This is the text of the Founder's Address given at the Federation of Continental Nations for World Peace"North America Inauguration Convention at the Meadowlands Hilton, Secaucus, NJ, August 31, 1996.
I congratulate you on your labors for the welfare of humankind and the realization of a peaceful world. I hope that this conference, convened with less than four years remaining in the twentieth century, can be a fruitful forum of discussion clarifying and expanding our hope for a peaceful world. I would like to share with you my thoughts on the realization of world peace and the ultimate human ideal.
I grew up on the Korean peninsula, where people suffered greatly as major powers fought over ideology and resources. Since my childhood, I have sought desperately to find answers to questions about life and the universe. I came to know the living God through my experiences with Him, and to know that God is the Lord of true love who has been present with humankind throughout history. I could not believe that God would have planned and created a world in which evil, conflict and war prevail. I do not have time to speak at length about the experiences of my youth. I will testify simply that those days were filled with an intense longing for the truth.
I have revealed the teaching of the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, a teaching known as "the Principle." It was not easily learned. Needless to say, I received the essence of the Principle through deep, fervent and prayerful communion with God, Jesus and other saints in the spirit world. Its revelation is a victory gained through a desperate fight with Satan. I am devoting every moment of my life to the teaching and practice of the Principle. Those whose lives it has touched are sharing it throughout the world, in 184 countries. The Principle is transforming people's lives by bringing them into a new relationship with the living God.
God's Ideal and Human Perfection
As human beings created by God, we were born with an innate hope to attain our dreams and realize an ideal world in relationship with God. Even under the worst conditions, human beings never give up their desire for an ideal and peaceful world. When we say "ideal world," we should know that God is the origin of the very concept of the ideal.
God did not create the world for the sake of power, glory or wealth. Being absolute, unchanging and eternal, and being the origin of all existence, He has no particular need for these things, as He already has them in abundance.
However, it would not be right to think that God has fulfilled all His desires. God exists as the embodiment of true love. God needs a partner in order to experience love, just as we do. Love can be experienced only when there is a "subject and object" relationship. No being can experience love in isolation, all by itself.
God created human beings to give and receive love freely in relationship with Him. We were made to be the true object of the love of God. He created us as His sons and daughters. He is the True Parent of humankind.
God wanted Adam and Eve, the first man and woman, to mature in purity, centered on true love. He wanted Adam and Eve to become true people. He created this beautiful and delicate natural world as the environment for their biological growth. Human beings were to grow and develop within this environment.
God's central concern, however, is with human beings' internal character. By experiencing true love, God intended that we would come to reflect His true love and grow to perfection. God created the power of love to be the strongest of all forces. Through the experience of such power of love within the realm of Heaven's love and law, people are to increasingly resemble God, their Parent. To possess unlimited true love, people first must learn to be responsible.
When human beings come into oneness with God through true love, they resemble Him and become the perfect embodiment of true love, with wholesome character. Thus we can say that God's love is the essence of human happiness, life and ideals.
Adam and Eve were meant to mature in God's love and become true individuals, true husband and wife, and, by rearing children, true parents. People experience God's true love step by step, throughout the stages of life's growth. Each individual is meant to come to know the heart of children through the love of their parents, the heart of a sibling through the love between brothers and sisters, the heart of husband and wife through the love of a spouse, and the heart of parents through loving children. The family is the foundation upon which we establish these four realms of love and heart.
The family is the basis for love, happiness, life and lineage. We cannot learn and experience these four realms of love anywhere other than in the family. We know love only through actual experience. The true perfection of the individual, family, society and environment has its root in the realization of love within the family.
World Peace and the Providence of Restoration
What is the reality of our world today? Despite advances in technology and the conveniences of modern life, the world is facing a profound crisis: the loss of our very humanity. Disorders and maladies of every kind violence, crime, drug abuse, war plague humankind. More significantly, the breakdown of the family, including the rising divorce rate, the collapse of sexual morality among youth and the problem of unmarried teenage mothers, is destroying the foundation of society.
Even though we have sought peace and happiness in many ways, none of us can be satisfied with the results we have achieved in our lives. After the First and Second World Wars, the League of Nations and then the United Nations were established to prevent further conflict. However, the global work of these organizations has not brought about a peaceful world. The efforts of religious groups also have not led to a world of happiness. The proud ideals of communism, the fascist illusion--these failed to bring about one ideal world. Neither highly advanced technology nor skillful diplomacy have delivered us peace and happiness. This is because the cause of humanity's unhappiness and suffering lies in the human fall and our disobedience to God. The solution of the problem begins by eliminating this root cause.
Adam and Eve defiled true love during their time of growth. They fell away from God's Principle by having sexual relations and creating children before they reached maturity in true love.
Human history thus began with Adam and Eve's lack of faith in God, their loving Parent, and their ultimate submission to Satan. By this action they became a false husband and false wife, and false parents. Our inheritance from the original family includes their legacy of corruption, conflict and suffering. This legacy has nothing to do with God's ideal of creation. We cannot imagine how God's Heart is broken!
God must, at any cost, restore His original ideal of true love and peace. What we call God's providence of salvation means His providence of restoration. For the sake of this restoration, He established religions and expanded a sphere of goodness.
The Messiah, sent by God, is the person who comes with the overall responsibility to complete the providence of restoration. The Messiah must come as the True Parent and must rectify everything, beginning at the very root of the problem.
Jesus came as the Messiah with the mission of the True Parent. He came to resurrect human beings on earth. He would thus restore them as true individuals, so that they might become true husbands and wives who would be true parents themselves. Unfortunately, because of the lack of faith on earth, he was unable to accomplish his purpose fully. As he ascended, however, he promised to return. He must return in order to restore God's ideal of creation.
Development of Civilization
Jesus was born in Israel, but he was not born for the Jewish people alone. Jesus came in the position of the Messiah and the True Parent. It was his purpose to realize God's ideal that is, a world of true love and peace. At that time, Israel was under Roman colonial rule. If Jesus could have accomplished his purpose among the people of Palestine, then God's providence was that his message to spread throughout the world.
In fact, Palestine's location at the crossroads of three continents, Asia, Africa and Europe, led to the transmission of Jesus' teachings during the first centuries of the Christian era. Christianity spread south into Africa, east into Asia and west into Europe. Eventually, Christianity attained continental dominion in Europe, western Asia and the Americas. Through Christianity these vast continents each accomplished relative unity. These unified continental powers came to dominate the world in the modern era.
Civilization first emerged on continents, in Egypt, Mesopotamia and China. The center of western civilization then shifted to peninsular cultures in Greece, Rome and then Iberia. These peninsular civilizations gave way to an island civilization in Great Britain. The center of civilization then moved to the continental civilization of North America, and then across the Pacific to an island civilization centering in Japan. It is the view of providence that the development of civilization will bear fruit in a peninsular culture emerging in Korea.
Peninsular cultures have given rise to important civilizations. Great religions and philosophies have emerged from peninsular cultures to guide the realm of the human spirit. These include, among others, Greek philosophy, which came from the Balkan peninsula, Christian culture that blossomed on the Italian peninsula, Hindu philosophy and culture from India, Islamic culture which arose on the Arabian peninsula, Buddhist culture which flourished on the peninsulas of Southeast Asia, the art of navigation from the Iberian peninsula, and the Nordic culture on the Scandinavian peninsula.
These peninsular initiatives took root on continents. Greco-Roman and Iberian culture flourished in Europe and the Americas, and Islamic culture spread across Africa and Asia.
Seen from another perspective, civilization that developed along major rivers such as the Nile, the Yellow, and the Tigris and Euphrates, gave way to civilization centering around the Mediterranean Sea in Greece, Rome, Spain and North Africa. The center then shifted to the Atlantic civilization of North America, France and Great Britain. Civilization ultimately will bear fruit in a Pacific civilization, connecting North America, Japan and Korea.
Major historical religious founders, including Moses, Zoroaster, Buddha, Lao Tzu, Confucius and Jesus, emerged on continents. God's will as expressed through Jesus, established in Israel on the continent of Asia, was to reach the world via the peninsular powers of Rome, to the Americas, and Greece, to Asia. Today global power resides on the continents of North America and Asia. The will of God for Christ's return can be accomplished only when these and all continents invest themselves completely in service to the world, based upon the place where Jesus is to return -- that is, where the True Parents are to come in Korea, a peninsular nation.
The surface of the earth is composed of land and ocean. I believe that the ocean has played the role of a mother, from which the simplest forms of life were born. If the ocean symbolizes femininity because it gives life, nurtures and embraces, then we can say that land symbolizes masculinity. Thus, island nations surrounded by ocean signify the feminine, and continental nations, with the peninsular nations extending from them, symbolize the masculine.
People from peninsular nations in particular have inherited strength and courage by having to defend against enemies from the surrounding seas and continents. Under their pioneering, exploring and adventuring spirit, their brilliant cultures blossomed and expanded. People from continental nations have rugged endurance. They cultivated difficult natural environments over vast distances. Living for generations isolated from cosmopolitan cultures, continental peoples retain the permanent, unchanging values attached to the land. Through the right relationship of island, peninsular and continental peoples, world peace will come.
As we greet the new millennium, the continental nations are called to accomplished a providentially significant mission. They should fulfill a leading role in realizing a peaceful world by combining their power to serve the world, together with their common experiences, into the Federation of Continental Nations for World Peace.
Respected leaders, I have not been satisfied merely to speak about humankind living happily in a peaceful world. I have been receiving tremendous spiritual support in actually creating substantial projects and organizations for this purpose"the Federation for World Peace, the Inter Religious Federation for World Peace, the Women's Federation for World Peace, the Youth Federation for World Peace, the Student Federation for World Peace, the Professors World Peace Academy, the Federation of Island Nations for World Peace and the Federation of Peninsular Nations for World Peace, among others. The Federation of Continental Nations for World Peace is dedicated to this same purpose.
There are many obstacles blocking the way to human happiness and peace, including political and economic conflicts. Most fundamental, however, is the conflict between mind and body within the individual. Throughout history, the conflict between mind and body has never been completely resolved. This is the serious and miserable result of the human fall.
Thus, people with inner conflict establish families which cannot set up a proper standard of ethics and morality. They cannot experience the world of heart based on true love. Can such families achieve complete harmony and unity? Since the family unit has abandoned its responsibility to practice true love, it is now being shaken and destroyed. In light of the breakdown of the family, is peace in the society, nation and world a realistic possibility?
I convened the Inaugural World Convention of the Family Federation for World Peace in Washington, DC, the capitol of the United States, from July 30 to August 1 of this year. Two former United States presidents, Gerald Ford and George Bush, sitting and former heads of state from forty nations, as well as representatives of 120 nations gathered for that historic international conference.
The Family Federation for World Peace will be the most treasured organization, coming as it does on the foundation of those international organizations which I have already set up in the course of investing my life for the realization of a peaceful world of true love.
Today, each individual must recover his or her true human nature, by uniting mind and body harmoniously within the realm of God's true love. Humankind must prepare a realm of eternal happiness through a movement for sexual purity and for the realization of true families. The Family Federation is dedicated to this task.
From the viewpoint of God's dispensation in the course of human history, humankind is one great family that is to live in attendance to God as the True Parent, transcending national boundaries, race and religious differences. Despite the fact that humankind as a single community is destined to cooperate as a global family, we live in an age when we feel that we have nothing to do with the problems of our neighbors and other countries. We cannot, however, ignore the reality of humanity ravaged by war, crime, drug abuse, pollution, the destruction of the ecosystem, ethical corruption and the scourge of AIDS.
Today, with the eyes of history upon us, we must answer to God. How can humankind, whose mandate is the realization of complete harmony and unity, overcome the unfortunate reality and greet the coming millennium with hope? How can we realize a peaceful world, in which everyone lives for and trusts others without respect for personal and national interests? What is the new value system by which we shall attain this ideal? Rather than riding the chariot of science and technology pulled by the horses of secular humanism, we must humbly seek the answers within our original mind. If we cannot find the solution on earth, we must find it through listening to the voice of Heaven.
