Four City American Speaking Tour: New York, Washington D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles
True Parents' 4 city tour begins tomorrow in New York. This is the speech they will present.
God’s Providence to Establish the World Transcending Religions and Nations Based Upon the Absolute Values of True Love
Rev. Sun Myung Moon
Four City American Speaking Tour
New York, Washington D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles
October 26–30, 2004
Respected leaders representing the religious, political, journalistic and academic spheres of America and the world, ladies and gentlemen.
A thousand emotions crowd my mind as I stand here today. Thirty-four years have passed since I first set foot on this land chosen by God. I came here to uphold God’ s will to make America a foothold for world salvation by reviving Christianity and bringing reconciliation to all religions.
Some of you who are sitting here may remember the warning I proclaimed when I first arrived in America. I boldly declared to the American people, "If there is an illness in your home, do you not need a doctor from outside? If your home catches on fire, do you not need fire fighters? God sent me to America as a doctor to heal this wounded land.
He sent me to America as a fire fighter because this house is on fire." In the early 1970s I called the two hundred and seventy million people of America to a great awakening. My "Day of Hope" speaking tour visited twenty-one major cities throughout the United States. I warned the people then that God was leaving America. I clearly stated that America would not have any hope if it did not end the racial strife between blacks and whites, reverse the moral degradation of its youth, stem the tide of self-centered individualism, resolve the problem of communism, and bring reconciliation among religions. The solutions to these problems could not be found in the federal government or in the schools. I called upon enlightened religious leaders to come together, surmounting differences of religion and ethnicity, to combine their strength and address these issues. Now, thirty years later, what do we see in America?
Only God knows the sweat and tears I shed in America as I labored to establish world peace.
You who are here today are the chosen fruit of that sweat and those tears.
Yet, a thorny path still awaits this nation. I, Rev. Moon, am not an American.
In accordance with God’s command, I have returned to Korea to lead His providence to restore my homeland to God.
The future of this nation is now in the hands of conscientious leaders like you. Who else shall save your nation? Where else but among the people gathered here can we find a politician who would willingly sacrifice him or herself for the future of this nation, or a professor who would spend sleepless nights anguishing over its problems? You are the only ones who can do it. You must stand up now and become the locomotive that leads America’s two hundred and seventy million people.
In this regard, I would like to convey a portion of a new understanding given by heaven for this age, titled "God’s Providence to Establish the World Transcending Religions and Nations Based Upon the Absolute Values of True Love." Please engrave this message in your hearts. Let its teachings give you direction and purpose in living for the sake of this nation and humankind. This message is not only for you and for the people of America; it is the new decree of heaven—the absolute, unavoidable truth—to be declared to all six billion people of the world and even throughout the spirit world.
A World Created in Mutual Relationships
Dear guests, what was God’s purpose in creating human beings? The omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent God did not want to live in solitude. He wished for counterparts whom He could love; these are human beings. He created the cosmos in stages to make an environment for human beings, and on that foundation, He created humankind to receive His absolute love.
God created us to be His children. God’s desire for us is unlimited: out of love He desires for human beings to become even better and greater than Himself. Don’t all parents wish for their children to surpass them? This is the tradition of parental love, with which God has blessed us.
God’s purpose of creation is to experience complete joy in seeing His children grow to maturity in a true family, marry under His blessing, and multiply true children who will build a true, ideal Heaven on earth in which to live eternally. They would be the fruits of God’s true love, true life and true lineage.
Does America today resemble God’s ideal of Heaven on earth? Can you Americans say that you possess God’s true love? I am here to teach you the path to becoming an owner of God’s true love.
We become owners of true love through practice. How do you practice true love? By giving first, by investing completely for your beloved, sacrificing and not remembering what you have given.
In the beginning, God practiced true love. Before God created human beings, He first established the standard of absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience. Then He invested Himself 100 percent. These are absolute values of love. Thus, God established the principle that any true relationship must be founded upon these true love’s absolute values.
You cannot become an owner of true love by yourself. You must be in relationship with a counterpart. Thus, a man and woman can never become parents without having children.
And it is the parent-child relationship where we practice the absolute values of and become owners of parental love.
This principle also applies to God. In order for God to stand as the owner of absolute love, He needs human beings as His true children. He practices the values of absolute love as He relates with them as His object-partners of love. Ultimately, the relationship between God as the subject-partner and human beings as object-partners becomes absolute, creating the realm of unity and perfection.
This principle applies throughout the universe, but has been sadly misunderstood.
Mistakenly, we have been taught that the strong always devour and exploit the weak. The theory of the survival of the fittest—the so-called "law of the jungle"—is rooted in the Hellenistic worldview. It is fundamentally wrong! Its proponents overlook the absolute values of living for the greater good that aim for the perfection of every creature, allowing all to be owners of love.
The owner of love lives for the sake of his or her counterpart, investing true love and forgetting ever having invested. The counterpart responds to that investment of love with complete submission. If true love were excluded from this equation, only the concept of struggle would remain. But God’s principle of creating does not base existence and development upon exploitation. Rather, He creates through a mutual process of giving and receiving, as the partners unite within a greater harmony rooted in love’s absolute values.
Sometimes an entity is sacrificed for the sake of a greater good, but we should not interpret this as moral evil. It is an investment for the sake of mutual development.
Is it evil for an individual to sacrifice for his or her family? Is it evil for a family to sacrifice for the nation, or a nation for the world? No, these noble acts display love’s absolute values.
They are the way to fully realize true love.
Selfish Individualism Is Satan’s Last Gasp An owner of true love strives, first of all, to lift up his or her object-partner as an owner of true love. Therefore, we must completely rid ourselves of the individualistic mind-set and the self-centered behavior that flows from it. This is the root of fallen nature and the cause of evil. This applies to an individual’s self-centered behavior and to collective selfish behavior of communities and nations.
Selfish individualism is in direct contradiction to the spirit that blossoms when we live by true love’s absolute values. Instead of sacrificing and giving for the sake of others, self-centeredness calls others to sacrifice for me. This leads us to be concerned first with our own interests.
Through the Fall, Satan diabolically injected self-centeredness into the mind-body relationship. He planted this poison mushroom in the human heart. Although the embrace of self-centeredness may lead to a beautiful appearance, worldly fame and earthly comfort, it is a trap. Enter it recklessly, and it leads to addiction and a life of suffering that is difficult to escape.
Consider your physical body. All the elements of your body were already present in your parents’ sperm and ovum. You were born from the love of your parents; 99.999 percent of the body came from your mother’s bone, blood and flesh. Your father’ s sperm provided the other 0.001 percent. You must acknowledge the fact that your entire body is an extension of your mother. No one is an exception to this. In this respect, there is nothing that we can call our own, nothing that can justify self-centered individualism.
Everything exists in relation to its complement. When we say "front," it presupposes a ‘back.’ Top is meaningful only in relation to bottom. Left is a precondition for right. By the same logic, masculine presupposes the existence of feminine. The moral lesson is that men are born for the sake of women, and women are born for the sake of men. Without men, there is no need for women. In the same way, without women, men cannot claim any value to their existence.
In the end, nothing is born for its own sake. All beings exist and act for the sake of a partner.
This means that God created all things to move toward the ideal of His Kingdom through the operation of mutual relationships.
Consider a human being’s five senses. Do your eyes exist to gaze at themselves? No. Our eyes, nose, ears, mouth and hands were created to sense others. What force energizes our five senses to sustain our life and maintain our activities? It is the force that exalts the values of true love. Our five senses are nothing but essential tools that exist in order to practice true love.
Nothing comes into being for its own sake. A life for the sake of others, giving and sacrificing through love and perfecting the ownership of love through willing submission, is a life aligned with God’s ideal of creation.
Today I ask you to recognize that each of you was created for the sake of your partner. Know that the law of nature calls you to live for the sake of your partner. Practice this way of life, and you will come to embody the absolute values by which you can become an owner of true love.
The Root of Free Sex Was The Human Fall
When God created the first human ancestors, Adam and Eve, in the Garden of Eden, He gave them sexual organs. Why did He do that? It was so that they could grow to maturity, marry, beget children without sin, and establish the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. Thus were they to perfect God’s ideal of creation. Adam and Eve should have accomplished this within their lifetime.
The problem was that Adam and Eve fell. They became people of false love, false life and false lineage. Instead of embodying and multiplying God’s love, God’s life and God’s lineage, Adam and Eve received the satanic lineage. They fell into disgrace; and worse, they transmitted Satan’s lineage to their children. They lost love’s absolute values, and instead became beings of no value. Hence, God had to drive them out of the Garden of Eden.
Adam was supposed to have become God’s body on earth. Eve was supposed to become not only Adam’s bride but also God’s bride. Instead, their minds and bodies were corrupted, they lost their ideals, and they turned into enemies. How grieved was God’s heart as He viewed that tragic reality! The Fall was Adam and Eve’s grave. It robbed God of what belonged to Him. The Fall was the root of free sex and the origin of self-centered individualism.
Take a look around you. We see self-centered individualism of the worst kind.
Everywhere people are over-consuming out of greed. Free sex is rampant among the young.
Whether in the East or the West, people are casting aside the dignity and value of the family and pursuing physical pleasure. Millions fall into drug addiction, contract deadly diseases and meet tragic ends.
The conscience does not desire a decadent and meaningless life. Even as we pursue paths of extreme individualism and bodily pleasure, our conscience raises an alarm. Every person has a God-given original mind that longs to live in a universe, nation, neighborhood and family wrapped in the loving embrace of parents and siblings.
Still, we continue to walk contrary to the original mind’s desire, and eventually the conscience burns out. Faced with the inescapable conflict between the body’s selfish desires and the conscience, we deaden the pain with escapist drugs and, in the extreme, resort to suicide. Our lives testify to the truth of the proverb, "you shall reap what you sow." What seed did Adam and Eve sow in the Garden of Eden? They planted the seed of free sex, through an illicit sexual relationship. That is why it is written that after they fell they hid their lower parts. In the Last Days, the time of harvest, rampant free sex among young people will surely manifest throughout the world. Through promiscuity, Satan is carrying out his last campaign to deter anyone from returning to God. Satan’s goal is to destroy humankind and perpetuate hell on earth.
When young children are caught stealing sweets, their natural reaction is to hide their hands or mouth. If Adam and Eve literally had eaten fruit from a literal tree, they would have hidden their hands or covered their mouths. So, I ask you: Why did they hide their lower parts? We cannot deny that the Human Fall was caused by an illicit sexual relationship between the first human ancestors. God could not do anything in the face of the tragedy of the Fall, because it was connected to Adam and Eve’s responsibility to create their lineage.
Dear guests, do you know the dividing line between Heaven and hell? Is it in the air? Is it in a church sanctuary? Is it in a national government? No, the dividing line between Heaven and hell is found in your sexual organ. This is where the greatest tragedy in human history occurred, which turned heaven and earth upside-down.
If you use your sexual organ recklessly, like a blind man, you will surely go to hell. On the other hand, if you use it in accordance with the standard of God’s absolute love, you will go to heaven. Who can deny this? If you doubt it, I ask you to carefully read the Divine Principle, which contains the laws of heaven that were revealed to me. If that does not answer your doubts, please pray about it sincerely. I am sure that God will answer your prayer.
Hundreds of thousands of young people throughout the world who have accepted the teachings of the Reverend Moon have ceased engaging in free sex. The message of the pure love movement, which advocates "absolute sex," is now spreading like wildfire. While free sex is based upon false love and motivated by selfish desires that come from Satan, absolute sex is the expression of absolute love centered on God. Literature, films and the media have been highlighting and fanning the flames of free sex. Now, leaders of all spheres of life, including politicians, businessmen, writers, journalists and religious leaders, must stand as one to overturn the culture’s obsession with free sex. This disease cripples individuals, families and nations.
We must bear in mind the importance of Adam’s family, the ancestors of humanity. It was Adam’s family that destroyed the path to true love and world peace. Yet Adam’ s family had the potential to establish the absolute values of true love and lay the cornerstone of world peace—if only they had maintained their pure love and received God’s holy marriage blessing. The reason why 10 years ago I brought an end to the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity and raised instead the banner of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification is because the time had come to call people of all faiths to receive the holy blessing.
How can we transform this world of conflict and war into a world of harmony and unity? The only way is by practicing true love and establishing love’s absolute values as a global ethic.
These eternal, unchanging, unique and absolute values are the attributes of God, the owner of true love. We must inherit them as our own and live accordingly.
The Beauty of a Family that Embodies God’s Original Ideal
Dear guests, why is the family a good thing? A good family, overflowing with parental love, is the place where we can express our original freedom. It doesn’t matter whether a family is rich or poor; if true love is at the core, their bond of heart is liberating.
That family can liberate humankind and even liberate God.
Freedom cannot exist without true love. If you visit someone as a guest, you feel reserved and inhibited. This is because initially you may lack a deep bond of true love with that household.
In other words, because your love does not spread in all directions, you feel awkward and shy. However, after you visit that home many times and your bond of love with that family grows, you lose your shyness and begin to relate freely.
In God’s blueprint for the family, the parents embody the highest and greatest value. Parents are the initiators and the center of eternal true love. No bond is closer than the life-long relationship between parent and child. When a child is born, the first person it relates to is its mother. Mother and baby share indescribable joy. When the child is happy, the parents share that happiness. When the child is sorrowful, the parents are the first to shed tears of sorrow.
Thus God intends that parents be the beginning and the end of their children’ s joy.
For this reason, we have sympathy and compassion for children who have no parents.
A loving couple, husband and wife, is the second most valuable existence in the family. A true husband and wife give and receive love that is unconditional. As newly-weds, their love does not begin as absolute, eternal love. But as their relationship matures, their love should become an absolute bond, taking after God’s attributes of absoluteness and eternity. Then their true love will bring happiness and joy to the family.
But even if a husband and wife enjoy the most ideal relationship, and it goes no further than the couple, it will not bring the absolute value of eternal happiness and joy. Therefore, couples need to have children. Imagine what would happen if all couples decided not to have children, saying that they would rather just enjoy their own happiness?
Humankind would become extinct in one hundred years or less. When a husband and wife receive love from their children, they rise to the position of parents. Only then can they be called a true couple.
Therefore, in God’s blueprint for the family, the third most important value is the true love of children for their parents. Children are to love and serve their parents with a bright and positive attitude, even as they seek to fulfill their goals and create a hopeful future for themselves. Their true love for their parents can become original love, adding pure and genuine value and expanding the family’s field of happiness.
This is God’s design for the family: It extends over three generations, completely endowed with the sacrificial love of parents for their children, the true love between husband and wife, and the true love of children for their parents. Families anywhere in the world which manifest this pattern will become the paramount, ideal, true families.
What kind of person does the world call happy? What is the basis of happiness? Does power and authority bring happiness? Does having tremendous wealth bring happiness? Does happiness come from possessing a unique talent? Does happiness come by becoming a world-renowned scholar or gaining a coveted position?
None of these guarantee happiness.
Nothing external can be the basis of eternal happiness. Sooner or later the happiness it brings will fade, stimulating anew the search for happiness. In the end, a person finds genuine happiness in a family that has loving parents, a couple bonded in true love, and children who are devoted and faithful to their parents.
Family Relationships are the Basis of Heaven Dear guests, what kind of place is heaven? According to the principle by which God created the universe, heaven must first be perfected on earth. Men and women were created to live their lives in heaven while on earth in their physical bodies. Then, when they naturally discard the flesh, they will make the transition to heaven in the spirit world where they will live for eternity. Our task, then, is to build the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.
Then what should the Kingdom of Heaven on earth look like? The answer is near at hand.
The Kingdom of Heaven has the same form as God’s design for the family. In an original family there are parents of the original standard, husband and wife of the original standard, children of the original standard, and siblings of the original standard.
If the members of a family unite in true love, they automatically create harmony and unity. In this way, true love, true life and true lineage are passed on through the generations. The grandparents convey the tradition of true love to the parents. The parents bequeath the same life of true love to their children. In their sibling relationships, the children take after their grandparents and parents by living for the sake of others and forming original relationships of true love.
When this happens, that family becomes a heavenly family. Such a family may be called an original family, a true family, a family that fulfills God’s purpose and ideal. Unfortunately, if even one of these components is missing, it is impossible to create an original family that can be a unit of the heavenly kingdom.
In an original family, love for one’s parents should be stronger than the love between husband and wife, and love for one’s grandparents should be stronger than the love for one’s parents. This sets up the tradition and ethics of true love.
The original family is the model of Kingdom of Heaven. The parents are analogous to the leader of a nation; the children correspond to the citizens of a nation; and the family’s house and property correspond to the land of that nation. When the values of true love in the original family apply to the governance and social life of the nation, that nation takes the form of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Individual Perfection through Mind-Body Unity
Thus, the starting point of the Kingdom of Heaven lies not in the individual or in the nation, but in the family. Once we enter heaven and are surrounded by our beloved family, we will not want to leave. Though we see each other hundreds and thousands of times, we will still want to see each other again and again. This is our original homeland, for which everyone shares a common longing.
Yet, heaven is not created in an instant. Just because the age has changed and heavenly fortune is with us does not mean that heaven will fall from the sky and appear before our eyes. We first must become people of character who can create heavenly families. In other words, we must achieve individual maturity.
The path to becoming people of character, to achieving individual maturity, lies in perfecting the harmony and unity between our mind and body. Originally, we were created to live without any inner conflict. The mind is supposed to guide to the body, while the body acts in absolute obedience to the mind. Thus, mind and body were created to function in perfect harmony. However, all human beings have inherited fallen nature, as a result of the Fall of the first ancestors, Adam and Eve. Humankind has lived in suffering because of the unavoidable conflict between mind and body that has its roots in the Fall.
No one in history has ever achieved mind-body unity during his or her life on earth. Despite the steady progress of God’s providence of restoration and His determination to save humanity, not a single person has been liberated from the struggle between the mind and body and achieved individual perfection. Although countless monks and hermits have followed the arduous path of asceticism, living in caves deep in the mountains and devoting their entire lives to meditation and prayer, not one has ever triumphed in that struggle.
The reason that even enlightened sages have been unable to stop the struggle between the mind and body is simple. No one has known the method to win the unrelenting, internal war.
Self-discipline alone is not enough to win the victory. All such efforts are worthless unless one understands the providence of Heaven, receives the call, reaches the stage of completing the providence of restoration that God has guided for thousands of years, and gains victory in a position publicly recognized by heaven and earth.
Two thousand years ago, Jesus came to the earth as Savior, Messiah and True Parent. As God’s only begotten Son, Jesus had the mission to complete the providence of Heaven and end forever the struggle between the mind and body. But when Jesus died on the cross due to the failure of certain crucial religious and political leaders in Israel to recognize him, he was no longer in a position to bring an end to the struggle between mind and body. And even though Jesus took every opportunity to call on people to love their enemies, his teachings could not bring an end to the struggle between mind and body.
Heaven can wait no longer. Heaven is now revealing all its secrets based on my foundation of victory. I have successfully completed the mission of the Lord of the Second Advent, Savior and True Parent. Now I am revealing this truth, bringing to a conclusion the final stage of the providence for humankind’s salvation. The absolute values of true love that I am teaching you today will bring a revolution of character within humankind. Those who follow my teachings will achieve individual perfection and participate in the construction of the ideal of Heaven on earth.
Dear guests, the only way to bring harmony and unity between mind and body is to live by the absolute values of true love. Live for the sake of others. Invest yourself with true love and forget what you have invested. Practice this, and you will perfect yourself as the owner of love. You will gain the authority of a subject in relating to others, and they will willingly submit to you in response. Unity of mind and body is impossible unless you live according to love’s absolute values where you give yourself for the sake of others completely. Please discard self-centeredness. It is the root of fallen nature.
Ultimately, the realization of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth depends upon the existence of original, true families. Individuals who have achieved harmony and unity between the mind and body create such families. They will form a society, nation and world characterized by interdependence, mutual prosperity and universally shared values, in which people live in harmony focused on the greater good.
Unity between mind and body means to live in absolute obedience to the voice of the conscience. The conscience is like the root of the mind. You must listen to your conscience that arises from within your mind, and be able to modify your course of action at any time, anywhere, while remaining as clear as crystal.
This is a necessary condition for becoming a true parent, a true teacher, or a true leader.
No matter how strong the desire of the body, if you can intentionally place greater force behind your conscience in accordance with the teaching of the Principle, your body will follow your mind. If you cannot, you had better control your body through fasting and asceticism. If clear water continually flows into a muddy pond, eventually the pond will become clear.
Dear guests, don’t cause your conscience any more grief. Don’t disobey its call. Disobeying the voice of your conscience only brings sorrow to your heart. It brings sorrow to your parents, to your teachers, and even to God.
Instead, cultivate a joyful mind. Although you may be lonely, and appear miserable in the eyes of the world, create an unbreakable bond with your mind and try to be your mind’s best friend. Within the harmony and unity of your mind and body, you will discover a world where all of heaven and earth are spread out before your eyes. In the state of mind-body unity, your conscience and body enter a realm of resonance. Referring to this dimension of the mind, the Buddha said, "Throughout heaven and earth, I am my own lord." Ask your mind if God is dwelling in you, and it will tell you. You will reach a state in harmony with nature, able to communicate freely with animals and plants. You will be able to converse freely with the beings of the spirit world. You will thoroughly prepare yourself for eternal life.
By attaining this unity of mind and body, and establishing the absolute values of true love in relating with your reciprocal partners, you participate in establishing the Peace Kingdom on the levels of the individual, family, nation and world. This is God’s most earnest desire.
Absolute Faith, Absolute Love, and Absolute Obedience But in order to attain this state of perfection, as descendants of the Fall, we must first shed our fallen nature. How can we do this?
First, we must resemble God. When God created all the creatures in the universe, He practiced absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience. Didn’t He believe and act in accordance with the absolute standard of the principle and according to the order of creation that He had established? He also planted within each of us the absolute standard of love.
In your lives, too, if you adhere to and practice these three major principles of absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience, your happiness will be guaranteed. Your good ancestors and even the great religious leaders in the heavenly world will assemble to guide your way. See what happens when you practice such an absolute standard of faith, love and obedience for the sake of your parents, your husband or wife, and your brothers and sisters.
Heaven will protect you to the same absolute degree. There will be no room for selfish individualism or the pursuit of unprincipled pleasure.
The Three Revolutions
Second, although no fault of our own, we are descendants of the Fall and have inherited fallen nature from birth. Therefore, it is the urgent task of each of us to bring about three great revolutions in our individual lives. I refer to the revolution through making atonement, the revolution of conscience, and the revolution of heart.
The revolution through making atonement means that you are to offer up everything. By this offering you can regain your internal and external rights of ownership, and establish a standard that transcends the realm where Satan has any claim.
First, you must carry out a revolution in your own lives by boldly shaking off all the old habits and ways of thinking that you acquired during the age when we lived under satanic rule, called The Age Before the Coming of Heaven. You need to make that victorious foundation in order to practice the absolute standard of true love, which is the standard for our lives in The Age After the Coming of Heaven, and live eternally as God’s true children.
In addition, you must go through a revolutionary course and give up all your property and your external rights of ownership to Heaven. Then, once you have cut off all ties to the satanic world and separated yourselves from Satan, you will inherit Heaven’s blessings. That means to increase Heaven’s wealth of sanctified assets such that Satan can never again claim ownership over them.
What is the revolution of conscience? It is an internal revolution that we carry out by practicing absolute obedience to the voice of our conscience. I am sure you cannot deny that within you there is still the unending struggle between the commands of your conscience, which pursues what is good, and the inclinations of your physical mind, which follows the desires of your physical body. To bring this shameful internal conflict to an end, we must have a clear understanding of the function of the conscience.
The conscience knows everything about you—your every move and your every thought. It knows them before your teacher does. It knows them before your parents do. It knows them before God does. What happens when you go against the commands of your conscience?
You will be attacked by pangs of conscience. Dust gathers, grime builds up and wounds appear on your soul. These wounds can never be erased. They are fearful baggage that you carry with you when you go to the spirit world. Therefore, you must work in a revolutionary way to suppress your physical mind and accept the guidance of your conscience. Then you will become a clear, unblemished and clean soul, ready for the day that you make your way forward into the presence of God.
What is the revolution of heart? I have said that God created human beings as His children.
What, then, is the connection that binds each of you to God? It is the love and heart between parent and child. If there is no communication of heart between parent and child, how can they maintain a relationship of love and respect?
Yet human beings, having lived for thousands of years under the influence of the fallen realm, are still slaves in our hearts to false parents, false love, and false lineage. If we are to escape from this yoke, we must constantly live lives of true love, practicing forgiveness and always giving to others. Through this process, we are able to return to the realm of God’s ownership based on heart.
If your heartstrings are still tied to selfish, individualistic inclinations, or are in pursuit of the vain glory of the satanic world, you will end up on a path of hopelessness and grief. On the other hand, if you live for the sake of others, always constructive, always seeking to be the first to yield and the first to give, your heart will be tied to the heart of God eternally.
In sum, you must completely cut your ties with the false parent, receive the Holy Blessing from the True Parents, who have appeared in this world as the substantiations of the invisible God, and secure Heaven’s true lineage.
Grade Yourself
Third, you must scrutinize your own lives every moment of every day. I am sure you all had experiences back when you were in school, looking at a problem on a test paper and not being able to make up your mind whether a particular answer was right or wrong. The same is true with your lives. I am asking you, in the course of your daily lives and faced with innumerable different situations, to analyze and scrutinize each moment as to whether or not you are right or wrong. Grade yourselves, giving yourself an "O" if you are right, or an "X" if you are wrong.
Whenever you give yourself an "O," it means you met the situation in an affirmative and hopeful way. Most likely you set a vertical axis that extends up to heaven, and you lived as at high noon—without casting any shadow. Your life undoubtedly had such depth and breadth that you were able to forgive and embrace even your enemies in the spirit of true love.
Whenever you give yourself an "X," however, it means that you acted shamefully. Possibly your heart was filled with negative elements such as insecurity, irritation, bitterness, and envy. Maybe your mind and thoughts were narrow and intolerant, and you were selfish and individualistic to the point that you did not see what was happening to others around you.
I believe that your choice could not be clearer. Every moment of your lives should deserve an O" grade. You should be like the letter "O," which is perfectly round and not out of shape in any way. You must come to have the form of an "O," which forms a 90-degree angle with the center no matter where it is placed. Please lead lives in which you pursue the true "O," so that you can look at the brightly burning sun and not be ashamed, you can face the vast and infinite universe with honor, and you can stand before all of creation having nothing to hide.
An "O" symbolizes harmony, unity and peace. "X" symbolizes death, while "O" symbolizes love and life. When your mind and body become completely one, you will take on the appearance of an "O," and when your mind and body are in a state of chaos as a result of conflict, your appearance will take on the shape of an "X." Ladies and gentlemen, today humanity has entered the Age after the Coming of Heaven. The realm of true liberation and complete freedom stands before us.
This is an unprecedented event in history and one that will never be repeated in the future. Shall we return gratitude and glory to God and True Parents for making this day possible?
Now the time has come for humanity to boldly break out of the fallen realm, covered as it is with falsehood and blood as a result of Adam and Eve’s transgression. Let us all rise up with extraordinary determination in response to Heaven’s call.
Please give careful thought to the reasons you are here today. Is it simply because you received an invitation from the sponsors, and therefore you came to attend a banquet?
Whether you desired it or not, you have been called by Heaven. Just as I suddenly received Heaven’s call as a young man of fifteen and began an eighty-year course of blood, sweat and tears for the sake of bringing true liberation and complete freedom to God, and for the sake of saving humanity from Satan’s yoke, so you also must now go forward determined to offer your lives in order to accomplish God ’s exalted will for the liberation and complete establishment of the world transcending religions and nations.
Ladies and gentlemen! Heavenly fortune is now shining upon this world, as the sun that rises powerfully in the eastern sky. The darkness that has covered this earth for tens of thousands of years has now been dispelled. The heavenly decree has already taken root in your hearts. It is the path—your destiny— that you cannot avoid. Be strong and rise up. The time has come to truly experience the meaning of Jesus’ teaching that whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever is willing to lose his life will find it. All of us without exception, including myself, are bound to go to the spirit world someday. I sincerely ask you to engrave tonight’s message on your heart, that from this time forth you will live a life that will not leave you with any regrets.
The heavenly discourse that I have given tonight is my last message to God’s chosen nation, America. I pray that God’s blessings be upon you, your family and this nation of America for all of eternity.
Thank you.