Father Moon Envisions Strong Korea as Key to New Pacific Civilization
On March 7, 2012, the Strong Korea National Movement was launched in Seoul at the Convention Center on Yeouido Island. More than 2,300 leaders from Korea and abroad attended, and Rev. Sun Myung Moon gave the following keynote address, titled, “A Providential View of the Pacific Rim Era in Light of God’s Will: The United States and the Future Direction of the United Nations and the World.”
Respected Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen: I am delighted to meet you all today. I would like to welcome you, on behalf of my family.
Ladies and Gentlemen: I am well aware that this rally today is a launch ceremony paving the way for the Strong Korea movement to actively carry out its campaign throughout Korea. Therefore, on this occasion I will explain something of the profound providential plan God has had for the Korean peninsula throughout history. I will also speak about some aspects of God’s providence dealing with the Pacific Rim Era that I have announced.
Distinguished guests, at the beginning of the seventh year of Cheon Il Guk, I declared the beginning of a jubilee period in God’s providence. God has greatly blessed us from that year. It is a time of jubilee the likes of which God and humankind have never experienced in thousands of years of history.
God’s heart has been in pain throughout history because humanity has been confined under Satan’s dominion. Humanity had endured oppression under the sovereignty of evil throughout the “era before the coming of heaven.” That time has finally come to an end! 2007 was the zenith at which time it became possible for the gates to open wide to the revolutionary era after the coming of heaven, ushering in the time of a new sovereignty of goodness in which humanity could serve and attend God as the central being.
Without your being aware of it, Heaven’s providence has been expanding in extraordinary ways. Now ambassadors for peace in 185 nations, numbering in the tens of thousands, have received my teachings and are working day and night in response to a special decree from God. Hence, today I would like to convey to you Heaven’s message, which is entitled, “A Providential View of the Pacific Rim Era in Light of God’s Will: The United States and the Future Direction of the United Nations and the World.” It is a declaration of God’s plan for His dispensation and the direction humankind should take.
Movement of Civilizations
Ladies and Gentlemen: If you carefully examine the progress of history, you will undoubtedly discover God’s plan and sense His presence as He tirelessly worked behind the scenes. Consider the history of civilization, which began centering on four of the world’s great rivers. We are familiar with the Egyptian civilization that flourished along the Nile River, the Mesopotamian civilization between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, the Harappan civilization on the Indus River, and early Chinese civilization around the Yellow River. The center of civilization shifted over time to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea where the Mediterranean peninsular civilizations flourished in Greece and Rome. History continued to progress and the European continental civilization emerged. This continental civilization in turn gave birth to an island civilization, Great Britain, which flourished in the Atlantic sphere. The British Empire, which dominated the seven seas and wielded its might as “the empire on which the sun never sets,” passed its splendid culture on to North America. We know these facts from history.
Civilization on the North American continent raised the banner of democracy, which was rooted in Christianity. It bequeathed to the world the principles of freedom of religion and respect for equal human rights as it led the struggle against fascism and communism, which had established atheistic, evil sovereignties. Through the victories of the First and Second World Wars, and the third—the Cold War—it won victory over totalitarianism and communism.
However, that victory does not simply mean that America is great; the development of human civilization did not stop there. Victory came because God had chosen and raised the United States of America as the Second Israel, in accordance with His providential plan, and had raised and trained the American people through Christianity. God worked through America to bring His providence to its present stage of fruition.
Ladies and Gentlemen: The present time marks an important milestone in the development of civilization. Civilization has completed a circuit of the entire globe and has now arrived on the shores of the Pacific Ocean. History’s course has come to the point under God’s providence where it must be completed and concluded in the Pacific Rim region.
No force can stop God’s providence now. Though there were both victories and defeats during the course of indemnity under the evil sovereignty in the era before heaven, now nothing can prevent the rise of the Pacific Rim Era. Herein lies the special reason that Heaven declared 2007 to be the beginning of the jubilee period.
New Start for the Providence
Ladies and Gentlemen: The arrival of the Pacific Rim Era signifies many things. What do you think the world would have been like if Jesus had fulfilled the complete messianic mission during his lifetime on earth? Jesus came as the Savior and Messiah, to save all humankind. He did not come just to save the people of Israel, a small nation located on a corner of the Mediterranean Sea. At that time, Rome, based at the center of the Mediterranean, was the center of human civilization. Rome was ready to rule the seas. Heaven earnestly wished for Jesus to first teach and transform Rome and then rule over her empire. Heaven was eager for a civilization that could bring salvation to all humanity by employing Rome’s strength. Yet, Jesus was cruelly put to death on the cross, as we know all too well through the biblical record.
After thousands of years of preparation, God finally was able to send Jesus to earth as His only son. There is no way to fathom God’s heart as He anxiously watched Jesus’ each and every action. Jesus’ death was a tragedy that broke God’s heart. It brought Him anguish even more extreme than the time when Adam and Eve, whom He created as the first ancestors of humankind, were lost from the Garden of Eden due to the Fall.
During the two thousand years since the crucifixion, God, in the background of history, has walked a suffering path that is beyond human imagination. Through this course, He prepared the United States of America to serve as the nation of the Second Israel. As a Christian nation that includes Catholicism and Protestantism, as well as the Orthodox world, the United States’ mission is to bring harmony and unity to Christianity as soon as possible—and moreover, in the twenty-first century, to fulfill the responsibility that had been the Roman Empire’s, but which was not realized in Jesus’ time. On America’s shoulders rests the responsibility, within God’s providence, to bring harmony and oneness among the world’s seven billion people and to expedite the creation of a peaceful, ideal world. These are not simply the words of Rev. Moon. This is Heaven’s decree to America.
Then how can we unify Christianity? God has already revealed the solution through me, Rev. Moon, the True Parent of humankind. Through me, God has given Christians the supreme command to practice lives of true love, to understand completely the reality of the spirit world to which we go after we die, and to establish model, ideal families—true families.
What kind of love is true love? And what kind of family is a true family? The essence of God’s absolute true love is not to have others serve you. Rather, it is to be the first to give, to serve and to care for others and to seek the greater good. True love gives, forgets that it has given, and continues to give without ceasing. True love gives joyfully. We find it in the joyful and loving heart of a mother who cradles her child in her arms and nurses her child at her breast. True love is sacrificial love, such as that of a devoted son who finds his greatest satisfaction through dedicating himself with all of his body and soul to helping his parents.
When we are bound together in true love, we will only ever be happy to be in each other’s company. The attraction of true love brings not only the universe, but even God Himself, to follow us when we call on them. The value of true love is that it has the power to permanently dissolve the barriers that people, descended from the Fall, have created—including national, racial and even religious barriers.
A Coming Era of Model Families
The main attributes of God’s true love are that it is absolute, unique, unchanging and eternal. Therefore, whoever practices true love will share God’s pleasures and pains, enjoy the right to participate as an equal in His work, and enjoy the same right of inheritance. Therefore, a life of service, in other words a life of true love, is an absolute requirement for entering the kingdom of heaven. A life of true love is the way to create all things; it is the mode of life of new families that live peacefully centering on God and form peaceful ideal model families.
The path is now wide open for anyone to establish a true family. The family is the model by which people are to live in service to one another. The warm environment of oneness based on love and respect between parents and children, mutual fidelity and love between husband and wife, and trust and mutual reliance among siblings is the manifestation of the model ideal family. This means that you need to establish a true family wherein the stem of true love emerges from the root of true love and bears the fruit of true love.
The responsibility of tribal messiahs, the mission of ambassadors for peace, and God’s desire is to seek and set up families of Cheon Il Guk, comprised of three generations—grandparents, parents, and children—that together serve the ever-present God as a united family.
You should form families that God will miss and yearn to return to after He has been away. You should raise families to which He can come freely as a parent visiting His children. This is what it means to live in service to God. In such a family, God is the vertical subject partner of everyone’s conscience. Following God as its vertical subject partner, the mind of each family member stands in the position of that person’s very own vertical subject partner. Each person must bring the mind and body into unity by following the mind.
It is in such a family that the four major types of love—parental love, conjugal love, children’s love and siblings’ love—which also form the four great realms of heart, are perfected. It is only in such a family that the relationships based on upper and lower, right and left, and front and rear can be linked together and the resultant spherical motion continue. This is how God’s everlasting model ideal families, ideal nations and peaceful ideal kingdom can be formed. If the entire world were filled only with such families of true character, it would be a world of natural order in which the heavenly way and heavenly law would reign supreme. There would be no need for lawyers, prosecutors or judges.
Dear Peace-loving Leaders:
Among the seven billion people on the earth today, almost five billion are our neighbors and relatives. They are our brothers and sisters of the Pacific Rim region. In other words, they are our relatives within the heritage of the Mongolian birthmark. Is there anything we cannot accomplish if we join together as one blood through receiving the blessing of marriage centering on God’s peace ideal? The future of humanity is now in the hands of the nations of the Pacific Rim.
Ladies and Gentlemen: God’s providence has now spread from the North American continent and blossomed in the island civilization of Japan, which is in the same position that Britain once held. It is now about to fulfill its destiny by reaching fruition on the Korean peninsula, the homeland of the True Parents, who have appeared as the Savior of humanity and the returning Messiah.
The Position of Korea in the Modern World
The Korean peninsula stands in the same position as Rome did in Jesus’ time, in that it is considered a conflict zone transcending the spheres of religion and politics that must resolve all the world’s problems. From a geopolitical point of view, the Korean peninsula persists as an arena of the most intense confrontation, despite the ongoing efforts on the part of all to secure peace.
The principles of restoration through indemnity make it inevitable that civilization will bear fruit in the Pacific Rim region, centered on the Korean peninsula. Fortunately, during the Korean War, the UN Forces, led by the United States, were, thankfully, mobilized to the peninsula. Yet, they did not recover the homeland and hometown of God’s desire as they should have, according to God’s will, and they left the job half done. As a result, global conflict and strife emerged, soon to be called the Cold War. As a result of this, the Korean people lost their property and were displaced, leading them to search for God.
In order to restore this through indemnity, I established the Universal Peace Federation (UPF) seven years ago. I then organized the Peace Kingdom Corps and Peace Kingdom Police Force, comprising heavenly women who have received the marriage blessing, who love peace, and who are willing to serve and sacrifice for the work of the Universal Peace Federation. I have taken the lead in educating those involved with these organizations. These peace organizations stand in the forefront for actualizing a world of peace centering on God. They will create the peaceful, ideal world that God desires.
You may not be aware of this, but I have been assisting behind the scenes of the Six Party Talks that were being held for the sake of resolving the nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula, and working to reconcile democratic nations with communist nations. I am presenting a solution based on the principles of peace and harmony rooted in the new ideology of the Heavenly Father.
At such pressing times, what exactly should the role of America and the United Nations be? Hawaii in the Pacific, located at the center of the Pacific Rim, bridge East and West, and link North and South. With the support and protection of the American continent, the Korean peninsula should become the homeland that protects and defends the Pacific Rim region by bringing together all the island nations of the Pacific. I say this because the future of humankind lies in the preservation of the Pacific Rim region centering on Korea, Japan and the United States.
As I was well aware of Heaven’s plans for this region, I invested thirty-three of the prime years of my life in the United States, beginning in the early 1970s, for the sake of world peace. On that victorious foundation, I returned to Korea, where I am working to complete the providence of establishing God’s homeland and hometown.
Ladies and Gentlemen: I ask that you analyze the current state of affairs in the world closely. Although the days of communism are gone, even now powerful nations are constantly on the lookout for opportunities to pursue their own interests aggressively at the expense of the powerless and small island nations. No small island nation by itself can deal with these powerful nations and their economic, political or even military ambitions. They are so powerful that if they wanted to, they could dominate any smaller nation in a single day, without shedding blood.
Only when peace and security are settled in the Pacific Rim can peace for all humankind be guaranteed. As I have mentioned, the small island nations by themselves cannot contend with the great tsunami of powerful nations moving into the region. The time has come, therefore, for all these small island nations in the Pacific Rim sphere to unite and build the homeland of the new, godly civilization.
The small island nations dispersed in both the northern and southern regions of the Pacific, on either side of the equator, as well as Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, the Solomon Islands, Australia, New Zealand and other countries, should become like one country, forming a union to sustain peace to the Pacific Rim civilization. This will secure peace and stability for all people.
What I am saying to you is that you have the responsibility to protect and save the oceanic realm, which is a lifeline upon which humanity’s future depends, from the environmental destruction and conflicts that are worsening by the day, and to shield its natural resources for the sake of peace in the future.
Ladies and Gentlemen: For the purpose of resolving these problems afflicting humankind, on September 12, 2005, I proclaimed throughout all of heaven and earth the establishment of the Universal Peace Federation (UPF), which will enable God’s providence to flourish. Now, it is possible for UPF to serve as an Abel-type counterpart to the UN in the era after the coming of heaven. It will renew the Cain-type United Nations and lead the way for millions of ambassadors for peace throughout the world who have taken up the ideology of the Heavenly Father, that is, my teachings—which consist of the principles of true love and the ideal of a true family—to without fail, fulfill the heavenly will of creating one family under God.
Ladies and Gentlemen: Through the cross-cultural marriage blessings that transcend religious denomination and nationality, the Universal Peace Federation will be the vanguard that carries out the great revolution of restoring the original lineage of humanity, hearkening back to Adam before the Fall. Some may laugh and say that this is impossible. Yet, where there is a will there is a way, especially if it is God’s will. The international and cross-cultural marriage blessings are conducted according to the teachings of Rev. Moon, who does God’s work on His behalf. Please think about this: What do you think will happen if people from the United States and countries such as Russia marry across the boundaries of their nationalities through these marriage blessing ceremonies? The two nations will belong to one family under God, the eternal, absolute Lord of all creation. How could anyone aim weapons at, much less launch nuclear weapons at, a nation that many millions of grandchildren from their own lineage make their home?
The holy task of building the ideal kingdom of heaven—the sacred reign of peace on earth—by recovering our ideal homeland and hometown, is being carried out enthusiastically in all corners of the world. This is God’s hope for engrafting the seven billion people of the world to the lineage of the true tribe.
Beloved Leaders, Ladies and Gentlemen: Please do not miss your chance to ride on the surging currents of heavenly fortune during this important and sacred jubilee. Take the lead in protecting and developing the realm of the oceans, which cover seventy-five percent of the earth. Where else will you find undiscovered treasure-stores of natural resources that hold the promise of reviving the earth, which is endangered by all kinds of pollution and resource depletion?
You have truly come to a significant event today. You should now join together under the Strong Korea banner. The scope of this campaign shall soon go beyond the Republic of Korea to the rest of Asia, and become the beacon that shines beyond Asia to the world. The Universal Peace Federation’s ideology shall be a cry for a strong Korea because at the root of Strong Korea is God’s philosophy of peace based on true love. Is there an ideology or philosophy that can surpass this philosophy of peace and the ideal of God’s true love? Heaven shall surely be triumphant!
On this meaningful occasion, please engrave this message on your hearts. The families of your good ancestors in heaven are already blessed. Numbering in the billions, they have come to earth today, and they are listening to this message with you. This is because it is only through you, their descendants, that they can perfect themselves and advance to the positions of true parents, true teachers and true lords and owners. You should not forget the fact that the spiritual and physical worlds live and breathe together in this way and walk hand-in-hand.
Your families should now find their place in history by fulfilling their missions as members of the Peace Kingdom Corps and Peace Kingdom Police Force of the Abel UN, which is advancing God’s providence in the revolutionary era after the coming of heaven. History will forever remember you for leading a noble life of devotion for the well-being of humanity and world peace. I am now developing globally the Peace Kingdom Corps and the Peace Kingdom Police Force, which I founded. I hope to see the heroic sight of you holding the UPF flag [Universal Peace Federation—the Abel UN] standing in the vanguard of the Peace Kingdom Corps and Peace Kingdom Police Force and shouting for a strong Korea.
I pray that you will engrave today’s message in your hearts and use this message as material for educating your children, the youth in your country and the people of your nation. May God’s blessings and grace be upon you, your families, the Pacific Rim and the Peace UN, and upon the launch of a “Strong Korea.”
Thank you.