The Words of the Skousen Family

Speech at the CAUSA Ministerial Alliance Convention

Cleon Skousen
March 7, 1985
Excerpt


Dr. Skousen and Dr. Pak share a table and a smile together during the convention.

After 15 years with the FBI, Dr. Cleon Skousen became a full professor at Brigham Young University, where he taught for ten years. He retired in 1978 and has become well-known as an author. His books have been published in seven different languages, and several have been used as college texts. He has lectured at more than 100 colleges in the United States, and he makes frequent presentations on radio and television programs. His largest audience was in the Hollywood Bowl, where he spoke to 15,000 people on a nationally televised program. Since 1971 he has served as president of the Freeman Institute to promote the revival of constitutional principles and the restoration of free enterprise. The institute's new name is the National Senate for Constitutional Studies. Dr. Skousen and his wife Jewel have eight children and forty grandchildren.

Each time I attend one of these CAUSA conferences, I learn a lot of new things. But what impresses me most is the fact that this man -- who had been so cruelly treated under communism and brutalized by people who claimed, in some instances, to belong to religious organizations -- would respond to the great force of the Spirit and come to America, even when he couldn't speak the language. He was moved to bring whatever resources he could gather at that time in 1971, and was committed to gather whatever he could in the future to save America, so that we could then save the world. That inspiration came directly from God. It carried him through some of the most bitter and disillusioning experiences that a human being can have. When you bring your resources, your heart, and your spirit to a country in order to be a blessing to it, and then end up in its prisons, what a contradiction in human relations that Is!

Rev. Moon wanted to accomplish three things when he came here. I deduced this from many things he has said, from some of his writings, and from the few conversations we have had together.

Spiritual Fire

The first thing he wanted to do was to have America come alive, refuel her spiritual fire through the churches. He wanted to get the churches to unite to fight evil. Well, that takes a lot of love on the part of American denominational religions. They didn't unite. They did the same thing here they did in Korea and Japan. They all focused on him. Next thing, they were pouncing on him -- that's the only thing they were uniting on. But that did not discourage him. He had become used to it. He was accustomed to it. So he just did everything that he could, initiating newspapers, trying to demonstrate through his personal life and through his teachings and his young people that he came as a man of good will.

He didn't attract much attention until the government pounced on him, and all of a sudden that touched off a little spark in the heart of every churchman, every thinking American_ That happened to me. All of a sudden, the very thing he had wanted to accomplish began t' happen, and now he finds himself uniting the churches in a very special way -- through his own endurance. I wouldn't say suffering; I never saw a man enjoy prison as much as Rev. Moon. He just spreads a beautiful spirit wherever he goes. I don't think those prisoners would ever have had any exposure to Rev. Moon if he hadn't gone there to meet them. I've noticed that gradually the very thing that he was hoping would come to pass, we are beginning to see. And you people being here all together is a virtual miracle. I think God is using him as an instrument for purposes that are greater than any of us even begin to realize.

The second thing that Rev. Moon wanted to accomplish was to alert Americans to the fact that they not only didn't understand communism, but they were deeply enmeshed in Marxism, and didn't have any idea what this was all about. They needed to be taught about that subject.

The third thing he wanted to accomplish was to have America get back to her original success formula and strengthen it so that this formula could be exported to the whole world until it was free and self-governing.

Those are three great aspirations. He's just in the middle of the first one and gradually moving into the second one. The churches -- we're beginning to unite. I've seen many books here published by denominations I've really never had a chance to cross paths with very much. The people from these denominations are wonderful. I feel a great camaraderie; there are common interests developing here.

A Great Golden Crucible

There is a reason why we don't usually unite in the great brotherhood of Christianity like long-lost kindred. It's primarily because we try to analyze one another's theology. This is a mistake, because nobody ever understood the theology of a church while standing outside of that church. A theology of a church is only understood from inside that church. Jesus understood that, so he told the people that when others are planting the tree, don't judge it until the fruit comes off, because you can't tell the good tree from an evil tree until the fruit is available. And then, no matter what was nourishing that particular tree, if the fruit is sweet, then you will know, he said, that an evil tree doesn't produce that kind of fruit. Now that can help us. We can judge the fruits -- the trees we cannot. Theology we cannot judge, because God has dispensed truth to the earth in a great golden crucible from which we each take a sip, and to the extent that we sip truth -- and none of us ever gets all of it -- we reflect that which produces good. And so, as we cultivate our particular little tree with the fertilizer and moisture from that golden crucible of God's truth, no one can judge that tree.

As I look around at the fruits that Rev. Moon has produced, I look at his -- I guess you would call them his children -- a lot of young people. He gathered them from the offspring of America, Japan, Korea, and many other countries; and some of them came out of very difficult circumstances. I see them today as though they were always encouraged to be little public angels, as I call them sometimes. I see a spirit of sweetness in their faces, I see a desire to be chaste, honest, full of service, commitment to God, and a desire to have families that are pure, decent, self-sustaining. I see the dedication of Dr. Bo Hi Pak -- the energy, the day-and-night anxiety to be helpful to you and me. I've been to lots of places; I've been the guest of many people, in several conferences. I have never had a more gracious host than Dr. Bo Hi Pak. All of us are treated like members of the royal family.

I hope that in this conference you've found you're a little bit closer to somebody in a different denomination or people from several different denominations, and have discovered that they are nice people after all. If you go home feeling that you'd like to be in another seminar with them sometime; if you go home feeling, "I thought I knew about communism, but I never realized the extent to which this seductive thought system is getting into the hearts and minds of our children;" if you go home with that consciousness -- even if you can't remember the details of everything you heard -- and you'd like to study more about it; if you go home with the feeling that America is the hope of the world and we've slipped off our pedestal a little bit, but we can still hold out the hand of brotherhood and hope for the rest of the world if we just get our act together -- if you have that feeling and want to do something about it, then you have made this a very worthwhile experience. And if you and I and all of us keep working together, and use our influence to stand on our principles and begin changing America, what will happen? It only takes 218 congressmen and 51 senators to change this country around to follow the founding fathers' formula. I hope we can do this in the next ten years.

I'll close by saying I feel with all of my heart and soul that if we do our part, God will do the rest. 

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