If I wasn't the most skeptical, I have at various times been tied for first or second place with someone.

I agree with what Jin Sung Nim said once: "For me, True Parents is the answer in the back of the book. The rest is my responsibility." At the same time I have many doubts in life; doubt is somehow even a part of my faith. What I do not doubt is Father's sincerity and his position before God. I have seen too much personal evidence not to know the truth of it. Father's teaching and his living example saved my life, and continue to save it daily. That part is fact, not belief. My blessing is my greatest treasure. Therefore, no matter how frustrated I become with some of the things our church does - I cannot abandon Father.

The Heung Jin Nim channeling phenomena of 1987, centered on the Zimbabwean man, threw me into a bit of a quandary. When it went sour I became slightly disillusioned with things spiritual. Make that confused. Despite falling out of love with shamanism, I still could not deny that through the Heung Jin Nim experience I felt a cleansing of sexual sins. I also felt atonement and closure for the accumulation of public funds misspent over the years. But most of all I felt that God had erased my blackboard and was standing there shiny-eyed, expecting only good things to be written from that point. His hope for me was palpable. I could feel that down to my bones and it was wonderful.

Shortly after that the Zimbabwean's Heung Jin Nim license was revoked, and in his footsteps there followed a parade of channelers and instant messiahs, all claiming the mantle of Jesus or Heung Jin Nim or True Parents, or inexplicably, St. Germaine. In many cases their revelations had arrogant undertones, eventually turned sexual - and always it seemed - pulled people away from the benchmark I had established for myself - attending True Parents.

When I heard about Dae Mo Nim I thought, here we go again. Yes, Father approved of Mrs. Kim's mediumship. But he had also given his approval to the Zimbabwean ten years earlier. I was hearing stories of miracles and angels at Chung Pyung Lake, and microscopic devils living in my bloodstream. I waited and watched. I tried to keep an open mind because I am always conscious of the need to remove my sin. For the past few years, as it pertains to Chung Pyung Lake, I have felt like a jeep with my oil pan stuck high-center on a log and all four wheels spinning in the air. Couldn't go forward, couldn't go back. Your classic midway position.

People whose spirituality I respect were going to Chung Pyung Lake and returning to testify. They had experiences. They got their hope back they told me all about it. My wife Taeko went and when she returned she urged me to go. She said God is really working there. My policy is to trust whatever she tells me, so I knew it must be true. There was still no time to go and no cash, but slowly I felt myself parting company with my fellow waiters and watchers on the sidelines. When it finally dawned on me that perhaps my own general lack of repentance might be a big part of the problem, I could begin to try to evaluate myself and the situation more honestly.

Word came that Dae Mo Nim would be coming to Washington and that we should prepare our hearts. I knew I needed a much deeper understanding than I had, so I welcomed the advance notice. Taeko and I did the suggested kyungbae condition, but I didn't have a great deal of feeling for it in the beginning. That changed slowly over the next three weeks.

I felt fortunate to be able to know the names of all seven generations of Moffitts. All but the two earliest and their wives are listed in the "Births and Deaths" pages of our family Bible purchased by Robert Moffitt five generations ago, not long after the American Revolution. Robert's father and grandfather were discovered through genealogy research. The Bible entries are in the handwriting of my ancestors, many made with a feather quill, on pages now brown and crumbling.

I am not a spiritualist and am not at all confident of my own perception in these matters. Nonetheless I felt there was much sadness among them for reasons having to do with unrestored sins and things left unfinished. According to the family Bible, one lost a son and a son-in-law in the Civil War.

My forebears are all well-intentioned people but I think their understanding of what it meant to follow Jesus into heaven "trailing clouds of glory" turned out much different than expected in some cases. Some felt little sense of any progress being made since they arrived in spirit world. The image they conveyed reminded me of what it's like on a stultifying hot day with no breeze, and no hope of getting one. I tried to lift their spirits and give them some comfort. I told them that soon they would be able to meet Jesus personally and that he would explain everything clearly, as it says in the Bible. They would no longer have to see God's will "through a glass darkly." I felt some believed me and some, from whom I must have inherited a quality of skepticism, didn't.

These images of my ancestors and their states of mind have emerged from decades of having seen and touched their handwriting in the family Bible and countless "conversations" with them as I was growing up. My daughter Kathy and I prayed at the battlefield in Franklin, Tennessee where the husband of Edith Moffitt was mortally wounded in November of 1864, just months before the Civil War ended. Another, Dillon Moffitt, died still a teenager in a Union Army encampment, from disease I think. The feeling of closeness that has always been there between me and my many generations of grandfathers was renewed and strengthened during this period preparatory to Dae Mo Nim's arrival. Truthfully though, it is hard for me to really know where my ancestors' leave off and where Larry begins, so don't take my impressions as absolute fact. These are simply my impressions.

As Taeko and I registered for the liberation ceremony on Saturday, we both felt an overpowering sense of gratitude for what was about to happen. I felt that Father and Mother's lifetime of sacrifice was the only reason this liberation was able to take place. My five percent? Forget it. When I consider the enormity of what it must take for legions of angels to find our ancestors, yank them out of whatever mess they've gotten themselves into, and bring them to that ceremony, I think that whatever I did to help that process would hardly amount to .0005 percent. I'm sorry to say it, but in my case Father paid the whole price. Period. Coupled with my gratitude was a certain amount of embarrassment, a profound sense of not deserving it. I still feel that way.

We sat just five rows back, in the middle. We didn't want to miss anything. We listened intently. We sang and clapped. We smacked ourselves. We invested, without reservation, in action and belief.

When it came time for the liberation prayer at the conclusion, Dae Mo Nim told us to look at our ancestors on the right. I got so involved in my prayer, however, that I forgot to look. I don't know what I would have seen had I opened my eyes, but I don't feel like I missed anything because I "saw" them anyway. Or felt them. Or something. I greeted them. They were all there, all lined up, some looking even more embarrassed and unworthy than me. All the Moffitts in the room, and I'm sure all my wife's Sonodas, realized we could not save our own selves in a million years, and now we were being tossed a life preserver. We grabbed it.

I was in the company of seven generations of the Moffitt family beginning with James Moffitt, Sr., followed by James Moffitt Jr., Robert Moffitt, John W. Moffitt, John H. Moffitt and Russell Mason Moffitt. My father, John H. Moffitt is still living. All their wives were with them. For some of the couples, it may have been the first time they've been together since crossing over.

Standing alone on the wives' side of the group was my mother. She had a deep melancholy I hadn't expected. Taeko felt that my mother didn't go to the spirit world when she died five years ago, but has been hanging around my father all this time. Her image was so strong in my mind. Even through her sadness, however, I could feel her excitement and anticipation. My beloved, hardheaded mom had finally come to the end of her own answers and explanations, and she was ready to go to the workshop. For the first time since she died, I cried for her.

In my prayer I simply urged them all to go to Heung Jin Nim's 100-day workshop in the spirit world and not worry about anything. "Just go," I told them. "It will all be explained. Everything will work out." And away they went, some happily, some a little dazed - but they went.

Our feeling afterward, as we strolled out of the hall into the bright sunshine, was a feeling of walking through a door into the brightness of heaven. We remarked on it to each other at the time. We ate something and greeted old friends. For a time, it felt as if the gate between earth and heaven was standing open. There is a special kind of well-being and peace of mind parents feel when they finally get the kids off to school, with confidence the children are in the care of loving teachers and that they will learn valuable things. That's how Taeko and I felt.

I feel them closer to me now since then and talk to them during the day, as I did when I was younger. They are the most ordinary of ordinary people, I think, with the same concerns I have. When school is over, they will come back to work alongside Taeko and me. We will try to make a team and will do, and see, and accomplish the things I have often longed to engage in with these living souls who are so much more than just names scratched in fading ink. If I can be righteous, they will be able to help in so many ways. I feel a lot depends on me for that to happen.

I want to conclude by expressing the gratitude of Taeko and myself to our True Parents. There is no way we can ever repay what they have done, except to the extent that we follow their example and embody the things they have taught.

In addition, I felt two things very clearly about Mrs. Kim and her role as a conduit for Dae Mo Nim's work. I want to emphasize that I am not worthy to comment on her qualifications in the slightest, for either good or bad. Nevertheless, everything about the way she conducts herself conveys her sincerity and her absolute lack of self-importance. To hear her speak and see her work reminds me that the first and worst sin of us all is our tragic ignorance of how much God loves us. It shames me that I could ever doubt in the slightest, the love and sacrifice of God in heaven and our True Parents on earth, that has built this foundation for the liberation of our ancestors.

The cooperation of Mrs. Kim and Dae Mo Nim is a team chosen well, and with utmost care, by God. Without the foundation of the True Parents, such a bridge as this would never have been possible.

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