The Words of the Salonen Family
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The Words of the Salonen Family |
The movement-wide "120-Day Condition of Prayer and Reflection" began on Friday, January 5, and will continue through May 28 or the exact date of Yankee Stadium. On February 28, Mr. Kamiyama and Mr. Salonen spoke on the meaning of the condition; excerpts from their remarks follow. If possible, the prayer condition should start at 6:30 a.m. It should consist of one hour of active praying. At headquarters the condition consists of 12 cycles of 10 days, each cycle has a theme, such as the role of the Unification Church in America. A two-hour outdoor prayer vigil from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. marks the end of each cycle. It is preceded by an hour preparatory meeting and a testimonial meeting on the following morning.
I want you to know the significance of this campaign and the main points which you should include in your prayers. The Yankee Stadium campaign is a very historical campaign. If we should fail in this campaign, then human beings and the whole world will suffer because of our failure. Father has said that this time is as serious as the time when Jesus Christ prayed in Gethsemane. Jesus Christ's prayer at Gethsemane was so serious as to determine the future destiny of mankind.
This speech will be Father's public proclamation in the growth stage, as the Madison Square Garden speech was his public proclamation in the formation stage, and the Washington Monument speech will be his proclamation in the perfection stage. As you know the growth stage is very important. The fall comes in the completion level of the growth stage, so we must never fail in this growth stage campaign. Even though we are not surrounded by the most favorable circumstances, we must bring absolute success in Yankee Stadium. This is our situation.
You must establish yourself as an individual accepted by God; steadfast and free from Satanic temptations. Your next mission is to establish one family centered on God. And you must expand this foundation for the tribe and national levels. This must be done simultaneously, so while you are establishing yourself as an individual centered on God, you must also be finding one nation centered on God. You must be very busy, because this kind of mission cannot be prolonged for a long time hut must be accomplished in the significant moment of God's dispensation.
In the world there are so many countries but none is accepted by God. Out of these many countries God must find one nation which can be qualified to be restored to God. So God is trying to restore one individual and at the same time God is trying so hard to restore one nation.
The Yankee Stadium rally will be given to Him as an offering to restore our nation. It is my strong conviction and belief that it we can offer victory to God at the time of Yankee Stadium, it will be a very good condition for the restoration of one nation. If God has one restored nation to stand on, He can begin the judgment based on the standard set by that one nation. Any nations which cannot measure up to the standard of God's nation will eventually be eliminated from the world. At that time the Communist regime, which doesn't measure up to God's standard, will he eliminated.
Why is it that Communism, shouting that God doesn't exist and God has died, has expanded so much all over the world? It is because we do not have, a single nation which is of the standard to be accepted by God.
So in this significant historical moment if America can contribute something to God's dispensation, then how much God will bless America! From the Principle we understand that if you contribute something to others, then you yourself will be blessed and rewarded. So if America can contribute something to other countries and the world, then America will be blessed with good fortune. But if America continues to withdraw from the world, then America can never receive the heavenly blessing. God is turning away from America and we must draw Him back again to this country. It the people of America cannot understand this situation and contribute everything they have to God, then we, as representatives of America, must contribute everything we have to God in their names. It is our mission to bring God's blessing back to this country.
We must have the inner heart to spread God's gospel to all the corners of the world. The destiny of America is on our shoulders and the destiny of the entire world is on our shoulders, so we are untying a heavy responsibility. But we must do it.
God is depending on us, so in responding to God's desire we must show our faith and we must fulfill our missions. We must pray and we must actualize our prayers; prayer and action. Please be responsible to fulfill the 120-day prayer condition with deep, deep prayer the deepest prayer we have ever had in order to satisfy God. Even though we may pray a long time, if it doesn't satisfy God then it is nothing. We must offer our deepest prayer in order to satisfy God, and we must pray strongly in order to avoid Satan's invasion. With this prayer we must push back all the pressure and heaviness with which Satan is covering this country. The more we pray, the more Satan must withdraw. We must peal away the veil with which Satan has covered us, one by one. Since Satan knows the significance of this Yankee Stadium campaign, Satan is trying in many areas to invade, so we must establish a stronghold to prevent Satan's attack.
I have been trying to understand more deeply the significance of the Yankee Stadium campaign: what God wants to accomplish and our responsibility. Because our lives are so busy, it's very easy just to accept each new project, to tackle it and want to bring success because it is Father's project, but only later understand its deep significance. It would be much more meaningful if we could really share God's viewpoint from the beginning, praying to understand God's expectation from the earliest. Based on this understanding I think we'd be able to work much more effectively too.
As Mr. Kamiyama pointed out, from a vertical point of view, God created America to use one nation as a representative of His ideal, so He brought people From all over the world to one nation, and He poured out His blessing upon this nation. The history of America is so rich with God. There are so many examples of how men who believed in God sacrificed themselves. Throughout history there are many nations with a very glorious history, but something that's very unique about the American history is the motivation behind the people who founded it. They came here in order to create one nation under God.
From the earliest beginning of this nation, we have been very aware of man's responsibility as a child of God, and we wanted to create one place where that would be respected. Only recently we lost much of that feeling. Prayer has been taken out of the schools; people don't really have deep and living faith in God. I was moved when we went to various Senators and Congressmen's offices there were a number of pictures of the early days in Congress, showing people of the Congress praying before I hey began deliberations. Nowadays at the opening of every session of Congress, the chaplain comes out, says a very brief prayer and then he goes. Usually there's hardly anyone in the chamber they only come when it's time to vote. And sometimes they're all scattered around, quickly discussing their notes, it is still just a ritual.
When Congress began the people used to get down on their knees and bury then heads in their chairs. And they really prayed for is God to guide them in leading this nation, because they knew what a difficult task it was. But slowly that feeling laded. Will Rogers, a comedian, used to sat that the chaplain would come out, look at the Congress, and then pray for the nation from God's point of view. He gave America so many things and now this generation of Americans is just using those things for our own purpose. We are withdrawing from the world. We are turning our back on the problems of our fellow human beings, on our own ancestors from so many other countries throughout the world.
All America now needs lo be mobilized by God to proclaim this great message at the crucial time of the Second Advent. But because America is not in the position to do that, then the meaning of the Yankee Stadium campaign is as a symbolic offering. Several hundred thousand Americans, Father always uses the number 200,000 because that number represents 200 million Americans not only giving thanks for the blessings that God has given to America but rededicating themselves lo the purpose of America will create the condition for God to claim not just that victory but all of America. We are gathering together Americans as a symbolic offering of the entire nation. Very little has been offered by America to God in these last 200 years, and so we must alleviate God's feeling by making this offering a symbolic representation of the whole nation turning to Him and giving thanks.
If we can be successful in doing this, then God can accept that condition, if that offering is really pure, if those people really understand the purpose, if they unite with us in the spirit of this campaign, then God can accept that offering in order to maintain His blessings in America and use us to proclaim His ideal, establishing the foundation for His Kingdom throughout the world. But if we were to fail in the Yankee Stadium campaign it means that no one could come back and give thanks to God. Nothing would be offered to God, and by the Principle, God would have to turn further and further from America.
So the first meaning of the Yankee Stadium campaign is to make an offering to God in thanksgiving tor everything that He has given to us. For the offering to be accepted it must he pure. If the Unification Church is in the position of a sacrifice making that offering, then are we acceptable? Is our motivation really pure?
Throughout this 120-day condition it is important for us to purify ourselves to be worthy to accept this responsibility. When we go out to reach the people of America we have to be worthy to speak in God's position, in His name. It the people don't come to hear Father because of some impurity or failure within us, then it is not the people or God who has to bear that responsibility, it is us. It is very awesome to be called by God to act in this position. It we really pray to Him that He could lift us up to be His purified representatives, then there is no question in Father's mind that through us God can bring together this great offering. This is a crucial point.
That is the most important meaning of the Yankee Stadium campaign. But there is another very important step which is also directly tied to the establishment of the foundation here in America. Right now as our movement is growing we are in the critical point. Mr. Kamiyama already said that the growth stage is the most crucial because it represents the period where Adam and Eve fell, or where Jesus was crucified. So it is the point of failure in history that has to be indemnified and gone beyond so that we can open up the next stage the stage which has never been pioneered, the perfection stage.
So for us to open up the third century of American history and to really make it a golden age when God's ideal can come about in reality, then we have to be able to go beyond this failure and pay the price to indemnify those crucial failures.
Right now Satan is working. It God's greatest desire is to make this campaign a successful offering, then we can be sure that it is also Satan's greatest desire to stop it. When the Guru Maharaj Ji had his great meeting in the Houston Astrodome, he called it a great Millennium of Peace, and he was going to fill up the Houston Astro dome. But even the biggest figure, in a stadium which seats 50.000 people, was something like 40,000. After that his movement rapidly declined because it was considered finished a movement whose time, like a swelling wave, had just passed.
Before the Madison Square Garden campaign, many people against our movement were predicting failure. Why did they say that? Because they really believed that? Not at all.
Because they know that the American people are very impressionable, and in America and probably throughout the world people respect success. If people can see something that's active, growing and alive, then they want to find out what's behind it. The enemies of our Church didn't want us to fill Madison Square Garden. So they tried to convince the people in advance that it couldn't be done. Now, it you thought that Madison Square Garden was going to be a complete failure, then you don't want to be one of the 10 or 15 fools who went. I am sure also that there will be a tremendous media campaign before Yankee Stadium that Rev. Moon can never fill it up -- it will be a complete disaster I'm sure a few people will stand up and say, "I wouldn't go to Yankee Stadium for anything." And probably they won't.
But there are more than 10 million people in the New York area. Let us really pledge in the next 120 days to pour out all of our efforts into making this campaign a great success. The future of America the future of the entire world literally depends on the success of Yankee Stadium tor all those reasons.
It is not just another campaign. It cannot be viewed by others as just a program; rather it represents the culmination of the fruit of the Unification Church movement in America and throughout the world. Father is focusing everything here. Victory brings great results. Failure would bring terrible consequences. The responsibility is on our shoulders.