The Words of the Seuk Family
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The Words of the Seuk Family |
In addition to visiting other countries as international vice-president of the church, Dr. Seuk has numerous duties as president of the Korean church, not least of which is attending True Parents at Hoon Dok Hae most mornings. We include here an excerpt from his New Year message, originally for Korean members.
To save humanity, True Father has restored history's course from time immemorial through the course of indemnity, and has trodden the path through death seven times in the ninety years he has lived. True Parents have resolved to tread that path even if it means walking on the brink between life and death more than just seven times.
True Father even said, "If by entering the Siberian gulag, I can save the people of the Soviet Union, groaning under the communist regime, I will willingly and gladly go there." You may not be aware of this, but the Siberian gulag was even more perilous than Hungnam Prison, the deeply hellish place where Father suffered for two years and eight months.
Even so, True Parents were willing to enter pits of fire and face death seven times, even eight times or more. If by so doing they could expedite the restoration and salvation of the communist nations even a little for the sake of the liberation and complete freedom of God, the salvation of all humanity and the establishment of the eternal world of peace, they were willing.
If we are indeed the true children of such parents, we should be ready to dedicate ourselves fully, even if it means putting our lives on the line at least once in the three years remaining before January 13, 2013.
It has been said, "Whoever seeks to gain his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will preserve it."
From that standpoint, I believe that this year we need to assume the attitude I will now outline in order to fulfill our mission and responsibility of successfully witnessing' to and blessing others at the standard True Parents desire.
First, we need to adopt an attitude of oneness with True Parents' pure heart. Through last year's October 14 Blessing Ceremony, True Parents provided the ground for Cain and Abel to come together in harmony and permitted the grace of the blessing in its original and complete state without even a trace of the Fall. And on the fiftieth anniversary of True Children's Day, they bestowed on us the solemn words, "Make a new beginning."
Though we have celebrated True Children's Day fifty times, we have yet to become true children. That is why the words "new beginning" as said to us by True Parents deeply express both their regret and, yet again, their heartfelt faith in us. In other words, they are instructing us to lead a life reflecting the settlement of noon, a shadow-free, vertically-aligned life, by uniting mind and body in crystalline purity and transparency -- oneness with True Parents' pure heart -- and by fulfilling our duties as true sons and daughters through this new beginning.
The motto also includes "oneness with all True Parents' victories." That is, we are to inherit the authority of True Parents' victory from the individual to the tribe, ethnic group, nation, world, and cosmos, become True Parents' representatives and heirs, and fulfill our 5 percent portion of responsibility so that in the end we can shout mansei for all our victories.
Second, we need to possess the spirit of true love as exemplified in the seven deaths and resurrections, to march forward even if it means risking our lives for the completion of the providence. True Father received the mission to save humanity from Heaven when he was only a fifteen- year old boy, full of dreams. From that point he abandoned all his personal hopes and dedicated his life solely to the liberation of God and the salvation of humanity. His course is soaked in a waterfall of tears from lamentation and grief and is full of innumerable life#and-death choices he could not avoid, which were more painful than slicing pieces off his bones. From cruel and merciless torture by the Gyeonggi Province Police, to imprisonment in Danbury, and even to the 2008 helicopter crash, in which their airborne craft weighing many tons plummeted to the ground and was totally destroyed by fire, True Parents have been on the brink between life and death seven times.
Even so, they were able to overcome all challenges in their course through true love -- through True Parents' endless true love for people, which nothing in the world can obstruct. Therefore, let us all march forward, with a mind-set that we are willing to risk our lives at least once in the last three years of the course that is headed toward the completion of Cheon Il Guk. Let us also completely inherit the spirit of true love established by True Parents and fulfill our responsibility and mission as true children.
Third, Cain and Abel must unite. Every one of us is in Cain- Abel relationships. Sometimes we are in the position of Cain, at other times in the position of Abel. As we continue our work of establishing Cheon Il Guk, we should not linger on the level of only emphasizing the position of Cain or Abel, but try to move closer to True Parents' hearts by becoming one in unity and harmony and by our willingness to make sacrifices and volunteer our effort for the providence.
Even if we have a clear goal and strategy, we cannot emerge triumphant if Cain and Abel are not completely united. The church leaders must unite, members must all be united, and church leaders and members must be one with each other, in attendance of God and True Parents. As the name Unificationism implies, we need to first be united within our own faith. Through harmony, we can create unity. And we need to become one with the True Family including, ultimately, with True Parents.
Fourth, we need to wholeheartedly invest our passion and true love into setting conditions that move the spirit world. At the airport, just before he and Mother departed for the U.S. on January 8, True Father said, "Now we need to fully mobilize the spirit world."
On October 8, True Parents proclaimed the Association of the Spiritual and Earthly Worlds under God. The Chinese character hyeop in the word hyeop-hoe (association) means "harmony." The combination of the character shib meaning "ten" and three of the character ryeok meaning "strength" make the character hyeop. The meaning of this term is that Cain and Abel need to be united under God and True Parents with hearts of absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience, and they need to make their utmost effort to realize God's will.
Therefore, we should not only work with a sense of duty, but dedicate ourselves fully, with true gratitude and enthusiasm, overflowing with joy, so that we can feel our worth. Only when we do can the spirit • world help us by cooperating in amazing ways.
In relation to this, I would like to share with you a little experience I had. On May 29, 1999, True Mother was scheduled to give a speech in the Great Hall of the People in China. Though China seems unrestricted because it is a great global economic power, its political regime is still in actuality a communist one, led by the Communist Party. So obviously, twelve years ago, China was incomparably more restrictive than it is now. Under such circumstances, it was not easy at all for True Mother to give a speech in the Great Hall of the People, and so it was a very significant matter, both for China and for the rest of the world.
True Mother arrived in Beijing from Mongolia on the day before the meeting. That very night, however, at about nine o'clock, an unexpected problem suddenly arose. The Chinese government sent us a message that said simply, without inviting any discussion, "The speech scheduled to be given tomorrow in the Great Hall of the People is canceled."
I was in charge of the event. I was on the verge of having a heart attack. My face became so pale that I looked ready to faint at any moment. The speech was to be given at 10:30 the next morning, and they had informed us of the cancellation at nine o'clock the night before. The staff concluded, "There is nothing we can do. It's impossible." Amongst ourselves, our tentative opinion was that we should hold the meeting as a small affair in the hotel by ourselves.
If you had been in that situation, what would you have done? Would you have given up just because the government had sent that message, when True Parents, the Savior of humanity, the Messiah, the King of Kings, had come all the way to China?
Although I felt almost as if my heart would stop, I thought I could never give up; I needed to make it happen even at the risk of death. So I looked for a solution.
At 10 PM, I set out for the home of the person in charge of the Great Hall of the People. I arrived at his house at 11 PM, and he came out in his pajamas, rubbing his eyes. With all my might I attempted to persuade him. Holding on to the spiritual world, I reasoned with him over and over again.
At three o'clock in the morning, he finally consented and allowed us to hold the meeting, even though he could be reprimanded for doing so. It was truly a situation in which we experienced both extremes of hell and heaven. On the morning of May 29, True Mother's speech at the Great Hall of the People, with the hall filled to capacity, was a tremendous success.
I will give another example, which happened in 2006. After holding a Universal Peace Federation rally in Tajikistan, we were on our way to Azerbaijan where the next rally was to take place. Azerbaijan is under pressure from within and without from political and religious forces.
It is a five-hour flight from Tajikistan to Azerbaijan. Three hours into the flight, an aide came to me and said quietly, "The pilot has just received an unexpected message from the airport in Azerbaijan telling us that they will not allow us to land there and asking us to inform them of an alternative destination."
The rally was the very next day and they were informing us that we could not enter the country two hours before our arrival, while we were airborne! This time too, I felt faint and my heart just about stopped.
The rally was not a simple meeting. True Parents were going to Azerbaijan in the position of the Savior, to save that nation through their teachings. I couldn't accept a situation in which, due to their ignorance, we were not allowed to land.
I insistently told the pilot, "Keep to the course and don't worry I will most definitely get a landing permit."
To be truthful, however, it was an emergency situation. In the airplane, I began calling everyone who was connected to us. I called Russian senators and government representatives. I was also able to reach the Prime Minister of Azerbaijan.
In the end, we received a landing permit twenty minutes before our arrival. It was almost a miracle. Moreover, after we landed at the airport and headed to our destination, we were assigned a special security detail of secret police under the Presidential Guard. The rally the next day was a great success.
I did not tell you this anecdote out of pride in my accomplishments, but to tell you that when you do your best with the courage and the certainty that you can do it, and with passion and faith in God's will, the spirit world can be mobilized and unexpected miracles can happen. We can make the impossible possible and work miracles.
However, our undergoing such experiences could never compare to True Father's life. True Parents have lived their whole lives on the brink of life and death as they worked for the providence. The course their lives have taken looks impossible from beginning to end. They have led lives of challenge, pioneering paths untrod by others -- lives of creative power that have leveled the path for all humanity to follow. They have truly made everything that was impossible possible. They have fulfilled and completed everything and they have emerged triumphant.
Beloved members, in 2010, let's work hard to make our families and churches overflow with affection and love, with our minds and hearts united just as Cain and Abel are united with True Parents at the center, as we march toward the day of the perfection and completion of Cheon Il Guk.
By distributing the autobiography bestowed on us by True Parents, we can enclose four hundred and thirty families and set the goal of converting three families, twelve families and even more, converting and teaching members of our tribes and seeing them participate in the Blessing Ceremony, thereby fulfilling our tribal messiah mission.
I hope and pray that by the end of this year, all of us will be able to shout with gratitude, enthusiasm and joy this year's motto, "Mansei for oneness with True Parents' pure heart and with all their victories under the authority of the Cosmic Sabbath centered on true love!"
When we work wholeheartedly with love and passion, the spirit world will definitely be with us. I hope that all of us will march forward without looking back, with clear confidence in the accomplishment of the will. I pray that in this New Year, the tenth year of Cheon Il Guk, God's love and True Parents' love will overflow in you and in your families. Thank you.