The Words of Hyung Jin Moon From 2009
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The Words of Hyung Jin Moon From 2009 |
Father asked us to visit different cities in America. We were originally scheduled to come back to Korea within two days when Father said, "You must go on a tour and show unity with True Parents." He did this for two express purposes. The first was to call for unity with True Parents. Everyone must unite with True Parents, the eternal center. And secondly, to ask for prayer, to pray for that unity with True Parents. That is why Father directed us to do the tour.
Although Father appointed me international president, for me it is making our success tangible that is the key. That is, creating a real example, proof that the Unification Church can not only be relevant but can also succeed tremendously. No matter how much we theorize, it doesn't do anything in terms of advancing the church, or the faith. The only way those are advanced is by creating real results. That is why we are focusing on that in Korea; we are focusing on the goals Father has given of 21,000 members and then 210,000 members.
Our members have been so beaten down by persecution that they could not see themselves standing alongside the greatest world religions. We say our mission is to be greater even than the other religions.
We have lost the sense of faith in the prophesies that have been spoken over us, and that's what I talked about when I spoke in the United States. I used the example of Hannah and Peninnah -- how Hannah came to rely on God; how, in the end, God used her, gave her incredible blessing, and how she fulfilled her destiny.
Among the children she bore, the first was Samuel, who eventually anointed King Saul and King David, of the chosen nation. So I told the members that I believe we members of the Unification Church are starting to remember our name. I was really preaching the heavenly gospel.
For a long time we have not had anything comparable to the Christian Gospel, or anything that could surpass that gospel, because it was such a powerful gospel -- Jesus died for you and he was resurrected to show his victory over death. God sent his only son. It's such a powerful story.
We had come to the point where we were comparing Father to patriots, to peace-loving leaders. We were reaching the limits of our own explanation of Father, of how we were portraying him to the world.
I had struggled with these things for years, studying different theological views, and when I reached my limit and began weeping and praying, that was when Father sent the dream and vision of the seven deaths and resurrections. When he sent that, I realize what kind of love we had been talking about, what Father had actually done for us throughout his life -- seven deaths and resurrections, continually dying for the sake of the children. True Parents were willing to do something so unimaginable out of the goodness and purity of their true love.
When I realized that, when Father showed me that, I realized what Father had done in his life, which we had been unaware of because we had not opened our spiritual eyes. Just as, if you are a Christian, you can't understand how much Jesus loved the world if you don't open your spiritual eyes. If you look only with physical senses, you will see a Middle Eastern man who like many others was crucified as a criminal and died. Only when you open your spiritual eyes, do you realize Jesus died for your sins.
We were not doing this as Unificationists either. We had secularized Father and had not understood his true value. We called him the Peace King, but there was always some feeling of inadequacy in our explanation. There wasn't continuity with the mission of Jesus Christ.
When Father threw his body into the hands of those torturers, he said, these people are my children; I take responsibility for them as their parent. I realized that each time he went through one of the seven deaths, he descended into hell for us -- to free us of our family sin, our tribal sin, our national sin, our world-level sin and the collective spiritual sin our ancestors created. True Parents' love is so comprehensive that it embodies the trueness of God as the parent. Because of that inheritance, they were able to be resurrected over the grave, over death and over hell, again and again. This is the resurrection power alive in True Parents when we believe in True Parents, when we obey True Parents, when we follow them as their disciples and as children are reborn.
True Parents' grace is comprehensive. In Christian theology, you are either cast into hell or allowed into heaven. Yet True Parents have allowed us to move into Cheon Il Guk; they have done that through the sacrifice of their own holy bodies and souls. Because of that grace, we can enter Cheon Il Guk. Because we are aware of the spirit world, God is not our judge in Cheon II Guk. It is we, and our ancestors, who are our judges. Even though we're given the grace to get into Cheon Il Guk, we can still be chastised or judged by our ancestors. If you received the grace of eternal life and realized that True Parents did that for you, but fell back into sin, your ancestors will judge you. That's why Father tells us about the importance of understanding the spirit world.
This helps you understand what type of love Jesus was to have inherited and why there is continuity between Jesus, as God's son, and True Parents, who carry on and complete that mission, and the liberation of Christ. Through understanding the seven deaths and resurrections, you not only see the discontinuities between what Jesus Christ accomplished and what True Parents have accomplished but also you are also awakened to the continuities of how the providence has reached fruition through the victory of True Parents and true love.
The seven deaths and resurrections are connected to the eight stages -- individual, family, tribe, society, nation, world, cosmos and God. In the ideal world of the kingdom, from the Principle perspective, when we reach maturity and perfection as individuals, we are supposed to live in God's direct dominion. We are given that incredible gift when we mature properly. The perfection of the eight stages represents the erasing of sins and the indemnity that had to be paid on all those different levels -- through the seven deaths and resurrections -- reaching the level at which we can be with God in the direct dominion, which is what we call the kingdom.
Because of True Parents' incredible grace and love, we're able to inherit that and move to the eighth stage. That is beyond comprehension. That's incredible. That's the perfection of eight stages. [In Korean:] "I am living in the love and victory of True Parents -- thank you!"
It's so exciting to finally have a narrative that portrays the greatness of True Parents. We're showing why they have inherited a greater love. That's what we couldn't do as a church, and that's why we weren't confident to share the gospel.
In the Acts of the Apostles, John and Peter are prophesying, they're witnessing, they're being persecuted. But their theological rock is the passion narrative -- that Jesus had died for their sins, resurrected on the third day and was the son of God who was victorious. That was the simple theological rock they had, and which they ran out into the streets to witness with. That small theological narrative is how they completed the Jewish scripture.
The Completed Testament is similarly able to incorporate the Old and New Testaments into its realm. With the seven deaths and resurrections, true love theology, and the true love of True Parents, it is a very exciting truth. It makes us want to witness.
I was recently speaking with a senior lady at a Christian Church -- I have met a group of them four times now, and this time we had dinner together. This was the first time I was able to explain our theology.
I said that if you want to understand Jesus, the role of Christ, you have to understand why God created human beings in the first place. He didn't create them just so they could mess up and then have Jesus come to save them. He had a purpose for creating us.
That's why I spoke about the first chapter, the Creation. I just explained that God initially wanted children who could inherit His love. He wanted to set up a true give-and-receive relationship of true love, in which that could be inherited by His children.
I explained that we see the Fall as the inheritance of selfish, false love -- symbolized by the covering of the lower parts; and that we see that Jesus' mission was to bring the kingdom.
In Matthew 6, we read, "Thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." In that same vein, Jesus was the one to bring the kingdom for the world, to bring true peace and unity, to create the kingdom of God, not only in the temples and in the hearts of men, but also in the real world. I explained to this lady that we understand that Jesus is the second Adam. And Jesus was supposed to inherit, just as Adam was, the true love of God, the parental heart, but he was opposed and persecuted. They didn't understand the value of the Lord, and he was killed. I explained that just as we see Jesus -- who resurrected, descended into hell to save souls and works with the Holy Spirit in the spiritual dimension -- we, as Unificationists, also see True Parents. We see them as completing Jesus mission.
In John 15:13, Jesus defines the greatest love. [Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.] I quoted the scripture and I told her that we believe Jesus came to True Father and asked him to fulfill his mission, because the blessing of the chosen nation left Israel when Jesus was killed -- and that blessing had to move to a prepared nation, which was Korea.
When Jesus came to True Father and asked him to fulfill his mission, to do that was the hardest thing for Father to accept. But Father walked the course, and I explained the seven deaths and resurrections to her. I explained how True Father went through seven deaths, that he died for us, and went to hell for us, not only once, but over and over again; that is our True Parents' heart, the parental heart of God.
I explained all this to this evangelical lady, a deacon in her church -- she is even a friend of the first lady. She listened, and immediately she said she wanted to attend a two-day workshop and listen to more.
Jesus love was incredible and it changed the history of the world -- over two thousand years. I told her that because of the greater love that True Parents inherited, the parental heart, the Unification Movement will now change the course of history. I told her that straight out. She just listened and said she wants to listen to lectures now. She signed up.
We want to witness, we want to share the incredible reality of what True Parents have done for the world. When you understand the seven deaths and resurrections, true love theology, you have a natural desire to share and witness because your spiritual eyes open and you can see the workings of the spirit.
What we are finding is that people are so ready, especially Christians. They really are ready. They love Jesus; once they realize that we also love Jesus and that Jesus had the mission of inheriting the true love of God (although it was cut short through no fault of his own) and that his mission is now being actualized in True Parents, something challenges them and makes them want to open up more. The spirit is moving.
Even though True Parents have done that for us, it's their principle of true love to give and give and then forget. Even though Father gave his body to be tortured, his soul to be ripped, for our sake, he forgot about it. Only when the children open their spiritual senses and realize the value of the course the Parents have walked, can the children truly be free. Just as young children don't understand the value of what their parents have done for them, when they mature, they see its value.
For me, one of the biggest questions was how to portray True Parents and how to share with the world their incredible deeds in a way that is even more inspiring and more faith-inspiring than those of Jesus Christ, the Buddha or Mohammed -- these world saints. We had explained Father as an educator, or a religious leader, the head of a conglomerate, or a peace activist, patriot, promoter of Korean culture -- but these never did justice to True Parents real victories.
It is something I had deeply struggled with. What is it that Unificationism has that is going to unite the world from the parent position? No one I asked could give me a confident answer. Yet if I can't answer this question, I don't have any identity. That goes for the movement too if we can't answer the question of why these prophesies have been spoken over us in the way they have -- that we will unite the world, that we will build the kingdom, that the Unification Church will become the parent of all faiths.
Only when Father opened my spiritual eyes -- when he sent me that vision in the spirit, and I saw the seven deaths and resurrections -- did I gain confidence that, yes, we can do this. We can fulfill the mission of Christianity, we can bring together world religions with a parental heart; we can stand as the center of unity as the parent.
When you understand the seven deaths and resurrections, you gain a sense of the texture of true love and what someone with that heart will do for the children even though those children are stained with sin and deserve to be in hell.
That's why we had to open our spiritual eyes, to see the true value of what the True Parents have done. This has revived my own faith.
This is really what we were conveying on the tour Father asked us to do in America; I spoke about the seven deaths and resurrections, the good news!
For me, my mission is all about serving True Parents; we're here to serve True Parents, we're here to glorify their names, to glorify our church as the center of the Holy Spirit, as the place where God can dwell and do His work. We're here to unite different religions and the world, to do the blessing, etc. Our mission is that.
We need to make results. I don't spend all my energy doing tours. I focus on making tangible results, so that when we go somewhere we can talk about how we have witnessed and made results on the ground; what kind of organizational changes we have made to create -- within one year -- growth from 14,000 to 18,000 core members and a doubling of donations in the same time.
We couldn't have done this without Kook-jin hyung. He was the one who put together the Task Force Team to research and find the best way to reorganize the church to create results. We've done the reorganization and we have had great success. The church has grown for the first time in thirty years; it's grown to 18,000 core members. That is tangible result.
We like to make results, because in the end that is what lasts and in the end what glorifies True Parents. We have big witnessing goals here in Korea. We need to complete those things to show the worldwide Unification Church that no longer do we have to say it is impossible.
We really had become slaves to Peninnah, believing her lies and chastisements and that we're going to lose and fail and never grow and have children. This was her condemnation of Hannah. But Hannah had to believe, "No. God will bless me. I will have children." And she had to pray. The Unification Church is beginning to pray again. We're beginning to remember who we are. We're beginning to find our faith again. We're beginning to believe in our prophesies. We are standing up again.
Because we're doing that, the Holy Spirit is coming. The gift of the Holy Spirit is starting to emerge. We heard testimonies of it emerging in In-jin nuna's ministry already -- people being healed by holy fire. We have already heard of it here at the Headquarters Church in Korea -- the holy fire, people being healed. We see the workings of the Holy Spirit. It's coming. In a major way, just as with the Apostles, who worked with holy fire and the Holy Spirit. It's coming again.
That's why -- in terms of inspiring the Unification Church worldwide -- the most important thing for us to do is to show results in Korea, where nobody thought it was possible, where we have huge opposition from evangelical Christianity, and where it's thus not necessarily the best terrain. Even though the church had been thoroughly persecuted, and the media had not been positive, these things have turned around one by one.
So achieving the goal of the 21,000-member temple is crucial. What this will do for all Unificationists is say "Yes, we can do this!" We can be relevant. We can have a worldwide impact. We will see thousands and tens of thousands of new members there.
That kind of movement of the Holy Spirit has not happened in the entire history of the Unification Church, except for the time when Father was directly ministering, such as in America in the early days when there was exponential growth.
But we are not focusing only on growth, but on caring for those members too, so that they can grow in faith. We have had the situation where we grew fast yet lost most of the members. That's why we have a professional management team and management structure. In that way, when we grow quickly like that, we will manage it.
Once we show we can do this, what we are showing is "Throw off the grave clothes and put on the praise clothes!" because we're getting ready to glorify True Parents. That's what it's about.