Understanding Father's Vision for Transforming America

This is excerpted from a speech given on May 1, at the HQ Chapel in NYC and in the Atlanta Center on May 29, 1994.

My deepest gratitude to Heavenly Father and our True Parents, who are giving me this opportunity to work with our elder brother Hyo Jin Nim. I am looking forward to doing a lot of wonderful things with him in the future for this country. This thing happened so suddenly, and I am really not prepared in many ways to be before you, but I would like to try my best. Over the last couple of years I was working in Russia, traveling to many different places and meeting many different people. Growing up as a blessed child I have been to so many different workshops, maybe altogether 20 different workshops, 21-days, 40-days, all different workshops. Through these workshops I understood conceptually how powerful Principle was in touching people and renewing their lives and revitalizing the important aspects of their lives. But when I went to the Soviet Union I actually saw how powerful it was to those young people who are so hungry and desperate to receive something in their lives.

The fall of communism created a vacancy, a vacuum, that young people are desperately looking to fill. After the fall of communism, even ideology was taken away from them, let alone when you speak of how miserable their external material circumstances are. When I actually saw how the Principle and Father's teaching touched their lives every day, and when I saw 60- or 70-year-old grandmothers studying Principle, teaching Principle, forgetting to eat, forgetting to sleep, trying to understand Father's heart, it really touched me. When I saw 16-, 13-, 12-year-old sisters and brothers trying to understand about Father, understand about Father's vision for this world, it really moved me. So in effect when I saw all this and tried to teach them and tried to work with them, be there with them, when I saw those kinds of things, actually it touched me a thousand times more than all those experiences I had in the 20 workshops. The conceptual understanding of Principle and Father's life is nothing compared to you yourself experiencing it in the field. I'm really grateful to Heavenly Father.

I have many problems of my own, I am unworthy to stand before you, but I realize how True Parents are trying to save this country, save Russia, save China, save Korea, Japan, throughout all the countries in the world, and I experienced the value of True Parents. I can really testify to you that this is the time, even for America, actually this is the most, this is the time for America to wake up, to accept True Parents. I have done 17 or so speeches in America. As you know, the speech itself is a very difficult speech. It is an in-your-face confrontation kind of speech. But when I saw the faces of the young people, their spirit is hungry to receive something special. I have the vision, I have the ideology, I have the life course for you to resemble, follow after, to save this country and the world. When I saw the young faces, even though they didn't understand probably most of the content, but still desperately trying to understand True Parents, at least they were curious and interested in trying to understand Parents, I really felt that even for America, the time has come to really receive Heavenly Father and receive Parents, and start serving True Family.

Can you name other organizations that are actually doing something? Christians? Sometimes I feel that we are just like other Christians. We do our own things, we have hometown missionary responsibility and tribal-messiahship, we do our own personal things, we lead our own personal self centered lives, then we come to a special occasion like this, Sunday service or something like that, and repent and ask for forgiveness. I hope not.

Father himself, even though he's 73 years old, he's acting so young! Some of you had the privilege to spend some time with Father, maybe, AFC leaders, last year in Alaska, AFC leaders right? You had a chance to go fishing with Father. Who fished harder than Father? Can you say, "I fished harder"? It's work! Father doesn't enjoy it. It's work! It's a labor! Concentration camp labor! Nineteen hours straight. Father was standing in the same spot, one spot. . . cast out the line maybe a few thousand times. As young kids you cannot rest in front of Father, I mean young leaders! They cannot rest in front of Father, so many of them go and hide behind the bushes!. . . Father gets very upset. He in fact gets humiliated if somebody gives any small notion of him feeling old or looking old or all that. . . Father is acting like a seventeen year old kid. Doing things as if he was seventeen years old. How about you?!!! How about us?!!!

When you first joined our movement, why did you join? Did you join our movement because of its fancy accomplishments. No way! There would be no way that you could have joined because of that because we are still a very controversial movement and back then even more controversial. Right? We still try our best to put out a face, I guess and telling you all these great kind of things but that's not why you joined, right? Don't you want to say? Right? You joined because of what? Something changed your life, something moved you, something! That something! Please, please never ever lose that. Never ever lose that. Whenever, in whatever situation you are, whenever you face difficulties you always have to try to remember back, you know, remember back that moment, precious moment, that determining moment . . . all night you were going through the workshop, like life and death you were going through, eh? "If this principle is true, Rev. Moon and Mrs. Moon are the True Parents as they say, the Messiah and all these things, if all these things are really true. . . " You struggled, right? Every minute of the workshop session, the beginning of the first moment, of first love was a struggling moment. And you overcame all these kinds of things to be our member. That kind of precious moment, that something that pierced your heart.

You are somehow a special group of people, somehow you found the essence. If something touches you, you can never throw it away. You can never disassociate with, disconnect from. So you now have kids. Would you trade your child, your love for your child for anything else, a million dollars, a billion dollars? No, nothing. Nothing in the world. Even if someone offered the whole universe, you wouldn't trade. Right? That kind of thing. That kind of bond for the created. The contract of love. The contract of True Love, that relationship "I'm your child!", "True Parents are my parents" , that kind of contract. Most, most special contract.

What hurts the most? Is it Father's superhuman level of external difficulties that he went through himself in his life, life course? Do you think that hurts Father the most? Do you think that hurts God the most? What is Heavenly Father's sorrow? When He lost his first son and daughter. Was it because He lost some million dollars or some aspect of His external possession? It's not that. The betrayal of love. Satan taking, raping His own daughter and wife, those kind of things, love- centered difficulties, sores, pains.

How can Father still say "America still a providential nation"? Basically what it means is that somewhere along the process, with Father's vision and dedication and even going to Danbury, sacrificing all the church structure, and all the finances to save America, building Washington Times. Father did something for this country. But, why are there so many problems in the society in general? Who's going to take the responsibility? Who's going to take the blame? Did Father envisioned it that way? Basically American society is a reflection of our own movement! Depending on how well, how much we do. America simply reflects the extent that we turn the tide of the evil forces in America.

Of all the 20 or 30 different workshops that I've been to as a blessed child growing up in our movement, always listening to how great all this principle is, I just literally took it for granted. The Principle, I've heard it, I've heard it! Thousands of times. I was always grateful, to tell you honestly, but still it was merely a concept until the moment I actually saw it perfected, witnessed myself in Russia. Thousands of those hours of just listening, of just taking it for granted, but just one single moment of actually seeing the reality of it is much more powerful and creates a much more powerful impact than just listening, just having those intellectual concepts. You don't realize the Completed Testament Era, the significance of what it means, the reality and actuality of it. The whole meaning.

Young kids, brilliant young kids!! Most pure, most pure I've ever met. Over the years, over half of my life spent in America, I went through high schools and universities, I tried my best to form some kind of friendship, to find some friend and in the same way I tried to make friends in the Korean town. I was never ever able to find one single friend or person that I can literally share my heart with. That kind of deep camaraderie you cannot find in America, those kind of relationships. But over the brief encounters I had with the Russian kids, because of so much suffering and difficulties for them and their families throughout generations, when you meet them is different. Wow! As if I knew these guys all my life. Closer to my own physical brothers and sisters. That kind of feeling. And if really they become my friends, I know they can be there for me and me for them. . . the deep, deep relationship we all want to have. Instantaneously, you can form it.

I am not a fancy talker, so I will try to tell you very briefly that I will give my best, my utmost, and I will dedicate myself as much as you guys do in the field. I like to be out there on the front line, witnessing, fundraising, trying to understand the young people of America, trying to raise them up, trying to give them the things we ourselves received for so many years, through workshops, through Father giving us so many blessings. This is really the time for us to share all those blessings that we have received from our Parents. I promise, I pledge to Heavenly Father and True Parents, to Hyo Jin Nim, to all the members of the True Family, that I will give my best, a thousand times, all the things that I have, to do my responsibility.