In His Father's Footsteps

Kook Jin Moon
April 1, 2010

Kook Jin nim was in Shimonoseki on April 1 to mark the sixty- ninth anniversary of Father's arrival on Japan's main island, on his way to begin his studies in Tokyo. To an audience of one thousand five hundred members, he gave this heartfelt speech.

Hello, brothers and sisters. How are you today? I'm very happy to see all of you. Sixty-nine years ago, our True Parents first came to Japan. When our True Parents first received their mission from God and Jesus Christ to fulfill the mission which Jesus Christ was unable to fulfill, from that time, the road that our True Parents have walked has been one of tears, blood and sweat. They had received a mission to be the Lord of Heaven and Earth, but they walked the road of a beggar and a servant and Father suffered in prison in many cases coming near death. Everywhere our True Parents have gone, they have been rejected persecuted and ridiculed.

You, our brothers and sisters in Japan, have walked that road together with our True Parents. Here in this church we have brothers and sisters who are truly saints of the world. There are men and women who have taken on the role of sacrificing their lives, their wealth, their freedom to serve the world and to work to restore the world back to its original state, where we as human beings can be in the position to inherit God's true love. And for pursuing this great and noble mission, our brothers and sisters have been tormented, tortured, murdered, raped, beaten. Great men and women who are truly honorable and noble have walked the course of indemnity and suffering to pay for all the sins of humanity. That is the path of our brothers and sisters here in the Japanese movement.

The whole world, myself included, must be truly grateful to all of you, our brothers and sisters, for all that you've done to bring God's providence to fruition. The government in Japan must realize the great injustice it has permitted against its own citizens who have done no wrong. In a modern-day democracy, where freedom human, rights and individual civil rights are guaranteed by the Constitution, it is unconscionable and unimaginable that the Japanese government allows Christian ministers and Communist attorneys to run a kidnapping business, where they trade in the torture and misery of thousands and thousands of good men and women. Brothers and sisters, we can no longer tolerate this injustice -- not just injustice against us but injustice against all humanity.

It is time, brothers and sisters, that we let the world and the government of Japan know that we, too, have rights -- that we have the right to believe, that we have the right to religious freedom, that we have the right to be free from kidnapping. So as we reflect and remember our True Parents arrival in Japan, as we reflect on the road we've come, I hope you can all, in your hearts and minds, determine yourselves to finally resolve this problem and liberate our suffering brothers and sisters here in Japan. Thank you very much.