I welcome you and extend my heartfelt thanks for your participation in this Fourth World Peace Conference of the Federation for World Peace to address the theme "A World Vision for the 21st Century."

I would like to personally invite you to a very special event at RFK Stadium on Saturday morning. Along with representative leaders of the world’s religions, my wife and I will officiate the blessing of 39.6 million couples in 185 countries around the world. The goal for this ceremony was 3.6 million couples, but we went far beyond that to more than 36 million couples. Many couples from your countries will be participating. More than 30,000 couples will be at the stadium, and ceremonies worldwide will be connected via satellite and video. These couples are dedicating their marriages to God, promising to remain eternally faithful to their spouses and to raise their children with commitment, fidelity, and strong moral values. These couples are of different religious backgrounds, languages, races, and national origins, but what draws all of them together is a love of God and a belief that world peace begins with stable, healthy, and God-centered families.

I would like you all to observe this history-making ceremony but, more than that, I strongly encourage all of you gathered here to also participate and renew your own wedding vows before God.

Today I would like to share with you about the course that I have gone over the past 50 years in search of a common vision for humankind. After the devastating experience of World War II, all nations were searching for peace. God gave me the direction to build a global movement and help establish God’s Kingdom on the foundation of 2,000 years of Christianity. The central message of this revelation is to find the formula course for "True Parents" and "True Family," which means those who live for the sake of others. But the failure of Korean Christian leaders to receive this message brought great disappointment to God, and I had to go a suffering course of rejection and humiliation, which led to my being imprisoned many times even though I was innocent. This providential mistake by the established religions provided the spiritual foundation for evil to run rampant in Korea, beginning with the division of that nation, and for the other calamities that have plagued the world this past half-century.

To understand why all this happened, we must understand the mission that God gave me 50 years ago to bring a special message to Christian leaders. That message is essentially the same today – but today the message is not just for Christians, but for Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and all religions and denominations. The message is that the ideal of the true family, centered on God, is the basis for true relationships and peace among individuals, societies, and nations.

As a young man, I desperately searched for the answers to the mysteries of human sin and suffering. I shed many tears and spent many years in lonely prayer fighting spiritual battles that most would never comprehend. After many years of searching through the Bible and the vast spiritual world, God revealed the true purpose of human life and the root cause of human suffering that originated in the Garden of Eden with the first human ancestors.

Esteemed leaders! You need to know that God created all things for the sake of "True Love" and "True People." All creation is structured in pairs. Animals, plants, and minerals are arranged in subject-object relationships, and the harmonious give-and-take between them forms the base for all existence, for all energy for productivity, and for love and goodness. Humans were also created with this duality between the mind and body within the individual and between man and woman. God’s ideal was for an individual’s mind and body to be united, centered on His love, and then for perfected men and woman to unite in the family unit. In this way, Adam and Eve could become a true reflection of God’s divine nature and become an object of God’s love. Then they could bequeath to their descendants true love, true life, and true blood lineage emanating from God.

Adam’s family was to be a family of true love, in accordance with God’s ideal. The two ancestral human beings, Adam and Eve, were created with the expectation that they would transfer God’s will and love to the world and all creation. Adam and Eve and their children were to establish a pattern that would have been the fundamental principle for all humanity to follow. Adam and Eve’s descendants should have become one with God, accomplishing the unification of mind and body, and man and woman. They would create a stable foundation for peace, freedom, happiness, and hope to fill the world. It was God's ideal that this model be expanded not just to the level of country and world, but to the entire cosmos. Thus, it would be possible for a country to become patterned after the family unit which would expand God’s family-level to the country-level, and the country-level could expand to the world-level centered on God. This would be called the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth.

The fundamental character and personality of an individual is formed in the family. Family is the starting point and foundation of love, personality, and life. The Principle of Creation teaches us that we are born in the cradle of our family through the love of our parents. We come to perfect ourselves as beings of love beginning as children who gradually grow to positions of spouse, parent, and grandparent. Ultimately, we pass to the spiritual world in the midst of love from our descendants. Family, therefore, is the most precious hearth of human love and life. It is more important than all value systems and ideologies as well as all policies and social systems. Through the family, history and country come into being and the ideal world starts. If there is no family, then there is no meaning in individual existence and there will be no passing of love through the generations.

Therefore, family takes precedence over all value, ideology, system, and structure. Family is the most precious and fundamental base for the love and life of men and women.

But, tragically, God’s ideal of true family was never realized. The serpent tempted Eve in the Garden of Eden, and then Eve tempted Adam. Instead of God’s true love, selfish false love was planted in the human race. Human history became one of sin and misery because our ancestors, Adam and Eve, entered into an illicit relationship with Satan. Because of the fall, the progenitors of the human race did not become good ancestors but, rather, evil ancestors corrupted by the root of evil life and evil blood lineage. The first family started with false love and did not establish the perfected true love character of a true person, a true couple, and true parents. The fruit of false love, fallen mankind’s selfishness, destroys the true order, beginning with the discord of mind and body and expanding into division and struggle in the family, nation, and world.

The solution and cure for humankind’s affliction, therefore, is to return to God through the principle of restoration by indemnity. Through true love for others, you can stop the struggle between your mind and body and be restored into your original character of true love. Humankind needs to receive the blessing and create an ideal family from true parents who are the model of true love character. We need to restore the individual and true family and expand true love and goodness to the world level.

Fifty years ago, I tried to bring this revelation to my fellow Christians, believing that this truth could unite the conflicting denominations and bring about the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. I never intended to form a separate church. However, God’s message was met with denial and persecution by the established churches, and I was left with no choice but to make another foundation that has taken me 43 years to build!

Starting in Korea with the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity in 1954, I sent missionaries to Japan, the United States, Europe, and all over the world. On that foundation we have built many organizations to expand the principles of the true family in the media, arts, academia, economy, and industry, and to create examples and models through which the world could be restored and indemnified.

The strategy of Satan, who originated sin, is always to destroy the ideal of true family and to prevent true family from taking root and becoming substantialized. This led to God’s three headaches during the past 50 years. The first headache was communism, which denies God’s existence. The second is corruption and immorality. The third is the division and disunity among denominations and world religions.

Think about it. How many innocent people died because of communism? Over 100 million were killed as a result of communism, and millions more were enslaved, starved, abused and wounded, and spent their whole life in suffering. But in addition to deaths and physical suffering, the crime of communism is even bigger: spreading false truth to deny God and make men and women unable to find their ultimate value.

Immorality, the second headache of God, is destroying families and countries and taking lives just as surely as an invading army. Moral corruption is one of the main causes of divorce, teenage pregnancies, crime, and drug addiction. The decline of morality is not limited to any single nation’s borders but is becoming the world’s common problem. The worldwide AIDS plague is a direct consequence of sexual promiscuity and moral decay. If AIDS continues to spread, tens of millions of people will die and humankind's existence will be threatened.

How about God's third headache – the division and disunity within Christianity and between the world religions? For God, religious people are the conscience of the world. Religious people should have traditions and values and practical power to overcome evil. But instead they are divided. They antagonize and fight with each other. They have became incompetent and have lost the power to overcome evil and educate the world about the true way of life.

These three fundamental headaches are the direct result of the failure 50 years ago of those chosen to receive God’s message.

Distinguished world leaders! From God’s point of view, all of that suffering was totally unnecessary. All the misery, death, and destruction were not inevitable. It could have been avoided. If in the late 1940s, the religious world centering on Christianity had followed God’s revelation and become one with the true family ideal, then communism would have naturally declined. Also, through the influential leadership and example of each religion, the degeneration of youth, broken families, and AIDS would never have grown into a worldwide plague.

Confronting God’s three headaches, particularly communism, made me unpopular and controversial. I was labeled a fascist and a religious charlatan. I was even jailed in the United States on trumped-up charges of tax evasion. Nevertheless, for 25 years I have been pouring out my soul, heart, and energy to make the United States understand its global providential responsibilities.

Through my work in the Western Hemisphere and around the world, I was able to help the United States overcome communism. Now communism has almost disappeared. But immorality and social decay are systematically attacking the family. Modern thinking holds that the traditional family is only one kind of family and that even homosexuals can form a family and have children through adoption or artificial insemination. This is being done without any thought of the dire consequences of undermining and destroying a fundamental biological, social, and spiritual unit that has been vital to human survival for tens of thousands of years. It is ironic that scientists warn of the threat to endangered species of plants and animals, but do not study far more seriously the consequences of family destruction.

Today God is asking us these questions: Will it be necessary to lose one-third of humanity before it is saved? Will we destroy the earth’s natural resources and environment before we learn to live in harmony with the creation as God originally intended? God will never give up! He will save this world, no matter what, and He will save it through the ideal and structure of the true family.

The question is, at what price, not only in terms of human lives, but financial and environmental. The social problems brought about by corruption and immorality are leaving a toll of economic collapse and environmental degradation. The leaders of the world need to reflect on these points. God’s desire is to end human suffering and build a world of true, peaceful families. God needs for us to take care of our portion of responsibility. If humankind receives and acts decisively upon God’s message, the achievement of God’s Kingdom will be relatively swift and joyful. If not, God’s and humanity’s suffering will be prolonged, and the misery and needless deaths will continue.

Then how can God’s headache be solved? How can families become fundamentally healthy? How can divided religions reconcile and cooperate under God? That answer is in the international Marriage Blessing Ceremony. My wife and I began officiating blessing of marriage ceremonies starting with three couples in 1960. If I had said at that time that many millions of people will receive God’s blessing, who would have believed it? But today, with God’s help and going beyond nation, race, and religion, the blessing ceremony of 39.6 million couples, promising purity and fidelity, is being carried out right in front of you.

Respected leaders! I only want to stress once again that, through the Marriage Blessing, the world’s families can stabilize and finally fulfill their original role. For true family to be restored, we have to establish true love character, we have to attend God, and we have to seriously pledge to become true couples and true parents. Those harmonious families that are restored to the ideal through the Marriage Blessing Ceremony can create a peaceful society, nations, and world. This Marriage Blessing that encompasses all nations, races, and religions and goes beyond all boundaries is itself the foundation for world peace. Is this not God’s desire? That this miraculous number of families – almost 40 million! – can participate in this blessing of marriage is because of the active support of the world’s religious leaders. It was also made possible because many national leaders agreed that this true family movement can cure the fundamental teenage problems and the breakdown of families, and they have actively supported it. I would like once again to thank all the volunteers.

The Marriage Blessing Ceremony can awaken people, especially young people, to the value of true love, and it can become the motive and catalyst for them to realize the necessity of absolute purity. All the world’s good young men and women who are awakened through this movement should gather together to stand up for a true love revolution, establishing themselves as eternal couples under God’s blessing. All these new families can receive support from already married couples who have renewed their vows before God and practice right ethics, and they can all become examples of moral citizens and build an ideal family, society, nation, and world – the fruit of true love.

The Marriage Blessing Ceremony eradicates the connection to false love and brings to life the holy content and value of marriage centered on absoluteness. This ceremony recovers true couples’ love, true parents’ love, and true children’s love. Therefore, those who participate in the Marriage Blessing Ceremony value purity and trust as highly as they do their lives and promise unchanging couple’s love. On the foundation of that true love, they can establish a true family, raise true children, and pledge to sacrifice themselves to build a true nation and peaceful world. In the world of the future, God, humankind, and creation are in harmony, living in a new culture of heart, a culture of love centered on true family. In the world of the future, true love means living for the sake of others in a world of interdependence, mutual prosperity, universally shared values, and cooperation. In the future, the natural desire of young people to live in a world of true brothers and sisters, one family of mankind, will be realized by centering on true love, true parents, and true family.

Esteemed world leaders, the Marriage Blessing is the most precious gift that God is giving to us. My wife and I devoutly hope that you will participate in this historic ceremony to receive God’s blessing of marriage. From now on, the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification will expand the true family movement. By the year 2001 we will carry out the 360 million couples blessing in three different events. Because of immorality and the loss of values, our young people are falling into moral decadence, and the family is being utterly destroyed.

Is there anything more important than saving humanity from plunging into ruin? My effort to globalize and universalize the True Family Movement and the Marriage Blessing Ceremony, which are the fundamental solutions to save humanity, needs the active support from respected leaders like you. Those who understand the fundamental problem and the solution God is offering should band together within their country and form a True Family Marriage Blessing support group and create a movement to save your nation. I ask that you put yourselves at the center of this great work to restore humankind to its original ideal. We have to quickly educate all men and women so they can establish true families and enter into the age of God-centered kingship on earth and heaven, centered on true love, and live in the victorious world of freedom, peace, and unity.

May God’s love fill you and your family and your country. Thank you very much.