Respected religious leaders, I am truly grateful that so many of you have taken time out of your busy schedules to gather here for the Fourth True Family Values Ministry Awards Banquet.

We see today that people in all fields of society are doing their best to prepare for the new millennium in a variety of ways according to what they believe is right. In my opinion, however, a sober and serious examination of human life reveals that understanding the will of God, who is our eternal True Parent, is the most pressing task we face at this time, just forty days before the new millennium.

Over the past fifty years, I have communicated the Word of God in public settings nearly 7,000 times. My followers have published many of these speeches in a series approaching three hundred volumes. Tens of thousands of families around the world are reading from these volumes daily.

From this vast content, I would like to share with you a sermon given to the 360 million newly blessed couples, delivered in New York on March 14, 1999. Through reading this together with you prominent religious leaders from greater Chicago, I hope we can realize that we are responsible to build the ideal world by building the ideal families that God has wanted to see for so long.

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen:

What is the most important thing, that which we need more than anything else? It is not money, power or knowledge. It is true love. True love is more precious than life itself and more important to us than air or water.

Why is true love so precious and important? It is because it is the means by which we can meet God. Just as human beings desire to meet God, God also wants to meet true human beings because of love. The love by which God can see, touch, and share with men and women at the same time, is the love by which men and women love each other. If anything other than love were to be recognized as the most valuable thing in the universe, men and women would fight each other to try to claim it for themselves. Once we realize that love is the highest value, however, we can strive to live for each other and become one with each other, sharing the happiness of possessing love together.

Everyone desires love. Love is the only thing that can satisfy all human desires. It is humankind's, and God's, unfailing attraction to love that makes God's providence of salvation possible.

Fundamentally, love belongs to God. Yet even God cannot possess love all by Himself. Love requires a mutual relationship. A man by himself or a woman by herself cannot experience love. Women exist for the sake of men's love and men exist for the sake of women's love. Regardless of external appearance, in our heart each of us desires a mate with whom we can give and receive the highest level of love.

When we examine the universe, we see that all beings exist in pairs relating to one another as subject and object. In the mineral world, we observe the relationship of plus and minus. In the plant world, the animal world and the world of human beings, we see the relationship between masculine and feminine. This is because God created the universe in order to fulfill the expression of love. All beings desire the experience of true love through a mutual relationship. Love is the one power in the universe that absolutely no one can possess by himself. Once we have a partner, however, love gives us the power to share the entire universe. Likewise, a husband and wife need children in order to experience the profound joy of parental love.

Thus, we can say that God created human beings and the universe as His reciprocal partners in order to bring about true love. All types of love-including love of children, love of siblings, love of husband and wife, and love of parents-come about through the unity of subject and object partners. When two partners become one in true love, it is impossible to separate them. If for any reason separation occurs, true love is destroyed. Therefore, in true love there is no concept of divorce.

When a man feels love, the feeling is not generated on its own. The feeling awakens in his heart because of a particular woman. Likewise, the fire of love is kindled in the heart of a woman not by herself alone but by the man she loves. In other words, our love belongs to our partner. Thus, we should honor our partner's love as being even more precious than our love. Each person should be grateful to his or her spouse, and should live his life for the sake of the other. This basic reasoning will make it possible for the 360 million blessed couples to live together eternally. When husbands and wives live for each other, respect each other, and become completely one through true love, it will be possible for the fallen lineage of Satan to be rooted out completely.

True love comes through both horizontal and vertical reciprocal relationships. A horizontal relationship of true love is gradually elevated in a vertical direction until it eventually reaches the pinnacle. This pinnacle is the position of the "King and Queen of True Love." In this position, everything is synthesized, everything is embraced, everything is crystallized into love, and everything blooms. This is why all beings in the universe want to be transformed in love and live in the midst of love. We are born for the sake of love, live for the sake of love, and finally die for the sake of love.

Not only people but all beings desire true love. This is why human beings, as the highest beings in creation, should embrace and love the masterpieces of God's creation, and teach creation how to love. All creation is longing to receive and experience God's love through men and women who have become one with God at the pinnacle of true love. It is a shame that we have not yet realized this degree of love.

All beings exist at a certain level in mutual attraction with another. At the same time, all beings want to be absorbed into higher levels of love. Thus, minerals want to be absorbed into plants, plants want to be absorbed into animals, and finally all of creation wants to be absorbed into human beings. Through this process they ultimately reach the position where they can experience the essence of true love, which is the love that is nearest to God - the origin of love. God created everything with an intrinsic nature to provide value to a higher level. For example, creatures such as eels, and worms which fish like to eat also provide ingredients for natural medicines for humans. Creatures on a higher level are meant to consume beings on a lower level. Without this process, the universe could not exist.

Darwin's theory regarding the survival of the fittest needs to be reexamined in the context of this logic of love. Even ants and microorganisms want true love so much that they will die to become part of an entity of greater love. Because of this principle, human beings, created as the highest partners of God's love, can consume all creatures. We can enjoy everything we desire, on one condition: that we do so with a heart that represents the love of God, the Creator.

God's ideal was for one couple, Adam and Eve, centering on true love, to become the seed from which all the world's families, clans, nations and, finally, the multitudinous citizenry of the Kingdom of Heaven would be descended. Citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven can be created only in accordance with God's tradition of true love.

The view I'm sharing is very different from the theories of Charles Darwin. Yet it is through this perspective, and not Darwin's theories, that we will achieve a world of peace. This is because my words witness to the fundamental principles of creation.

Darwin proposed in his theory of evolution that species evolve through a process of natural selection based on random mutations. Such a theory implies that there is no fundamental meaning, order or goal in the development of the natural world. Today scientists and others debate the theory of evolution vs. the creation theory. The word "creation" acknowledges the existence of God the Creator and that there is purpose embodied in God's act of creation. Each subject and object partner unites to achieve a higher purpose.

Together with Darwinism, communist theory, based on materialism, also lacks the element of purpose. God's creation embodies the purpose of true love, whereas Communism posits only struggle and destruction. Thus, it is destined eventually to disappear.

In all creation, the most precious entities are human beings - men and women. Furthermore, the most precious part of the human body is not the nose, the eyes, the hands, or even the brain. It is the sexual organs, the main organs of love. Everything in the universe can be recreated through the sexual parts.

Most living things-whether plants or animals-multiply through sex. The most precious and outstanding family begins with a husband and wife who are one with each other. Our love organs are the main sanctuary of life, occupying a position of incredible value where blood lineage and history are connected.

God's fundamental principle is to create through male and female. For a man and woman to share absolute love, however, they should have only one partner. We must not have two or more partners, but only one, eternally. There is absolutely only one man for each woman and one woman for each man. That is why God did not create two Adams or two Eves. Tragically, in the world today we see children who have had as many as ten stepfathers. How false and degraded love has become!

When men and women uphold and preserve chastity, they are protecting the universe. The discipline of love between men and women is the foundation of the universe. We must not abuse our love as if we were animals. Our love can only have one owner. The word "true" in "true love" does not allow for the possibility of more than one partner. There can be only one. This is an absolute law.

Not just anyone can say they have "true love." Only God can really love with true love, and only God absolutely owns true love. God's true life, God's true lineage, and God's true conscience emerge from true love. In this way, the most fundamental essence of God is true love.

Therefore, to connect with true love, we must first relate with God. A child might say, "My mother and father don't fight and we live well," but that doesn't necessarily mean that this is a family of true love. A young man and woman may say, "We are so much in love that we could die," but that doesn't mean this love is true love. If God is not present, then it is not true love. True love always centers on God. To become God's son or daughter, we first need to connect with God's love, life and lineage.

Power, knowledge, money, and military might cannot ensure that a person will be welcome in the world of true love. Everyone wants true love, but such love is only possible when we live for others. We need to sacrifice for and serve our partner. Everyone avoids a person who relates to others with the mindset that says, "You should live for me." This kind of selfish individualism is Satan's strategy, purpose, and tool. The result can only be hell. We must live for the whole. If a person lives for others, sacrificing himself or herself and serving the whole, then everyone and everything will come to love him.

We are created as God's children. As we grow in love, relating to brothers and sisters, becoming husbands and wives, giving birth and raising children, God is present each step of the way, harvesting true love. God observes and guides us as we develop, and He becomes the owner of love at each stage. In this sense, it can be said that human beings, through whom God comes to own all love, are more precious to God than He is to Himself. In the same way, we attach a thousand times more value to the person we love than to ourselves.

God invests Himself for those He loves and then forgets this investment. Then he invests again. He invests Himself one hundred percent and then forgets one hundred percent. That is why He can continue to invest.

In the same way, a wife who wants her husband to be a success invests herself in her husband and then forgets this investment. By investing herself and forgetting, she enables him to achieve his full potential in life. When we as partners continue to invest in each other and forget, the level of our love is elevated, and we will ultimately find ourselves connected to God. This is how we can fulfill our parent-child relationship with God and have eternal life.

Everyone wants to go to heaven, but those whose attitude is "Everyone should live for me," will not get there. True love begins with embracing and living for the sake of all God's masterpieces of creation. The way we can reach heaven is to live for all humankind and ultimately for God.

During our lives, each of us should have at least three experiences in which we dedicate our lives to someone or to some higher purpose. This is how we can indemnify the selfish acts involved in the fall of Adam's family, the crucifixion of Jesus, and in the persecution directed against the family of the Lord of the Second Advent.

And then even after we figuratively pass through death and resurrection three times, we should not ask for God's praise but instead pledge our lives to Him even more. This is how we can meet God. When such people populate the world, this will be the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. This is the path that I am teaching, and this is the kind of world that I am building.

Children are the fruit of the love of the mother and father. We need to understand that children embody their parents' love, life, and lineage. Little children often say "This is mine," but parents are the origin of everything that children refer to as their own. Parents are the root and the trunk. Without parents, we would all be orphans. We cannot live if we break the ladder of love that connects us to our parents.

We are the sons and daughters of God, the parent who is the origin of true love. Parents are the highest masters of love for children. The parent-child relationship is vertical, and the husband-wife relationship is horizontal. The lines of these two relationships should cross at right angles. The relationship among siblings forms a third dimension, a front-to-back axis. When all are equidistant from the center, and are freely circulating in love, their relationships form a sphere. That is why all beings existing in love, and the universe as a whole, are spherical. The entire universe achieves balance centering on these relationships. All love is united and achieves a peaceful dynamic harmony in the central point of this sphere of love relationships. This center, where all these relationships intersect, is where God resides. If we picture this three-dimensionally, we see that God is the ultimate origin of love, life, lineage, and conscience.

In the God-centered family, vertical and horizontal loves are united as one. Such a family will multiply to become a clan, society, nation, world, and cosmos of love. The fundamental center though, is always the one God.

If Adam and Eve had not fallen, they would have realized the ideal of the God-centered family and become the True Parents of humankind. As True Parents, Adam and Eve would have provided a model of true husband-wife love and true parental love. God's providence of salvation has been a providence of restoration. Throughout human history, God has been working to restore True Parents who can establish, as a model for all humanity, the ideal of true love, true life, and true lineage.

After Adam and Eve had children, who would have overseen the marriage of these children? Adam and Eve, as their parents, would have done this. We need to look seriously at the deficiency of parental involvement in their children's marriages in today's society.

The Unification Church, which has True Parents, is standing in the position of parents to give the marriage blessing to all the peoples of the world. These marriages transcend not only racial, religious, and ethnic differences. By knowing True Parents and being engrafted to them, even saints and evil persons are being blessed in marriage with each other. The True Parents reject evil love, evil life and evil lineage, but they do not cast out Cain, who murdered Abel. Everyone, including Cain, receives the same blessing.

In the ocean, there is a point during the changing of the tides when the forces of outgoing and incoming tide are at equilibrium. There is a similar turning point in the Providence of Salvation in the balance between the forces of good and evil. By blessing good and evil people at the time of this turning point, Satan can be expelled completely.

The human fall occurred when there was an error in the Garden of Eden that involved marriage. Now, the True Parents have corrected that error and are blessing marriages with the original foundation restored. By clearing up the problems created by Adam and Eve as fallen parents, the True Parents are eradicating hell and giving the blessing to tens of billions of ancestors in the spirit world. In other words, by centering on true love and restoring the original true love, true life and true lineage, we restore the true parent-child relationship.

In this way, we come to perfect the master of love, the model of true love in the eight stages of God's ideal of creation. That is, we establish the eternal unchanging true love tradition by going through life in the womb, infancy, life as brother and sister, as an adolescent, which is the engagement period, as newlyweds enjoying conjugal love, as parents, as true parents and finally as true king and true queen. Upon this foundation, we can perfect the true love model, the parent-child relationship.

In God, love, life and lineage are absolute, unique, unchanging and eternal. Humankind is to inherit this as the model of true love. This model will not change through tens of thousands of generations. Centering on true love, we can reach oneness between parent and child, between husband and wife, and between brothers and sisters.

A father becomes the owner or master of love through his son. A husband becomes the owner of love through his wife. An elder brother becomes the owner of love through his younger brother. On the other hand, children without parents, women without husbands and elder brothers without younger brothers cannot find the central position, the position of the owner of love.

In order to become the owner of true love, we must serve and honor our parents. By doing so, we will attain mind-body unity as individuals, conjugal unity as husband and wife, fraternal unity as brother and sister, and world peace as nations. In this way, we can perfect the realms of love defined in the eight stage ideal model.

Again, the ideal family and ideal nation are the places where all of us -- as parents, children, couples, brothers and sisters, and nations -- want to establish ownership of the eight-stage model, centering on true love. From there, eternal world peace will emerge, the Kingdom of God on Earth will dawn, and the Kingdom of God in Heaven will blossom.

Beginning from the year 2000, in every corner of the globe, countless blessed families united with the Parents of Heaven and Earth will initiate a new family revolution and worldwide moral revolution, centering on true love. God is longing to see the eternal ideal Kingdom of God built on Earth as well as in Heaven. Let us join in this holy task. I pray that all of you will become the owners of God's true love. May God's blessing be abundant upon you and your family.

Thank you very much.

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