The Words of Hyung Jin Moon From 2010
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The Words of Hyung Jin Moon From 2010 |
Good afternoon, brothers and sisters. It is great to see you all. It is always our honor to have you here in this sanctuary with us. We sincerely hope and pray in the beginning of 2010 that your days and your life will be filled with Heavenly Father’s and True Parents’ blessing and true love. Aju!
Good afternoon, brothers and sisters. Let’s start by manifesting the Principle: Give and receive action, four position foundation, may I inherit the true love of God. Aju!
Today we are going to read from Cheon Seong Gyeong 688-9. Father says,
"True Parents are the true parents whom all humankind must seek. Their existence makes it possible for true goodness to be established in history. So what kind of people are they? They are the foothold enabling you to move to God. They stand as an altar that bridges the gap between God and humanity. They are like the bridge by which we cross over the world of death. They are the position where you can be with God, the focal point enabling you to bond together with God as parent and child and become one body with Him."
Aju!
Brothers and sisters! Oh, my goodness! It’s an exciting 2010, because we have so many things going on this year, and particularly in the beginning of this year. Believe it or not, we have only five more services in this sanctuary before we move to the Temple. Let’s give it up for this sanctuary one time! (Applause) Just five more! We are going in; we don’t want to go in without having prepared.
Today we want to share with you a general outline of what we will be doing for the next couple of weeks. We will really go into the Temple honoring and glorifying the very people that we just heard about, our True Parents.
Brothers and sisters, we now have just five more services before we actually enter into the growth stage World Temple. There have been so many preparations, as you all know. This is a temple that the whole world-wide membership has contributed to, so really it is not Korea’s temple, nor is it Headquarters Church congregation’s temple. It really is the blood, sweat and tears of all our brothers and sisters around the world.
Of course, the most victory was made in Japan. Korea made history-breaking results last year. For the first time in history the Korean church was self-sufficient, so it received no funds from Japan. It’s the first time for the Korean church. Let’s give it up for the Korean church! (Applause) Big accomplishment, very big!
Last week we had Kim Shil-jang nim here at the headquarters. He is the head of the planning department at the headquarters. He gave a detailed presentation on exactly where we stand as the Unification Movement. Since the 1970s we’ve been declining as a church, not only here in Korea, but also in other parts of the world. In Korea, for example, we were at 16,000 members in 1970. That was incredible, because you have to remember that in the 1970s there were no big mega churches as we see today. So that kind of congregation following True Father around was absolutely incredible at the time.
But we see a steady decline. We see that during the initial early days those incredible histories were made. So many miraculous things and spiritual phenomena were happening -- people getting revelations, seeing visions of True Parents even before they met them. We see incredible witnessing testimonies and stories where people find True Parents and understand that they are the returning Christ. The person who was going to be the next president of Ehwa University joined our movement. The minister who was present at Ehwa University -- which is a Christian evangelical school -- also converted, became a follower of True Parents.
So, we had these incredible, incredible histories that were being made at that time, the spiritual phenomena, and people were finding the truth, learning the Divine Principle and discovering that the Lord had returned. We had incredible things happening. There were Dong Ins, kind of ascetics, religious leaders, that are in the mountains. Some of these leaders brought their entire group to come in and to follow and serve True Parents.
But then, what did we see happen over time? We saw that initial kind of incredible history being made, and incredible phenomena happen, but over time we saw that those kinds of people ended up leaving the movement. And so we look at this with a great sense of sorrow because we really were here to transform the world. We were here to truly make the Kingdom of Heaven. That was what the Messiah was here to do. And we came with that kind of intensity and that kind of incredible hope and expectation.
But as time went on and we saw the slow declining of our church, then all of us at some point in our life found a sense of sorrow in seeing that kind of trend. But you see, when we look at that actual history, when we see what happened in the course of those early years, and why we were not able to keep such individuals or groups in our movement, the real problem is not the content. It is not the content of our Principle or our theology.
Our theology is extremely powerful and continues to be to this day. If you compare Christian theology, if you compare what Christians must believe as Christians in the modern day with our theology, we have a much more rational and powerful theology, and an explanation of history which includes the modern world. So we have an incredible theology.
But the weakness of our movement was not our content or our theology. The weakness of our movement was our organization. It was our organizational management that was the weak part of our movement. We had people, actual Christian pastors who came with their devotees, who declared and found True Parents to be the coming Christ, who wanted to come and follow and become Unificationists, but we were not able to digest those organizations with our capacity as a movement.
And that is because, when we look at the Unification Movement, it was not ONE movement, one organization that was going with a common goal. It was many smaller organizations inside the movement that were going many times in different directions. So there was not a consistency. There was not cohesiveness of the organization. We see that even when people wanted to come in, the management was not helping; the level of care was low, etc… all of these kinds of things. We understood that this was a major problem and a major weakness for our movement. And so we started addressing these issues.
Kook-jin hyung, of course, brought incredible results. I don’t know if you heard. Last week I shared with the Korean congregation that now, in Yonsei University, which is really the Columbia University of Korea, in the MBA program -- there are two blessed children who are currently in that program who told this to us -- in the study of business management the Yonsei University professors are teaching about the Tong Il group as a turn-around company in 2009 and the incredible results that they made. Now, even at Yonsei University, we are receiving the proper due respect that the Unification Church deserves. Let’s give it up for Tong Il Group! (Applause) Incredible!
These kinds of things are happening. In Yonsei the blessed children who are studying very hard were -- I think -- dozing a little bit during class, but then they heard "Tong Il Group", they woke up, and then they heard "Moon Kook-jin chedan sajang". "Ooh, my goodness! I think I saw that man somewhere!" And they were so excited, so happy, so proud!
You see, we are actually making an impact in society; we are actually making results that create an impact in society. We are starting to get that kind of recognition because we are really moving towards creating a result-oriented organization in whatever we do.
So, in that trend, we see that in 2009 we had incredible victories. We talked about this last week. I was not with you on Saturday last week but we talked about this very strongly in the Korean services, that we were victorious in 2009. We did things that nobody thought were possible. We turned around the media in 2009. Kook-jin hyung and In-sup nim as part of the business group were able to bring back that business group into success even in that economic downturn.
We were able, in the Korean church, to be victorious in Cheon Bok Gung. The Cheon Bok Gung donation, the fundraising; all the members were participating in that. Nobody thought that was possible. We were able to actually prepare the temple. That seemed impossible, too. Two years ago, when we talked about 21,000 member temple, everybody rolled their eyes saying, "What! Talk about a 21,000 member temple? We can’t even gather together fifty, let alone 21,000 members in a temple!" I remember that. I felt that so viscerally in the congregation.
But now, in the Korea congregation especially, we’re having people on the street every day. We have groups and teams that are out there declaring the name of True Parents. No longer are we hiding our Unificationist identity, we are coming out and really expressing ourselves, sharing what it is we believe and standing up for what we believe.
So, this year we had incredible witnessing happening for the first time in 30 years. Again, the church grew after 30 years. Also the church became sustainable; it did not have to rely on Japan this year. Incredible things that actually everybody thought were impossible to do! But the Unification Movement did it this year! We did it here in Korea! And that’s why we want to remember that in 2009 we were victorious.
See brothers and sisters, now we enter 2010, and now we have an incredible, incredible opportunity right now, because we stand at the time right now where we are actually entering into the new temple. That’s not only a facility. It symbolizes and represents that the Unification Church is not dead and will not die or perish but we are growing and we are becoming more prominent and we are standing up for what it is we believe. Let’s give it up for the Unification Church! (Applause) It represents our pride and our faith as a tradition, and if you really think about it, True Parents have given us this incredible blessing to be able to construct this temple. They have not allowed that for the last 30 years. But they have allowed us to invest in a temple, a temple that is created by the members, that is offered to True Parents as a gift of our filial piety, as a gift of our devotion.
But at the same time it’s an open temple, in the sense that we invite people there; people are reborn there. People will come to realize True Parents’ love and True Parents’ life, will understand how we’ve been saved through that grace, will understand the seven deaths and resurrections, etc. This is a place where new lives and new histories will be made, and this is why it is so exciting that we are moving into this temple.
So many people have prepared for this temple to open. You know we have countless brothers and sisters in Japan and also in Korea who have really stepped up and helped in creating the actual temple, helped in actually putting down the stones, so-to-speak, with their own devotion, with their own mind and heart and sincerity.
We have also a committee that has prepared for the temple building, and that is the Cheon Bok Gung Temple preparation committee, the committee that organizes and also manages the fundraising activities for the temple transparently so that all the financial elements can be professionally seen and transparently managed.
The head of that, of course, is Kook-jin hyung, who has that kind of professional background. He was in Japan this week, and I gave him a call. I said, "Kook-jin hyung, I really need you to address the congregation. We’re moving in just five weeks. We don’t have so much time."
So this is a video that he sent to us from Japan while he was there working with the Japanese church. Let’s see this video.
Good afternoon, everybody. I want to wish you all a Happy New Year. We had a very successful year 2009. Actually it was a very difficult year. There were a lot of difficulties in the Unification Church. We did a lot of difficult things to get over these. In Japan the government was really scrutinizing our church. They came and visited the church many times. They brought the legal status of the church in Japan into question, "Is this really a church?" We had to solve this problem. I worried a lot and I asked Father to help me solving these problems.
Also, Father asked me to solve the problem of the kidnapping of members in Japan, and in 2009 we made a lot of progress on this. So, the Japanese church is much more stable now with Father’s help. I want to really thank True Parents for helping with this.
In 2009, we re-organized the church and the foundation in Korea. This was difficult for the members and for the ministers. It was difficult but now that we’ve done that, and we look at the church we can see that it is better than it used to be. There are new people coming, more people giving their tithes. We have a stronger financial base now. So, now we have a much healthier church than we had a year ago. And even with those difficulties, during this difficult time, we managed to raise the money for Cheon Bok Gung at the same time, and we are now getting ready to move into Cheon Bok Gung. This is an amazing achievement!
If we look at the church one year ago, and now we look at the church preparing to move into Cheon Bok Gung, we can see a big change in one year. I really want to thank all the members all around the world who worked so hard to make this move into the Cheon Bok Gung a reality. Of course our faithful members in Japan have been a big part of this victory. They have made big donations for Cheon Bok Gung. And our Korean members, too, have really sacrificed themselves to make donations for Cheon Bok Gung.
As I worked with the members on the Cheon Bok Gung committee, I came to know more and more about our members’ heart and their devotion. I met a lot of you during the process of discussing how to build and how to use the Cheon Bok Gung. While I talked to you I could recognize the depth of sacrifice and devotion, how our members have sacrificed to make donations for Cheon Bok Gung even though their lives are very difficult. Members are living a life of devotion for the sake of Father’s direction and for the sake of the victory of the Unification Church. I was very moved and grateful when I saw this.
We have to be grateful to all the members around Korea, from Japan and from all around the world who have given donations for Cheon Bok Gung. Now, as we get ready to enter Cheon Bok Gung, we need to remember all these brothers and sisters who have made sacrifice and made devotion to make this possible. We have to feel this from the bottom of our heart. They have made great sacrifices. We are the ones here receiving the benefit.
Now it is the time for the members of the Headquarters Church to take a lot of responsibility. Cheon Bok Gung is not a church just for the headquarters members. This is the headquarters of the Unification Church for the whole world, so when we work for the victory of this Headquarters Church, it is not only our victory that we are working for, but the victory of the worldwide Unification Church. If we cannot bring victory to match our goals and expectations, if we cannot match the goals and expectations of all the members around the world, that will be a failure, so we have to take our responsibility very seriously.
Why have all these members given such big donations? What is their reason? Our members all around the world believe that God and True Parents have called them to work for a larger dream, a larger purpose, a larger goal. That dream is not just so that the members at Headquarters Church, just the members in Korea, could have a nicer place to worship or do their work. The dream is bigger than that. These offerings are to support the realization of Cheon Il Guk, the establishment of Cheon Il Guk, the beginning of the substantialization of Cheon Il Guk.
From now on, we need to work quickly. We need to invest all our energy reaching the goal of 21,000 members at Headquarters. In order to do that, there is a lot of work for us to do. While we prepare to move into Cheon Bok Gung, we need to remember the sacrifices of our brothers and sisters here in Korea and all around the world, and we need to work in such a way, that we can live up to the pain, the expectations and the hope that our brothers and sisters have invested. That’s the heart that we must take with us when we move to our new headquarters.
We have a wonderful new place to worship, a wonderful new headquarters. We need to have a heart of gratitude and we need to focus on God’s will, and True Parents’ will in accomplishing what God and True Parents have asked us to do. We have to reach out to all the people in Korea, teach them about True Parents, teach them what True Parents have taught to us about true love. We need to teach them about true love as we have learned it from True Parents. And that way we can give all our efforts to return great joy to God by making Korea the nation that can attend True Parents and the nation that can embody Cheon Il Guk.
Let’s make our effort to bring this into reality. Thank you.
Let’s give it up for Kook-jin nim!
Brothers and sisters, today I need to go through with you a general outline of the next couple of weeks. Father has asked for a couple of different changes in the schedule. We want to update you on all those kinds of things, so today we will be a little more in the practical realm. We are going to pull out the digital calendar, that’s the Cheon Il Guk calendar. So, brothers and sisters, for the next couple of weeks we will have services at the same time. But really these are preparatory services because we’re only here for five more services. After this service there are only four more services. We’re preparing with our hearts and minds, really like a Jeong Seong, a devotional practice. For the next weeks we’re preparing to enter into the temple.
Next week we’ll be hearing from all our leaders here at the Cheon Bok Gung. Last week we heard from Kim Shil-jang nim, who is our manager, our planning director manager, up in the headquarters. He gave a report about the Korean church’s nationwide situation, how the Korean church members made historical results last year. That was shared last week. Next week we’ll be listening to Lee Dong Han. He is the head of the ministry teams here at Cheon Bok Gung, so he will be head of our ministry department. Reverend Lee Dong Han will be giving the pastoral plan and goals for Cheon Bok Gung 2010, what the ministerial teams will focus on when we enter into the temple. This will help in understanding what kind of ministry will be alive in Cheon Bok Gung.
The week following that, on the 23rd, we will have Mrs. Yasue Erikawa. She is the head of our Women’s Evangelical Ministry Department. As you know, she’s an incredible woman of faith. She has incredible courage and she has a samurai spirit. She’s like a spiritual samurai, she’s incredible! She has really revamped and helped us organize the women’s ministry here. For thirty years in the Korean Church we did not have members declaring True Parents as Lord and Savior, going out on the streets, as we did it in the early days.
With Mrs. Erikawa’s leadership, a lot of sisters have stepped up, even young people have stepped up, going out on witnessing teams, going out on the streets, handing out flyers for the bestseller book, but also explaining what the Unification movement stands for, etc. We’ve been doing that kind of street witnessing, we’ve been with them, participating with them on the streets. It really is exciting -- it’s exciting and liberating to be able to go around and actually declare your faith. Sometimes you get people angry. Some evangelical Christians got angry at me, "Get out of here!", but I said, "I still love you guys, we love you." We explained why Jesus and True Parent’s course are reflected. It’s the same, how Jesus received persecution, how True Parents as the returning Messiah receives persecution. So, Mrs. Erikawa will be sharing with all of you the goals and plans of the Women’s Evangelical Ministry Team, what they have done in 2009, and what they will do in setting their goals for 2010. That will be on the 23rd.
The 30th, which is Saturday the following week, we’ll be hearing from Mr. Sang Yi Lee. He is the head of our Administrative Support Department. This is the management of the organization, how the organization is actually run. We need all of you to understand how this organization is run, what departments there are and how it is that we are inviting people. We are owners here, we are people who have faith and who are practicing our faith. We’re not coming here just to worship, we’re also coming here to save lives, to bring people to the church. So, you need to know how those processes will actually happen, how that will be managed. Mr. Sang Yi Lee will be sharing with us the goals and plans for 2010 that week. That will leave us then with just one more service.
The next couple of services, we really encourage all members to come and listen to the leaders. It’s good for all of us to understand what caliber of leaders are here in the church in the Cheon Bok Gung Temple. These leaders have extensive experience in the business world, in the professional world, operating and working in organizations in a competitive market place. These people are not like the leaders of the past, who may not have had that kind of experience. The people you will be meeting will have had extensive experience and results during the course of their careers and in their given departments. They’re very, very professional. We will be hearing from those leaders.
And now, the last service that we will be holding here, the last real service for both the congregations in English and in Korean will be on February 6th and February 7th. That will really be the last formal service that we will be holding in this foundation stage temple. In this service, we’re going to do something really exciting, because it’s really like the Exodus! We’re moving into Canaan. We’re hearing the train to Jordan and we’re getting onboard the train and we’re moving, we’re moving. We’re going towards Canaan, going towards the temple.
So, we will have the service on the 6th and 7th, and then after service, we will have groups that will gather with appointed ministers after each service. That will be not only the international service but also the Korean service -- 1st service, 2nd service, all the way to the 5th service. After service, the groups will congregate just downstairs and we will physically walk to the temple. We are actually going to march physically to the temple in the exodus. That’s going to be fun -- very, very fun, so bring your sneakers and bring your Unification Church signs, and we’re going to hold them up with pride as we move to the temple. So, we’re actually going to walk. It is 3.4 kilometers, just to let you know, about one hour and a half. We had the young people from the ministry team participating in that. They took about an hour and 20 minutes, so we’ll take it slow, but we’re actually going to walk, we’re actually going to make the march towards the temple in Yong San. That will be about one hour and 20 minutes. We’re preparing for that, so bring your sneakers on that day, okay?
Then, once we’re there we will also have Hoonsa Nims there. We will be leading the services here so we can’t go with you all, but we will walk there after the 5th service on Sunday, February 7th. After the 5th service we will walk, me and my wife will walk with a couple of other people, to the temple, after all the services are done. When you arrive there with your groups, we will have the Hoonsa Nims there, who are retired ministers who are now practicing a life of complete devotion. They’re living almost like a monastic type of life, training with me every day from 2:30 in the morning. Our day begins at 2:30 in the morning, every single day. We don’t get any sleep. We have to do it every day. This is the spiritual practice. The Hoonsa Nims will be there awaiting you and we will have a small prayer service and some other ceremonies and such things prepared. So, that will be on the 7th.
On Saturday, February 13th, that will be the day before God’s Day. As you know, from this year Father has designated God’s Day as the lunar new year, which is February 14th. This is big news for us, because now the Unification Church will be using the lunar calendar. Father has explained that up until now, it has been the Cain world centered on the solar calendar, but now the Abel realm is using the lunar calendar, and it is through that Abel realm that a new history is going to be made. Father has ordered us to change the calendar, so we will be making calendars with lunar numbers. Of course, because we all have to live practically in the world, there’ll also be solar dates. On each of the days, we’ll have the solar date in a smaller place, but as a movement we’ll be heartistically centering on the Abel realm of the lunar year, okay?
So, this year, February 14th is God’s Day, the lunar God’s Day. We’ll be serving True Parents that day, attending them. All our teams, all our members will be going up to Chung Pyung that day and we’ll be attending them in the God’s Day celebration -- Lunar New Year God’s Day.
And then on the 17th, as you all know, just three days after God’s Day Lunar New Year Celebration, we will have the 14,300 blessed couples Universal Blessing Ceremony. Let’s give it up for those 14,300 new members! I have to make this clear to the congregation: We are going to do this honestly for True Parents. You’re going to ask why I am using the word ‘honestly’. Because in the past, when we did large blessing ceremonies, when Father gave a goal for a large blessing ceremony, many times we had a situation where the same members received the blessing and just wore the wedding gown and participated in it again. But this time, we will not be doing that. Only the people who are new members, who are really receiving the blessing in a new way will be participating in the ceremony. There will be other people, spectators that can come watch and participate by watching, but they will not participate in the actual wedding ceremony. The wedding ceremony will only be for new members who have succeeded in all the different requirements to receive the blessing.
True Parents have given us the goal of 14,300. Our Korean church is really, fighting, fighting, fighting for this! Every day, we are trying to bless people and get people prepared, but we’re not going to reduce the value of True Parents. In the past, as you know, in order to fill these big number blessings, we reduced the quality of the requirements. Then, problems were made in Unification Church. We had men that were not members, and they were not prepared. They were matched to sisters from other countries who were completely faithful. Then we had situations that have occurred with intercultural, domestic violence, or not such good things that happened like this. That’s because we degraded the value of the blessing. We forgot the value of True Parents, and we just tried to fill the numbers. This is not what we’re going to do this time. We’re going to continue to keep the requirements high. That is, not just anybody off the street can just sign up to get matched to an Unificationist. Not that kind of program, which in the past created many problems. This time, only the people who fit the requirements will be able to participate. It is our goal to make 14,300, as Father has ordered.
So, our Korean Church is working very hard to fulfill these things. It’s a very big, big challenge (laughs) as you may understand. It is an extremely stressful time for us right now. We’re working very hard on that level. Anybody in our western congregation, if you know contacts, please work with the Korean members, who are working so hard to try to really honestly do this before True Parents, okay?
That is Wednesday the 17th, at the Kintex. At the Kintex, approximately 10,000 - 14,000 people will be able to fit into two halls, but, as I said earlier, only the people who fit the requirements and who are new members or returning members will be able to participate in the blessing ceremony. So we will report honestly to True Parents how many people actually receive the blessing. And if we get in trouble, we get in trouble. That’s my view, okay? It’s better to be honest and get into trouble than to fudge the numbers and create bigger problems for our community. That’s at least my view, okay? (Applause)
After that, on Friday, the 19th of February, there will be True Parents’ birthday celebration, and the Coronation Ceremony for God’s Kingship will be held on the same day.
Sunday, February 21st is the real date for us here, for the opening ceremony. It’s the commemorative offering ceremony of the Cheon Bok Gung Temple to True Parents. When we share this with True Parents, we don’t say, "Me, myself, and Kook Jin nim have organized this great victory to make this temple for you, True Parents." That’s not how we describe it. We describe it, "True Parents, the worldwide membership as one family centered on your love and your life and your lineage, the worldwide family has come to offer this temple to True Parents and to declare True Parents, to share that they are the returning Christ and to make people be reborn in this place." Okay? So, that is the date, the 21st. That was confirmed just today with True Parents. I confirmed it via phone. The 21st is Sunday and that will be the opening offering ceremony of the Cheon Bok Gung Temple.
Father gave us a very special name here. He gave us the name Cheon Shim Tongil Kyo Hae. Cheong Shim Tongil Kyo Hae is the ‘Unification Church that has the Heart of Heaven’. What an incredible name for explaining what Cheon Bok Gung is! Let’s give it up for Cheon Shim, Heaven’s Heart! That’s an incredible, incredible name! (Applause)
Okay, but now for us it is really important with what kind of attitude we enter into the temple. We don’t want to enter with arrogant thinking, "Yeah, we got this big temple. You know, everyone in the world is now going to be envious of this temple. You know, look at this!" We don’t want to go in with that attitude. We really want to go in with the attitude that we as a Unification Movement have sacrificed tremendously to build this for True Parents and their victory. We’re going in there, not feeling entitled, like, "This is what I always deserved." Not that kind of attitude. We’re going in with the attitude to really declare before the nations, before the world, who the returning Christ is.
The ceremony will be on that day, Sunday the 21st, but on the 20th, the church will actually be open all day. The Cheong Bok Gung will be open all day. The reason is this: On the 21st, the opening ceremony, there are people coming from all over the world. Not everybody will be able to come into the temple because there’s a limited capacity in the sanctuary. We have VIPs and members coming from all over the world. We have 500, for example, coming from Japan, so we have huge numbers of people coming here from around the world on that day. All the members in the congregation who worship here every week, about 2,500 people, are definitely not going to be able to fit that building at that exact time that True Parents are there. So, a lot of people will not be able to pack into the sanctuary. We have to always be safe while we’re in the sanctuary, following the emergency codes and all the legal codes, okay?
So, on the day before the opening ceremony, on Saturday the 20th, the temple will be open, all day. The reason it will be open all day is because we want to prepare our hearts before attending True Parents on Sunday. On Saturday, all the members will come at convenient times during the day and offer at least 21 bows before True Parents, as a symbolic offering of attendance for the next day, okay? We encourage all of you to make a list on your calendar, set a time for yourself and come to the temple, see the facility, but with the right heart. We want to enter in with the correct heart, right? So, it will be open all day for brothers and sisters to come in and sit and meditate and pray and prepare ourselves for Sunday when True Parents will come.
After Sunday, the day when True Parents come and we have this ceremony, the following three days, from the 22nd to the 24th, we will be having all day vigils, all night vigils. We’re not going in there as a business; this is not a hotel, this is a religious temple, so we need to go in there with spiritual practice, and this is the attitude that we’re going in with. After the opening ceremony, from Monday to Wednesday, the church will be open all day, all night. We will have relay teams all day, all night, a three-day vigil, symbolizing the foundation, growth, and perfection level victories that we are now moving towards. So, all day, all night. We definitely encourage brothers and sisters who are members of the Headquarters Church, to come during that time. Pay devotion, offering your heart and prayer and meditation, and we’ll do vigils together, okay? We’ll be all centered on prayer. We want to offer that kind of devotion.
That will be for three days following Sunday, and then finally after all that Cheong Sung and after attending True Parents and ceremonies, etc., on Saturday the 27th, we will hold the first formal service in the growth stage temple. That is the international service. Let’s give it up for the first service on the 27th! (Applause) Okay so what date was that? The 27th, that is the first service in Cheon Bok Gung. That will be done in English. On the following day, the 28th, we’ll be holding three services. That will be our first Korean service in the temple. And then the real mission will begin.
From that point on we’ve moved into the Cheon Bok Gung Temple, and that’s where the real fun begins. That’s where the real mission begins. That’s where the real excitement begins, okay? It comes from our faith, it comes with sharing our faith, and there are so many people in that area who are ready, who are waiting for us to come. I’ve met them on the street while I was street witnessing. I’ve met the people who live in those apartments who say, "Hey, when you come in, we’re going to stop by and visit you." There are so many people who are prepared. That is where we actually begin the journey. We begin the journey towards the 21,000 Temple victory, and I want to send a huge round of victorious applause towards that goal, the 21,000 Temple victory! Let’s give it up for the Cheon Bok Gung; let’s be victorious this time!
So, brothers and sisters, we want you to remember this has never been done in the history of our church, never. Never has it even been contemplated that we could be at this kind of professional level of religious organization. Really, this is a level where all the big religions are playing at, really at the professional level. At this temple we are really focusing on the organizational management. Of course, I focus and my ministry teams focus strongly on only spiritual practice, but also other parts of our team members have extensive experience of organization management. They help us in keeping the church organized, helping it, as it grows, to manage members. We are creating new systems, new ways in which to do that. Of course, it’s not easy to do because the church has never done it before. There is always a learning process, okay?
So, there we’ll actually be beginning. And you understand that in the early days -- when we had incredible histories based on our theology, when people understood who True Parents were -- people were excited! New members were coming into the church. They were so excited to meet the returning Christ. We had, as I mentioned, Christian ministers bring their congregations. Dong Ins, these religious, wandering teachers would bring their students to True Parents. This kind of thing is happening again, but this time our organization is getting stronger and we’re becoming more adept at managing larger groups of people and helping them raise up in their faith. Although it’s not perfect, we’re getting better at it. We will have the capacity when these histories begin, and they are happening again. We will have the capacity to be able to allow them to participate, to be, in our community of faith, to continue to work and strive for the building of Cheon Il Guk.
This is the real excitement of the Cheon Bok Gung Temple. It really is a new level up in the way we conceive ourselves as Unification Church, but it’s not the end, it’s only the growth. We are really moving on a new stage in a new era where we’re opening up this temple, where we’re all entering into it and we’re all going in there with the right attitude. We’re going in there to really bring glory to True Parents as they are here on Earth, not just for personal needs. We have personal needs, but in the end, as we go to spiritual world, the criteria by which we’re judged is by how much did we glorify True Parents. How much did our life bring others to come to the returning Lord? This is what really is happening at the Cheon Bok Gung. This is what is happening again in our Korean Church, so it’s extremely exciting!
Brothers and sisters, I hope you all had your calendars out. We are really moving as one body, mind and spirit towards a reachable goal that we can accomplish for True Parents; and further, after this, to really get to the 210,000 Temple! When we do that, the Unification Church will be the world’s largest single religious organization in one area managing an actual live congregation; it will be the largest temple in the world. When we are able to reach that level of success and truth, we will be able to shine out to the whole world. People will be curious as to why it is that Unification Church has become this successful and they will look at our teaching, they will look at True Parents’ life course and they will be compelled and moved and transformed and reborn in the great love that True Parents have portrayed before all of history. Let’s give it up for God and True Parents!
Heavenly Father, our most beloved True Parents! We thank you so much because you have given us this incredible opportunity. For so many years we have followed the path of serving True Parents and many times our faith has wavered and become weak. But we want to remember the early days when we found excitement in discovering the anointed on, the one who had come to fulfill the mission of Jesus Christ, that kind of incredible joy and expectation to change the world. We believe it is that kind of spirit that is again reviving our Korean church.
Father, we pray that our brothers and sisters who are also walking with us in the international group may feel that kind of spirit that is present now; that is alive again in the Korean congregation. We pray that we may be able to go into Cheon Bok Gung, as we have only four weeks now; we pray that we may go in there with the right attitude, the attitude of gratitude that will save and liberate all things.
We know that it is not on our own doing and ability or our own efforts that we have created such a thing but because of all the great devotion of all the saints and sages, the members and the brothers and sisters and the heroes of the Unification faith around the world who have come forward and provided this victory.
Father, we pray that we can go in there, not entitled, but that we can go in there with humility, with mission, with a purpose, with faith that can declare to the world what we believe, standing up for our human rights, standing up for our faith as our religious freedom and knowing that nobody can strip our faith away from us. Father, we pray that we can go in with that kind of courageous heart. We pray that you may imbue every single person here to go in with that courage, to go in standing up for the greatest purpose in our life.
We pray that as we enter the temple with this heart that we know that we will see the glory and victory of heaven, the incredible miracles that will happen before our eyes that already we are witnessing in our Korean church, people being healed, new members being anointed into the church, new people that we thought we could never witness are coming in and becoming our brothers and sisters. We are seeing history being made.
We also pray that the international congregation may have that kind of ownership and heart that can truly serve True Parents, glorify them and declare to the world the pride and the beauty of our faith.
We pray that we can truly offer this day to You, for we are planning and preparing in our hearts, in the spiritual atmosphere of devotion, to enter into the temple. We thank You for all the direction that You have given us through Kook-jin hyung and his words of encouragement. We pray that we may have that kind of responsibility as we enter in. We pray that in the month of February that we, as the Korean movement and as people who are worshipping here in Korea, that we can do our best to truly bring victory on the 17th which is the 14,300 member blessing ceremony.
Father, we want to report HONESTLY to True Parents. We want to be honest with them. Even though we may be chastised and even though we may not have reached the goal that they have given us. We want to be honest with them. We want to keep the standard and preserve their value and the blessing value, so that we don’t repeat the mistakes of the past.
Father, we pray that You may bless that day and bless each day that is leading up to that day. We have brothers and sisters on the streets right now, meeting people, discussing about the blessing on the 17th. We pray, that You may bless that and bless every single one involved in the ministry of Your will.
Also, on the 21st we are going to worship together with True Parents, hear their words, in the actual sanctuary. We pray, that as we move towards the temple, as we actually walk on the exodus across Seoul, across the nation’s capital in the fatherland, as we walk and demonstrate our faith, moving towards the land of Canaan and the land of liberation, that You may be with us each step and that that devotion and heart may be there on the 21st when we are able to be with True Parents.
Father, thank You so much for preparing this incredible history and we pray that You anoint and strongly bless the Cheon Buk Gung Temple and all the brothers and sisters that enter through those gates and that we may truly do the impossible, what all people have said is impossible for the Unification Church to do, but we want to do it again. We want to do the impossible and make it happen before You once again.
Father, we pray that in the Temple 21,000 members can be victorious there, moving forward to the 210,000 Temple and spreading all over the world Your great love and Your great faith and Your great unconditional hope in humanity.
We thank You so much and we offer this altogether with a preparation heart, with a heart of spiritual devotion and preparation for the next coming weeks. We pray and offer these things to You in our own names as central blessed families, in the name of our great True Parents. Aju!