Manhattan Center
As you all know, today is God's Day. The first celebration was conducted in 1968, making this the tenth anniversary and the eleventh celebration.
All nations and every person in this world set aside certain days for celebrations.
Certain days of remembrance recall some sorrow, but celebration days recall some joy. No one happily celebrates the memory of sorrow, but it is our human nature to want to celebrate joy and happiness.
Let us ask one important question.
Has there been a happy day for God in history?
As we all know through the Divine Principle, human history started in sorrow and tragedy because of the fall of man, and since then God has not seen any happy day for the celebration of joy.
The day of the fall was the day God's children died, making it the worst kind of tragedy that God could encounter. Ever since, God has had memories of only sorrow and tragedy.
Initially, Adam and Eve were created by God as His own son and daughter, and they were to be the prince and princess of the universe. Instead of perfecting themselves in that capacity, however, they fell from that position to being even lower than God's servants.
Unless man can restore himself to his original position, there will be no way he can give a day of joy to God. That restoration must include being elevated from the position of enemy to that of servant, adopted son, and finally back to being a true son and daughter.
True joy for our Heavenly Father can be accomplished when mankind sees true parents who are installed by God; in other words, men should not only become the sons and daughters of God but ultimately move up to the parents' position, centered upon God. As we all know, mankind has two parts, one being man and the other woman, regardless of race and nationality.
Men are in Adam's position, and women are in Eve's position, and because it is God's desire and ultimate hope, all men and women are destined to be perfected in Adam and Eve's position.
For this reason, all men and women will inevitably go over the obstacle we call the fall of man and then beyond that experience to the level of perfection.
This means that each one must deserve God's love even more than Adam and Eve did in the Garden of Eden. We must exceed the level of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Does everyone now deserve God's love beyond that level?
All parents in the world love their own children and kiss and embrace them. Does mankind feel the love of God even more closely than their parents' love? God is anticipating the day when He feels the ecstatic joy that He never felt with Adam and Eve; that is the goal of God's providence.
The world of men makes up the world of one Adam, and all women make up the world of one Eve. When God looks at Adam's group and Eve's group, can He see perfection there, or is there only ugliness for God to see?
When God looks at the world, can He completely forget that the people are the descendants of fallen Adam and Eve?
Humankind is the descendant of God's enemy, Satan, coming out of the lineage of satanic blood. In this fallen state, no one can even be called a child of God. Clearly, God must devise some way to bring man back to his original position so that mankind will not remind Him of the day of the fall.
The problem is, then, how God can forget that day of sorrow, the day of the fall of man. God is a historical God who remembers all events of history. Consequently, there is only one way God can erase His painful memories. The one way mankind can achieve that goal is by recreating everything, starting from scratch and remaking the whole thing. That's the only way God can forget the past.
God cannot wipe out Adam's race and Eve's race to recreate man, however. God can't disregard His creation and start all over again because God already gave permanence to man's existence. Whether he is perfected or fallen, each person is a permanent creature.
The only course left open to God is to devise a way to recreate men by using the old material, a course that is a thousand times more difficult. Nevertheless, God has to take that route.
Sun Myung Moon
How can God's children be remade?
There is only one way to get to that goal: by starting in the present and going backwards, reversing events all the way back to the fall of Adam and Eve and then going beyond their creation, back to the very origin, which is God's love. Everyone must return that far and then start on a new journey.
The Christian concept of salvation is rebirth, which means going all the way back to the beginning and starting out anew. The Christian concept of salvation means the death of the old self and the birth of a new, resurrected self.
The Bible records the visit to Jesus of a Pharisee named Nicodemus, who asked how people can be saved. Jesus' answer was obvious: "Unless a man be born anew, he cannot see the Kingdom of Heaven." Nicodemus was totally puzzled and inquired, "How can a man be born when he is old?
Can he enter his mother's womb and be born again?
Then Jesus said, "Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you don't understand this?"
Everyone has been born in the position of an enemy of God. How can mankind become even the servants who are not of satanic origin?
Have you felt that you could be born as a servant on the side of God?
You don't even know how to do that much. Then how could you be born again as God's children? Reaching the servant level on God's side is just the initial state of restoration, but the servant cannot inherit the master's fortune. A servant has no right of inheritance; therefore, each person must next be elevated to the adopted son's position.
Christians all hope to be born again as adopted sons of God, but they do not know what the process is. Even so, they still crave this salvation. In knowing God's ideal, it is clear that He wanted to love men and women, not as adopted sons and daughters but as direct sons and daughters.
Do you want to be direct children of God?
You don't even know how to be born again as adopted sons, and now you crave direct Sonship. Naturally fallen mankind could not know the whole process of salvation.
That's why God promised the Messiah to guide the way. God knows that no one has any way of knowing the truth without meeting the true Son of God as an example and model.
Who is the Messiah?
The Messiah is completely united with the heart of God, like a direct import to earth from heaven. When God sent Jesus to be the Messiah, did He just take him as a baby and place him on earth, or did He at least have to utilize the body of a woman for him to be born?
Jesus was born of Mary, so Mary must be God, right?
Did Mary have her own parents here on earth, or did she drop out of the sky? Since Mary had parents, she must also be a descendant of the fallen lineage. Even though Mary also came from fallen parents, there must be proof that she had nothing to do with the fallen lineage.
Without going into the whole process of how Mary was isolated from sin, we will say that Jesus was conceived without sin. Without having an entirely different beginning, there was no other way that Jesus could be a Messiah, a begotten Son of God. Before Jesus' birth, a tremendous dispensation was developed for thousands of years to open the way to the servant's level, adopted son's level, and son's level.
All three levels of rebirth are necessary, and though this hidden side of the dispensation was not revealed to mankind, it was a fact nonetheless. No historian, theologian, rabbi, or minister ever knew the concealed truth on the side of God.
God worked in a hidden way, making meticulous preparation so that man could be born again on those three levels. As a result, Satan had no way to claim Jesus, even while he was still in Mary's womb.
Compare this situation to that of a great minister in this country, like Billy Graham, for instance. He and his wife believe in Jesus and God forcefully.
Considering the strong faith of his parents, would their child still need a savior? Could he go right into heaven without salvation?
Don't you think God would favor their child with special recognition because the father was a great evangelist?
What's the difference between Jesus and any other child with physical parents? The only difference is historical time; on the surface, the parents may look the same, but their backgrounds are entirely different. Mary was a historic figure.
Throughout thousands of years of history, God and Satan bargained and struggled and finally reached an agreement even before Mary herself came into being. God knew that He had to use a woman's body to have His son born on this earth, and to have that one woman ready, God prepared for thousands of years.
Through many women before Mary, God worked to set the conditions for Mary to have no stigma of satanic influence. Practically speaking, how many years did God take to prepare this one woman to be the mother of the Messiah?
The Bible counts 4,000 years, which represents a symbolic time, but counting in the physical way, it took millions of years.
Sun Myung Moon
Why would it take 4,000 biblical years if God is truly almighty?
This shows how formidable a task it was to wipe out the consequences of the fall of man, even for God. After that long ordeal of millions of years, God finally saw His own son conceived in his mother's womb. An ordinary baby takes nine months to come into our world, but this one Messiah took millions of years.
Can you imagine God's infinite delight at having that particular baby growing in his mother's womb?
Furthermore, at the same time, God was proceeding with the external providence to protect that one most precious baby. For this purpose, God created first a tribe and ultimately the chosen people and nation to be a shield around this precious child.
When we know how meticulous God's preparation was internally to prepare one woman to be the mother of the Messiah and externally to create one chosen nation to protect him, and then finally to see that very people crucify the Messiah on the cross and hear many people today teach that those events were the will of God, we can glimpse how outraged and agonized God must be!
Today's Christians simply do not know even one ounce of the sorrow of God. They have never really understood the role of the Messiah or what God is feeling right now. Until the day comes when people here on earth realize God's heartbreak and come to comfort Him, there is no way God can be vindicated or fully relaxed.
Reverend Moon has made the truth known to mankind, and without him, this particular hidden secret would have remained hidden. Without mankind knowing this truth, there is no way God can be comforted or liberated.
Even though God set up all the providential conditions for the Messiah to be born of Mary, once the Messiah comes, he has to physically walk each step himself, allowing people to see and follow him as the prototype. He must manifest the entire dispensation in his own lifetime.
Jesus stood as the personification or consummation of the God-centered servant. Furthermore, Jesus was the personification of the God-centered adopted son, and he was truly the personification of the true son of God. He needed to consummate these three stages in himself first.
As a representative of God, Jesus was to be a perfected person and love his perfected family. To achieve that, he was to marry and create the first family base here on earth, expanding it into a society, nation, and world, loving that world as he loved himself.
After doing all of that, he would be qualified to love God in the ultimate sense. Without going through this process, he would not qualify to truly love God.
Without ever seeing him, how do you know whether Jesus was a man?
According to the Divine Principle, God created both man and woman, with man to be subject. Man was in a position to reach perfection first and also to recreate woman. That was the position of Adam. Definitely, Jesus came as the second Adam, so he must be a man.
How about Eve? Where did she come from? Out of the jungle?
Is that the way Eve came into being, or did God actually create her? The Bible says God stole one rib out of man's side and molded it into a woman.
Sun Myung Moon
What does it actually mean that God pulled a rib out of man?
It means that God molded woman by His own hand, using man as the example, making her slightly different so they would complement each other. For example, because God gave man a beard, He made woman with smooth skin.
Even their voices are different, with men's voices capable of loud volume while women's are lighter and sort of fragile.
If a choir could only sing in one unison tone, it could not make good music, but men's and women's voices together create the harmony and beauty of music.
Since Adam was masculine and strong, God made Eve as beautiful as the flowers and very feminine. Imagine if God had made both men and women muscular, heavy, and broad-shouldered. God knew the needs of each and made them to complement each other.
Some people ask why the Unification Church men cut their hair so short. The answer is very simple-men have short hair and women have long hair to complement each other. In today's world, you have a hard time distinguishing men from women.
Many times I have tried to figure out whether a person with long hair and smooth skin was a man or a woman, particularly in wintertime when everyone wears heavy coats.
Sometimes, by looking at their shoes and way of walking, I could tell, but nowadays that doesn't always work because men have high heels and women have flat heels! All that similarity is against God's principle.
God wanted men and women to be different and to complement each other. In the Unification Church, you have no problem telling men from women.
Have you ever thought about why women wear high heels?
I think it is because God intended women to walk with small steps and not take giant strides, while men wear flat shoes because God wanted men to walk differently. This also indicates that God wanted women to be horizontal or more earthly and men to lift their vision high and look at God and walk like God.
The manner of walking is very significant; a man who has great ambition, vision, will, and discipline has a telltale stride. When we know the Divine Principle, there is a reason for everything we do, even for looking clean-cut.
Today is truly God's day. In the Orient, it is customary to celebrate a man's 60th birthday very elaborately, but the most important part of that celebration is to know his history beforehand. To truly celebrate God's Day, we must first know what kind of person God is and also His historical background.
It took God 4,000 biblical years to prepare for the Messiah, and God naturally wanted to have a total victory in that particular time, liquidating all past debts and recreating the brand-new world He intended, all at the time of the Messiah.
The Messiah must be victorious to pave the way for the victory of mankind. If Jesus were a man, should he have been a bachelor all his life? After God created Adam, He said it was good, but not good enough; it wasn't until God created woman for Adam that God said it was very good.
If God were this pleased after creating Adam, how much more joyful would He be with creating Jesus after such a long, long ordeal?
Since God wanted Eve for Adam in the Garden of Eden, doesn't it make sense that God wanted an Eve for Jesus? I want clergymen everywhere to reconsider whether God wanted Jesus to die a bachelor and hang on a cross in that tragic manner.
How cruel Christianity is to look at a person dying and say that it is the will of God. Our way of understanding is truly more logical.
What did Jesus need to do before he restored his children, his nation, and the entire world?
Sometimes I am amused by the content of English. "Evening" is what you call the late hours of the day. That word comes from the name "Eve," and means continually searching after Eve.
The morning is the time of awakening and new realization, so morning is the symbol of man, and evening is the symbol of woman.
Sun Myung Moon
First, Jesus needed to search for Eve; the Bible clearly says that Jesus came as the bridegroom to search for a bride. Many people think, "How blasphemous! How could you say such a thing? Jesus was a saint, and saints should not even look at women."
What is the definition of a saint, however?
Do they have upside-down eyes or an upside-down nose and mouth?
No, saints don't look any different from you. The only difference is in their loving the people and the world the way God does. That's the definition of a saint. The fall of man came from self-love and selfishness, but the love of a saint is very sacred.
Today, the Unification Church is proclaiming that the time has come to meet the bride and bridegroom. Up to now, religious orders have concentrated on living an ascetic, celibate life, but recently, many nuns and priests have left that life. The New Age has come.
History has come to a different dispensational age, and whoever persists in believing in that way of life has a difficult time ahead of him because the will of God is being found elsewhere. At the same time, the established churches have a different kind of problem in becoming too permissive.
Some churches are like fraternities, sponsoring dances and parties. The Unification Church stands between to coordinate these extremes with the will of God.
God wanted Jesus to marry and have a home and children. Together with his children, he could have expanded to a society and nation and world that was one family of God.
Then the praise of God would have been heard from the entire earth; that sound would have echoed and resounded in the spirit world, and the spirit world and physical world together would have been joyful in celebration.
After the Messiah fulfills God's will, he will have a day of celebration and dancing.
The Messiah will dance, and the whole universe will dance with him. Even God will come down and be everyone's partner, dancing together. That's the way God wants it done on God's Day.
Jesus could not obtain that day for God, and his mission was left undone.
Therefore, the Bible proclaimed that there would be another day of the Messiah.
Christians today are also waiting for the Messiah, looking up in the sky and believing that the Lord is coming on the clouds of heaven. They all think we in the Unification Church are crazy people for disagreeing with them, but God knows that their expectation is a crazy idea.
God's agony was unimaginably deep when the Messiah's mission ended in tragedy in Israel, but in these last 2,000 years, God has worked harder than before, and finally, the day of the Messiah has come.
Would God be happier than before to see the day finally dawn? As soon as God sees the day of the Messiah, He can forget His initial 4,000 years of suffering because His last 2,000 years of struggle were so deep and severe. That is how much God suffered.
In these last 2,000 years, Christianity has been God's champion, but because Jesus was killed, Christianity has endured martyrdom and bloodshed. One person after another was killed, but God could not strike back or speak out.
Because people have not understood why God could not take action, they rage, "What kind of God are You? There is no God!" Today, there is even a theology that proclaims that God is dead.
Why is God silent?
Sun Myung Moon
Why does God seem so weak and vulnerable?
If the Unification Church is truly God's champion today, why doesn't God do something about all the opposition in America? This kind of question is not new; Jesus' followers could not understand how the Messiah could be killed.
Why didn't God prevent Jesus' death 2,000 years ago?
God cannot intervene. If God ever intervened in the dispensation, man's honor and dignity would be nullified. It was man who fell, so man must restore himself to perfection; if God did it in place of man, then no one could ever be His son or daughter and represent His creative image.
Furthermore, God's right and duty are to give blessing and benediction and love, not punishment and judgment. That is God's law, and to be like God, we must follow that law.
Once Jesus was perfected, do you think God would limit his kingdom to just a few miles around Jerusalem?
People marvel at the biblical stories about Jericho, Jerusalem, and the Sea of Galilee in Israel, but today you can travel around the entire country in a couple of hours by car.
God's goal for the Messiah 2,000 years ago was not limited to just Israel. That nation was to be the birthplace of the Messiah, but God wanted the victorious Messiah to advance to the empire of Rome, which represented the world at that time.
Suppose for a moment that Jesus had gone to Rome. The proud citizens there would have looked at him even more scornfully than the American people today are scornful of us. Despite that, Jesus would have walked with the pride of being the son of God.
After the first Messiah failed to totally consummate the Kingdom of God here on earth, God knew that the second Messiah would need a new environment. For that purpose, God worked for 2,000 years to set up one landmark achievement, the creation of democracy.
Here in America, you have a democracy that upholds rights guaranteed by the Constitution, including the rights of free speech, assembly, and freedom of religious belief. That was God's most important preparation for the coming of the Messiah. If this nation did not guarantee religious rights, could I freely preach like this?
Would I be safe in this country?
Even with its democracy, there has been some religious martyrdom in America..
Who am I?
I am a teacher first, and I wanted to come here to teach and make a dark world brighter. Because I know where God is and which direction He is taking, you and I together will not fail to meet the Messiah and meet God.
With this firm conviction, I can lead you over mountains and through jungles, no matter how rugged the journey may be, and even though your body hurts, I will pull you without reservation to get to that terminal where you will find the kingdom waiting.
I can have no mercy upon you because, compared to God's suffering for so many thousands of years, our suffering to reach out for God is small. Who did God suffer for? For you. God suffered for me, and He is my Father, so for Him I can suffer too. Even if your arms or legs give out and you must crawl on your belly, you must go.
Even though the world, and especially the United States, is antagonistic, am I scared and nervous and looking for a hiding place? The greater my opposition, the farther I like to stick my neck out.
Sun Myung Moon
Who actually started this battle, me or my opposition?
God did. God started the whole thing because He wanted to see that one showdown battle between the Messiah and the world.
There is a tug-of-war going on between Reverend Moon and the United States, but the prize is the children of America and the world; the United States does not want to lose them, and I want to get them for God.
Deprogramming, kidnapping, and all kinds of conflict have stirred up America, but today you and I know who has won that battle. We have not only won the children, but now we are winning their parents!
Parents are starting to look around and see that things in the Unification Church look very good, and soon they will realize, "I'd like to stay a little while!" Their friends may say that they've been brainwashed, but the parents will respond, "What are you talking about? You've been brainwashed!"
Realistically speaking, we are fighting a match in a boxing ring. Usually, if there is no knockout by the fifteenth round, the judge will add points together and decide who is the winner, but in our match, we have no limit of fifteen rounds.
We will go on until finally we knock Satan out. In our battle, the match doesn't end if one fighter drops dead; another champion will come out and keep boxing in his place.
If I am fighting for God's side and then I die, what would you just say? "Oh, that's too bad. Our champion is gone"? Or would you yourself become the champion and slug it out until you finally knock Satan to the ground?
If we were a political organization, no one would feel that serious, but because we are a religious organization, our conviction will spur us on. Therefore, the end of Reverend Moon is not the end of the movement.
If the State Department thinks that getting rid of Reverend Moon will be the end of all the commotion and controversy, they are wrong.
If I ever left America, God would raise 100 or 1,000 stronger Reverend Moons to fight on and finish the task. It's not going to be easy to push me aside.
Without the background and spiritual power I have behind me, I would never have dared to wage this battle in America.
Are you Americans, or are you citizens of the Kingdom of God?
Yes, before you are Americans, you are God's children. Even though it's difficult and your natural parents strongly oppose this work, would you go this route and finish the task?
If this nation despised you like a beggar, would you still finish the task? The only reason we can continue is that the cause that we champion is so priceless that nothing under the sun can be compared to it.
Furthermore, when we realize how much our Heavenly Father suffered to prepare for the Messiah, then nothing else matters. Death is not a problem; controversy is not a problem. The opposition of nations is not relevant. That's the value of God's love.
God wants to have His day of victory, and once He has it, He will never release it. God has suffered so much that on that one day His joy will be endless; on that day God will become crazy Himself! Then he can forget all his past suffering. Think of being loved by that crazy God in that precious moment.
Lovers today try to show their love by hugging and kissing, but that cannot be compared to God's elation when He has His one day of victory. When His own children achieve that goal and bring comfort and liberation to God, He will be crazy in joy, and the world will be crazy in joy.
Jesus' parable of the prodigal son demonstrates this. There was a son who wanted to take his inheritance and leave home. He went far away and squandered everything he had and became so destitute that he had to feed pigs to survive.
Finally, with a repentant heart, he decided to return home. His father had compassion and ran to embrace him. His elder brother, however, condemned him and complained about their father's generosity, but the father's joy at his son's return had no limit.
If even a prodigal son was welcomed that much by his father, how much more will God welcome you, not as a prodigal son but as a loyal, faithful son who has given his life for the restoration of God's Kingdom?
When on the day of homecoming you walk to God's throne, how much more will God welcome you?
My only desire is to see God feel that joyful. I have been crying out for my father, trying for so many years to liberate God. I have come a long way, and my journey is almost ended.
When I started from the mountains of Korea, I was opposed by my own people, but I survived. Then I went to Japan, and that nation was thrown into turmoil. The communists have been trying to eliminate me, but I survived, and now I am here in America. The entire world opposes me, but I have already been victorious.
I am not the one who started this battle; God started this battle. God made my victory in Korea and Japan and in America, and I want you to know that the same God will finish the task with the ultimate victory.
Today is God's Day, and we truly want to celebrate this day with limitless joy for God. This is the meaning of the day: bringing joy to God. You know the historical God and His past suffering of 2,000 years and 4,000 years.
Sun Myung Moon
You know that God was suffering and unhappy. No one else outside our church knows this. If you have really listened to this message today and you take it at face value and live it, then you are really men and women who know God. You not only know God, you also know Jesus and his suffering.
You also know the martyrs and saints who suffered for the sake of God; they are no longer strangers to you. This celebration ought to be a celebration upon the foundation of understanding God. Furthermore, you know the future. You have a vision of the ultimate victory, and you know how it will be consummated.
God's Day celebration is the ultimate day of celebration, for God's Day was set up last. Parents' Day came first, then Children's Day, and then Day of All Things. For the ten years since the establishment of God's Day, we have advanced from being a movement of small scope to a worldwide movement. In ten years, we will have made history.
Having this very event in the Manhattan Center this morning is a dream of God realized. Ten years ago, no one would have dreamed of seeing all races and nationalities and cultural backgrounds gathered here together, celebrating with one heart and understanding, under the True Parents. This in itself is a sign of victory.
There have been many great religious leaders in history, but none went beyond the national level because persecution became so great in their own lifetimes that they never had the chance. But under the utmost persecution, I have pushed open the way to the worldwide level, winning step by step. In this respect, I am victorious and unique in history.
Even under opposition, the Unification Church has grown this much, but suppose one nation had welcomed me with open arms; what would have happened then? That nation would have become invincible.
Any nation that accepts this ideology as its national goal shall rise to such a height that it will even liberate America. The world could have been liberated by now if that had happened.
Suppose I were a white man and spoke English as my native tongue. America would never have thought about deporting me. Americans would have been proud to have a native hero.
Furthermore, instead of kidnapping their children, parents would push their children to go to workshops! You could protest to God for having me be an Oriental and demand, "Why couldn't he have had white skin?" Would God say, "It slipped my mind? I just didn't think of it."
God thought about it before you did. If I were a white man who became a formidable power in America, the rest of the world would tremble in fear that America would swallow them up.
If I were a Black man instead, then there would never be a chance to end the racial conflicts between Black and white. The Black people would have been happy to have a champion and hero, but the White people would still be hostile. If I were white, the Black people would not feel free to unite with me; the polarization would become too wide.
There are significant reasons that I should come from Korea. Korea is an innocent country that has never invaded any other country in the past. Nobody would feel threatened by Korea.
If I were Chinese, then both Russia and America would feel threatened, as well as the whole Western world. If I were Japanese, then the rest of the world would remember Japan's ruthless imperialism over all Asia.
It is characteristic of the Korean people to be outstanding individually, but to the world, they are known for never uniting! God already planned how to use that quality; the rest of the world would relax and say that you could just forget about Koreans as a threat because they never unite.
Amazingly enough, however, this divided and feeble nation has somehow maintained its own identity and culture for 5,000 years. Korea is now becoming a first-class world citizen, and Japan and America are beginning to feel the competition. God thought a great deal about which nation I should be born in, and I like His choice.
The yellow race has an important role as a mediator between blacks and whites; only a yellow person can tell blacks and whites, "You are my brothers, and you don't have to fight. Let's be friends. " Everybody will nod and listen to this mediator.
Do you know why we have the MFT? The Unification Church is always doing impossible tasks, like fundraising and witnessing, and these things will teach the white people in our movement the power of endurance. By receiving humiliation while fundraising, they will become tougher and never easily give up in the future.
With that kind of training, a new American character can be formed. American young people are characteristically impatient and short-tempered; they cannot wait patiently for results. But you are becoming different Americans who can endure and hang on. Once we make up our minds to do something, then we hang on until the last.
There are three crises facing the world. First is the degradation of young people, whose moral standards have sunk very low. The day is coming when popular sentiment will favor anarchy. Already, people are asking, "Why do we need government or City Hall? We are free. We want to live our own way.
We don't need our parents." This crisis is already in our midst. Many Americans don't have any attachments to their family or nation, and if they don't value even their own nation or home, how could they love the world?
Sun Myung Moon
Do these people have any religion?
This is a second crisis. The third crisis is the threat of communism, which is infiltrating every cell of society and corrupting it. We must rise above all these crises and become a living remnant.
We are different from hippies and yippies because we must be the remnant that will go in the opposite direction from the rest of the world. We have the ideal for the family, society, nation, and world, and this is the only way we can ward off anarchy.
We value patriotism, but we are going beyond that and loving the world. We take a passionate stand against communism because communists are trying to take over the world.
When we rise above all these crises, we will automatically become the saviors of the world. If we are the only group to rise above the crisis, then naturally, we are the people to liberate the world from its misery.
No matter how logical this all sounds, if it is only my theory, then we would inevitably fail, but we are not going to fail because it is God's theory. God wants to contract out this mission.
The march forward will not be easy because chains are binding your legs; each step will be a desperate one, but we are going to make headway.
I want you to realize how different you are from the world outside our church. You have already tasted life in the everyday world, and you don't want to go back. Our job is a tearful one, but we have vision, and our feet are planted on the firm ground of hope. Our reality may be tearful, but we have hope.
The little Japanese women have an advantage because when the wind blows, they can fly instead of walking! Do all you women, even the little Japanese women, want to go on?
Who inspired you to say yes?
Because God made you say yes, giving your answer is a great honor and glory. God is concerned with the well-being of each one of you, smiling upon you right now to see your bright young faces. God is happy in looking at you because your hearts are burning with zeal to do God's will in 1978.
You must feel, "God, there is nothing I cannot do for Your happiness. Trust me and let me go on in 1978; you will see the result." No matter how impossible the route ahead, you can feel that if you kick the rock blocking your road, it is not your leg that will hurt, but the rock that will be broken into pieces. That's the kind of conviction you should have.
God will be happy to issue the mandate to go ahead in the new year. Would you like to think about it for a few days and wander around, or would you be like a rocket of desire and shoot straight up high?
Whoever goes straight up like a rocket and lands on the moon will be known a a moonie, but landing on the moon is not even the ultimate destination. We can leap once again and go around the sun; then we will become Sunnies.
But even that is not the ultimate destination. We will lift off once again and go right to the heart of God, and since He is king of the universe, we will become Kingies.
New York is too small for true Moonies or Sunnies. You must feel that America is too small. Neil Armstrong from Apollo 11 landed on the moon. You will never become a real Moonie unless you have a strong arm, which you will pledge to God; the arm is a symbol of marching. Do you have strong arms? We not only need arms but also legs so we can leap and jump.
At the outset of this new year, can you pledge this year as the year of leaping and marching? God bless you. Thank you.
Sun Myung Moon