My family received God’s blessing at the time of my great-grandfather. However, we paid indemnity in my grandfather’s time. One surely suffers an indemnity after having received a blessing. The history of indemnity never fails to bear this out….
When one receives a blessing, he has to receive indemnity to the same degree. To sustain something and leave its seed behind, one has to go through indemnity.
What is more, for a family to leave behind a seed, not for the family, but for the tribe, Satan brings hardships much greater in degree than the blessing the family received.
Therefore, until I finally received the call from God, there was great confusion in my family. Our family’s property was scattered, and some people lost their lives. Besides all this, unfortunate things happened to people around me. Everyone, beginning with key people, was affected.
For three generations, before I began my search for God’s will, indemnity was paid. We received indemnity in my grandfather’s generation and my father’s generation. In my generation, it came to my older brother.
Was this God’s providence aiming to destroy me? No. I knew it expressed the love of a God who wanted to begin the process of gaining complete victory. When we look at the historical providence that resulted from the fallen blood lineage, we see that this must be so.
We never know when Satan will come in through our ancestors, our family, our brothers, or even ourselves. So, one cannot go to the place of indemnity without having the ability to liquidate this invasion and work in the face of God. Still, whether we know it or not, indemnity comes.
This is my family. I had three great uncles; the second one, Moon Shin-kook, died in a foreign land. The second sons of all three great uncles died outside their country.
Yong-gi’s father [Moon Kyung-bok] died in a foreign land. In addition, Moon Yong-gi’s grandfather’s second son, Moon Kyung-hoon, died of illness while studying in Seoul.
The second son [Moon Kyung-ho] of the third great uncle in Paju also died of illness while studying in Hwi Moon Senior High School in Seoul. During those times, my family was in a state of confusion. We were receiving an all-out attack from Satan.
Now, it has come to my generation. As you know, I am the second son. This being the case, Satan wanted to strike me, but the fact is I didn’t fail. Also, Seung-kyun was the second son, and so was Yong-gi [two of Father’s cousins].
All the second sons were attacked. So, Satan tried all sorts of things. Because of this family history, it was said that smart people die early if they are educated. For this reason, many young people were not sent to school. This was all to protect me.
I had thought that I would do everything I could for the sake of my younger brothers and sisters, but even that foundation was cut. Not only was one younger sisters, but also my beloved younger brother was taken away.
My brother, who died at the age of seven, was more handsome than I and was very lively. So I thought, “Oh, the fellow will be somebody in the future. I will keep up with you. He was a lovable brother. His name was Yong-kuan.
My younger brother died of smallpox. I remember that it was during the period of Japanese administration. At a time when the vaccination for smallpox was not available, Yong-kuan came down with the disease. He had a terrible fever.
People used to say that a person with smallpox would die if his feces tasted sweet and survive if they tasted bitter. I still have a vivid memory of my mother tasting his feces.
Former president Mr. Eu Hyo-won was the second couple among the original three blessed couples [he died of physical ailments in his fifties]. Hee-jin was my second son [died in a train accident].
When the providence reached the age of True Mother, Heung-jin, our second son, died in a foreign land. Hye-jin was also our second daughter. She died eight days after her birth. The law of indemnity works in this way.
Strange phenomena surrounding Father in his early days
Spiritual phenomena do not just happen in the invisible world. We can see many spiritual occurrences. So, Satan used every means available in his plan to bring down those related to me.
Under these circumstances, something awful happened to my brother (Moon Yong-soo) and sister (Moon Hyo-soon). They became mentally unbalanced. When they were young, there was a spiritual environment, and there were problems from the spirit world.
By the way, my brother, whom we thought had lost his reason, was talking to himself, but what he was saying was extraordinary. He spoke in different ways; all day long, several spirit men were coming to speak with him. I could see that at once. All sorts of things happened. For example, my grandfather died and then revived. Everything was being affected….
When you reel the thread off a spinning wheel, it’s called toot-ggutclothes. You keep all the tot-ggut in a jar; when it’s enough to make a twenty-five-yard bolt of cloth, you bind the threads of hemp together. In this way, we would make clothes.
One night, the piled-up hemp cloth was all undone and strung from our 150-year-old chestnut tree to the chestnut tree of our neighbor. Seung-gyun, do you remember that? [Yes.] [Father laughs.]
All sorts of unlucky things happened. Mischievous spirits exist. Here is another example. In the rural parts of Pyong-an Province, people would cut a small ventilation port into the door of a house.
When my mother kindled the fire in the kitchen, the fire made a sound and passed through that hole. The edge of the eaves caught fire. Can you believe that?
My uncle’s dog bit off a baby’s ear and ate it; some large pigs drowned; cows and horses died. Such things happened because of me, one person. All my relatives were affected. By the time I started down this road at the age of fifteen, only five out of thirteen members of our family were left; the rest had all died.
Furthermore, Heaven took away all my closest friends. In this way, those friends were blessed by Heaven. Heaven got rid of everything and cut me off from everyone in the world I could trust and rely on.
Some of them were from North Pyong-an Province, and some of them were from Hwanghae Province. Heaven took away my closest friends.
God was concerned that I, who was to take the will of God upon my shoulders, would share the situation with them. So, He took away everything in the world I might be interested in. I understood these circumstances and therefore changed paths.
From childhood, when I went to other towns, things happened—people died or became sick, or horses or cattle died. It has been this way all my life. Horses dying, dogs dying, or eagles flying down and taking away chickens several times in one day. Such things happened. So, I was sometimes driven out of town. People chased me away for being a bizarre person who caused such phenomena.
Asking questions about life
In 1920, when I was born, Korea had already been annexed by Japan. At that time, I experienced, to the bone, the pain, and sorrow of a small, weak nation trampled by a strong one. In those times, as a young man, I couldn’t help thinking seriously about a way of saving the world from the misery of war and evil.
Who would take charge of the chaotic state of the world and sort things out? The lives of both individuals and families were hard. It was a time of confusion to the point that no family, regardless of which town they lived in, was happy.
Beyond the community, it was the same for the nation. Beyond the nation, the situation was the same in all of Asia. Beyond Asia lay the chaotic world.
Besides, from my boyhood on, I began to worry about fundamental questions of life: Who am I? Where did I come from? What is the purpose of life?
Does life continue after death? Does God indeed exist? Is God omniscient?
Is he a helpless being? If He is omniscient, why doesn’t He solve problems affecting humanity? Why is life so painful?
Looking back, these may sound like trivial memories, but they were earnest at the time. It was a time when deciding on how to live one’s life meant risking one’s future.
Since I knew these questions couldn’t be solved by human decisions alone, I thought that if God existed, I should take the road that would decide the situation in line with God’s will, over and above human thinking. I still have vivid memories of all I have labored for in my life of faith.
Sun Myung Moon