Learning from Suffering

The path of indemnity

Because Christianity and its representatives whom God had prepared failed to fulfill their responsibility, True Father walked the path of indemnity, enduring the suffering of prison six times.

He walked a thorny path, leaving a trail of blood, sweat, and tears, even as he comforted God in His bitter sorrow. In the end, True Parents surmounted a course of eight vertical and eight horizontal stages and were victorious in completing the providence of restoration through indemnity.

1. The path of restoration is paved with suffering. It is the way of indemnity. On this path, you should not think centered on yourself, or insist that you must live this way or that way. You cannot hold on to any particular expectation about how your life should go.

Rather, you must maintain a public perspective. On the arduous path that heaven has mandated for you, you should feel that you are ever falling short and must redouble your efforts. You need to press forward one step at a time, constantly striving to overcome the challenges on your path and to go as quickly as you can.

If you start complaining that your path is too difficult, you will not be able to overcome it. To overcome the suffering, you must walk the path with gratitude.

There is a gap between us and heaven. God is high above, and we are far below. Therefore, we must always contemplate how we can reach the position that God wants us to reach. Yet, the gap between individuals and heaven is so huge. How can we bridge the gap and meet?

God must descend to find us, and we must ascend to find Him. Yet, because it is difficult to reach Him, we need to pay indemnity in the process. (277-121, 1996/04/07)

2. Ever since the Fall, the levels of the individual, family, tribe, people, nation, and world have been Satan's kingdom. So how do we restore this world?

Each individual has to be planted in a place where he or she is separated from the world. The path that each of us must go is opposite to the world, and we need to pull ourselves through it to separate from the fallen world. This is why in high-level religions like Buddhism, believers leave their homes and renounce the world.

It is why Christianity teaches that we must love Jesus more than we love even our mother and father, or our older brother or sister; as is written in the Bible, "Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me." (Matt. 10:37)

It sounds paradoxical, but it embodies a logical principle that leads us along the path to heaven.

I came to understand that this law of indemnity has to be extended to the cosmic level. That is why I have been focused on perfecting love from the individual level to the levels of the family, tribe, people, and nation to all levels. As I proceeded on each level, Satan used all his strength to destroy me. So we can see why the path of faith entails persecution.

You simply must not walk the path that the world says is good. You must proceed on a path where you are willing to shed tears and blood. Do not strive to reach the top of the world, but rather remain in the shadow of suffering.

That is the safety zone. Since Satan is arrogant, he despises difficult places. So our safety zone is found in the most miserable places. (181-212, 1988/10/03)

3. From the time I turned 20 until the time I passed 40, I had to endure a period of tearful struggle. You do not know what it was like. I went to prison as if it were just another stage on life's way; I decided that undergoing torture was something ordinary, and I accepted it as necessary to go through the course of indemnity, to pay the price.

That was my whole life during that time. The nation of Korea and the religious world in Korea opposed me. The 30 million people of Korea banded together to oppose me. They drove me out into sorrowful circumstances. I come from that kind of personal history. (059-286, 1972/07/27)

4. When God created, He invested His whole heart into all things of creation and human beings.

Therefore, we should be willing to offer ourselves and all our material possessions to God. This is why the motto of the Unification Church emerged, “Shedding tears for humanity, sweat for earth and blood for heaven.”

Are you all living this way? You should be. If you do not, it is a serious problem. To live like this involves treading a complex and complicated indemnity course. To pass through the individual challenges of this course, you have to bring yourself to the zero point and tear down the walls within yourself.

I do that continually, which is why during the most crucial times of my life I willingly went to prison. (211-318, 1991/01/01)

5. Looking back on my life, I recall going to prison and being severely tortured many times. During those times, I would tell myself, “If I die here in prison under this torture, it would be an utter catastrophe for God's providence.”

If I had died with my body covered with scars from torture, despairing, and groaning in pain, it would have been a serious problem for God. Who else did He have who would take responsibility for this path of restoration through indemnity?

In these circumstances, when I shed tears transcending my death, moving God's heart, and even shocking Him, God resolved everything for me. I had many such experiences. In my mind, the pain of the torture was not the real issue. What was most fearful to me was dying with my mission unfulfilled.
(276-012, 1996/01/02)

6. Never in my entire life have I insisted on my way. My life has been like living in prison, or even more difficult. Prisoners have to endure hunger with barely enough food to survive, but my life is not that simple.

I am intensely aware that on this earth thousands upon thousands of people are dying in pain every day, at every moment. To me, this is as painful as having my hand cut off. That is what you should feel too.

We should not be able to look at the world we are living in without tears. When we have this mindset, we cannot face God without tears. That is why, when I prayed in wintertime, I shed tears and sweat to the point where my cotton pants were completely soaked. (343-095, 2001/01/16)

7. I pioneered the course of indemnity, conquered Satan's realm, and laid the foundation for our victory.

This is easy to say, but the reality was and is not easy at all. Unimaginable complications arose during my course.

As I walked the path, the way I could overcome all obstacles was by leading a life of extreme intensity in which I felt I could not let my guard down even for a second. Without such seriousness, there would be no way to ever turn Satan's world around. (362-182, 2001/12/12)

8. Because I came to Adam's place, I had to walk the course of indemnity on the world level. Settling the accounts with Satan is not just a symbolic matter. I had to face him man-to-man. Now it is easy to make conditions; you are now in circumstances where you can even be welcomed by the world. You have just no idea what I went through.

I hope that your family will become a family that is filial to heaven, that your nation will become a nation that is loyal to heaven's nation, that the world will become the realm of global citizens, and that heaven and earth will become the realm of divine, holy men and women.

Yet, no place on earth apart from the Unification Church provides the training for you to grow into people of such greatness. Therefore, you must do this work, to create that which the whole world longs to see.

By establishing the realm of liberation and securing it on earth, you should be able to say that we have gone beyond the age of indemnity. (307-191, 1998/11/08)

9. Parents can never sit idly by as their child edges toward death. Until their last breath, they invest all their strength to revive their child, and if they do, they raise a heartfelt cheer.

Unless you have experienced a state like that, you cannot understand me. I am fighting, risking my life to the edge of death, to save even one person. I have devoted my entire life to battling for the lives of all humankind.

The spirit world knows this. That is why a person like me can never be overcome by bad fortune.

Even in prison I would always examine myself and think that my imprisonment occurred because I still needed to invest more. Because I was determined to do more to save humankind, I had no regrets whatsoever.

Since I had no regrets, I could embrace my incarceration, even forgetting that I was in prison.

When parents look at their son who has such a heart, they have to hold back their tears and bless him for eternity. Such is the heart of God. (247-033, 1993/04/21)

10. Throughout my entire life, I have had to climb over many hills of restoration through indemnity. I climbed over the hills of eight stages, from the individual to the family, tribe, people, nation, world, cosmos, and God. On my course, the entire world opposed me. On the family level, the parents of our members were against me.

After I went over that family-level hill, the tribe opposed me, then the Korean people opposed me, the nation of Korea opposed me, and the entire world opposed me. All the Christian denominations stood against me. However, they could not succeed in eliminating me. On the contrary, those who attacked me have since suffered misfortune. God formally recognizes this.

Although they struck me with all of their might, since they could not eliminate me, they are now being won over. Yet, I never fought with them. God's strategy is to be struck first and take back what is lost. In God's ideal of creation, there is no such thing as striking. (302-217, 1999/06/14)

11. To pay the indemnity to restore Satan's world, the shortest path is the one beset by the most persecution. It is the path that takes you to the rock bottom of prison. The path that can reach the vertical is the path of suffering. It is the path of prison, which intersects with death.

That path is like a bridge that makes a straight line. This is why I did not mind going to prison. That is why God even led me to prison.

Jesus also was imprisoned before he died on the cross.

When the ruler of your nation sends you to the dungeons of your nation's foulest prison, you form an adversarial relationship with that ruler.

That is why if you want to reach the topmost position in your nation, the shortcut is to go to prison and overcome that experience, and then you can stand even above that ruler. When a righteous person is cast into prison, the ruler who imprisoned him or her is considered evil.

Then, when that righteous person is released, he or she can stand above that ruler. When a good person is forced to go to prison, the people in his or her surroundings will support and protect him or her.

That is why on all levels, the path of imprisonment is the shortcut by which to ascend. (136-046, 1985/12/20)

The ultimate victor

Although innocent of any crime, True Father underwent imprisonment six times: once by Japan, three times by communist North Korea, once by South Korea, and once by the United States.

He endured and persevered because he understood the fundamental rule of restoration that progress in God's providence comes about through setting indemnity conditions, by being unjustly struck, and then claiming back what was taken.

With this conviction, he overcame every kind of suffering in prison. Boldly standing up against Satan's powers that occupied the positions of authority, he took on the role of a beacon that guides the world shrouded in darkness into the light. In the end, True Father was victorious over every form of opposition and persecution.

12. You have no idea how deplorable it is that during my life on earth, I had to go to prison. How will this affect the dignity and honor of both you and your ancestors? All of your necks are on the line. You do not know the fearful consequences that could ensue.

Why do you think I risked my life during six terms of imprisonment? Society brands a person who has gone to prison even once with a scarlet letter, but six times?

If a normal person were to go to prison six times, he would carry so much shame that he could not walk the earth with his head held high. However, I am not the least bit ashamed. The ones that should feel ashamed are those nations that did this to me.

Each time I survived. Why? I had a job to finish, and I could not afford to die until I got the job done.

That is why each time I went to prison I survived. (612-222, 2009/05/27) 13. I have lived a righteous life in the service of God's Will while keeping myself whole under the shade of His protection.

That is why I could remain alive despite experiencing prisons more bleak than anything in Satan's fallen society. Even in those wretched prisons, God was my refuge.

You have no idea how many tears my mother and father cried when I entered prison. My parents had provided me with everything for my schooling, saying that I would help save the nation with my education. But after graduating from school, I ended up incarcerated. Can you imagine how they felt?

In a sense, I sought prison. I went to live in North Korea under the communist regime, and while in prison there I studied and analyzed communism more than anyone else. Besides the prisons in North Korea, I experienced prison life in Japan, in South Korea, and even in America. (430-061, 2003/12/30)

14. I experienced prison life three times in North Korea. It was heaven's strategy to put me through this, so I would not have even the slightest lingering attraction toward communism. It was also God's plan that I would not be interested in the type of Christianity that was allowed to exist under the communist regime.

God wanted me to utterly repudiate anything influenced by communism, so I would not trust the Christian churches under the sway of communism or in any way trust the nation of North Korea.

It was God's strategy for me to reject it all. Even persecution from South Korea and America was God's strategy so that I would not have any unnecessary attachment to the false values in those societies.

Now thinking about the past after going over all those hills, I realize that all those experiences were heaven's strategy to give me something more precious than I could ever anticipate.

I count those suffering times as God's blessings because thereby He would bring me something greater, something even more valuable, something infinite the honor of pioneering the path to give the Blessing to all humankind.

They enabled me to secure a position that no one can usurp. Indeed, it was heaven's love that I went through those paths full of ordeals because they were the conditions by which I could claim everything from Satan. Everything that Satan had taken from heaven came back to me. (161-198, 1987/02/03)

15. It is not because I enjoy receiving persecution that I have been doing this work. I have not been working like this because I enjoy being insulted and abused.

Honestly, I do not enjoy it at all. Yet, I am doing it because I had personal experiences in the spirit world where I tasted joy more wonderful than anything else. It is so real and intense, that I can feel it as I reshape this world. That is why I continue this work.

You might think that the reason I can work so tirelessly is that I was born different as if my body were made of steel, but that is not the case. Why would I do this work if it brought me nothing that I liked?

Try to do work that you do not like for one or two years. That is like dying. There is a reason I am doing this, despite all sorts of hardships; it is because there is something so real, something so worthwhile, that is calling me to continue.
(036-121, 1970/11/22)

16. God loves me. I know this very well. Yet while I kept faith in Him and loved Him all my life, there were more than a few times when I felt like complaining to Him. Occasionally when I was in a life-threatening situation, God acted as if He did not know anything about it. However, think of how

heartbreaking it must have been for a parent, especially the Heavenly Parent, to say, “I did not know about your suffering plight.” Parents could never stand idly by while their child's hands and feet were tied up.

They would do whatever it took to untie their child's bonds and free him. But if God had intervened, then the person known as Mr. Moon of the Unification Church would not have been able to accomplish his responsibility, which he had to do on his own. So God had no choice but to stand by as if He were a third party. (048-121, 1971/09/05)

17. When I felt lonely as I walked this path for the Will, I recall God who had called me and said, “Sun Myung, you know that I am with you, don't you?”

Then walking a lonely path became no problem. I said to Him, “For a while, I thought I was all alone, but truly You are with me,” and then I went on with new strength.

There were times when I would weep when I saw a beggar on the street, thinking, “What if that beggar were my Father who had come to find me? What would I do?” You should all become people of such heart, so you would even hold the hands of a beggar in tattered clothes and weep for him without letting him know why. I have had many such experiences.

Amid pain and loneliness, I sometimes felt, “Heavenly Father, You are so cold-hearted. You are so merciless. You only give me responsibility, but You do not take care of me.” But as soon as I said that to myself, God said to me, “Look, I was right there with you when you held the hand of that beggar.

Amid your misery, when you were shedding tears with those sorrowful people, I was with you there.” So how can I not but continue on this path?

Now we can understand why Jesus said, "I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me." (Matt 25:35-36)

(011-203, 1961/07/17)

18. God's strategy is to be struck first and then claim what is His. Satan's way is to strike first and take what he wants, but eventually, he falls into ruin. In both the First and Second World Wars, the side that attacked first was defeated. The third world war is similar; it is a war of ideology in which communism has been attacking the world. Many of its attacks have been aimed at me.

The Republic of Korea opposed me, the United States opposed me, and so did Japan and China. They are still doing so. Virtually the whole world united against me.

However, I have emerged from all this and am now receiving blessings from the entire evil world. The Devil cannot keep all the blessings of heaven and earth. In the Last Days, Satan has to hand over all the blessings to the True Man.
(176-203, 1988/05/09)

19. I never doubted God's Will. Nevertheless, without training myself, and without exploring and understanding more and more about the great mysteries of the here and the hereafter, the foundation I built could have been lost. To

To inherit a foundation on a higher dimension, I needed to pay an appropriate level of indemnity.

This is why I received persecution. Persecution is not a bad thing. It helped me reach perfection.

That is why going to prison was not a problem. Nor was facing life-and-death situations. I already knew that if I died while living in adversity, I would go to the most precious place imaginable. So I had no basis to complain.
(326-040, 2000/07/02)

20. When I was in prison, beaten so badly that I collapsed and vomited blood, I still did not pray in a way that would cause God to worry about me. I endured, silently pledging, “God, I am different from other saints, even Jesus in ancient times.”

If I prayed asking God to save me, that would be a weak prayer. As God's central person, I would rather not be petty and unmanly. Hence, I never prayed for anything for myself; I only prayed for God's sake.

God had put all His expectations and hopes on me to shoulder a cosmic responsibility. So how could I come pitifully crying for Him to save my life and free me from prison? I was arrested and locked up by the Japanese imperialists, by the North Korean communists, and even by the democratic world in South Korea.

Even so, I kept advancing toward the world. I will keep moving forward, no matter how much they might persecute me or shun me. (016-243, 1966/06/19)

21. Before Jesus was crucified, he prayed in the garden of Gethsemane, saying, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt.” How can there be “my will”?

Satan tried to catch him on this point. What I am saying is that at that time, Jesus' will and God's Will were not perfectly one. Because I understood this, even when I found myself in circumstances where I was tortured and vomiting blood, I thought to myself, “I am different from Jesus.

I am determined to offer my blood for Your Will, without any hesitation.” Truly, I was willing to offer all my blood for God alone. That is why, no matter how difficult my situation, I never pray for myself.

Heaven already knows my situation, so I do not pray, “God, please save me!” I have trained my body to go the sacrificial way that will enable all humankind to live. By focusing on the goal, I ultimately emerged as a man of absolute faith and absolute love.

Whenever I have to go through the valley of the shadow of death shedding tears and blood, I go only with my love for God, and with my heart and mind in absolute oneness with God. (268-300, 1995/04/03)

22. Alone, I carry out the work of a lighthouse that guides people at night with its light. A lighthouse is important to those who travel at night by sea. Yet, no one regards a lighthouse as important during the day, and people do not appreciate the lighthouse keeper. Yet, that is the role I have taken on.

People do not appreciate the light from a lighthouse in the daytime. So the question is, how can I make my light become like the daytime sun? The way is by taking up the task of restoration through indemnity.

What I am trying to do is to shine a light that will help people change to become God's eternal, original stars whose light will shine in this world. It was incredibly challenging to change my lighthouse lamp into the shining sun. Yet with this as my goal, I have come thus far.

Even as I entered the first prison, I asked myself, “Where will prison number two be? Where will prison number three be?” I am the type of person who, as I entered prison number six, was thinking about prison number seven.

After all, I still had a mission to fulfill in the Soviet Union and China; thus, I thought that in the years ahead of me I might have to go to prison in those nations.

Since I was preparing myself for this path, God protected me and I did not need to go. However, I was determined that before I died I would visit the countries that could be worse than any prison. Thus, I went to the Soviet Union. Many people around me advised against my trip there; they begged me not to go.

However, I went to that prison of the day to dissolve the prison of the night. In fact, by going there, I brought daylight to that prison.
(311-092, 1999/08/19)

23. I have been shunned and persecuted all my life, but I have not perished. This is because I always go in the original direction. I do not act in a self-centered way.

The reason I have been setting this standard is to help people become better, to help them advance to be in a better situation, and to have a greater future.

For this purpose, I have been educating people and setting the example of living by that standard. As a result, I have been persecuted, but both heaven and earth are protecting me.

There is a fundamental law and principle that defines the path we must walk. A man must walk the path of a man, and a family must walk the path of a family.

When we live 100 percent in accord with that fundamental principle, all heaven and earth will support us, and nothing can cause us to fail. If we were to fail, heaven and earth would fall apart.

The principles and standards of nature would fall into chaos, and heaven and earth would face destruction. (120-151, 1982/10/05)

24. To enter the kingdom of heaven, I must stand in the position of the perfected Adam, and in that position give out so much blessing that even the Archangel will protect me until the end.

Because such a standard exists in the Principle, you have to meet the condition of overcoming Satan's accusation and loving your enemy. Otherwise, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. If you do not love your enemy, you cannot go there.

That is why I too have been striving to meet this standard in the work I have done throughout my entire life. It is what I did when I went to Danbury Prison.

Although the government and people of America cheered when I was sent to Danbury, I loved them from inside the prison.

Because I loved them truly and fully with the original love of God, Satan's world cannot lift its head. This is how I overcame them and emerged victorious. From that point, a new world could open up. (173-295, 1988/02/21)

25. I am the central person in a world where every nation has lost its direction. Day and night I have been pioneering the new direction that will set each nation aright. When I walked the path of indemnity, I had no awareness of myself. Jesus, too, had no awareness of himself when he was nailed to the cross.

That is why he prayed to God, pleading with Him to forgive those who crucified him, as they did not know the serious crime they were committing. In this way, he made the condition for Christians to conquer Rome in the future.

It is the same with me. I went through the crucifixion prison under the Japanese, in North Korea, in South Korea, and in the United States.

However, I never forgot God's guidance that I must not sever the net of love that will save them. So, even in prison, I hauled in people with the net of love.

This can be likened to a light bulb that will always remain lit if it is connected to the power station by a live electric line. If the electricity of God's love is connected to the spiritual electric line, that light will shine everywhere.

If you are connected to God's love, the electricity of His love can resurrect you and give you new life.

This is how you can see a clear path of hope. This can be your joy. It will make you such a wonderful person that you can smile even while going over the path of the cross.

Then Satan will flee without looking back. When you become such a person, we can conclude that restoration has been completed. (229-258, 1992/04/12)