This speech was given at the founding assembly of the International Association of Parliamentarians for Peace in North America on November 30, 2016, in the U.S.
Congress Russell Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C. Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, since the proposal of the International Association of Parliamentarians for Peace at the beginning of this year in Seoul, Korea, we have succeeded in inaugurating IAPP, beginning in Asia, continuing to West Africa, Europe, Central America, South America and back to East Africa before we came to meet here today in Washington, D.C.
Before our meeting, we have seen many distressing incidents in the world, incidents that are indescribably painful to think about. The world has come to a point at which human beings do not have the power to solve the problems they are facing.
Then what must we do?
We must begin a movement in which our families, our nations, and the world attend to God, the original Owner of the universe. However, in the reality of today's world, even though our hearts want to do that, putting it into practice is difficult.
The original Creator, God, created all things in the cosmos; He created the world of plants and the animal world, and after everything else, He created Adam and Eve, who would become the ancestors of all humankind. He especially gave Adam and Eve responsibility.
That responsibility was the responsibility to achieve God's dream. During the growth stage, in the position of absolute unity with God, they should have reached the position to receive the marriage Blessing. They should have gone through that process of growth. Nevertheless, during the growth stage, they became greedy.
They began to look inward. That means they grew further apart in their relationship with God. In the end, the first human ancestors, who should have become the true parents, fell and became false parents who began to multiply, and their descendants became all the humankind.
However, the omniscient and omnipotent God had to achieve His purpose of creation. The beginning and the end must be the same, which is why God had no choice but to go through the very lonely and difficult course of providential history.
As it says in the Bible, God selected the chosen people of Israel, and, after a long period of 4,000 years – not 400, not 40, but 4,000 years – God sent his only-begotten son, Jesus Christ.
How difficult it must have been for it to take 4,000 years before he could be sent! Fallen human beings could not immediately come into Heaven's presence. They had to set indemnity conditions to go forward, which is why Heaven's providential course for restoration through indemnity, briefly put, meant suffering through blood and tears.
God's wish was for the lost true parent of humankind to be regained. That person was the Messiah, the Savior.
However, what happened?
About the people of Israel was that they were under a great empire, the Roman Empire. People used to say, “All roads lead to Rome.”
God placed the people of Israel in that environment, and He sent the Messiah through those people. If the people of Israel – especially Mary, Zachariah's family, and Joseph's family – and Judaism had united with Jesus and led the way along Heaven's providence, with the strength of the Roman Empire to help them expand, one family of humankind centered on God, the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, would have come to fruition at that time.
However, what happened instead?
The people around Jesus failed to fulfill their responsibilities. This left no place for Jesus to stand. As a result, Jesus had to follow the way of the cross, yet he said he would return. He said he would return to hold the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.
Those words meant that Jesus had not been able to marry and stand in the position of a true parent. Therefore, the returning Messiah must complete a family and go forward as the True Parents of humankind.
Sun Myung Moon
God's providence in America
We can look at the 2,000 years of the providential history under Christianity as the providential period to establish the position of the only-begotten daughter of God.
As part of Heaven's historical providence to send the returning Lord, Heaven especially chose this nation. Through the Puritans, who wanted the freedom to worship God, our Heavenly Parent, as they wished, and through the many other immigrants who came to the American continent, God gave birth to this nation, the United States of America. There were native people already living on this continent.
However, Heaven raised America through the people who could create the foundation and environment for the returning Messiah. He blessed them. Responsibility follows the people that Heaven blesses.
However, 200 years after its founding, what was the situation like in the United States?
America was suffering from a malaise that led to a period of extreme individualism and the breakdown of the family, problems with youth, and problems with drugs.
That is when Reverend Moon came to America from Korea, a small nation in Asia. Reverend Moon, who was aware of Heaven's providence, knew he had to protect America and knew Heaven's providential plans for America. He said, “America is suffering, and I have come as a doctor.
I came as a firefighter, responding to a call.” He woke up righteous people and American intellectuals. Hearing of this, many well-known pastors responded. In 1976, here at the Washington Monument, on the National Mall, where 300,000 people gathered, Reverend Moon spoke urgently to the people of America, saying that they had to wake up and become a nation responsive to God.
Through that, the nation that God originally blessed could fulfill its responsibilities. Continuing to hold rallies under the banner “God Bless America,” Reverend Moon was able to pull the heartstrings of good American families.
Because of that, young people in America were reborn. In that era, many of the people who joined the Unification Church had been hippies. They came to understand what responsibility they had to fulfill in response to Heaven's summons.
God had raised and cultivated America to become a democratic nation that had the same great power as the Roman Empire 2,000 years ago.
My husband and I spent more than 40 years here in America. This was so that America could build the foundation for the True Parents, the returning Lord, who came for the sake of the world, for the sake of the world's people, and so that America as a nation would embrace the world as one so that it might become one family under God and achieve God's great dream.
During that time, within the Christian culture, communism, which proclaimed that God was dead, emerged. Communism spread until it occupied more than two-thirds of the world, coming right up to America's doorstep.
However, the people of the United States of America were complacent and did not recognize how serious the situation had become. Washington, D.C., which was often referred to as the capital of the free world, had only one major newspaper, The Washington Post, and, just based on the common sense of democracy, this was something that should not have been.
We could say that some people in this nation are among the wealthiest people in the world. People consider the United States a rich nation, but most people were not fully alert to the danger that communism posed to democracy.
If America had stayed in that defenseless state, the America of today could not have come to exist. At that time, to create The Washington Times, Reverend Moon used all the money from our world mission budget. You can imagine the amount of expense required to establish a full-fledged daily newspaper.
Reverend Moon nurtured The Washington Times, and through it, America and especially those in the national government were informed. Through it, the conservative world was enlightened.
Reverend Moon invested in this because, knowing the course of God's providence, he hoped that America would survive and become a nation that would achieve God's dream.
True Parents are essential
For Heaven to save fallen humankind, people need True Parents, the Savior, and the Messiah. That is why God had to pass through the long period of 6,000 years.
God gave humankind responsibilities, and from among humankind, a person who can be the True Parent must emerge. Somebody is needed who can guide humankind to achieve God's providence and God's dream.
This is why fallen humankind needs True Parents, who are the Savior and Messiah.
Because they are the True Parents, they worked to save this great nation of America. However, human power alone cannot possibly solve all the bleak problems that are occurring all around the world.
I want to say this to all of you gathered here today: God originally had a dream to become the True Parent of humankind. You are all among the 7.3 billion children whom God wishes to embrace.
However, according to the Principle of Creation, the descendants of the first human ancestors who have not fulfilled their responsibilities cannot directly come into God's presence. The Bible has a metaphor about wild olive trees and true olive trees.
Fallen human beings in the world, wild olive trees, can only become true olive trees through True Parents. Therefore, what humankind needs today is the True Parents. Legislators and other leaders in the United States and from around the world who have gathered here, you have an important responsibility.
You are significant. In this new providential age, more than just individuals, God requires you, intermediaries who represent the people, so each of you must develop a movement that attends to God in your family, society, nation, and the world.
This is the way for all of you who live today to become filial children and loyal citizens in front of our Heavenly Parent. I am saying we must all become God's true children. I pray that all of you can unite and become the people who will realize God's dream, which is also what all people desire to see.
Hak Ja Han Moon