The people living upon this globe, one and all, all wish to receive God’s blessing.
They wish to receive blessings centering upon my one individual self. And a person who has received God’s blessing comes to wish that that blessing may reach his neighbors or his nation. So tonight I think I shall speak with the title “What Is the Process by Which God Comes to Give Us Blessing.”
The First Condition for Being Able to Receive a Blessing
People use the word “blessing” lightly. Yet they do not know how much hardship and suffering there is behind this blessing and how difficult the process is until it comes about.
The One who gives us blessing is God. And it is we human beings, that is, you, who receive that blessing. Yet in a fallen world, God cannot bless man unless man sets up a condition suitable for receiving blessing.
We can find a good example of this through Noah’s age. Before receiving a blessing, Noah received a command to give full loyalty while undergoing extreme hardship for the long period of a hundred and twenty years. The period in which he toiled to set up that condition was not twelve months or twelve years but a period of a hundred and twenty years. Still more, the command he received was to build an ark not at the seashore but on a mountaintop.
When Noah received such a command from God, all the people were skeptical. It was thought to be a kind of madness (광상, 狂想). Because the people of that time thought that such a thing was something they could not conceive of even in their dreams, they lived as at any other time, eating and drinking and enjoying pleasure and forgetting God. Yet to Noah, God’s command was absolute. There was no one who truly understood the heart of Noah. Only he himself knew. His wife too could not understand, and his children too could not know Noah’s circumstances. How much more would his relatives have said? Is that not something one can well surmise?
The circumstance God required of Noah was that he completely abandon his relationship with the whole of humanity. To fulfill this command of God, Noah had to sever every bond. He could not love his wife or his children more than God’s command. It means that Noah could choose nothing apart from God’s command, which was absolute and like a rock that could not be shaken in the slightest. How would the people of that time have treated a Noah who was in such a position? You will be well able to surmise that.
In fact, at that time the person who was his wife ought to have followed her husband. It is not recorded in the Bible, but it means that because at that time his whole family forsook Noah, he undertook the work of building the ark alone. Noah’s family refused Noah’s plan. They opposed his will. If he could have obtained cooperation from those close to him even a little, he could easily have endured the persecution that came from without. Yet in a position where that was not so, passing through ten years, twenty years, thirty years… a hundred and twenty years, Noah, who had become an old man, came to be known to the world as a madman.
At that time, only one person, Noah alone, followed God. All the people, apart from Noah, as the days passed, gradually came to depart far from God. So it means that from God’s position at that time, He could not but choose the one person, Noah. It means that God had no other way but to rely upon Noah’s loyalty alone. It means that He could find no other footing upon earth.
God needed a footing more than anything. The footing God needed received extreme persecution in the world. The world repeated its rebellion toward that footing and toward God. The condition of such a footing was set up by Noah. Accordingly, God could judge the world, taking that footing as its ground. This is no more than one example.
Before God blesses an individual, or a family or a clan, a nation or the world, of course, or whatever it may be, that comes to bear Heaven’s mission and responsibility upon earth, He first makes sure whether they can endure whatever hardship. Therefore, one who has taken Heaven’s mission must fight, and in that fight one must without fail be victorious. You must know that this is the first condition required before receiving a blessing.
The Hill of Trial and Hardship
Let us look again at Abraham. God commanded Abraham to leave his beloved hometown, Ur of the Chaldees. For Abraham there was no road apart from the road of obeying God’s command. He could not but go to an unfamiliar foreign land where he had never once been. And while doing so, he believed in God alone.
Because Abraham thus gave full loyalty to God, God could set him up as the center of the Providence.
God can choose some individual only in a place that does not receive Satan’s accusation. Accordingly, that chosen individual must have escaped Satan’s accusation. This is the condition God requires first of the central individual. You must know that this principle applies likewise in today’s Providence too.
It was the same in Jacob’s case. In order for Jacob to receive the blessing God had promised, he could not but go to Haran, Satan’s symbolic land. He could not but set up a condition of sacrifice. He had to undergo hard labor that was difficult to endure for as long as twenty-one years. And only then did he receive, in the land of Haran, which symbolizes Satan, the name Israel, which holds the meaning of victory, and come back to Canaan, which symbolizes the land of the heavenly world. Yet he and his family of some seventy people had to set out upon another sojourner’s road for the hard labor of Egypt. This is the trial on the tribal level.
They underwent hardship in Egypt for as long as four hundred years. Only upon the ground of having undergone such hard labor could God press forward a greater Providence by which He could restore the Israelite people to the land of Canaan under the leadership of Moses. Yet the further that course of trial and hardship went, the more rugged it became. The Israelite people had to cross a still more rugged hill of trial and hardship to establish the foundation for greeting the Messiah. Yet the Israelite people, chosen by God at that time, did not know the reason they themselves had to walk a course of hardship in the restoring of the heavenly world that was to be accomplished centering upon the Messiah.
If at that time the Israelite people had known the reason it had to be so and, after establishing the people-level foundation, had greeted the Messiah upon a national foundation and become one with him, the history of humanity today would have been utterly different. Yet unhappily, the Israelite people did not fulfill their mission and nailed Jesus Christ to the cross.
So we have come to be able to move only in the direction of being able to accomplish a national and cosmic foundation spiritually. Because the Israelite people thus did not fulfill their mission, after Jesus, the Christian believers had to receive hardship and trial. That is why Christianity could not but move to the Roman Empire, which is Satan’s land. And so Christianity, together with the spiritual Messiah, by valiantly undergoing hardship amid the persecution of the Roman Empire, came to accomplish a new foundation by which it could carry out a worldwide restoration, if only spiritually.
In fact, Jesus ought not to have died as a sacrificial offering upon the summit of Calvary. If that had not become so, the believers who followed him could have entered the Roman Empire together with a living Jesus within forty years. Until such content as this was revealed to us today, there was almost no one who knew the heavenly Providence. If Jesus had not died, he could have been victorious not only spiritually but in reality too and gained victory on both sides.
The Roman Empire of that time was known as a worldwide empire. It means that the Roman Empire was the center of the whole world and was in a position that symbolized the whole world.
If at that time the crowds who followed Jesus had gone forward, attending a living Jesus as their center, they could well have brought the Roman Empire to submission and, moreover, could have overcome worldwide trial and hardship again there and completely accomplished the Will of worldwide restoration.
The Meaning of the Blessing God Has Given
History, in principle, repeats itself. And while doing so, history is preparing one dramatic day, one day of the world’s Last Days on which the purpose of human history is attained. That is, it moves in the direction of arranging things in the same state as at the time of Jesus’ first coming. During this time God does not simply remain still. He has come forth moving in the direction of creating better conditions and atmosphere, and a better environment to establish a religious focus with new vigor. He has come forth preparing everything by which a new religion could be born, establishing freedom of speech and freedom of association, and freedom of religion. That is why democracy came into being as a new political form by which a free world could be built. One must clearly know such a fact.
The United States of America today is in the same position as the Roman Empire two thousand years ago. America, which one may call the Rome of the twentieth century, must not be like the Rome of the first century, which boasted only of its culture. Moreover, it must not make efforts only to dominate other nations.
God’s blessing is absolutely public. That blessing is not for some individual alone, nor is it for some family alone, some nation alone, some world alone. God’s blessing is for the whole universe.
You brothers of America, gathered in this place today, must know how much hardship He has endured until God gives a great blessing upon this land, until He prepares this place at this moment. Now a great ideology must truly be born upon this earth. The great ideology that the whole world is one brotherhood must be born.
Let us look at recent world history. Since the Second World War, the tendency of the whole world has inclined in the direction of making all nations and peoples independent. The history of humanity, which sought to set out truly and genuinely, was destroyed through the fight between the two brothers Cain and Abel. Cain killed his younger brother Abel. In this age, in which such a tragedy of human history must be restored, brotherly love must be established again from a worldwide position.
The brothers and sisters of the Unification Church who have stepped forth to carry on the Divine Principle movement must know the fact that God has come forth shedding countless sweat and tears and blood to bless us. Accordingly, just as God has done so for our sake, we too have a responsibility to do so. We have already resolved that we will not spare tears and sweat and blood for the sake of our comrades.
We must distribute to all people the blessing we have received. You must clearly know the fact that if America does not distribute to the people of the whole world the blessing it is receiving today, and if you cannot shed tears and sweat and blood for the sake of the people of the whole world, all the nations of the world will rebel against you. And you yourselves too will simply perish. Therefore, you must take the lead and become an exemplary company in giving everything you hold for the sake of the people of the whole world.
The former American president Kennedy, whom you respect, established a new pioneering spirit. This pioneering spirit is precisely what symbolizes this age. Going further, he founded the Peace Corps, which can bring about the age of the heavenly kingdom and God’s Providence.
One Must Serve for the Sake of the Whole of Humanity
In receiving God’s blessing, there is, unlike in olden times, one point of difference in the method. In olden times, to receive God’s blessing, one had to cast away everything one held and go to an unfamiliar land. Yet today one must not cast anything away. We today must take everything we hold and distribute it. This is goodness.
In your giving there is one excellent principle. It is that you yourselves, holding God’s love and heart, carry out the role of a servant. In heart, one must hold God’s heart, but in body, one must wear the body of a servant. And one must go seeking humanity and give everything one holds.
What is the most precious thing you hold? You must be able to give it without the slightest hesitation and without any regret. The most precious possession for you is your tears and sweat and blood. You must shed sweat for the sake of all things. You must scatter your blood for the sake of Heaven. You must shed your tears for the sake of humanity. This is the motto of the Divine Principle movement. We must be able to distribute these things freely. Only then can we become one in spirit and become one in heart.
Going further, we must find the lost true children and true brothers, true family and true nation, true world. Restoring such true things is not an easy and simple matter. True things are not found easily. In what is found easily, one cannot discover happiness.
We have had the heavenly blessing taken away by the satanic world. Because that satanic world belongs to Cain, Abel cannot but restore the satanic world through Cain. That is why Jacob could not but serve Esau. Jesus, too, had to restore everything through serving the chosen people. Therefore, you must serve for the sake of all people. This is the formula for restoring.
People who are within the sphere of Heaven’s blessing must help the people who are not within the sphere of blessing. One must be able to set others before you. Only then can you occupy the best place. Only when you help them and set them before you and push them from behind can they arrive at the destination.
Let us take one actual example here. However blessed a nation America may be, America as one nation alone cannot attain the final purpose of the Providence of Restoration. To attain that final purpose, one must help all the poor people of other nations. One must set the suffering whole of humanity before oneself and go forward pushing them from behind. In fact, America today is drawing near to that attainment of purpose. Yet for my part, I should like more of America’s budget to be spent for the sublime purpose of helping the humanity of the whole world.
I think that the relationship between this America and Vietnam today is a good example. It seems to have no relationship whatever with you, but in reality, they and you are entangled in some relationship. Such is the present age. That is why America is helping all the regions that are causing problems. You must face such lands with exactly the same sense of responsibility as toward your land. You must serve for the sake of the whole of humanity.
The Mission First and Foremost
Do you wish to become sons and daughters who receive God’s love?
God has come forth seeking you through indescribable places of sacrifice. He has walked a road of casting away everything to find you, who can attain the final purpose. God has come forth seeking you while sacrificing the most precious things. Thus, God has received infinite suffering while giving everything of His own infinitely.
Yet in what sort of place have you been standing? You have been standing in a place of seeking to receive blessings. If so, have you indeed made any resolve to receive hardship together with God? If we are to become true sons and daughters of God, we must be awakened for the sake of one new realization. Going further, we must be fully prepared for a new practice.
Then, when God’s ultimate purpose is attained, and you come to receive blessings, can you cast away everything you have held until now without the slightest lingering attachment? Can you cast away your property and your children, and your family? At the last, can you cast away even yourselves for the sake of the whole world? I mean, can you offer up your children and wife, and your husband and even your life? Whatever hardship there may be in such a process, God has walked that road to find you. To walk this road, God has not compromised with anything whatsoever.
If today the one hundred and eighty million American people were fully prepared to give the most precious things they hold for the sake of the whole of humanity, for a sublime and holy purpose, the whole world could be restored in a single morning. Yet the present state of America today is appearing somewhat differently from what we are hoping for. Therefore, you, who have been chosen as pioneers of the Divine Principle movement, must pioneer an exemplary course for the sake of the brothers and sisters of America. In fact, the road this Teacher has walked until now was such a road.
Early on, I cast away my parents. When I was in prison, my parents came seeking me and urged me to give up what I was doing. Because that was just the same as stabbing me with a knife, I refused that request on the spot. Immediately after the Liberation in 1945, I was living in South Korea with my family. Yet when I received God’s command, I came to realize the fact that it was not good to live there. So I had to leave South Korea. Leaving my whole family behind, I had to go all alone to North Korea, which the communists were occupying.
God at all times thinks of Himself last. He always thinks first of you who are living upon this earth. God does not put the work of being for Himself first. Forgetting Himself, He first worries and is anxious for and loves you who are upon this earth. This Teacher too had to walk the same road, following behind God the Father. What I love most and what is closest to me must be accepted last. Whatever may happen, one must go forward putting the mission first and foremost.
I had one elder brother who truly loved me. He held some degree of spiritual experience, and among my family, only that one elder brother understood my mission, if only dimly. No one apart from that elder brother knew that I had a mission concerning the Principle and that I had a will to raise a new movement that could present the final answer before Heaven and earth. Yet I loved my family. I loved my mother and my brothers. Despite that, I could not tell them the astonishing truth concerning the Principle before others. It means that I could not reveal the Principle to them before others. This was because four-directionality had to be established first, before the center was determined.
So, to step forth before God’s standard, I had to form bonds with others and go further with the world before my family. The people of the whole world must accept the Principle before my family. Before the center is determined, the surroundings must first be determined.
America, Which Must Become the Footing for World Restoration
I truly served people as though attending to my father and mother. Going further, I have treated even people I did not know in that way, to establish the foundation for the restoration of society and the nation. Under such a principle, I could not be anxious only for my nation. Even in the midst of the severest persecution, my prayer and concern were not for Korea. I did my utmost to send missionaries to Japan and America.
At the time we sent a missionary to Japan, it was a time when normal diplomatic relations between Korea and Japan had not been established. That is why the missionary had to cross over to Japan by a small boat without going through normal procedures.
So you will be well able to surmise how much hardship we underwent in sending one missionary to this America. At that time, sending a missionary to America was something no one, whatever, could have thought of. Despite such an environment, I made the resolve that I must send someone to sow the seed of the Principle in America, and did not spare my toil night or day.
The principle of the Providence of Restoration is that one comes seeking in from the outside to the inside. Accordingly, for this America to receive the blessing of glory from God, one must carry on the work so that the Will of the Providence comes seeking in from the outside to the inside. One must not carry on the work beginning from this America. This is your responsibility. Because this is such a position, you must set out upon a far road. Your life and death hang upon this mission.
For the restoration of America, for the restoration of the whole world, and for the restoration of the universe, your family is not the problem. Your self-respect is not the problem. Without sacrifice, a great work cannot be accomplished. I see it that the time has now come for America to be newly awakened. A new dawn must come to the land of America.
You must take responsibility for all the states in America. From this state, your activity must expand to other states. Though your number be limited, each one of you must complete this responsibility.
If you, as Americans, cannot carry out this responsibility, do you know what will happen? If it becomes so, America, which is in Abel’s position, will come to receive hardship through the communist regime, which is in Cain’s position. It means that the whole free camp will come to undergo tribulation. Yet if you feel such a grave mission and complete your responsibility, you will be able to save democracy, and moreover, you will be able to build freedom. If it becomes so, the communist world will automatically perish of itself.
The Meaning of the Divine Principle movement Centering Upon Korea and America
Seen by God’s Providence today, Korea is in a position of having to receive America’s aid in the economic aspect. The relationship between Korea and America today is the same as the relationship between the Kingdom of Judea and the Roman Empire two thousand years ago. Why must a movement of re-creation set out from a nation like Korea? The historical ground for this lies here.
You will be able to discover that there is a point of similarity between two thousand years ago, when the greatest thought was brought to light in the insignificant nation of Israel, and this age today. The reason is that the great thought must be propagated to the whole world. Seen in the light of God’s Providence, America is a nation that represents the civilization of the Western world. America has come to accomplish such a civilization today through learning and research, and analysis. Moreover, it has accomplished today’s culture upon such a scientific foundation. This I call an outward civilization. The more you too acquire knowledge upon such a foundation, the more you will gain worldwide victory.
Yet with outward things alone, one cannot satisfy the whole of what humanity requires. There an inward element is necessarily required. This inward element and the prosperity of outward culture must become one. As mentioned before, the more you acquire scientific knowledge, the more you gain victory. Yet on the contrary, the more one acquires religious or spiritual knowledge, the more one loses material possessions. In other words, effort toward science that analyzes and researches makes humanity live well. Yet this is to the very end, merely outward.
Contrary to this, the crowds who are devoted to inward civilization, that is, to the spiritual or to religion, come to lose outward things. All of you, do you know why that is? The reason is basic. It is because spirit is not matter. Therefore, one nation that has lost everything material must be chosen from among the nations of the East.
Seen thus from a historical perspective, today East and West are facing the stage at which they must become one. At such a time we cannot but become one. Thus, in the Last Days one nation must appear that can unify the whole civilization of humanity into one, that is, that can aim at cosmic completion in both spirit and body. If it becomes so, the whole world will without fail become rich both spiritually and materially.
It is a fact that many nations in the East hold great expectations toward America’s outward success. At the same time as this, you of America must hold expectations toward them for inward success. This is precisely what the Divine Principle movement means. You must understand that we are thus standing at the crossing point for unification. As was mentioned at the very first, for you to receive God’s blessing, you cannot but overcome much suffering and trial. That is a holy responsibility for you. You who have come to know all such things must now be able to give the most precious things you hold to the suffering people of the whole world. You must be fully prepared to be able to answer that great calling.
I shall say it once more here. It means that you must be able to distribute your most precious things not only to the people within the free camp but, widening the scope, even within the communist sphere. The final victory lies in our giving infinitely and loving infinitely and sacrificing infinitely for their sake. Only then do the communists come to bow their heads before us and submit. Only when such a time can come is a true Kingdom of Heaven at last accomplished. The Kingdom of Heaven begins precisely from such a place.
I love Korea. Yet I know well that my mission lies in something greater than Korea. My mission lies in what is worldwide. My prayer and concern are concentrated beyond Korea upon the whole world. Likewise, the brothers and sisters of America too must not pray only for America or hold concern only for America.
If One Would Become a True Son or Daughter of God
You must not give only to the American people. You must not bear the cross only for the American people. You must bear the cross for the sake of the whole world. You must not weep only for America either.
If you would shed tears, you must shed tears for the sake of the world. You must shed blood and sweat for the sake of the whole world. You must stand in a position of loving America because you love the world. Only this is your rightful love.
Our limit (한계, 限界) is not America. Only by crossing beyond this America and loving the world can one love the spirit world. Going further, you must love the universe. Only when you unify these two worlds, the spirit world and the earth, into one is God’s ideal realized. This is your holy responsibility.
To accomplish such a grave charge, you must truly be awakened and rearm yourselves. It means that you must set out anew for the greatest movement. When you set out, you set out from an individual place, but to accomplish that purpose, you must transcend the individual and transcend the nation and transcend even the world. Only then can you gain a cosmic victory.
Where are you placing the standard of your loyalty?
Do you wish to receive a great blessing?
I think that it is so. Then can you bear the cross with joy? What did Jesus say? He said, “He that loveth mother or father or wife or brother and sister or child more than me is not worthy of me. Take up your cross and follow me.” Of course, Jesus was a forerunner who pioneered a new domain and a new road. You too, to become true sons and daughters of God, must walk such a road.
Now is precisely the time when people of culture must shed tears. The time has arrived when millionaires must shed tears. This present age requires the tears of capable people and intellectuals. It is a time that requires their sweat and their blood. This alone is the only road by which the restoration of the Kingdom of Heaven can be accomplished even one day sooner.
You must make that preparation from this place, from now. You must advance bravely to complete your responsibility upon such a road. In fact, you have until now lived for the individual. Yet now your individual living must place its purpose in restoring the universe. You are the pioneers who will change the satanic world into the heavenly world. So you must advance valiantly to break through Satan’s encirclement and pioneer a new road. Only then can you become true sons and daughters of God.
With this, I shall conclude the words I give to you, who have greeted a new day of the fight for the realization of a new task.
