The first seven-year course is for perfecting the foundation of the conjugal relationship. It leads to the perfection of the foundation on the family level; thus, it applies to the Mother as well.
Some aspects of her personality will differ from aspects of mine, but a time will come when we’ll gradually come to be in accord with each other.
We need to let go of those parts that cause discomfort and start fresh with those we feel comfortable with. That’s one purpose of the seven-year course. In short, in the first seven-year course, Mother and I have to set conditions through which we can become one centered on the providence.
We need to be united in faith. Then, we have to be united in body, that is, in substance. Then we have to be united in love. Centered on God, we have to become one in faith, in substance, and in love.
The foundation of the unity of my heart and Mother’s is also what can bring together all the things in the world that are divided from each other. We had to try to achieve that because we had to stand on a foundation of the heart that can unite the world.
True Parents’ family-level cross
Only when the seven thousand years of history are brought to a conclusion can we go beyond the realm of the Sabbath and start fresh with the number eight. This is to be done in the first seven-year course, and not by anyone else.
During this time, I am meant to lay a foundation for my family. After the Blessing Ceremony, that is, the Holy Wedding, it was not a joyful time for our couple because we had to bear the family-level cross.
Until a banner of victory is held high, proclaiming that a family has borne the family-level cross and triumphed, there is no path for your families to follow because yours are the secondary families.
Centering on my family, I have expanded the ground for the four-position foundation. As that ground expands, others can be restored. When you consider the names of the True Children, who are right here, you’ll see they are all related to the history of restoration.
All my children need to be born in the midst of this, to be obedient to Mother and unite. During this time, many things will happen in my family that will need to be indemnified. The children themselves cannot grow up in safety during this period.
Many unexpected incidents will take place in my family. When the children come into a room where Mother is, the children are little gods. About love, they are closer to God. Yet, they have to be obedient. When they call, “Mom!” she has to answer the children with a smile, “Yes?”
Though I have not been able to take care of my children, with the four older ones, I went into their rooms every night, even after midnight, to kiss them good night and to pray for them.
Though I failed to guide them in every way as their parent, I prayed for them morning and evening because I have a responsibility to keep them safe., Unless the parents, the children, and all created things are united, they cannot reach God’s realm of love.
That’s why Mother trained for seven years, why Mother and our children were persecuted, were, and why there was so much commotion. They were going through that course.
Through the Fall, the man failed to fulfill his responsibilities as the husband and as the son, and the creation was lost. That all needs to be indemnified internally, which is why I have undergone this process and indemnified it all by designating the Day of All Things, Children’s Day and Parents’ Day.
I did this all within those seven years. Thus, at the end of the seven years, I was able to establish God’s Day and climb over the mountain of indemnity.
Three couples were engaged before the Holy Wedding
What is the central issue in restoration? In the providence centered on Noah, his three sons were important.
In 1960, when Parents’ Day was to be established, it was necessary to establish three families like those of Noah’s three sons. By doing so, it became possible to save the spirits of the people who had died during the period from Adam to Noah and to establish the family of Jacob on the foundation of this victory.
These three families represent the families of Adam, Noah, and Abraham. They represent the restored Cain-type families.
They also represent the Cain-type children in the age of the Second Coming and replace the disciples who had opposed Jesus in Jesus’ time. Therefore, they must be in the position of restored archangels by attending the Second Coming of the Lord.
Jesus represented Adam, and the Second Coming of the Lord represents Jesus.
Therefore, the rule is that unless the Second Coming has three obedient children of faith, he cannot achieve the status of the True Parent. He needs to have three disciples who will be loyal to him and follow him through persecution, even at the risk of their lives. In April 1960, I restored three such disciples that I had found.
Chosen as the resurrected figures of Cain, Abel, and Seth in Adam’s family, they established the relative condition upon which Father and Mother could go beyond the level of engagement and become parents substantially through the Holy Wedding.
The fact that the parents and three children in Adam’s family, who have always been a source of grief to God, could finally unite, and that the first time it had been achieved on earth in history was in Korea, is truly historic. It can even be said that the fortune of a new future began to spread from that moment in Korea.
Blessing three couples
Before my Holy Wedding in 1960, three couples out of the thirty-six couples were engaged, and after our Holy Wedding, we blessed them.
You may know that in the course of the providence of restoration, there must be parents at their children’s weddings. That is why the purpose of the six-thousand-year history of God’s providence of restoration also lay in first setting the central condition, and then blessing His children from then on. He has yearned for such a moment to come for a very long time.
Besides, to hold a wedding, the children must first go through a ceremony that enables them to stand in front of God as His children. In other words, a ceremony is needed to confirm that they are His children.
They need to receive the blessing from their parents and stand in front of God. Next comes the reading of the vows and the affirmation of the vows. Then they are blessed, and the first part of the ceremony is over. At the end of the ceremony, the brides, and bridegrooms will make their entrance here wearing holy robes.
A position determined by principles
The first of the three couples, who represent the thirty-six couples, is Kim Won-pil and his wife. History cannot establish just anyone in that position. Unless a specific background based on a specific program had been set up in the spiritual world, he couldn’t have been established in the position of the firstborn son.
Kim Won-pil was able to stand in that position. In the second position is Eu Hyo-won, and Kim Young-hwi is in the third. You know them as Won-pil, President Eu, and President Kim, don’t you? I didn’t appoint Won-pil president of the church. Why not? Won-pil himself may be aware of this, but he has to be in Adam’s position.
The great thing about President Eu is that, though he has weak legs and is deficient in many areas, he has been obedient to the providence and me. He has practiced absolute obedience.
Won-pil, too, always absolutely obeys what I say. How about Kim Young-whi? He has a certain innocence. They need to unite, and once they unite on the individual level, their families also need to unite.
Unless these three families unite, the individual, the family, and the tribe will all suffer on their account, and they will also cause trouble in my family. That is why these three couples are critical.
Loving my children, following God’s will
I could not love Sung-jin properly. Before the Holy Wedding in 1960, I was unable to pay his school expenses. I could not even buy him a book. You know this well, because you have seen it.
If I were unable to love my spiritual children more than my children, I would not have been able to advance the providence of restoration.
On the other hand, I devoted all my sweat, tears, and blood for the sake of Unification Church members. Even when I was tortured in prison, I prayed for them, allowing my children to be sacrificial offerings. I devoted all my heart and sincere effort to this way. This is the Unification Church’s philosophical outlook.
The three years before the first seven-year course began
In 1960, too, I sent out members to their posts, telling them to live servants’ lives in the same way that I had to live a prison life for three years. I had to establish the condition of having achieved victory in restoration through indemnity by undergoing life in prison.
Do you know what kind of time that three years was? It was a time of looking for the lost children in Satan’s world and restoring them by shedding sweat, tears, and blood.
In those days, members could not go to school. They gave up their schooling and jobs. They gave up everything. If they had three sets of clothing, I instructed them to live with only one. I lived that way as well.
I began fasting on my birthdays. Furthermore, I did not eat on my birthday for three years. And when I did eat, I had no more than three different side dishes at a meal. Therefore, our Unification Church members must fast on their birthday for three years. To pay total indemnity, go to the world of perfect love and achieve happiness, you must be willing to follow a paradoxical path, one that seems abnormal to people in the secular world.
Though my body was in the headquarters church on a comfortable bed, my heart was in torment. On a blustery night, with a cold northern wind howling and cold snow drifting down outside, my young sons and daughters were shedding tears on the brink of death, and I had driven them to it. I have prayed until now that I, a teacher of others, will never become a false man.
Third forty-day workshop for witnessing leaders
December 21, 1959, to January 30, 1960 (those who attended just in the evenings continued for seventy days, until March 16); 164 members completed the course.
What is important is that we invest our whole mind, to give everything for the will, to dedicate ourselves fully. You must do this whether you are asleep or awake. God wants to uphold those who do this in front of Satan and to say proudly, My sons and daughters did this.
Until now, we have been fighting to defend ourselves. However, from this year on, we cannot take that position. So far, no one could we could not help but take a defensive position because no one could stand as Heavenly Father’s representative and fight on His behalf?
Now the times are changing, and I must give the order to charge forward. In giving this order, matters of the heart are significant. You must feel in your heart that even if Heaven and Earth disappear, your relationship with Heavenly Father cannot be changed. With that kind of heart, you finish the battle and become glorious sons and daughters of the Father.
You must receive what belongs to Heavenly Father and fight against Satan. All you workshop participants must inherit Heavenly Father’s great achievements of heart.
You must go out, inheriting all that belongs to the Heavenly Father and also his great accomplishment. You must fight as his representative.
Because He had no one He could give this task to, Satan has accused him. Now this is our time, we must think that we cannot tolerate Satan any longer. If we go out with such an attitude, we will be able to conquer any mountain with ease. Only if we do so will we be able to establish our honor in front of Heaven.
Forty-day enlightenment witnessing, 1960
This enlightenment campaign aims to awaken the external intellect, and the Divine Principle is needed to develop the internal intellect. Therefore, it is necessary to carry out an educational campaign based on both.
The 30 million Korean people are in constant struggle, not knowing which way to go. You need to become the these of these forlorn people. You have to step forward in front of the Korean people, who are shedding blood and sweat in the world of death and begging for mercy, and break the wire netting of death off them with your iron rod of life and shout, “Friends, brothers and sisters, I am here!”
And on the day when you can uphold the parent–child relationship and establish the relationship of brotherhood, and thus form a tribe and a race and appear in front of God as His citizens, Heaven’s sovereignty will be restored, and the sorrow and grief tearing at God’s heart will be lifted.
Everyone, are the clothes you are wearing precious to you? Discard them! Do you have wealth? Cast it away! You need to know that those very things can become the bait by which Satan will try to lead you away from the path toward God.
If you can become a person who loses sleep during their work to provide even an inch of land or have to those who stand for the sake of goodness, regardless of the tears and blood these people have to shed in the process, you will govern the world.
Until now, you have worked for yourselves as individuals, but from now on, you need to work for your people and the world. To do so, you need to shed more sweat, tears, and blood. Let us make a new resolution and a new pledge.
Let our hearts overflow with love for God. Let us shed our sweat for the land, tears for the people and humanity and blood for God. Since our bodies and minds are not ours but our Heavenly Father’s, let us dedicate our bodies and minds to the Korean people and for all people on earth, who have nowhere to turn to and no one to trust.
If we don’t begin now, we will never get another opportunity. You need to go forward now, while you still have me to drive you on from behind. You need to begin while I’m here and set the condition of having done something. I am telling you to do this because I know what should be done now.
We will make history in three years, and if you have your name included in it, innumerable people will come to pay their respects to you, and they will make barefoot pilgrimages to places associated with our work.
Speech just before the forty-day summer witnessing condition
July 17, 1960
When I hear members who have gone out witnessing say upon their return that they were insulted by others, on one hand I feel mortified, several times, but on the other hand I feel happy and offer a prayer. Why?
It is because the member who was insulted has formed a strong relationship in his heart, not with the heart of a person, but with the sorrowful heart of God. There will come a time when those members will feel proud of that.
Today, with new resolve in our hearts, we are meant to pour out every passion we have as representatives of all the world’s people. With heavenly sorrow harbored in our bodies, we need to explode in hell, shedding our blood. I believe that when we do this, the tower of victory will be erected at that very place.
Prayer: I hope that at the end of the forty-day course You have entrusted to us, we will meet again and hold hands with one another and share our experiences and talk about how much we were persecuted by the people, and how much we have wept for them.
If members have cause for sorrow and lamentation, I pray that they will cry out “Father!” and wish nothing but blessings for the people, and then return with living proof in their hearts that they have done nothing but love the people. Heavenly Father, I beseech You to help us feel this way.
Father visits members during the enlightenment, witnessing campaign
July 30–August 19, 1960 (twenty-one days)
I can still vividly recall the time I toured Korea in 1960, after I sent you all out to witness. Nowadays, when I go to visit a place, people line up to greet me.
However, I remember how members looked at that time, fretful, standing amid a lonely, blustery place, looking like one person guarding the world of the dead, or holding the flag of Heaven, promising life, and who still bowed their heads to me in greeting and prayed with all their hearts.
God makes a heaven-and-earth relationship with such a person. When you think about it, you can see that you form a stronger bond with them have time, the earth with God when you are in a difficult situation.
When I toured Korea for twenty-one days, I thought that though the roads I traveled were rough country roads then, a time would come when they would become highways for cars carrying numerous people.
Though innumerable people after me need to follow the path I am on, even when I traveled back and forth over a distance of seven hundred miles, I didn’t think I was doing it just once, but that I was destined to do it constantly.
Therefore, you too need to be resolved to shed more sweat than others, to travel more than others, to work harder than others and to continue to do so constantly.
Sun Myung Moon