Hyung Jin Moon
January 29, 2012
Sermon at the Cheon Bok Gung
Seoul Korea
"In the past week we have seen many historic days. We witnessed how all the members were able to proudly proclaim True Parents during the Parade. We are not IN the closet, we have now come out! And now we have shown our faith to all the world. Think about it! We went to Seoul, to Kwang Hwa Mun, the center. We passed the statue of King Sejong. There we passed his royal seat and had our True Parents, who are even higher then King Sejong, proclaimed...
I think it was the first time in the Unification Church history that we went to Kwang Hwa Mun and held a demonstration. Father said that we were holding a spiritual demonstration against the satanic forces and through that we were able to elevate True Parents' status throughout the entire world.
On that day I was so happy and we were so filled with energy... we were burning with passion...
I had the opportunity to report to True Parents, and Father was so happy. He said, "Now we have to do that Parade on a global scale!" Father was really so proud to hear about this Parade.
Testimony of Mr. In Seock Nam, who was very much involved in the preparation for the Cheon Bok Parade. He explains what a struggle it was before finally True Parents and their messiahship were openly proclaimed:
"Many events and programs that we had at this time [of Cheon Bok Festival] all had a common theme. They were ways and means to testify about our True Parents....
In 14 locations in Seoul City we had billboards advertising the Cheon Bok Festival. It was broadcast.... throughout Seoul.
It [the advertising] started out by speaking about True Parents' messiahship. We had of course many times [in the past] advertised that we were holding an event, but this was the first time that we actually proclaimed on such a billboard that True Father and True Mother were the True Parents of Heaven, Earth and Humankind. We also advertised in newspapers...
We started to prepare for this Parade last year in August... When we were first trying to do this Parade, all of us, even our staff, were wondering, "Maybe we will just be ridiculed if we do this!" And we were wondering about the snow, the cold weather, what to do.
So a lot of our staff were against it and opposed this idea from the start, but my mission was to go to the International President [Hyung Jin Nim] to ask his approval to NOT hold this Parade and to just make it a small pilgrimage of Korea. That was actually my mission when I went to Las Vegas last year in August. I had a chance to report this to True Parents. But then True Mother said, "You have to show to the world who we are!"
After that we were first thinking of just diluting our message on the advertising [of the Parade]. But True Mother said, "We have to promote ourselves with full force!"
Many people said that we had to really package our True Parents so that it can be easily understood by people of society. This was the trend among many of our people, of leaders, in our movement.
But through this Cheon Bok Parade and Festival we went forth with [advanced] our standard of promoting True Parents. Members in their reflections said that they were so excited with the Parade... They really felt great... (Mr. In Seock Nam explained that even the weather was in favor of the Parade).
I feel that God and True Parents really wanted us to proclaim True Parents through this Parade!