The Ideal Home and World Peace

Hak Ja Han
August 23, 1995
Hotel Lotte World, Seoul, Korea
Second International Convention of the Women’s Federation for World Peace

Photo date and location unknown

Photo date and location unknown

Honored guests, distinguished representatives and members of the Women’s Federation for World Peace, and women leaders from diverse fields:

I am confident that our long-cherished wish for world peace will be brought one step closer to realization by this conference today. I want to express my heartfelt gratitude for your tireless efforts, in every corner of the globe, in building a more peaceful society and world.

True world peace has never been accomplished on this earth, and yet this has been the one constant dream of all humanity throughout history. In order for this dream to be realized, a peaceful nation and society must be realized first. A peaceful nation and society can only grow out of the premise of a peaceful home. In this light, the peaceful and ideal home is the very starting point and the basic unit for the peaceful world.

The ideal home on a foundation of true love

What is the ideal home? As recorded in the book of Genesis, God’s plan for the human family was for Adam and Eve to become a good husband and a good wife, thereby becoming good parents, and creating an ideal home. God had planned that, on the foundation of the original ideal home, the descendants of Adam and Eve would continue to duplicate the tradition of their parents’ love, generation after generation.

According to the teachings of my husband, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, God is the origin of true love. The very act of creation was prompted by God’s original nature, stemming from true love. God’s true love needs an object partner to love and care for in a reciprocal relationship. God’s motive of creation was true love.

The creation, therefore, is God’s object partner of love in physical form. Among all of creation, however, man and woman are the closest object partners of God’s love. God is the True Parent of humanity, and all men and women were created as sons and daughters of God. God and humankind are True Parent and children.

As people grow, receiving their parents’ love, they experience the heart of children. And through the love between brothers and sisters, they experience the heart of brothers and sisters. When they mature as perfected true people with true character, through their married life, they experience conjugal love and the heart of husband and wife. When they give birth to children, through them they experience the parental heart. All creation wants love and needs love. And people are especially filled with happiness when they feel true love and live a life based on true love. When they give and receive love, they are vibrant with life. The perfume of life blossoms in genuine love.

Love is the fountain of an individual’s happiness, life and joy. This precious, genuine love is not obtainable through external knowledge or external conditions or techniques. True love can be felt only through experience and acquired through life.

Human beings were created to develop and embody God’s true love, step by step, during their growth period, through their life experiences. In other words, people perfect their character as they experiences, through this process of stages, the heart of a child, the heart of a brother or sister, the heart of a husband or wife and the heart of a parent. People’s character and happiness are determined by how rounded, how versatile and developed their love becomes as a result of experiencing these stages of life. To achieve the perfected ideal, their love must come to have the same qualities of maturity, unselfishness and total investment that characterize God’s own love.

Self-control and the unique responsibility in the love between a husband and wife

Within the four relationships of heart, vertical love, such as a parent’s love for children, does not diminish or change as it goes from one child to the next. That is why one parent can love many children. Because of this principle, one God can love all humanity as His children.

As God’s children, human beings, unlike the animals, were given total freedom to love between a husband and wife. A human being’s love is fundamentally different from that of an animal, which mates only to procreate. However, this freedom, if it involved no responsibility, could not be freedom in the truest sense. Love between a husband and wife requires responsibility. When a husband and wife are committed to sacred, everlasting love, and take responsibility for their relationship, there is peace at home. This home will be a nest of happiness. It is heavenly law that they have sons and daughters through this indivisible and faithful love between a husband and wife. Men and women originally were created by God to grow to become true individuals, then to become true husbands and wives through indivisible love with a spouse. By having children together, they would become true parents.

The Fall and the order of love

From the Bible we know that the ancestors of humankind did not have a marriage blessed by God, nor did they bear God’s loving sons and daughters. Adam and Eve committed sin against their original parent and were kicked out of the Garden of Eden. Outside the garden they had children that have multiplied through the generations. Because Adam and Eve became neither the true husband and wife nor the true parents that God desired, we as their descendants were not born in the lineage of true parents, as members of God’s true family. The reason people strive for everlasting, unchanging love between a husband and wife, yet can’t seem to achieve it, is because Adam and Eve’s original separation from God, the Fall, was caused by false love and adultery. The reason the original sin is inherited throughout the generations, and the reason we, in what the Bible calls “the last days,” are witnessing wide-scale immorality and family breakdown, is all due to this. What God dislikes the most is when a person goes against the law of love and becomes immoral. My question to you is: Who has a solution to such problems of youth, family breakdown and teenage pregnancy that are so prevalent in both East and West?

These phenomena are more fearful than starvation, war or any disease. Why is that? These problems are not just our problems today; they are the problems that will destroy humanity’s hope in our future generations. Today’s immorality has direct consequences for our descendants.

Teaching children ethics

The home provides elements that are necessary for a child’s internal development. The basic characteristics and attitude toward life are formed at home. Babies are born with a natural ability to receive love. Even after a few months, children can differentiate their mother’s loving embrace from another woman’s. They grow up naturally experiencing love from parents and from brothers and sisters. A person’s ethics and character are mostly formed through his or her experience of love and happiness, acquired in relationship with their family members. Parents’ life as seen by children, especially the parents’ love relationship, has a critical role in their child’s ethical development.

According to heavenly law, parents were meant to be true parents, as well as true teachers. The education that children need most is not the education of knowledge or techniques. The most important education for children is ethical and moral education. This education for life is essential and can be taught only by parents at home. Children learn, feel and resemble their parents’ most valuable examples of love and the basic order of life. Children need a model they can learn from and follow. Regardless of whether parents realize it or not, they are their children’s most important teachers. Children imitate and learn from their parents’ pattern. There is no teacher more important than parents who can show a child the correct direction in life.

As the fruit of love between two parents, children wish for their parents to be the most loving, ideal husband and wife. Children feel happiness from this loving relationship. For children, a divorce between their parents is a living nightmare and impossible to comprehend. This is because children also partake of the love between their parents. To the children, the love between their parents was the origin and root of their being. They cannot imagine the foundation of their existence being ripped apart. If the parent-child relationship is a naturally indivisible relationship, should not the husband-wife relationship, which was the root and motive of the parent-child relationship, also be naturally everlasting?

Immorality, sexual promiscuity and divorce are grave mistakes that violate heavenly law. These phenomena are the result of the Fall. Neither God nor an individual’s original mind desires them.

Children partake of their parents’ love

Woman leaders, how can we create order out of this chaotic world? Humanity has made tireless efforts to create a moral society, a society that would allow an individual to live in dignity as a man or woman, a society that would guarantee a bright future under the true value system. However, immorality is flooding our society with free sex and other decadent trends that go against heavenly law.

The AIDS epidemic is not simply a disease, it is a serious problem directly linked to humanity’s descendants and our survival as a species. These problems are not being fundamentally resolved at school by teachers, or by any government policy, or even by parents at home. Everything has been tried. The experiment is over. Humanity’s attempt at a cure is no longer the solution.

Even if one is not religious, the situation is so desperate that we must seek the solution from God in order to save the world and to save humanity. To accomplish this, God sends the Messiah. The Messiah comes as the True Parents, because the Messiah must cure the reality of this immoral society from what caused it go against God’s Will. Because the human ancestors, Adam and Eve, did not become true parents, the Messiah must come as the True Parents to take the place of Adam and Eve and become the origin of true love, true life and true lineage. The True Parents will educate humanity by being the example of true persons, the true husband and wife and the true parents who can make Satan surrender. Together, the True Parents must create the model of an ideal family and the world of peace and love on this earth. This is the essence of God’s dispensation of salvation.

God sent my husband, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, as the Messiah. His entire life is dedicated to fulfilling God’s Will, the ideal of creation. Due to the lack of understanding about his mission, however, he has been treated as a criminal worldwide without having committed any crime.

True Parents and the ideal family

Being close to him and seeing him every day, my heart aches to witness how difficult and unfair is the way of the saint. Even under all kinds of suffering and persecution, he never broke away from walking the path. At the same time, spiritually he has been in a bloody and furious battle with Satan. Satan is launching an all-out offensive on my husband in order to defend the sovereignty of false love he has held over humanity since the Fall. Both spiritually and physically my husband and I are carrying out our mission as the True Parents. Upon this victorious foundation Satan can no longer accuse us.

Dear woman leaders! The Second World Culture and Sports Festival is the culmination of all my husband’s activities. He has dedicated his life to realizing the united world of love. The Women’s Federation for World Peace, the Family Federation for World Peace, the Religious Federation for World Peace, the Federation for World Peace, the Youth Federation for World Peace, the Collegiate Federation for World Peace are all organizations to bring about the world of peace.

The conferences and events that are being held by these organizations, as well as by the International Cultural Foundation and the World Media Association, will awaken humanity’s original mind, lead history toward a good direction and bring hope for humankind’s future. In particular, the international marriage Blessing is an historic event. Who on earth can imitate this? Three hundred sixty thousand couples of different races and cultures from six continents and one hundred sixty countries will receive God’s Blessing and will embark on creating ideal families. The holy march is beginning, with the goal of creating the ideal families that will become the foundation of a peaceful world. This is a holy event, in which the leading players for the true love culture and true heart culture that God has been longing for are being born, the event where the good descendants are being promised.

The ideal family and the role of women

I have expounded since the founding of the Women’s Federation that God and history are asking us to live a life of love and service, and build world peace through realizing the ideal home. All the misuse of love and the fallen reality that has been controlling humanity must be boldly cleaned up. Immorality, hatred and all self-centered perversions must be eradicated. It is the proper role of women to demand an end to and put in order these wrongful practices.

The goal of the Women’s Federation for World Peace must not be for women to imitate men, trying to raise the position of women within the existing culture and social custom. By following the heavenly way, women can attend the True Parents and become leaders in creating the world of heart-centered culture. Please discard all the attributes of the Fall and establish the original culture, the peaceful culture of love and goodness that humanity has been longing for and seeking. Women now need to be engrafted into the True Parents and give birth to the worldwide true family of all races and cultures. In order to fulfill this, all women must emulate True Mother and become true mothers themselves. With the introduction of this new women’s age, all women need to become new pioneers, who guide with true love. At home, a woman has the responsibility to embrace her husband as a personification of true love and to nurture her children with the heart of a true parent.

Who will establish the home where God’s blessing of love dwells and where the original order of love is in place? This is the responsibility of women who are connected to the True Parents. We must be the vanguard for this movement. I would like to ask all of you to become leaders for the true liberation of women based on genuine love, and to establish a world of true peace. May God’s blessing be upon you and your family and upon your work!

Thank you very much.

Let Us Open a New Era of Civilization

Hak Ja Han
August 20, 1995
Youth Federation for World Peace Korean National Delegates General Assembly
Jangchung Gymnasium, Seoul, Korea

Photo date and location unknown

Photo date and location unknown

My dear members of the Youth Federation for World Peace (YFWP), representatives from nations across the world, and guests from home and abroad:

I would like to take this opportunity to express my heartfelt gratitude for your support and encouragement.

Rev. Sun Myung Moon proposed the establishment of YFWP in October 1993, and it set out on its great quest on July 26, 1994, at a rally in Washington, DC. In Korea it began with the organization of the South Jeolla Province branch on December 15. By February 1995, the organization of thirty-seven branches in cities and provinces across the nation was completed, and by the end of June there were two hundred seventy-three branches in cities, counties and districts. To my knowledge, at present there are more than three thousand seven hundred branches at the level of town, township and neighborhood. This rapid development in such a short time is the result of the passionate support and interest you have shown in YFWP. Once again, I would like to offer a hearty round of applause for your hard work and the steadily mounting reputation of YFWP.

My beloved YFWP members, we need to show at least as much, if not greater, interest in our internal improvement and practice as in our external achievements. No longer can we repeat the past generation’s conflicts and indiscretions, caused by confusion and chaos. This is because we are the conscience of this generation of young people and we need to take central leadership in the world.

Proper ethics and moral values disappeared from today’s youth a long time ago. Young people cannot even distinguish whether their current values or degenerate actions are right or wrong. The prevailing hedonistic culture and distorted views of life have led to evils that have paralyzed the judgment of young people in finding the right direction for their lives. Unless they go out of their way to seek a life of value, such things as true love, head-wing thought and the concept of God will be beyond their reach.

Beloved YFWP members, do you know your own value? Can you feel the preciousness and value of the ideals that you hold in your heart and your determination to realize them? You need to know that when those ideals are accompanied by practical actions, they can become the source of energy that can even move mountains. It would be natural not to act when you don’t know what to do. However, the people who are meant to lead this world and become its central figures have to be people who can look squarely at the world without wavering and know how to put their faith into action.

What kind of people do you want to be? Would you become the courageous center, or would you rather be insignificant people who are driven and dragged around from here to there? It is said that long ago our wise Korean ancestors sent their youths for years and even decades to the training grounds of such schools as Hwarang-Do, Gookseon-Do and Gyeong-Dang. Illustrious leaders such as Admiral Lee Soonshin and General Kim Yoo-shin are representative graduates of such schools.

Through seminars, workshops and youth education the Youth Federation for World Peace is developing a movement for the establishment of true values in a world where traditional values are increasingly forgotten while ethics and morality have become more and more confused. Through this movement we will awaken young people to the preciousness of true love and true life and head toward the original form of humanity. Then they can begin to build the societal structures for the coming ideal world, a world based on the unchanging, absolute values of God and the young people who embody them. These values will form the center of the youth movement of this era. Throughout history, regardless of place or time, God valued young people and made them stand at the center of history. When they march forward, training and cultivating themselves by leading the right kind of life, God will manifest Himself vividly in their daily lives.

Although cultivating your body and mind is something you need to do throughout your life, its importance is truly incalculable during your youth.

This is because adolescence was the period in which the Fall occurred, and also because adolescence signifies the beginning of the awakening of your mind, marking the second stage of your life.

As young people going through such an important period, you need to become the pioneers who have the exceptional courage and vigor to open the gates of a new era. To translate this important task into action, the Youth Federation for World Peace will work, under the principle of mutual benefits, in reciprocal solidarity with all organizations that are in philosophical agreement. These include the Federation for World Peace, the Interreligious Federation for World Peace, the Women’s Federation for World Peace, and the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification. Presently countless young people in nations around the world, including those in Central and South America, are participating in our movement. In particular, the YFWP is actively taking part in efforts to unite Protestantism and Catholicism and to unite North and South America. I believe that these efforts will play constructive roles in bringing about the reunification of our homeland on the Korean Peninsula.

In addition, through the Unification movement and fraternal exchanges and cooperation with international youths and students, the YFWP will fulfill the mission of a “Youth UN” to realize a world of peace and true unity and organize all structures to prepare for the era of a new civilization in the twenty-first century. YFWP will engage in a movement that builds the ideal world of interdependent living, mutual prosperity and shared goodwill, where everyone can live in affluence through the democratization of societies and nations and equitable economic distribution. In such a world all people will be able to enjoy freedom and equality based on the true love of God and will lead lives befitting humankind. Even as we speak, countless people in many developing nations are in miserable circumstances and are dying of starvation and disease. This is not just the business of others, for it concerns us all. Rather than viewing with pity the tragedy of our dying brothers and sisters in the global village, we must carry out the ultimate, global salvation movement to help them substantially.

At present, Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the founder of YFWP, is continuing to educate many young people in Africa and have them participate in the Unification movement in order to liberate their countries from the sufferings of starvation and poverty. Moreover, to take care of the nations in Central and South America, whose development is stagnant and which are second only to African nations in terms of underdevelopment, he is promoting various projects in conjunction with the Association for the Unity of Latin America. To successfully realize these plans, we visited dozens of nations in Central and South America and met with their heads of state. He promised to make joint efforts for the bright future of Latin America before his return.

Now the Unification movement, centered on YFWP, is taking root in more than one hundred sixty nations around the world. In particular it is brightening the future of the youths and intellectuals of Russia and Eastern European nations, who lost their ideological coordinates with the downfall of communism. At 5:00 in the morning, April 3 of this year, in the presence of leaders representing one hundred sixty nations around the world, my husband and I announced the New Hope Farm Declaration. Prior to that, on March 31 of this year, we announced the Sao Paulo Declaration. We then set out on our long, historic march to establish an ideal society and an ideal, model nation. The current crises of humanity and environmental pollution, resulting from problems such as the spread of sexual immorality, greed, starvation and poverty, and misguided applications of science, have reached a stage where we can no longer turn a blind eye toward them. As a means of overcoming such crises, we are cultivating vast areas of land under the name New Hope Farm, to create a model of an ideal society and ideal nation. This land, totaling more than a million acres, lies in South and Central America, including parts of Brazil and Argentina.

We then can expand this model of an ideal society to the rest of the world. In my opinion, this movement is the most important enterprise that our YFWP members need to promote as they stand in the central position. It is also the hope of God and the dream of the founder and the substantial, ideal society that YFWP is aiming for. Modeling yourselves after this pioneering spirit of the founder, you too need to show your revolutionary spirit in your own way.

Just as many conscientious ancestors have fought against the crises of humanity and the chaos of the Last Days in every period of transition of the ages, likewise you members of YFWP have to fulfill your mission with your own clear conviction and effort. This mission is the task you are to accomplish at all costs in order to build a peaceful global community in the coming twenty-first century, and we need to do all we can to encourage united efforts on a worldwide scale.

Members of the Youth Federation for World Peace, you need to sow the substantial, ripe seed of God’s Will and ideal in your hearts. By doing so, you are to resemble Him more than anyone else, and you are to become youths who can set down deep roots in the new era and the coming future. Now is the moment when you need to act with the passion and culture of your hearts. We have to develop cultural programs that can reform this chaotic world and create art that all can enjoy with pleasure.

In accordance with the founder’s teaching, let us make YFWP an organization with a noble spirit that can establish new values aligned with God. Let us help this fallen world, which denies God, to understand the providence of God. Let us lead the way in a human revolution through which God and humankind can become one. When we achieve individual perfection, that is maturity of our own character guided by God, followed by the family and tribe restored to God, and lead the nation and people to Him, at the same time the world and cosmos will come naturally to the presence of God. Only when we place God at the center of all our thoughts and actions, can the results stemming from them be good and can we become leading figures in the establishment of a new history.

My dear YFWP members and national representatives and guests from home and abroad, let us all become organizers who can lead the new, moral world with burning desire. Let us become youths who can find and establish the right values and morality in the lost conscience of humanity and march forward as the vanguard.

You have the infinite energy and conviction of God and the. undaunted spirit that makes you get up again in the face of any difficulty. It is said that Heaven helps those who help themselves. Your spirit is stronger and redder than the morning sun. Whenever I see you filled with aspiration and hope, I can only think of my husband, the founder of YFWP, Rev. Sun Myung Moon. In his youth, my husband received the mission from God to save humanity, and since then he has dedicated his entire life, investing his efforts ceaselessly, to resolve the sorrows of God’s providential history. The world has misunderstood and persecuted him in all kinds of ways, and yet he has clung to the heart of God and prayed in tears and fought against the forces of evil. Ultimately he was able to proclaim the coming of True Parents and the Completed Testament Age and thus win an historic victory.

In his long course of life he has undergone many hardships. They include his suffering in prison under communist rule in North Korea, where he hovered between life and death, imprisonment under the authoritarian regime of Syngman Rhee in South Korea, and suffering in Danbury prison in the United States, where he was oppressed because of racial and religious bigotry. Nonetheless, he did not forsake the Will of God and won by his own efforts with his indomitable fighting spirit. Today he has established a worldwide foundation that he can proud of before God and all peoples of the world.

Standing by his side, I see my husband living his life solely to resolve the sorrows of God’s providence of salvation, unable to rest in comfort even for a minute. I can feel how his whole being is filled with the Will of God. Despite the fact that he is an older man nearing his eighties, he continues to promote the work for world peace and the salvation of humanity with passion and efforts that exceed those of young people. As youths, you need to inherit this spirit of the founder and take part in the heavenly march toward building the ideal world.

Dear YFWP members who will lead the future of humanity, the hand of salvation headed toward the new world of the twenty-first century is waiting for us. You need to establish the unchanging center of God in your hearts and inherit the shining tradition of the life course of True Parents. You have to become the leading figures in constructing a united world of peace, where the world is one family and all people live as brothers and sisters, transcending ethnicity, nationality and race, which is God’s ideal of creation. I welcome all of you, who have rolled up your sleeves to lead the way in working to achieve prosperity and happiness for humankind. Let us all participate in the movement that practices true love for the reunification of the homeland and world peace guided by Godism. Let us become the axis of the youth of this age, going beyond mere thinking and translating our thoughts into actions, and light the flame of the culture of the heart. Attending God and True Parents, let us become the center of the true youth movement as the proud young people who can expand our energies from the individual level to the levels of the family, tribe, people, nation and world, thereby building the ideal world.

Young people who will open the new century: The twenty-first century is yours. Let us become the enlightened youth who can pioneer the age of the new civilization, open a twenty-first century filled with love and peace, and brighten the future of humanity. Once again, I thank you all for your hard work and warm support. I also would like to express my deep gratitude to the guests from home and abroad and the representatives of nations who have graced us with your presence. As the head of the Youth Federation for World Peace, I love you all from the bottom of my heart.

Finally, I pray that the abundant blessings and grace of God will be with you, the YFWP members and guests from Korea and abroad.

Thank you.

The Twenty-first Century and the Mission of Women

Hak Ja Han
October 12, 1994
Seminar for Korean and Chinese Women Leaders
Little Angels Performing Arts Center, Seoul, Korea

Photo date and location unknown

Photo date and location unknown

Women leaders from China and from various associations here in Korea, and leaders of the Women’s Federation for World Peace:

It is a great honor for me to speak at this event and encourage women leaders from two nations, Korea and China, who have come together to seek the way to bring a world of peace and to affirm the coming of the global age of women.

With the twenty-first century only a few years away, we stand in a position to experience the upheavals of the twentieth century along with a new and different century in our lifetime. This does not mean simply that we will span two centuries. Since the providence that permeates human history is carried out in units of two thousand years, there is great significance in concluding the twentieth century and preparing for the twenty-first century.

Though history is apt to change, the rate and extent of recent changes have been so wide and unpredictable that we have come to fear change. In the society of the future, in which science and technology will have been developed to a high degree, will humankind find happiness? In the information society of the twenty-first century what kind of lifestyle will people lead? How will the pressing problems of humanity that darken our future be resolved? What will be done about such issues as the establishment of a principled morality and new values, and the problems adolescents face, crimes, drugs, AIDS and other diseases, war and starvation, and religious conflict? Without finding a fundamental answer, the hopes of humanity for the twenty-first century will never be realized. We need to address these problems not as problems of individual nations; instead we need to address them as those of humanity. The time has come to resolve our problems and bring clarity to our future through the new expression of truth revealed by Heaven.

On the verge of entering the twenty-first century, when we examine history we see that men have been ignorant of the true value of women and have not treated women fairly. The women’s movement of modern times, which began with the nineteenth-century campaign of Western women to gain suffrage, has continued to develop under the banner of women’s liberation. In general, it has been a movement carried out against men to restore women’s rights, including the extension of women’s rights, gender equality, and the women’s labor movement. Therefore, the mainstream of the women’s movement generally took the form of opposing men only for the sake of women. The movement I am carrying out through the Women's Federation for World Peace is different from the American women’s movement. It is a women’s movement not only for women. It is for everyone, carried out on the foundation of the new teaching centered on God’s ideal of creation.

Chauvinists assert that men are destined naturally to assume the superior position and men and women are designed for certain roles they are meant to play. Their theory is that men and women are born with different natures and that accordingly their roles also differ. They believe that men and women naturally assume the superior and the inferior positions, respectively, in terms of identity and status and that men are established as the superior. I believe that feminists until now primarily have been responding to this view. They have tried to secure an equal status with men in all respects, by imitating them and assuming the same roles as men.

In spite of their efforts, complete gender equity could not be achieved. This was because they did not know the essence of the problem. The fact that the role of women and their inborn nature differ from those of men does not mean that the value of women is less than that of men and that their status is inferior. The unhappiness of women stemmed from not realizing the preciousness of their God-given original nature and role. Problems arose from the fact that many women forgot what they possessed and tried to imitate the nature and role of men, as if men were the exemplars for women.

My esteemed women leaders! Women are the individual embodiments of truth representing one of the two natures of the incorporeal God, who possesses yin and yang in both external form and internal nature. Therefore, women are not in a competitive relationship with men, who represent the other side of God. Women are not the assistants of men; they are the interdependent object partners who make the world whole. When God created men and women, God established them as the ideal object partners of each other and made it so that they can become one through true love.

From the perspective of true love, women are the perfect object partners of the love of men, and in regard to their value, men and women are absolutely equal. The fact that the natures of men and women are different does not pose a problem. Those differences are factors that bring on the stimulation of love. In the original ideal, a man and a woman united in true love have the right of equal position and equal status. Moreover, a man and a woman united in true love have the right to participate as equals, and through their love they can always be together. A man and a woman united in true love have the right of inheritance through which each shares what belongs to the other as the second owner. As you can see, a man and a woman united through God’s ideal of true love are created as completely equal beings in terms of value. They have the right of equal position and participation and mutual ownership.

Therefore, men and women are not in an antagonistic relationship, in which they need to imitate, covet or somehow acquire the other’s nature and role. Instead, they are in a relationship in which they share with one another, by giving what is theirs to the other through true love. Thus each perfects the other and becomes one with the other.

My fellow women leaders! Women have a precious original nature and affection that God has made unique to us. We also have the central role of bearing and nurturing children and leading our families. Through the self-sacrifice of bearing and nurturing the fruit of love, women continue clans and generations of human beings. While the external work of mothers is important, the role and responsibility of mothers in nurturing their children to become righteous, cultivating their character even while the children are in the womb, are just as noble.

From now, humankind has no choice except to live in an increasingly globalized and pluralized society. In the future world, women will have a noble role in the family unit and in the entire society as well. We could even say that the role of the mother shapes history by bearing, giving birth to and nurturing the future of humanity. Without this maternal nature, where can the hopes and bright future of human beings be conceived? Where can good men and women, our future leaders, be born, and from whom can they receive their basic education?

Respected women representatives, traditionally history has continued under the leadership of men. Most men have misled humanity using brute force, and they have created conflict and division in irrational societies. Consequently, there is a mountainous pile of historical legacies that need to be dispensed with, as well as many pressing problems. For humanity to usher in the twenty-first century with hope, the contribution of women is absolutely necessary. Now that the age of women has come together with heavenly fortune, centering on True Parents, the women of the world can create a movement of magnanimous true love as part of their lives and make new families and new societies. The trend of internationalization and globalization leads toward the twenty-first century, wherein we need to live together as one global family. Extreme individualism and egoism are major deterrents to achieving this goal. Only true love can affect the hearts of the people who are inclined in that direction.

Women, united with True Mother, need to raise their children to create the heavenly way, through their influence of love, and perfect their husband’s maturation through mother-child cooperation, thus forming ideal families. This is the movement to inherit the True Parents’ true love, true life and true lineage. Through ideal families thus established, we are to construct ideal societies, ideal nations and an ideal world. I hope you women leaders will become central figures in this movement.

To achieve this goal requires the cooperation and international activities of enlightened women from various nations. A time will come when the leaders of nations will realize keenly their international relations and the conditions of this planet’s environment. On this basis they will have no choice except to prioritize the common good of the world above their national interests and to translate this realization into action.

I hope that this meeting and exchange of Korean and Chinese women leaders will set an example of women’s international cooperation for constructing an ideal world. I encourage cooperation of women leaders from both nations that will serve as a turning point in achieving peace in Asia and the whole world, marking the progress of history toward one world of peace transcending the walls of nationality, race and religious belief.

Thank you so much for listening, and may God’s blessings be with you and your families.

Address to the Blessed Children

Hak Ja Han
March 20, 1994
East Garden
Translator: Peter Kim

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[At the beginning True Father and True Mother were speaking with one another over the telephone and Peter Kim translated this to the blessed children:]

"You study hard and be united with Shin Won Nim and grow well, True Father says."

Mother's question to you is who are you and what are you? Blessed children? What do blessed children look like? You must be different from the children in the world. You are different, right? (Yes) What is the difference? Does your appearance differ from theirs, or is it that your mind and heart are different? (Heart) Your root is different. It is Shin Won Nim's birthday today but from the age of Shin Won Nim up to the twelfth graders, all have been invited here today by True Mother. Do you know the reason? You must be the hope not only for the Unification Church but for the entire humankind. You must become the children whom God is able to trust and love the most. Therefore, you must love True Parents more than anyone else. All of your actions and thinking must stem from the same motive as that of True Parents.

Some of you older brothers and sisters are around the age of twenty years. Do you remember at what age Adam and Eve fell? (Fourteen) In their teenage years. Once your age is over twenty you are considered an adult man or woman. Your age right now is the most precious and important age in your entire life. To be truly united with God and True Parents is the best thing for you at this age in your life. However, if you are not united with God and True Parents, Satan will invade your life. How many years has it been since True Parents declared the motto "True Parents and the Completed Testament Age"? (One) What year did they proclaim that? 1993; so that means we are in the second year. You may not fully understand how precious and extraordinary this proclamation is. Mother wants you to understand why God couldn't interfere, even though He knew that Adam and Eve might fall. Do you know? (Yes) You understand the purpose of God's creation, don't you? You are in the very important position of having to fulfill the purpose of God's creation. You are the only ones who are in the position to walk along with God and True Parents together in order to fulfill the purpose of God's creation. That is the importance of your position right now. No matter what you may do or where you may go, your senses must always be focused towards True Parents and True Parents' family. As long as you do that, all the foundations and victories that True Parents win will be bequeathed to you.

You may not fully understand right now, but True Parents' life up until this point has been so difficult. As you grow, you will be able to understand these things more. The fact that True Parents declared "True Parents and the Completed Testament Age" means that True Parents have already set the victorious foundation of the completion of the Old and New Testament Ages. They have gone beyond those levels. Ever since True Parents declared "True Parents and the Completed Testament Age" the time is different. Beginning in 1993, many different phenomena have been taking place in major dispensational countries such as Korea, Japan and America. It is unlike anything that has occurred in the past.

You know that True Mother had a worldwide speaking tour under the banner of the Women's Federation for World Peace last year. Mother traveled to forty different nations. When Mother went to Africa, she discovered that there were some missionaries and members who have been waiting for twenty years to meet True Parents in person. When Mother faced that reality on the continent of Africa, and saw all those bright young members with glowing eyes, Mother's heart was touched. Without speaking, Mother could spiritually feel their hearts and they were able to communicate. That is what is known as the world of heart. While in Africa, True Mother felt that if all the blood, sweat and tears that True Parents have spent in this country of America in the last twenty years had been invested-or even one-tenth of that effort-in the continent of Africa, what result do you think we would expect by now? Much greater than we are harvesting in this country now, or less? (Greater) That is what Mother felt also. Therefore, Mother truly felt sorry to all those African brothers and sisters. At the same time, Mother felt that all of our American brothers and sisters are greatly indebted to our members all over the world.

Do you understand that through God's providential history, those who have been chosen by God must be willing to sacrifice themselves and even their nation for the sake of humanity? (Yes) True Parents are the ones who have shown this kind of exemplary way throughout their entire lives. Because of this absolute standard that True Parents have set, and all the victories that they have won, Satan does not have anything to do with what True Parents are doing and saying at this point. Some of you are still young and growing, but once you become blessed and have children, you will understand what Mother is saying. When it comes to the meaning of love, love is experienced through raising your children. Love moves down from parents to children. Love travels downwards, but that does not mean that the parents do not love the first child. Your first child in your family received the full love of his or her parents when they were the only one. Then when the younger child comes, the parents give more love to the younger child, but that does not mean that the older child should feel bad. The older child must join the parents in giving love to the younger brother or sister. That is the way that love works.

We have learned from True Parents that we must live our lives for the sake of others. However, when it comes to the practice of this altruistic lifestyle, we often forget its application to our immediate family members. Suppose your elder sister loves her younger brothers and sisters just as her parents are doing. Then they will follow their elder sister just as they follow their parents. Your parents did not have an easy life; they have been receiving a lot of persecution over the years. Also, they have been taught by the True Parents all these years, but we cannot say that they have been successful in completely resembling True Parents' lifestyle. If your parents had truly followed in True Parents' footsteps, exactly as True Parents had expected them to do, then the situation in America and this world would be different by now. For example, there is one drop of water on a steep mountain and it joins with many drops of water and collects to form a small pond and eventually a stream and river. Where do they all flow? To the ocean. Mother is making this analogy: the first generation, your parents, were like individual drops of water on a steep mountain. If they had truly resembled True Parents from the beginning, each of them, as a perfect couple and family collecting together would have formed a stream, river and eventually an ocean to save all humankind. A drop of water or a small stream may not be too strong, but once all of this water joins together it can form a large ocean, and nothing can stop the power of an ocean. Each one of you have that power within yourself.

Our destiny is set already. Do you feel that? (Yes) If Mother were to explain the long history, even from the time of World War II, it would take too long, so she will skip over it with the assumption that you already understand. Its conclusion is that once you are totally united with True Parents, your life is wide open. You won't have to deal with any outside persecution, because you will be standing upon the victorious foundation which True Parents have laid. When True Father left for Korea, he gave instructions to the True Family, including True Mother. From Hyo Jin Nim down to Kwon Jin Nim, all are participating in the proclamation of True Parents and the Completed Testament Age to 100 major universities in this country. As your parents and your elder brothers and sisters may understand, in looking at the history of America we see that in the 1960s young people were seeking love and ideals on their own. However, they did not find either but ended up with drugs, alcohol and free sex. During the years that have followed, there have been serious-minded young people who have begun, especially in recent times, to think more sincerely about life. All those young people of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s tried every possible thing they could think of until there was nothing else left for them to try. Then the 1990s came and True Parents declared the women's era and even the United Nations declared the Year of Women. The world was following the lead of True Parents and at the same time the young people of the world, particularly young females, began to follow this more reasonable direction.

After the worldwide speaking tour that True Mother gave, she came to the conclusion that our time has now come. What is our destiny at this point? First of all, mothers and children must unite together and then restore the father in each family. Eventually each family must be united with True Father and True Parents. That is the way the entire five billion people of the world will have hope to be restored. All throughout the country, in the major universities, True Mother and True Children are giving this proclamation at each campus. Even today one of the True Children is speaking at the University of Illinois. True Mother was on the road up until yesterday, covering all the venues assigned to her. As of yesterday Mother completed nine major universities and tomorrow she will speak at Yale University. This proclamation, in this particular time period, is giving hope and light to those young people all over the campuses in this country who do not know what to do and where to go. It is our mission to go out and reach them, every single person on the campuses. They are the ones who are still longing for parental love, True Love. They are the ones who are waiting and searching. We have to give them this proclamation, so that there is absolutely nobody in this country who says they did not hear about it. Your elder brothers and sisters, the True Children, are going around the country giving this proclamation, which is a very difficult job. The first step for you is to be absolutely united with them and give them all the support, love and prayer that you have. You must also go ahead and create the right kind of atmosphere so that you will be able to teach your friends.

Spring is just around the corner. What is the meaning of spring? Particularly the spring of 1994 is special. This spring is special, because as soon as you see the seed you will see the results there, ready to harvest. This is the time, a different time. If you try you will realize that you can experience this different time period. Blessed children are the true seeds at this time, but if you become a weak and stale seed which cannot germinate and produce fruit right away, then from God's point of view you may be replaced by healthier and stronger seeds from outside, who will sprout the results. In order to maintain your seed intact, healthy and strong you must be able to cut off all the bacteria that might damage your seed. Do you understand? It is true that your parents didn't fulfill their responsibilities in terms of being united with True Parents fully and expediting the providence of God. However, you must be different. Throughout history always the second stage has been important. The second generation must be stronger than the first generation. Only then will the third generation become perfect and will we have hope for the future. Do you follow True Mother? (Yes) Therefore, you must be able to create your position or your place which is closest to the True Parents. You are the ones who have to create that. Only if you secure that position within yourselves will you be instructed and led in spirit by True Parents directly.

Before the Fall of man, don't you think that Adam and Eve communicated with God directly? Did they or didn't they? (They did) They had a channel open to God, and you are in the same position. Nobody else will be able to help you or set you there. You by yourselves have to create that internally and externally so you can directly communicate with God and True Parents. If you truly wish to demonstrate the difference between the Unification Church second generation and the world at large, the elder brothers and sisters among you must be able to offer your heartistic care and love to your younger brothers and sisters. This will enable them to learn from you and practice the same love and care for their juniors. This is the way we will be able to attain total unity among our second generation, and that will make the difference between the Unification Church second generation and the people of the world. If you practice this principle, then whenever True Mother comes to America, she may invite you and guide you directly as she is doing today.

Mother feels sorry that this room is not big enough to set up tables and chairs for each one of you; instead, we had to sit and have a buffet breakfast. Are you still happy? (Yes) In the future there are much greater and more joyful things awaiting us. Mother's conclusion is that you are truly lucky boys and girls. (Applause) You can never imagine how much True Parents love you. True Parents always want to see in person the shape and faces of you children growing beautifully as you are now. Therefore, we must pray together so that our True Father and True Mother will live with us for another 100 years, so that they can watch us growing beautifully. Will you do that? (Yes) Would you like Mother to sing for you? (Yes - Applause)

Although we don't want to believe it, it is a fact that True Mother is now the grandmother of many grandchildren. Therefore, she may not remember all of the lyrics, but still you want to hear? (Yes) Today is Shin Won Nim's birthday, and the song Mother would like to sing for you is often sung by True Father. It is a children's song. This song is about a particular flower, usually blooming on the mountainsides of Korea, and it is commonly called grandmother flower. Even before the flower is blooming, the stem is always bent like an old grandmother's back. The lyrics of the song say, "Even when you are young, you are still bent, grandmother, when you are old, still your back is bent, grandma flower."

This spring of 1994 is special. How special? As soon as we sow our seeds, we can expect the results. In order to give more blessing from True Parents to you in this special spring season, True Mother is giving you a special gift. Only Blessed children and teachers, not parents, stand up. Please come to True Mother one by one and as you receive the special gift from True Mother give your father's name. The special gift from True Mother is the symbol that you will never forget today, the day that you came to East Garden by True Mother's invitation on Shin Won Nim's birthday and Hyun Jin Nim's wedding anniversary and received this special blessing from True Mother. Do you understand? (Yes) Please begin to approach True Mother and give your father's name. You must use both hands in order to receive from True Mother.

God, Women and World Peace

Hak Ja Han
September 7, 1993
Invitational address at the United Nations Headquarters, New York, USA

Photo date and location unknown

Photo date and location unknown

Honorable president, your excellencies, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen:

I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to you for coming here today. As leaders of the United Nations, you bear the responsibility of guiding this world into the next millennium. The promise of a peaceful and prosperous future depends directly upon the collective actions we take today.

God's ideal of creation

As we all know, our contemporary world is not a world of peace and happiness. It is a world of conflict and despair. We are confronted by the breakdown of our families and the moral decline of our societies.

We debate issues over and over again and yet find no solutions. Why is this? It is because a true solution has to include God and deal with the root of the problem and not only the symptoms. To find this root, we first need to understand God's purpose of creation and realize that today we face the most critical turning point in the history of God's providence.

At this crucial time in history, God has asked my husband, Rev. Sun Myung Moon, to bring a new revelation to the people of the world. I have been supporting him in his work and I recently concluded a yearlong tour that took me to twelve countries, where I spoke on the topic, "True Parents and the Completed Testament Age."

A few weeks ago, toward the end of a speaking schedule that took me to all fifty states of the United States, I addressed members of the United States Congress in Washington, DC on this same theme. I would like to take this opportunity to convey this important message to you, assembled delegates of the United Nations and other distinguished guests.

God's ideal in creating Adam and Eve was that they would perfect themselves through true love so that, as True Parents, they could then create a good family of true love, true life and true lineage. Such a good family would have formed on the basis of hearts and minds united among the family members before God.

When God created Adam and Eve, His first son and daughter, God wanted them to be better than Himself. Conventional thinking would say that this is absurd. However please take a moment to think about it. When we as parents look into the faces of our children, we wish upon them an infinite amount of love and hope. We want them to grow and achieve things we ourselves only dreamed of.

Similarly, God wants to give limitlessly to His children. God is not content in giving just one hundred percent. God's desire is to give a thousand times more than what He has. The nature of God's love is to give completely and then forget what He has given. Unlike some, who calculate how much they have given and decide that it is enough, for God enough is never enough.

Moreover, God's purpose in creating the world was to have an object partner of love. His purpose in creating parents and children, husbands and wives, and all things in this world in complementary pairs was to substantiate true love throughout His creation. Likewise, parents are to live for their children, and children for their parents. Husbands are to live for their wives, and wives for their husbands. All beings in creation are to live for, and give to others.

If God's ideal of true love had been realized through Adam's family, that family would have become the beginning of the heavenly kingdom. It would have expanded throughout history to the clan, the nation and the world. This would have been the world of true love, the kingdom of heaven on earth. Furthermore, there would have been a parallel expansion of the heavenly kingdom in the spiritual world.

Human history's false start and the providence of salvation

If God's original ideal had been realized, there would have been no need for a Messiah or for God's providence to save humanity. Adam's family, though it was merely a single family, would have been the center of the clan, the nation and the world. It would have been the blueprint for all future families and the model for the realization of God's ideal world.

Because of the Fall of our first ancestors, God's work of salvation had to begin. Salvation history had to be extended repeatedly through the complicated and suffering courses of the Old and New Testament Ages, culminating in today's Completed Testament Age.

God's ideal of the true family and the heavenly kingdom, which He wanted to realize through Adam's family, was destroyed because Adam and Eve fell away from God. Due to the Fall, this present world is far from the good world of God's ideal. In fact, today's world is a false world, in that it is flooded with self-centered love.

This came about because Adam and Eve became false parents based on the false and self-centered love of Satan. They multiplied evil rather than goodness, creating a false family and passing on false life and a false lineage to their descendants. Thus, false clans, false nations and a false world came into being.

Therefore, the goal in God's dispensation of salvation is for a man and a woman, representing Adam and Eve, to be restored as True Parents centered on God's true love, so that they can form a true family. From them eventually would flow the true clan, the true nation and the true world that God originally planned. In other words, the seed from which God's true love, true life and true lineage can grow has to be created.

My dear friends, have you ever wondered how a world filled with such evil and corruption could come from a God of love and goodness?

If you read the Bible carefully, you will see that the Fall involved the loss of Adam's entire family. First, the position of parents was lost through the Fall of Adam and Eve. Second, the position of children was lost as Cain murdered Abel. God's blueprint for an ideal family and world perfection was lost.

Therefore, to restore the original family, God works in reverse to reclaim the positions of Cain and Abel, and then the positions of True Mother and True Father. This pattern requiring the reconciliation of Cain and Abel as the foundation for restoring the True Parents has been God's consistent formula throughout the history of restoration.

The separation of fallen humankind into a Cain-Abel division occurred over and over again in Judeo- Christian history. God first of all separated fallen humankind into two brotherly sides of Cain, representing Satan, and Abel, representing God, to resolve the emotions that resulted from the Fall.

God used the method of having the Abel side be attacked first and sacrificed. As a result, the Abel side could stand on that very foundation to embrace the Cain side and receive the blessing that Cain, in the elder son position, had received.

For example, the religion that advances the purpose of salvation always receives Satan's severe persecution. It walks the path of receiving constant opposition, yet it continues its sacrificial efforts to save the sinful world. Likewise, good people always stand in the position of being struck first and sacrificed.

Looking almost anywhere in our fallen world, we observe struggle between good and evil, similar to the struggle between Cain and Abel. These struggles start in the conflict between mind and body in each of us. The mind, which represents the Abel side, struggles to overcome the body, which represents the Cain side. The struggle within individuals has expanded to the family, nation and world.

As a result, humankind always has been divided into two opposing camps, one good, or Abel-like, and the other evil, or Cain-like, locked in struggle at every level. Always it has been God's intention, however, that both sides be restored, not that one triumph over and destroy the other.

An example of this division is the thief on the right side of Jesus' cross, who represented Abel, and the thief on the left, who represented Cain. So the key to God's work of salvation always has been to unite such divided sides, based on His ideal, in order to build a foundation on which to reclaim the True Mother and True Father.

Self-centered love and the breakdown of the family

Ladies and gentlemen, if a family is not centered on God's ideal of love, there will be conflict among the members of that family. Without God's love as an absolute center, the family will ultimately break down. Moreover, a nation of such families will also decline.

Because illicit, self-centered love invaded the family of our first ancestors, selfishness and greed have continued to dominate human history from the individual to the family, society, nation and world. For this reason, God's work of restoration begins at the individual level. Since Satan knows this, he also focuses his efforts on the individual level.

It is not by chance that selfish individualism has become the dominant way of life in these Last Days. People feel increasingly alienated from those around them and bear little sense of responsibility for the well-being of their country, community, or even their own family.

Rising divorce statistics indicate that husbands and wives feel little responsibility toward their marriage; parents do not take proper responsibility for their children; and individuals, devoid of any sense of human dignity, reject accountability for their own lives.

The United States and many other countries of the world have seen such phenomena, beginning with the youth movement of the 1960s. Idealistic youth rejected the materialism around them in order to seek love and peace, although in the process they also abandoned morality and responsibility. Unable to attain the true love they sought, many disillusioned young people resorted to drug use and free sex, leading to selfdestruction, including suicide.

Of all these, what pains God most is free sex. A world of free sex is absolutely contrary to the Will of God and the ideal of the family. Love comes from the stimulation of unblemished emotion, however free sex is totally devoid of purity or true emotion.

How many of us have been touched by the cruelty of infidelity and divorce? Where is God in all the onenight stands? What about the nightmare of children who are sexually abused by a parent? Is free sex worth the price of a broken child?

Indeed, in the domains of homosexuality, free sex, drugs and alcoholism, the world of true love is far away. It is a world in which Satan openly tells people, "Drink! Take drugs! Have sex!" Those who do God's Will, on the other hand, live a lifestyle that is 180 degrees different from this. Throughout history, those who chose to walk a spiritual path of self-sacrifice have been bitterly opposed and persecuted by the rest of the world.

For example, it is only God's love and blessing that have allowed the Unification Church to prosper, despite worldwide opposition. The fact that our church has risen from obscurity in war-torn Korea to become a world-level religious movement in only thirty-eight years testifies to God's continued guidance and support.

There are those who continue to oppose the Unification Church, whispering rumors to prevent our teachings from being heard. Again, Satan's way is always to attack that which is most precious to God. Yet those who go against the Will of God can never prosper. The principle holds true that those on God's side who can endure unjust persecution will win the right to take back the blessing. God's strategy is always to be struck first and then take back what is rightfully His.

Restoring true love

Ladies and gentlemen, the Bible teaches that Eve was the first to disobey God and enter into a relationship with Satan. Due to the Fall, Eve and Adam and also their sons Cain and Abel inherited Satan's lineage, based upon selfishness and false love. As the descendants of the first couple, which was compromised by Satan, we have all inherited Satan's lineage. For this reason, Jesus said in John 8:44, "You are from your father, the devil..."

The Old Testament describes a process of restitution according to the formula "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." (Ex. 21:24) In the Divine Principle we refer to making restitution for a wrong as "paying indemnity." To make restitution for her wrong actions, fallen Eve needed to take on the entire responsibility. She needed to have reversed the actions of the Fall and made spiritual and physical restitution for each step of the Fall.

It was God's Will that Eve assist her younger son, Abel, to unite with the Will of God. We know from Genesis that God accepted Abel's offering. However, this was not all that was expected of Abel. Abel's love was supposed to bring Cain to recognize Abel as God's chosen person and unite with him, and Eve was supposed to help them achieve that unity.

If Cain and Abel had united, the second problem of the Fall would have been solved. The unity between Cain and Abel, centering on Eve, would have been the foundation to restore the whole of Adam's family. Throughout providential history, we see God calling special women to play this exact role, to help unite the positions of Cain and Abel as restitution for fallen Eve's role.

Rebekah as a model of restoration

In the Bible, one of these special women is Rebekah, Isaac's wife. As the mother of Jacob and Esau, Rebekah held the same position in Isaac's family that Eve held in Adam's family. Unlike Eve, however, Rebekah understood God's providence and helped her second son, Jacob, representing Abel's position, to gain the blessing intended for the first son, Esau.

Just as Cain killed Abel, Esau wanted to kill Jacob when the blessing went to his younger brother. However with Rebekah's help, as recorded in Genesis, these brothers eventually reconciled in a warm embrace, rather than resorting to violence.

This reconciliation was a major victory for God. This victory, nevertheless, was not complete, since the reconciliation was only a symbolic purification of the lineage. The substantial purification of the lineage had to be accomplished in the womb. This is the reason for the paradoxical story of Tamar.

By understanding that Tamar, like Rebekah, was in the position of fallen Eve, it becomes possible to understand why Jesus was born of her lineage, the tribe of Judah. I am sure that many of you have read the story about the birth of her twins. She conceived with Judah, her father-in-law, the twins Perez and Zerah. The Bible tells us that the two sons struggled even in the womb for the position of firstborn.

During Tamar's labor, Zerah's hand was the first to emerge and the midwife tied a red string around his wrist. Then Zerah's hand disappeared back into the womb and Perez, the younger, was born as the elder. Thus, the positions of Cain and Abel were restored before birth took place. It was on this foundation that the nation of Israel was chosen to receive the Messiah.

In terms of conventional morality, the actions of Rebekah and Tamar are questionable at best. Why God blessed them has been a theological mystery until today. As we now see, through these women, God could reclaim His lineage from Satan so that Jesus could be born. Their lineage was the point from which the Israelite nation started expanding. The word "Israel" means victory. Their victory was the reversal of Cain and Abel in the womb, the purification of the lineage.

Mary's life and her dangerous course

The lineage of Judah developed for generations, expanding to the levels of the tribe, society and nation. From this lineage, Mary was born in Israel two thousand years later.

Mary had the responsibility of uniting the Cain and Abel figures on the family, clan and national levels through paying appropriate indemnity and restoring elder son-ship. Mary responded to God's call and conceived Jesus, even though, in the eyes of others, she had betrayed her parents and Joseph, to whom she was engaged.

At that time it was customary to stone to death a woman who became pregnant out of wedlock. However, Joseph, standing in the position of Adam, courageously protected his fiancée and would not abandon her.

Because of Mary's faith, and the victories of Rebekah and Tamar, Satan could not claim sovereignty over Jesus in Mary's womb. Jesus was born in the position of a true Son under God's complete, direct lineage. He is the first true Son of God, based upon the purification of the fallen lineage.

That is why Jesus, the only begotten Son of God, is the saint of all saints and the ancestor of God's true lineage. His birth represented the conclusion of the Old Testament Age at the national level and the dawn of the New Testament Age at the worldwide level.

Mary, in the position to restore fallen Eve, had to build unity between Jesus, who was in the position of Abel, and his elder cousin, John the Baptist, who was in the position of Cain. This unity was essential if the people of Israel were to recognize Jesus as the Messiah.

John was the elder. He had a great following and was widely respected. He described his own role by saying, "I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, and ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,' as the prophet Isaiah said." (John 1:23) Also, Jesus explained to his disciples that the ministry of John was the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecy that says, "I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes." (Mai. 4:5)

However did John fulfill his responsibility in God's providence? The Gospel of Luke tells us that John came "with the spirit and power of Elijah." (Luke 1:17) John, however, denied that he was Elijah and doubted the Messiah-ship of Jesus, even after he had received a clear revelation at the Jordan River at the time of Jesus' baptism.

John was a well-respected religious figure, while Jesus was seen as only the illegitimate son of a poor carpenter. Without the support of John, it was unlikely the Jewish people would believe in and follow Jesus. Alone, Jesus undertook the difficult path of self-proclamation.

John the Baptist was supposed to have helped Jesus reach the religious leadership of Israel. If John had fulfilled his role, then the religion of Judaism, in the position of Abel, and the nation of Israel, in the position of Cain, could have united with Jesus.

A dream unfulfilled

This Cain-Abel unity would have laid the foundation for the marriage of the Lamb. Jesus would have stood as the True Father of humanity, and his bride would have stood as the True Mother.

In less than seven years his teachings would have expanded rapidly to the worldwide level, winning Asia and Rome to his side before he reached the age of forty. Eventually, as True Parents, Jesus and his bride would have achieved the individual heavenly kingdom, family heavenly kingdom, clan heavenly kingdom and national heavenly kingdom.

However, this glorious destiny could not be realized. It was the religious people themselves who rejected Jesus' words and called for his crucifixion.

Confronted by the disbelief in Israel, Jesus determined to give his life to achieve spiritual salvation for humankind. However, he knew that Christ would have to come again in order to bring physical salvation on earth in addition to spiritual salvation.

As a result of Jesus' death on the cross, the conflict between supporters of left-wing and right-wing ideologies appeared, symbolizing the two thieves who were crucified with him. This is similar to the separation between Cain and Abel that resulted from Adam's Fall. Likewise, Islam and Christianity appeared and began struggling. Because such separation was caused by the crucifixion of Jesus, Christ will work for the unity of these divisions at the time of the Second Coming.

Why unity is inevitable

God's preparation for the Second Advent required a world-level foundation of successful Cain-Abel reconciliation. This dispensation was carried out through the events surrounding World War II. The Allied countries of Britain, the United States and France represented Christianity and were in the position of Abel. The Axis countries of Germany, Japan and Italy practiced nationalistic militarism and stood in the position of Cain. This war represented the expansion of the conflict between Cain and Abel to the world level.

Immediately after the Allied victory, great strides were made toward creating a world of peace, guided by Christianity. With Britain in the position of Eve on the world level, and the United States and France representing Abel and Cain respectively, the Allied nations stood united in the position ready to receive the Lord of the Second Advent.

Despite this preparation, God's dispensation was not fulfilled at that time. God's representative came to bring God's Word, yet he was met with tremendous persecution and almost universal misunderstanding. This paralleled Jesus' situation two thousand years earlier. Just as the people of Israel in Jesus' time were awaiting the coming of Elijah on a chariot in the clouds, Christians awaited the Second Coming by expecting Jesus himself to come on the clouds.

In the Book of Revelation, Jesus reveals to John the Divine that he will come with a new name. (Rev. 3:12) This foreshadowed that Jesus would come again through another man, just as Elijah returned through the person of John the Baptist.

At this crucial time after World War II, God instructed my husband to bring a new message of truth to Christians in Korea. Korean Christian leaders, however, rejected the possibility that he, a humble young man, had been chosen to bring this new message. They could not believe that the Second Coming would be born as a man on earth any more than the people could believe it at the time of Jesus.

If the Christian churches had united with my husband, the heavenly kingdom already would have been established on earth as well as in the spiritual realm. During the seven-year period from 1945 to 1952, which marked the end of World War II and of the New Testament Age, the entire world could have united in accordance with the providence of God.

The path of indemnity

Instead of uniting with him, however, these religious leaders were jealous as they saw the number of his followers growing. They blindly opposed my husband without hearing him out. They even spread lies about him. Rumors of sexual misconduct and greed, the very antithesis of his teachings, were used to assassinate his character.

God had expanded Christianity and had lifted up a mighty Christian nation like the United States for the purpose of preparing the way for the Second Coming. Whether they realized it or not, those ministers in Korea represented all of Christianity. Because these representatives did not unite with my husband after World War II, worldwide Christianity and America began to decline in power and moral authority.

After World War II, the nation of the United States and the religion of Christianity stood on a victorious foundation of Cain-Abel unity. The time was ripe to receive the Second Coming. However, the whole world opposed my husband's work and missed this opportunity. He was expelled into the wilderness. He was forced to the bottom and has been climbing back up ever since.

Thus, the Cold War began. The world separated again into two worldwide spheres of Cain and Abel, just as it had during World War II. Denying God, just as the thief on the left denied Jesus, communism represented the Cain-type world. Christian democracies, which affirmed the existence of God, represented the thief on the right and the Abel-type world.

It was God's Will that the Messiah of the Second Coming unite these two hostile blocs. That is why we mobilized our church to help settle conflicts between the right wing, represented by the free world, and the left wing, represented by communism. We also have been working as a peacemaker on behalf of Christianity, Judaism and our Islamic brothers and sisters.

During the forty-year Cold War period, my husband fought to break down barriers on the individual, family, clan, national, worldwide and cosmic levels in order to rebuild the lost four thousand-year foundation to receive the Messiah. Since my husband cannot live that long, he knew that he would have to indemnify all of history in just forty years.

During this period of four decades, he restored the four-thousand-year history before Jesus and the sixthousand- year biblical history since the Creation. After this indemnity was paid, unity of the Cain and Abel blocs brought the Cold War to a close. The Unification Church accomplished this internally at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, when athletes from one hundred sixty nations came to Korea.

For decades, my husband has been completely misunderstood. For three years, he was imprisoned in a communist concentration camp. Altogether, he has been wrongfully imprisoned six times for doing God's work. Moreover, the media have mocked him as a monster who brainwashes the young for self-benefit.

Can anyone disagree when I say that Rev. Moon is the most persecuted religious leader in the world? My heart is broken when I think of how my husband has suffered. However he always comforts me, reassuring me that God has deep compassion for those persecuted for doing His work.

My husband and I have purposefully walked a path of indemnity, or restitution, in order to restore the failures of the past, including those of the Old and New Testament Ages. Korea connects to the Old Testament Age, while America, a mostly Christian civilization, connects to the New Testament Age.

For the first twenty years, my husband walked the road of indemnity for the Old Testament Age, focusing on the Korean nation and the Unification Church, representing the positions of the nation of Israel and Judaism, respectively. On the foundation of this work in 1960, we established the Holy Wedding of True Parents on the national level.

Then, in 1971, my husband and I came to America. During the next twenty years in the United States, we walked the path of indemnity to fulfill the New Testament Age and begin the Completed Testament Age. Thus, we established the True Parents' family, the origin of true love, true life and true lineage, based on God.

What the Unification Church offers

The truth that God revealed to my husband is contained in the Divine Principle. Interpreting the history of humankind and the stories of the Bible from the providential viewpoint, the Divine Principle unlocks the answers to questions unsolved for thousands of years. Those who have sincerely studied its contents have found it to be a true gift from God, providing the solutions to the problems facing our society today.

Even in the former communist Soviet Union, government leaders and thousands of young people have found their lives renewed through their studies of our teaching, known as Godism or head-wing thought. Finally free from the oppression of communist ideology, they are seeking spiritual truth to guide their nations.

There are countless other testimonies to the power of the Divine Principle to give hope and new life to young people. Last year, in Korea, we held a wedding celebration for thirty thousand couples, all dedicating their lives to one another, to God and to the world. In most families today, parents cannot effectively guide their children, especially in such intimate matters as love and marriage. Yet, my husband and I brought together young people from one hundred thirty one nations and realized their most cherished dreams of love in a historic way.

This was indeed a great miracle of the modern world. In the future, as people come to understand the value and quality of these precious families, millions will seek such marriages. Through them, God can restore the family that Satan destroyed. Such restored, God-centered families are the very building blocks of an ideal nation and world.

World-level foundation to receive True Parents

My dear friends, when Jesus taught about the coming of the Messiah, he told the parable of the virgins who were awaiting the arrival of the bridegroom. This signifies the restoration of the original positions of man and woman, restored Adam and Eve, to the realm of true equality.

When Christianity failed to meet her bridegroom the first time, God's dispensation had to be delayed by forty years until 1992. At this turning point in the history of restoration, a woman in the position of True Mother has to prepare the world to receive the True Father.

That is why, in April 1992, my husband and I founded the Women's Federation for World Peace. Last year, with the heart of a True Mother, I visited Korea, Great Britain, the United States, France, Japan, Germany and Italy, as well as Russia, China and Oceania.

I gathered together the women of these nations to form chapters of the Women's Federation for World Peace. With these events, the nations that had been the worldwide Cain and Abel countries since World War II and the Cold War united to receive the True Mother and prepare again the foundation to meet the True Father.

Based on this foundation, my husband and I can now stand on a worldwide level as the first True Parents. As True Parents, we are ushering in the Completed Testament Age.

At this historic turning point, we have to practice on the worldwide level the principle that an individual's mind and body have to be united, with God in the central position. To facilitate this, we have founded two organizations working for world peace.

The Interreligious Federation for World Peace represents the mind on the worldwide level. It carries out the internal mission of uniting all the world's religions on the foundation of God's love. The Federation for World Peace, on the other hand, represents the body on the worldwide level. It pursues the external mission of building ideal societies with leaders in every field of human endeavor, including politics, economics, media, academia, science and the arts.

The first true family

Looking at the vertical perspective of love, Adam and Eve could have related directly with God by developing in themselves the four types of love: children's love, sibling's love, conjugal love and parental love. Therefore, Adam and Eve originally would have grown through four realms of heart, based on God's true love, achieving the completion of the levels of children, siblings, couple, and parents. In this manner, they would have achieved what we may call the perfected, or true family.

Adam and Eve were to have become role models for the members of their family. Their children would have looked to their parents as ideal role models. They would have become brothers and sisters who loved each other as their parents loved them. They would have become married couples resembling the husband-wife relationship of their parents.

Finally, with the birth of children, they would have established more true families, resembling that of their parents.

In such a fashion, by establishing ideal, unbreakable families that fulfill the vertical and horizontal unity between parents and children, brothers and sisters, and husbands and wives, we can finally build the eternal basis for God's Kingdom on earth as well as in heaven. Thus, all families in the world originating from the same God-centered ancestors, Adam and Eve, will have equal, divine value.

In every true family, grandparents will be in the position of kings and queens representing God and good ancestors. Parents will be in the position of kings and queens representing present-day humanity, and children will be in the position of princes and princesses representing all future descendants. When all three generations are united, past, present and future will live together in harmony.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is my great privilege to announce to you the establishment of the first perfected True Family. My husband and I, together with our thirteen children and twenty grandchildren, are absolutely dedicated to serving God and humanity. With three generations in one family, we have achieved on the family level the central root of grandparents, the central trunk of parents and the central bud, children of the biblical tree of life. It is our sincere hope that you will symbolically graft into this tree of life by joining us in our efforts to create an ideal nation and world. This marks the beginning of the Completed Testament Age.

The process of tribal messiahship

Ladies and gentlemen, at the dawn of the Completed Testament Age, the time has come for each family to take up the messianic mission of completing the work of salvation throughout the world. After restoring your family, the next step is to restore your tribe, nation and the world. We call this process tribal messiahship.

In the Completed Testament Age, the mother's role will be crucial. She has to unite her children and her husband, and link her family with the True Parents. Already we have sent thousands of tribal messiah missionaries around the world. Soon the original ideal of the family will be achieved worldwide.

As the world enters the Completed Testament Age, we will live with God again. Realizing this, we have to accomplish the unity of our minds and bodies, husbands and wives, and parents and children. We can then establish ideal families, based on God's love.

With such families, the symptoms of our decaying society will vanish. As confident children of God, we no longer will be enslaved by the temptations of alcohol and drug abuse. Moreover, by understanding the holiness of love between husband and wife, we will possess the moral strength to stand strong against infidelity and promiscuity. Finally, we will work as a whole to eliminate war, racial and religious prejudice and world hunger.

Based on this foundation, we can realize a world of true happiness, freedom and peace. In such a world there will be heartfelt compassion for the needs of others, and the nations of the world naturally will cooperate to preserve peace and justice. A situation such as the tragedy we are witnessing in Bosnia today would evoke a resolute and united determination among the world's nations to provide both effective material relief and a swift peaceful solution.

Therefore, understanding that this is God's vision for humanity, let us join together; all nations as one, under God, to bring peace and reconciliation to every corner of the world afflicted with suffering and conflict.

Honored guests, ladies and gentlemen, it is my hope that people of all faiths and nationalities gathered here this afternoon will understand this message with a deep heart and an open mind. I sincerely pray that by upholding the Will of God, we all can reach the place of God's blessing.

May God bless you, your families and your nations.

Thank you very much.

True Parents and the Completed Testament Age

Hak Ja Han
July 28, 1993
Invitational address to US lawmakers
United States Capitol Building, Washington, DC, USA

Photo date and location unknown

Photo date and location unknown

Dear House and Senate members, and respected ladies and gentlemen:

I express my deepest, sincere gratitude to all of you who have honored us with your attendance. As leaders in this great nation, you all have a responsibility in guiding the United States of America, and even the world, into the upcoming new millennium. The promise of a peaceful and prosperous future depends on how we act today.

As we all know, our world today is not filled with happiness or peace; rather it is rife with conflict and despair. We are confronted with broken families and decaying social mores, among other issues. We have debated these matters numerous times, but we have yet to find a solution. Why is that? The true solution to these problems has to come from God, and not only must we deal with the phenomenal aspects of the problems, but we have to reveal the original root in order to bring a solution. To reveal this root, we need to understand deeply God's purpose of creation and realize that we are at a turning point in God's providence.

God's ideal of creation

God created this world for the sake of the experience of true love. God's ideal in creating the first human ancestors, Adam and Eve, was that they perfect themselves through true love so that they could then create a good family of true love, true life and true lineage. A good family like this would have been formed on the basis of united heart and mind among family members in front of God.

If God's original ideal had been realized, there would have been no need for a Messiah or for God's providence to save humanity. Adam's family, though it was merely a single family, would have been the center of the clan, the nation and the world. It would have been the blueprint for all families in the future. It would have been the model for the realization of God's ideal world. However, this present world is far from the good world of God's ideal.

If you read the Bible carefully, you will see that the Fall of human beings involved the loss of Adam's entire family. First, the position of parents was lost through the Fall of Adam and Eve. Second, the position of children was lost as Cain murdered Abel. Because the first family practiced self-centered love, they came to multiply evil rather than goodness, and they bequeathed false life and lineage to their descendants and thus came to form a false world. Thereupon, the history of God's providence of salvation was begun.

In order to restore True Parents centered on true love, God needed a man and a woman who could stand in the stead of Adam and Eve. Only then could a true family be formed in accordance with God's original plan. To restore the original family, God needed to unite Cain and Abel so that the position of true children could be reclaimed, and then He needed to reclaim the positions of True Mother and, finally, True Father. To do so, He worked in reverse of the way by which human beings fell.

This pattern of reconciliation of Cain and Abel is the foundation and consistent formula for restoring the True Parents. The separation of Cain and Abel occurs again and again in Judeo-Christian history. God separated fallen human beings as siblings into two sides, that of Cain, symbolizing Satan, and Abel, symbolizing God, to work out the hatreds resulting from the Fall. God established the pattern of having Abel be struck first and sacrificed. As a result, Abel gained a foundation from which to stand and embrace Cain and recover the blessing given to the eldest son.

By virtue of this principle, the religion that most advances the purpose of salvation always receives Satan's most severe persecution. It walks the path of receiving constant opposition, yet continues its sacrificial effort to save the sinful world. Likewise, good people always stand in the position of being struck first and sacrificed.

The violation of the first family and the course of restoration

Ladies and gentlemen, because illicit, self-centered love invaded the first family, selfishness and greed have continued to dominate human history from the individual to the family, society, nation and world. For this reason, God's work of restoration has to begin at the individual level. Since Satan knows this, he also focuses his efforts on the individual level.

It is not by chance that self-centered individualism has become the dominant way of life in these Last Days. People feel increasingly alienated from those around them, and bear little sense of responsibility for the well-being of their country, society, or even their own family. Rising divorce rates indicate that husbands and wives feel little responsibility for their marriages. Parents do not take responsibility for their children. Individuals, devoid of any sense of human dignity, do not even take responsibility for themselves.

America has seen such phenomena at work, expanding with the youth movement of the 1960s. Idealistic youth rejected the materialism around them in order to seek peace and love. Yet in the process they also abandoned morality and responsibility. Unable to find the true love that they sought, many disillusioned young people ended their lives through drug abuse and free sex, and the suicide rate rose dramatically.

Among all violations, the one that pains God most is free sex. A world of free sex is absolutely contrary to the Will of God. Love needs to come from the stimulation of unblemished emotion. However, free sex is totally devoid of purity or true emotion. How many of us have been touched by the cruelty of infidelity and divorce? Where is God in a one-night stand? What about the nightmares where children are sexually abused by a parent or relative? Is free sex worth the price of a broken child? Where there are homosexuality, free sex, drugs and alcoholism, the world of true love is far away. In this world, Satan openly tells people, "Drink! Smoke! Take drugs! Have sex!" The lifestyle of those who do God's Will, on the other hand, is one hundred eighty degrees different from this.

Throughout history, those who chose to walk a spiritual path of self-sacrifice have been bitterly opposed and persecuted by the rest of the world. It is only God's love and blessing which have allowed the Unification Church, despite worldwide opposition, to prosper. The fact that our church has risen from obscurity in war-torn Korea to become a world-level religious movement in only thirty-eight years testifies to God's continued guidance and support.

Ladies and gentlemen, religion teaches that what has gone wrong can be corrected through a process of restoration. In the Divine Principle, we refer to making restitution for a wrong as "indemnity'' To make restitution for her wrong actions, fallen Eve needed to take the entire responsibility. What this signifies is that Eve must first unite Cain and Abel, her children, so that they can be the foundation on which the True Parents can be restored.

Through Abel's love, Cain was supposed to recognize Abel as God's chosen person and unite with him. However, Cain murdered Abel and thus the opportunity of restoring Adam's family was lost. This was why God had to wait for a woman who could reclaim the position of Eve.

In the Bible, one of God's great heroines is Rebekah, the spouse of Isaac. As the mother of Jacob and Esau, Rebekah held the same position in Isaac's family that Eve held in Adam's family. Unlike Eve, however, Rebekah understood God's providence and helped her second son Jacob, who occupied Abel's position, gain the blessing destined for the eldest son.

When Jacob received the birthright and then Isaac's blessing, the eldest brother, Esau, just like Cain, wanted to kill him. However with Rebekah's help, these brothers ultimately did not resort to violence, but reconciled in a warm embrace. This reconciliation was a major victory for God.

This victory, nevertheless, was not complete, since the reconciliation represented only a symbolic change of blood lineage. The substantial change of blood lineage needed to be accomplished in the womb. This is the context for the enigmatic story of Tamar. By understanding that Tamar, like Rebekah, was in the position of Eve, we can see why Jesus was born of the tribe of Judah, which was her lineage.

I am sure that many of you have read the story about the birth of Tamar's twins. (Gen. 38) Tamar conceived with Judah, her father-in-law, the twins Perez and Zerah. The Bible tells us that the two sons struggled even in the womb for the position of firstborn. During Tamar's labor, Zerah's hand emerged and the midwife tied a red string around his wrist. Then, Zerah's hand disappeared back into the womb and Perez, the younger, was born as the elder. Thus, the second son reclaimed the position of the firstborn son in the womb before they were born.

In terms of conventional morality, the stories of Rebekah and Tamar are questionable at best. However, we now can see why God blessed them, and how they played the role of reclaiming His lineage from Satan, to make it possible for Jesus to be born. From this same lineage, Mary was born in Israel two thousand years later.

Mary had the responsibility of restoring eldest sonship on the family, clan and national levels through paying the indemnity necessary to unite Cain and Abel figures. At that time, the law was to stone to death any woman who became pregnant out of wedlock. Mary responded to God's call and conceived Jesus at the risk of her life.

Because of Mary's faith, and the providential victories of Rebekah and Tamar, Satan could not claim sovereignty over Jesus in Mary's womb. Jesus was born in the position of a true Son under God's perfect, direct lineage. He is the first true Son of God based on the change of the fallen blood lineage. That is why Jesus is the saint of all saints and the ancestor of the true blood lineage. His birth represented the conclusion of the Old Testament Age, the national dispensation, and the dawn of the New Testament Age, the worldwide dispensation.

Mary, in the position to restore the original Eve, needed to build unity between Jesus, who was in the position of Abel, and his elder cousin, John the Baptist, who was in the position of Cain. John had a large following and was widely respected. Their unity was crucial if the people of Israel were to identify Jesus as the Messiah. If they had become one, this would have laid the foundation for the feast of the Lamb. Jesus would have stood as the True Father of humanity, and his bride would have stood as the True Mother of humanity. Eventually, the kingdom of heaven would have been established on earth.

Even though he had received a clear revelation at the time of Jesus' baptism, John the Baptist did not become one with Jesus. Without seeing John's public support for Jesus, it was impossible for the Jewish people to believe in and follow Jesus. Alone, Jesus then undertook the difficult path of self proclamation.

Confronted by the faithlessness in Israel, Jesus determined to give his life to bring spiritual salvation to all who believe. Nonetheless, he said that he would come again in order to bring salvation on earth, which is physical salvation, on the foundation of spiritual salvation.

The opening of the Completed Testament Age

This is why the mind can draw close to God through Jesus, though the body continues to struggle with evil. Even Saint Paul anguished over the contradiction between the desires of the flesh and the desires of the spirit.

Many great Christian evangelists have also suffered because of this contradiction. At the dawn of the Completed Testament Age, the crucial challenge is to accomplish both physical salvation and spiritual salvation. That is why we need the Lord of the Second Coming.

God's preparation for the Second Advent included a world-level foundation of Cain-Abel reconciliation. God carried out this dispensation through events surrounding the Second World War. The Allied countries of Great Britain, America and France represented Christianity and were in the position of Abel. The Axis countries of Germany, Japan and Italy were under the influence of nationalistic militarism and stood in the position of Cain. This war was the world-level expansion of the conflict between Cain and Abel.

Immediately after the Allied victory, great strides were taken toward a world of peace focusing on Christianity. With Great Britain in the position of Eve on the global level, and America and France representing Abel and Cain, respectively, these Allied nations stood ready to receive the Lord of the Second Advent.

Despite this preparation, God's dispensation was not fulfilled at that time. God's representative came to bring His word, yet he was met with tremendous persecution and almost universal misunderstanding. This paralleled Jesus' situation two thousand years ago. Just as the people of Israel in Jesus' time awaited the second coming of Elijah on a chariot descending from heaven, Christians awaited the Second Coming by looking for Jesus himself to descend on a cloud from the sky.

At that crucial time after the Second World War, God instructed my husband to bring a new message of truth to Christians in Korea. Korean Christian leaders, however, rejected the possibility that a humble young man had been chosen to bring a new message.

Instead of uniting with my husband, these religious leaders became jealous of him because of his growing number of followers. They blindly opposed him without hearing him out. They even spread lies about him. They exploited rumors of sexual misconduct and greed, the very antithesis of my husband's teachings, to assassinate his character. The whole world opposed his work and cast him into the wilderness.

Because Christianity did not unite with my husband after the Second World War, the moral authority of Christianity suddenly declined. America, as well as other nations that are founded on Christianity, came to face severe social and cultural crises. Thus the Cold War began. Humankind divided again into two worldwide spheres of Cain and Abel, just as it had during World War II. Denying God, just as the thief on the left denied Jesus, communism represented the Cain-type world. Christian democracies, which affirmed the existence of God, represented the thief on the right, the Abel-type world.

The first battle of the Cold War was the Korean War, which involved sixteen nations from the free world gathered under the banner of the United Nations. And then what happened? Forty years later, at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, one hundred sixty nations that were hostile toward one another could come together at one place in peace. Following that, in the year 1991, South Korea and North Korea, which represent Abel and Cain respectively on the world level, joined the United Nations. Such incidents of harmony and reconciliation have taken place in Korea because it is the nation to which God has sent True Parents.

During the forty years of the Cold War period, my husband fought to break down barriers and rebuild the foundation to receive the Messiah. During that period of time he was completely misunderstood by others. For doing God's work, he has been unjustly imprisoned six times, including three years in a North Korean communist concentration camp. Moreover, the media has vilified him as a cruel monster who brainwashes people for his own profit.

Can anyone disagree when I say that Rev. Moon is the most persecuted religious leader in the world? My heart is broken when I think of how God has suffered to see His messengers rejected time and time again. His only desire has been to comfort God's heart; yet he finds that it is God who always comforts him.

He has walked a path of indemnity and restitution to restore the mistakes of the past, including those of the Old and New Testament Ages. Korea represents the Old Testament Age, while America, a mostly Christian civilization, represents the New Testament Age. For the first twenty years, my husband walked the road of indemnity through the Old Testament Age, centering on the Korean nation and the Unification Church, representing the positions of the nation of Israel and Judaism. In the course of this work, in 1960 we established the Holy Wedding of True Parents on the national level. Then, in 1971, we moved to America. The reason America is essential to the providential dispensation is because of her close ties with the Christian churches, Judaism and Israel. During the next twenty years in the United States, we walked the path of indemnity to fulfill the New Testament Age and to begin the Completed Testament Age.

All dispensations in the Old Testament Age, New Testament Age and Completed Testament Age have to be completed centering on True Parents. Bearing this in mind, Israel, America and Korea share a common fate as nations chosen by God. That is why the United States, which represents the democratic world and the free world, needs to work to bring about the reunification of North Korea, an atheistic communist nation, and South Korea, a nation where democracy and Christianity are flourishing.

People have to realize that God blessed America not for herself, but for the sake of the world. The Pilgrims did not come here for wealth. They came here to attend God. If America does not remember the purpose for which she is blessed, then her blessing will dissipate and she will perish.

God has granted my husband an understanding of the forces involved in His providential history. The truth of God is contained in the Divine Principle. Looking at history and the stories of the Bible from a providential viewpoint, the Divine Principle unlocks the answers to questions unsolved for thousands of years. Those who have sincerely studied its contents have found it to be a true gift from God, providing solutions to the problems facing our society today. Even in the formerly communist Commonwealth of Independent States, former Soviet leaders and thousands of young people have found their lives renewed through their study of these teachings. Finally free from the oppression of communist ideology, they are hungry for spiritual truth to guide their nations.

The role of women and the Blessing

Dear friends! When the foundation of Christianity was lost after World War II, God's dispensation was delayed forty years until the year 1992. That is why, in April 1992, my husband and I founded the Women's Federation for World Peace. Last year, with the heart of True Mother, I visited twelve countries in the world, including those nations that represented Cain's side on the world level at the time of the Second World War, namely Germany, Japan and Italy, and those nations that represented Abel's side on the world level, namely the United States, Great Britain and France. Just as I had done in Russia and China, in those twelve nations I emphasized to more than a million women leaders that we have to lay down the foundation to receive True Parents. Based on this foundation, my husband and I were able to declare the advent of the Completed Testament Age as the first True Parents. I hope that all of you who have come here today will follow our lead and become true parents yourselves.

Ladies and gentlemen, at the dawn of the Completed Testament Age, the time has come for each family to take up the messianic mission and complete the work of salvation all around the world. After restoring your family, the next step is to restore your community, your tribe and your nation. We call this mission, "tribal messiahship." In the Completed Testament Age, the mother's role will be crucial. She has to unite her children with her husband and link her family with the True Parents. Already, we have sent thousands of tribal messiah missionaries around the world. Soon the original ideal of the family will be achieved worldwide.

In the completed family, grandparents will be in the position of kings and queens representing God, parents will be in the position of kings and queens representing present-day humanity, and children will be in the position of princes and princesses representing all future descendants. The past, present, and future will live together in harmony when the three generations are united.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is my great privilege to announce to you the establishment of the first true family. My husband and I, together with our thirteen children and twenty-four grandchildren, are absolutely dedicated to serving God and humanity. With three generations in one family, we have achieved, on the family level, the central root, the central trunk, and the central bud of the tree of life mentioned in the Bible. It is our sincere hope that you will graft into this lineage and join us in our efforts to create an ideal nation and world.

With the advent of the Completed Testament Age, we will be able to fulfill God's original purpose, which was to create Adam and Eve and have them live together with God. Realizing this, we have to accomplish the unity of our mind and body, the unity of parents and children, and the unity of husband and wife. Then we can establish ideal families practicing God's love.

Last year in Korea, my husband and I officiated at the mass wedding ceremony of thirty thousand couples. They dedicated their marriages to God, to each other, and to the world. In today's homes, most parents are unable to guide their children effectively, especially in such personal matters as love and marriage. My husband and I, however, brought together young people from one hundred thirty-one nations in the world and helped them realize their precious dream of love. In this way, families centered on God can come together and build ideal nations and an ideal world.

When we are able to realize such families, social breakdown will disappear. People who have become God's true children will never become slaves to alcohol or drugs. Furthermore, by understanding the sacredness of the love between husband and wife, they will have the moral power to stand strong against illicit and promiscuous sexual relations. Lastly, when this power is pooled together, it will carry out the work of eradicating war, racism, famine and disease. On this foundation, we will be able to build a world where we can fully enjoy true freedom, peace and happiness.

Esteemed friends! It is my hope that, as leaders of this nation, you will understand the meaning of this message with a deep heart and an open mind. I sincerely pray that, by fulfilling God's ideal, we can all reach the place of His blessing.

May God bless America! Thank you very much.

Women Will Play a Leading Role in the Ideal World III

Hak Ja Han
Women’s Federation for World Peace Japan Conference
September 24, 1992
Tokyo Dome, Tokyo, Japan

Photo date and location unknown

Photo date and location unknown

Respected guests, members of the Women’s Federation for Peace in Asia, ladies and gentlemen: On this occasion, as we approach the Women’s Federation for World Peace seven-city speaking tour, I wish to express my heartfelt gratitude to all of you who have helped make this evening a success.

On September 17 of last year I came to Tokyo as the principal speaker at the national rally held by the Women’s Federation for Peace in Asia. Since that rally, this organization has received tremendous support in Japan and around the world and has accomplished remarkable growth. On November 20, the first Women’s Federation for Peace in Asia rally was held in Seoul, with fifteen thousand representative Korean women in attendance.

Then, on April 10 of this year, more than one hundred fifty thousand women from seventy-two countries filled the Seoul Olympic Stadium beyond capacity to express their strong desire for world peace. That rally, the largest women’s rally ever held, inaugurated the Women’s Federation for World Peace. I have nothing except the highest words of praise for your strong dedication and hard work in bringing about such remarkable growth in this movement.

Following that international rally, I toured eighty-one cities in Korea and continued my lectures on the topic of “Women’s Role in the Ideal World.” Everywhere I went, people gathered in numbers so large as to resemble the clouds of heaven. In all, I received the welcome and support of more than a million Korean women. The enthusiasm of these women clearly illustrated that women possess an unlimited capacity to contribute to future world peace.

In only eight years we will enter the twenty-first century. We are witnessing the passing of the era of brute force, in which men have held almost exclusive sway. This era has been tainted by war, violence, exploitation and destruction. In the new era we are about to enter, women will have the central role in leading humanity into love, forgiveness, harmony and cooperation. My tour was an opportunity to bring this important realization to the people of Korea.

The original role of women

Women need to come to a new realization of their original, God-given role and become cornerstones for peace, happiness and freedom. The only way for us to build peace in each of our nations and in the world is to build true families, that is, families confirmed in true love.

The International Wedding Ceremony of thirty thousand couples in Seoul on August 25 of this year validated the fact that world peace can be brought into reality through ideal families. This ceremony, held as a part of the first World Culture and Sports Festival, was a historic declaration opening the gate to world peace. It was a giant panorama of love testifying that humanity is one family, and that a kindred tie centering on God’s love unites the world as one.

On that day, my husband and I, in our capacity as the True Parents, gave the Blessing of eternal love to some sixty thousand brides and grooms from one hundred thirty-one countries. At this magnificent festival of love held under the bright sunshine and azure sky, each bride and groom made his or her pledge to establish true families and a world of true peace before God, True Parents and all humanity. The covenants of love formed that day centering on God’s true love are eternal and absolute. Such marriage bonds can never be seen as conditional or limited, because true love seeks to give perpetually. When two people come together in such love, they form an eternal association that no force can sunder. Thus, for these brides and grooms there can never be even the slightest thought of divorce or the corruption of sexual morality—two problems that have become so widespread in today’s society.

Because these people come together in an environment of God’s true love, differences of nationality, race, language and customs do not become obstacles. God’s true love melts down all obstacles, and these husbands and wives will discover in His bosom a common language of true love. They will come together in the common arena of true love. Their unions transcend nations, race and religion. They will grow to become citizens of the future world who will serve and embrace the world. When these people set down their roots of sacrificial true love around the world, the world will be swept clean of all the philosophies of hatred and conflict. There will be an end to the tragedies t)f war and genocide. There will be only true, ideal families and a true world.

Peace through international marriage

Already, in 1988, my husband and I had built a bridge of eternal peace between Korea and Japan by joining in the Blessing of marriage more than six thousand Korean-Japanese couples. As husbands and wives centered on God’s true love, they formed families that, by virtue of their connection by lineage, have a greater love than anyone for the peoples, traditions and cultures of both countries. Peace in northeast Asia, at least, is now guaranteed forever through these Korean-Japanese couples.

Traditionally, the task of protecting and nurturing the family has been the special right and mission given to women. In our society today, however, there are innumerable fundamental problems that threaten to undermine our families. Certainly the problems faced by the world today cannot be resolved by developing military might or economic power. In contemporary society the amplification of problems of an internal nature, such as the collapse of traditional values and the breakdown of social order, is undermining our external growth and development.

Even now, tens of millions of people on this earth are dying of starvation. Underlying the challenges of adequate production and distribution of food is the more fundamental problem of the dearth of the love by which we would see these suffering people as our own sons and daughters, our own brothers and sisters, our own mothers and fathers. Societies today are increasingly afflicted with crime and drug abuse. It is said that humanity has escaped the threat of nuclear war. Yet, our future appears more shrouded by the clouds of despair than lit up by the sunshine of hope.

Such crises faced by the world today reflect deeper, more fundamental problems, which will not be resolved by fragmentary or superficial means. Any effort to pursue the solutions to such problems solely through human means, while excluding God who has been working His providence in the background of human history, is certain to end in failure.

This is the reason that Rev. Moon teaches Godism, which is also referred to as Head-wing Thought. Despite having had to undergo every imaginable form of suffering, he has opened a new horizon of victory, one that enables humanity to find solutions to the problems of the world. His message is that the gates to a peaceful world will be opened only when humanity recovers its relationship with God and reestablishes original, ideal families. I’m not talking only about the United States; I’m also talking about Russia, which has been controlled by atheistic communism. There, large numbers of young people and intellectuals are studying Head-wing Thought, which is opening their eyes to the existence of God and the ideal of a true family.

Whether we are concerned with racial discord, violence, conflict between the rich and the poor, destruction of the environment, or even the selfishness exhibited by countries and peoples, we can begin to work out the solutions to the world’s problems only after we have been trained within the environment of the ideal family in the practice of true love—that is, the love that seeks to sacrifice oneself for the sake of others.

Practical steps

To bring Godism into reality, Rev. Moon has made efforts in a wide variety of fields. Using the Unification Church as a foundation, he has established the International Conference on the Unity of the Sciences, the Professors World Peace Academy, the World Media Conference, the Summit Council for World Peace, the Global Congress of Religions, the Federation for World Peace, the Interreligious Federation for World Peace, the World Collegiate Association for the Research of Principles, the World University Federation, various international performing arts groups and many other organizations. Each of these organizations holds as its ideal and purpose the building of a world of peace centered on God.

Rev. Moon, who has devoted his heart and soul to the realization of world peace through the establishment of ideal families, was also the central figure in the establishment of the Women’s Federation for Peace in Asia and the Women’s Federation for World Peace. In addition, he has founded the House of Unification for World Peace in order to bring together the efforts that are already in existence in each country around the world.

No one can deny that Rev. Moon has established the most expansive foundation in the world, extending into religion, philosophy, academia, media, education, science and culture. When all these different fields join forces and begin to step forward as one, the world of peace that has been the object of our desires surely will appear before our eyes.

True love, by its nature, perpetually seeks to give and to sacrifice for the sake of others. True love allows no concept of an enemy. In his practice of Godism centered on true love, Rev. Moon has received all sorts of misunderstanding, persecution, slander and innumerable hardships. Rev. Moon, however, would never even think of considering anyone his enemy. In keeping with this spirit, even though for almost a century the Soviet Union had been considered the enemy of the free world, Rev. Moon visited Mikhail Gorbachev when he was president of the Soviet Union. Rev. Moon also went to North Korea and met with President Kim Il Sung. There he expounded on Headwing Thought, which is the principle of peace centered on God’s true love. Rev. Moon has shown that he is willing to go to the ends of the earth for the purpose of practicing the true love that perpetually gives to others.

Even at this moment, Rev. Moon is working harder than anyone to lay the foundation for Japan to become a nation most respected in Asia and the world. He is also working day and night to ensure that his teachings reach the young people of Japan so that they can follow a properly moral path. Look at those young people working in a pure and healthy manner! Already many Japanese young people have gone out across the world. As a result of their activities, they are experiencing overflowing love, esteem and respect from the people of the world.

Rev. Moon would have had much to say to each one of you regarding the true way to save Japan. I know very well how much love my husband holds for this country and for its people. Unfortunately, however, I must appear on this stage alone tonight, even though I am not really qualified to give to you the full message of his deep love. Certain persons who are ignorant and caught up in their own prejudices continue to persecute and oppose our work. I hope that they will come as quickly as possible to a true understanding of Rev. Moon’s love and his true will.

Ladies and gentlemen, in order for Japan to strengthen its relations with other Asian countries, it needs to establish a position of unity with Korea. This will give Japan more friends and a larger foundation. Koreans and Japanese each refer to the others’ country as “the country that is so close and yet so distant.” Now it is time for our two countries to become close to each other in every meaning of that word and to stand side by side in shouldering the future of Asia. More than anything else, I believe that Japan has to devote its full energies to the unification of Korea.

Japan’s rule over Korea culminated in a division of the peninsula. The deep pain that comes from this division can be relieved completely by efforts on your part for Korean reunification. A first step would be to unite the two organizations of Korean residents in Japan, one of which is pro-Seoul and the other pro- Pyongyang. These two organizations can be brought together by means of Head-wing Thought, centered on true love. If Korea and Japan oppose each other, they will both lose all that they have. If these two countries combine their strengths, they will provide the strongest energy to build Asia’s future and accomplish world peace.

Historically Asia has been the leader in developing the spiritual aspect of world civilization. It is inevitable that a new movement of women, a new movement of families, and a new movement for peace begin here in Asia.

Rights and responsibilities

The women’s movement that I have been directing has a character that is fundamentally different from the women’s rights movements that challenge male authority and assert our rights exclusively. The women’s rights movements that have developed in western societies until now reflect the antagonism and animosity that have been an integral part of western civilization’s culture of struggle. Ours, by contrast, is a movement based on the East Asian principles of harmony that stress mutual accord and complementarity. Our movement’s ideal is to seek out tasks that men cannot perform, that is, tasks that can be performed only by women, so that we can join men in complementarity in order to establish true families.

The destruction of families is becoming the most serious problem in our societies, and yet no one is able to propose an effective solution. The very foundation of human existence is being shaken. Thus, in the United States, family values and issues of social morality are becoming major issues in the ongoing presidential election campaign. Such issues are not the concern of America and Western Europe alone, however. They represent a serious crisis for all humankind.

Japan and Korea are also affected by such problems. We are at a stage in which we must seriously concern ourselves with the moral crisis that supersedes our economic development. The only way to resolve this crisis is to teach Godism and Head-wing Thought, which approach the problem from the perspective of providential history.

We have a particularly urgent need for the moral education of our young people. In this regard, I was surprised to hear that many Japanese people responded positively to the recent series of rallies upholding the spirit of Yu Gwan-soon. Certainly Yu Gwan-soon, who is known as “the Joan of Arc of Asia,” is a most appropriate role model for instilling patriotism in young people. What surprised and moved me, though, was the progressive and broad-minded attitude of the Japanese people in their search to transcend the historically unpleasant relations between Korea and Japan and open a new avenue of understanding.

World peace through ideal families

I would like to ask the women of Japan, in particular, to take your stand at the forefront of the effort to resolve the serious issues in our world related to the family. You possess the most admirable tradition of women in the world because, through your country’s long history, you have protected your families and nation in a spirit of love and sacrifice. Also, I know that you women were the hidden force behind your country’s recovery after the total destruction of World War II. You enabled Japan to become one of the strongest economic powers in the world. You need to take the foremost position in our movement, because the virtues of sacrifice and service that you have cherished through your tradition now must be applied on the worldwide level in the form of true love and perpetual giving for all of humankind.

Men have tried for the past twenty centuries to build a world of peace, and now the task has been entrusted to us women. It is the decree of Heaven that we take up the task of building world peace through ideal families. In general, men tend to center on themselves, whereas women tend to be more willing to sacrifice themselves. With the coming of the age of women, we are entering a new history in which, instead of sacrificing the whole for the benefit of each individual, we are to sacrifice ourselves for the benefit of the whole and, in this way, exercise true love.

Let us strengthen our spirits with Head-wing Thought and become leading figures in building a world of peace. We need to correct deteriorating family morals. We must stand up against drug abuse and the spread of AIDS. We need to give proper guidance to our young people, who are wandering aimlessly along self-destructive paths.

We are in a new age of transition in which women have to take a firm stand and contribute to world peace. I hope all of you will stand proudly at the frontline of peace. Once again, I thank you for your support for this upcoming nationwide speaking tour.

I pray that God’s blessing will be upon you and your families.

Thank you.