Sun Myung Moon (1920 – 2012)
Founder of the Unification Church, a new religious movement.
Up until today evil has lured goodness into evil, but goodness has not been able to lure evil into goodness. This may be the reason why up to today Christianity has not been able to boldly fulfill the Will of God.
Those who are the most devout, outstanding Unification Church members are they the most beautiful people externally or just so-so? Very often, those who have the features of an Idaho potato are the most loyal members of the Unification Church.
After 7,000 biblical years — 6,000 years of restoration history plus the millennium, the time of completion — communism will fall in its 70th year. Here is the meaning of the year 1978. Communism, begun in 1917, could maintain itself approximately 60 years and reach its peak. So 1978 is the border line and afterward communism will decline; in the 70th year it will be altogether ruined. This is true. Therefore, now is the time for people who are studying communism to abandon it.
The Reverend Moon is a fundamentalist with a vengeance. He has a belief system that admits of no boundaries or limits, an all-embracing truth. His writings exhibit a holistic concern for the person, society, nature, and all things embraced by the human vision. In this sense the concept underwriting the Unification church is apt, for its primary drive and appeal is unity, urging a paradigm of essence in an overly complicated world of existence. It is a ready-made doctrine for impatient young people and all those for whom the pursuit of the complex has become a tiresome and fruitless venture.
Until this day the history of restoration has been the course of being beaten and recovering. Thus, history has been made by those who were beaten and persecuted. Go where people hate to be, and where people cry sorrowfully from the depths of their hearts. There lies the bone marrow of history.
God is not stupid. Don't make excuses before Him. God will not make excuses, even though man may cause damage to His promise. You must take that degree of responsibility too.
Why trust Rev. Moon's dreams and visions of the new age and his role in it, we ask? Most converts actually have had minimal contact with him. Frederick Sontag (Sun Myung Moon and the Unification Church, Abingdon, 1977) in his interviews with Moon appears to have found a pleasant but not an overwhelming personality. Charisma, as traditionally understood, seems hardly applicable here. Rather, Moon provides a model. He suffered valiantly, he knows confidently, he prays assuredly, he lives lovingly, say his followers. The Divine Principle is not an unrealizable ideal; it is incarnate in a man, it lives, it is imitable. His truth is experienced to be their truth. His explanation of the universe becomes their understanding of themselves and the world in which they live.
There have been a number of instances in the Bible where the Spirit of God has acted in a birth. For instance, in the story of Abraham and Sarah, Sarah was too old and Abraham was also old. But the Bible says God quickened the womb of Sarah so that she could bear a son. In the same way, the Holy Spirit worked with Mary. It was not done in the sense of producing a child from the union of God with man, but in the sense of God participating in the event. Jesus was born of a father and a mother, just as anyone else is, but in his case the Spirit of God was working also.
Charles Darwin's evolution theory states that the strong eat the weak. According to Darwin's evolution theory we are the worst people. But it is actually not so. It is a natural universal law. If we take Darwin's evolution theory literally then God is the worst kind of being. Because God planned creation in a certain way. When love is involved there is no evil. Even mother birds sacrifice their own lives for the sake of their babies.
In the providential history of mankind, Adam fell on the individual level; Noah fell on the family level; Abraham on the tribal level (clan level); Moses, on the national level; and Jesus, both on the national and worldwide levels. All those things are not a history of victory at all. But when we think of centering on the man Noah -- he kept his faith, trying to carry out his mission for 120 long years -- but we have to excel his faith. Abraham was the father of faith, Moses was a man of faith, Jesus was the son of man, trying to carry out his mission at the cost of his life. But they are, in a way, failures. So, in order for us to accomplish our mission, our whole-sided mission, we must excel them in many ways. It makes it difficult for us to carry out our mission; but when we pour out our whole energy, our whole being, into this providence project, we can get the cooperation of the spirit world, making it possible. We must turn all things upside down like this, making it a reality, and making it a success. Jesus had a strong sense of purpose in his mission, but ours must be even stronger than that.
We accused a newcomer to our shores of criminal and intentional wrongdoing for conduct commonly engaged in by a large percentage of our own religious leaders, namely, the holding of church funds in bank accounts in their own names. Catholic priests do it. Baptist ministers do it, and so did Sun Myung Moon.
No matter how we view it, it remains a fact that we charged a non-English-speaking alien with criminal tax evasion on the first tax returns he filed in this country. It appears that we didn't give him a fair chance to understand our laws. We didn't seek a civil penalty as an initial means of redress. We didn't give him the benefit of any doubt. Rather, we took a novel theory of tax liability of less than $10,000 and turned it into a guilty verdict and eighteen months in a federal prison.
I do feel strongly, after my subcommittee has carefully and objectively reviewed this case from both sides, that injustice rather than justice has been served. The Moon case sends a strong signal that if one's views are unpopular enough, this country will find a way not to tolerate, but to convict. I don't believe that you or I or anyone else, no matter how innocent, could realistically prevail against the combined forces of our Justice Department and judicial branch in a case such as Reverend Moon's.
Where did you set your standard of faith? Do you desire the greatest blessing? I know you do. Are you willing to take up the cross? Do you know what Jesus said? He said, "He who loves his mother, his father, his wife, his brothers and sisters, his children more than me is not worthy of me. To come with me, you must bear your own cross." Jesus Christ, of course, was a pathfinder. He opened up the territory, the new way. In order to be adopted as a true son and daughter of God, those who followed his path must walk the same way. The time has come when the tears of civilized people are necessary. The tears of the millionaire are needed, The tears of the men of talent, the men of knowledge are needed. And their sweat. And even their blood. This is the only way we can expedite the restoration of the Kingdom of Heaven.
That should be your determination. As a man, in your right front pants pocket is a small inside watch pocket. Keep pliers there, and when you go to the bathroom, once a day, pinch your love organ. Cut the skin a little bit as a warning. If your love organ does not listen to your conscience, then you should cut off the tip. Even if it takes that extreme measure, we have to make sure our mind and body become one.
Like most Americans, Wineburg had been unaware of the power Moon holds in our nation's politics. The reverend, who once served eleven months in prison for income tax fraud, is best known for marrying thousands of strangers in mass weddings. Those events earned him a public reputation as a spectacle-mad eccentric, but that obscures his role as a significant D.C. power broker. In fact, Moon is an important patron of the Republican party and of the conservative movement. Through his various front groups he's been a major proponent and minor recipient of Bush's faith-based funding.
You should be a person who can establish the Heavenly Kingdom rather than just the one who can go there. Those who can go to heaven are those who wish to be dependent on God, but those capable of building the Kingdom are those who can let God depend on them.
Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." In order for you yourself to become the way, the truth, and the life, you must embrace the whole universe and bring harmony to it.
When Jesus said, "The Kingdom of Heaven is within you," it was the mind that he was speaking about. The Kingdom of Heaven must begin within a mind which exists for the sake of the whole. Such a mind is so broad that the entire universe can be embraced by it; the whole Kingdom, including all of mankind, can come within that mind. In that case, who should be the center of your mind — the nation, the world, or God? Yes, it should be God. If your mind is embracing everything, that means you are trying to capture or embrace the mind of God.
Rev. and Mrs. Moon boldly entered Moscow in April 1990 and had a one-on-one meeting in the Kremlin with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. This was another miracle to have occurred. Rev. Moon conveyed his support to Gorbachev of his policies of glasnost and perestroika. I was there to translate that extraordinary meeting. Rev. Moon persuaded Gorbachev to allow religious freedom, to allow God to enter the Soviet Union. In my opinion, this meeting was crucially important in the sight of God. It was, in a way, the beginning of a peaceful process of the demise of the Soviet empire. Rev. Moon indeed motivated Gorbachev in the direction of peaceful reform. The greatest miracle that occurred in this century was the liberation of the Soviet Union without nuclear war. The threat of nuclear war was the single greatest concern of Rev. Moon. He said, "Thank God, not a single nuclear weapon was used against mankind since 1945." Clearly, it was God who dismantled the Evil Empire.
That's why I can dream dreams that God Himself never dreamed. I'm that kind of person. I can believe the things even God can't believe. I can do things even God can't. That's why God hated me more than Satan hated me.
Anyone can keep going in an easy situation, but do you have a philosophy which can enable you to meet the worst hardship?