God's Vision of National Restoration Inspires Unificationists in Cambodia

God’s powerful vision of national restoration seems to inspire our Unificationist leaders and members in Cambodia. A momentum is now visible in critical areas — the pilot project for achieving tribal messiahship in Battambang is successful and many young people are joining our church and receiving a comprehensive education. Moreover, some legislators, scholars and NGO leaders are active in promoting our ideas.

Visiting Cambodia (March 25–28) to see some of these breakthroughs was a privilege. This experience in a mission field was refreshing and life giving. Our Cambodian members do not talk much about restoring their nation. They are just doing it, working together, consistently, with joy and a clear focus. Indeed, our movement in Cambodia is still young; it has not yet reached critical mass, but I could see what makes this country promising as a strategic nation.

Released in 1984, film director Roland Joffé’s Killing Fields showed the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. The movie illustrated how in a short time a group of dedicated fanatics can commit the worst crimes on a national scale. Pol Pot, the mastermind of this tragedy, did even worse than Mao Zedong in China or Kim Il Sung in North Korea. Research conducted by Yale University has established that the Khmer Rouge killed 1.7 million people, around 20 percent of the population (April 1975–January 1979). The brutality was unprecedented, and the ideological motivation for the genocide was a radicalization of Marxism-Leninism that had never reached this intensity before.

In light of the savagery perpetuated forty years ago, the current breakthrough of our movement in Cambodia is surprising. Why Cambodia? Why not in one the neighboring countries, Vietnam, Laos or Myanmar? The answer is complex. God has certainly prepared and commissioned the right people to do the right things in the right places at the right time. During a long period, God’s work in Cambodia was latent, but suddenly a few people opened a path and the path now is now much broader and clear.

In the progress of existence and three dimensions

Let us start talking a bit about the right place and the right time. Modern Cambodia is 180,000 square kilometers in size, with a population of 15 million people. The majority of the population is Khmer but there are also Chinese, Vietnamese and other minorities. The country’s motto is “Nation, Religion, King,” exactly the same as Thailand’s unofficial motto. Cambodia’s current king is Norodom Sihamoni, son of late King Norodom Sihanouk (1922–2012). Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has been in power for thirty years, holds the political power. Hun Sen was in the Khmer Rouge clique in the beginning, but then fled to Vietnam in 1977. He played a critical role in the fall of the Khmer regime and in the slow transition (sometimes described as enlightened despotism or guided democracy) to the current regime.

This makes Cambodia unique. Despite the chaos of the Communist episode, the monarchy is still there, the same dynasty still symbolizes the essence of the nation. Moreover, Cambodia has maintained a stable state.

Now, let us put Cambodia in the bigger picture. Located on the Indochinese Peninsula, Cambodia belongs to Southeast Asia. Since 1999, it has been a member of the ASEAN, a regional union that comprises over 600 million people. It belongs to a region that mediates between the Indian and the Chinese cultural spheres.

Within the Unificationist framework, Cambodia is under the regional group leadership of Dr. Yong Chungsik and is part of a huge region consisting of Oceania, Central Asia, Greater China, and South Asia. In this region, our movement has selected five strategic nations — Taiwan is in Greater China. Nepal is a nation where Hinduism is the main religion. The Philippines is the most Christian Asian nation (over 90

percent of the population is either Catholic or Protestant). Thailand and Cambodia share the same Theravada legacy (small-vehicle Buddhism). Our Unification missions in Thailand and the Philippines started in 1975 and we now have a strong presence in both countries. Our missions in Nepal and then in Cambodia developed much later (in the late 1990s and early 2000s). We can say that the unification movement in Cambodia is the youngest among the thirteen strategic nations.

At present, Cambodia comprises twenty-five provinces (including Phnom Penh, the capital city), and 171 districts. Our movement has communities in the capital city and in three provinces, but tries to maintain activities in the whole country.

As of the beginning of 2017, 350 people had registered as members of the FFWPU. In Phnom Penh, they meet for Sunday service and occasional Hoon Dok Hae in the headquarters church. A large number of members are students living in the three CARP centers in the capital.

Preparing a bright future

In Battambang, the nation’s second city, the Family Federation is renting a huge center for both Sunday services and offices for various providential organizations and has one CARP center (see Blessing a Wounded Nation). Two others will open soon. They use Battambang mostly heavenly tribal messiahship pilot project, which the special envoy to Cambodia, Reverend Saito, supervises in conjunction with the regional group leader and the FFWPU International Headquarters’ HTM Academy. They hold Blessing Ceremonies almost every week, in close cooperation with our community, local governments and some advisers. The goal is to turn the newly blessed couples into regular FFWPU members who attend gatherings and offer tithing. Moreover, FFWPU is running a center in Banteay Meanchey Province (on the border with Thailand), and another in Kampot Province, in Southern Cambodia, near Vietnam.

In 2017, the Cambodian movement had a wonderful occasion to show its capacity to mobilize people. When True Mother inaugurated YSP in Thailand, eight hundred people came from Cambodia to see True Mother and listen to her speech. In May 2018, the Cambodian movement will inaugurate its new 950- square-meter (10,225-square-foot) headquarters, in Phnom Penh. The will use the nice hall on the ground floor Sunday services and other meetings, and the three floors above will host offices (FFWPU, UPF, FFWP, YSP) and dormitories.

They will be able to host workshops there as well. Momentum exists in Cambodia now. The nation is famous for two records: it once offered to Heaven the largest known religious site on the globe, Angkor Wat, the splendor of which attracts tourists from around the world. It has also offered to Satan one of the worst mass slaughters, which the Khmer Rouge perpetrated forty years ago. In Angkor Wat, sculptures show the terrible fight between good and evil forces in Cambodia’s creation. This may be the time for Heaven to claim this country, whose people have suffered in the midway position perhaps to a greater extreme than has the rest of humankind.