Cheon Il Guk: Settlement and Life as Citizens

We solemnly offered the third anniversary of True Father’s Seonghwa on the foundation laid by True Mother’s three-year devotion of attending True Father at his side. I imagine many of you have overcome the desolate feeling of having lost a parent in the course of three years and have risen to face our responsibility as True Parents’ children, to inherit and advance Father’s last wishes. We have now ushered in a new year through which we should invest ourselves completely in making Cheon Il Guk a reality.

On 1.13 on the heavenly calendar in 2013, True Parents proclaimed the ideal of building Cheon Il Guk based on the foundation of True Father’s having endured a course of restoration through indemnity as the messiah, savior and True Parent called by our Heavenly Parent. We have entered a period when our responsibility is to make this ideal reality. Most importantly, we observed True Mother carry on honorably over the past three years, despite her tremendous sorrow. She encouraged us to “advance without ceasing” and wrestled with each providential task for firmly establishing Cheon Il Guk. Through her, we were able to see with our own eyes the preparations being made for laying the foundation for Cheon Il Guk.

True Mother spurred efforts to compile a set of holy scriptures enabling the Family Federation to stand firm as the central religious institution in Heaven’s providence. Compiling the three great Holy Scriptures and establishing a structure for conveying the truth to future generations is a great accomplishment in itself. Cheon Il Guk should not simply remain a nomenclature for our faith but should be transformed into an actual sovereign nation of Heaven in which we can live together as a heavenly community in which citizens of Cheon Il Guk can live together in one heart, one body and one harmony. The enactment of the Cheon Il Guk Constitution, as a governance system, is another significant achievement in laying the basis for the substantiation of Cheon Il Guk.

Heaven’s providence has shifted from the wilderness era led by True Father into the era of the complete settlement of Cheon Il Guk led by True Mother. Thus, she has been guiding the development and support of special educational programs to raise and train the next generation of leaders like Joshua and has been spearheading a new paradigm of instilling accountability and ownership in second-generation members. To this end, she created the Cranes Club to bring together second-generation members with professional insight in a range of fields to lead them back to True Parents’ realm of love, so that they can live based on principled values.

A major event on the third anniversary of True Father’s Seonghwa was the first Sunhak Peace Prize Award Ceremony, which was to honor True Father’s teachings and achievements. It is now our responsibility to create Cheon Il Guk in reality based on True Parents’ achievements. We might ask ourselves, Where is the Cheon Il Guk that True Parents proclaimed? Nothing has changed in this world, which is still hell with people fighting among themselves. Does not a day go by without news of conflict, war and murder heading toward great destruction?

At such times, let us look inward to see whether we are hoping to live in Cheon Il Guk built by others. True Parents proclaimed Cheon Il Guk to remind us that it starts from “us,” from “our families.” We should expand the ideals, values and norms of Cheon Il Guk to society and manifest the Cheon Il Guk ideal with our own hands. Cheon Il Guk will not be created by anyone other than us. This is not an apocalyptic confession of our faith with a certain deadline; rather it is our ultimate destiny to manifest and establish Cheon Il Guk in our daily lives and in those of all human beings.

We survived the wilderness age, protected by our absolute, vertical faith in our Heavenly Parent and True Parents. In this era of establishing Cheon Il Guk, let us now embody True Parents’ teachings, embody true love by horizontally sharing with others, manifest our identity as True Parents’ children and as citizens of Cheon Il Guk and transform the world. In 2016, let us perfect our individuality by leading a life in vertical oneness with True Parents, casting no shadow, perfect the true family ideal in our own families, and create a federation of families that can go out to the world to living others’ sake as True Parents have taught us. Let us pledge now to bring the Cheon Il Guk ideal to fruition by being victorious in our mission as heavenly tribal messiahs blessed by True Parents.