The Path of the Unification Church

Father gave this sermon on Sunday October 14, 1988, to commemorate thirty eight years having passed since his release from the Hungnam Special Labor Camp.

Note: This speech has been translated and edited with the hard work of the members of the True Peace magazine team and published in October issue of TP magazine.

God and seeking the way to live with him. On the other hand, philosophy, today’s philosophy to

be more precise, is about discovering God by centering on all knowledge and cultural

backgrounds and on certain worldviews and other ideological viewpoints. They thus differ from

each other. Philosophy is about finding God whereas religion is about living with him. That is

why the people who have moved history until now are not philosophers.

Where God should be

As you are probably aware, there are four great saints. Who are they? They are leaders who

started religions. This is true of Jesus, of Buddha, of Confucius and of Mohammed. These are the

four great saints. How did they, out of the innumerable people in history, come to bear the honor

of being the four great saints? They were not people that lived their lives yearning to live with

humankind. Instead, they were people that thought solely about God’s will and about living with

him and that kept pace with God’s will as they lived their lives.

Human thoughts and desires are transient. Each human being’s path differs, based on whether he

or she is superior or inferior and in accordance with the lifestyle of each particular individual and

his or her situation, but those paths all slip away. The lifestyle of a patriot continues as long as the

nation exists. That is why a patriot’s loyalty ends when the nation comes to its end. Because

people try to follow the path of their thought processes or desires based on their nations, on their

societies, or on their families in the human world, the paths of the societies, families and

individuals centered on the nation have nothing to do with God’s will. Why? Because they belong

to the fallen realm. The place where God should be needs to transcend the fallen world.

From this viewpoint, the historical representatives that have tried (at least) to pave a path for

humanity to advance to the ideal world, that is, a world of a higher dimension, are the four great

saints. Christians formed the European cultural realm centered on Christianity. Hindus formed

the Indian cultural realm centered on Hinduism. Figures in the Far East formed a cultural realm

centered on the three religions of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism; Muslims formed the

Middle East cultural realm centered on Islam. In this way, they have endeavored until now to

form the ideal life realm for God, in other words, his ideal foundation.

Why is it, then, that believers have conflicts with one another? They have conflicts because they

all desire the standard by which God can lead his ideal life in the world centered on their own

religious denominations. It is bad for religious people to fight amongst themselves, but we should

realize that it also demonstrates that the standard they desire is yet to be achieved. Thus, God’s

will remains to be fulfilled until that standard can be achieved. In light of this, since the cultural

backgrounds behind people differ, their starting places are also all different. Those in the East

began Eastern culture and those in the West began Western culture. In order to bring them

under control, the four great cultural realms formed. Wherein lies the purpose for doing that? It

is not to break them all up centering on religions, but rather to unite the religions and save global

humanity on the foundation of the united religions.

Then, where is global humanity, once saved, supposed to go? Buddhists desire to go to a world

that believes in Buddhism, Christians desire to go to a world that believes in Christianity and

Muslims desire to live in a world where they can live their lives centering on the religious

denominations they belong to. Thus, they all desire to live in a united sphere. All religious

founders, longed to achieve that hope, and at the same time, therein lies God’s will.

However, what none of these religious founders understood was that all the cultural realms thus

formed become one in the Last Days. There comes a time when they become one and the will of

the individual, the family, the tribe, people, nation, world and that of all of heaven and earth

come into contact with God’s will, based on which they originated. They did not understand this.

What will happen next after a worldwide domain is formed? Only one axis exists where the

nations can become one, the tribes can become one and the individuals can become one

centering on the peoples, tribes and families.

The paths for the will of an individual and the will of a family are the same, the only difference

between the two being the scope of that will. That is why they need to unite. Since God is the

absolute, one being, we need to inherit the will of that one being.

It is the same as people climbing a mountain from all directions, starting out from regions of

different cultural backgrounds. When, in the end, they reach the peak, they look at one another

and say, “Ah, you’re from the east! You are from the south! You are from the west! You are from

the north!” After they get to know each other in this way, and they ask one another, “Who did

you come to find?” each will answer, “I came to find God.” They will not know this until they

reach the mountaintop. Only God, who watches over those people climbing to the mountaintop

and who works his providence as he looks down upon them, knows this—no one else.

Love manifests creative power

Based on this viewpoint, since the path of religion began when people first began to live centering

on God’s will, the path followed by religion is the path of God’s will. Since God’s will is the will of

the absolute being, it remains the sole will forever. There cannot be two of them. Therefore,

people who live while centering on the absolute will, that is, the will of the absolute God, live

their lives in an individual heaven. People whose families lead such a life live with God in a family

heaven. Beyond peoples, nations and the world, when the entire world lives together, united as

one and centered on the will of the world, that becomes the kingdom of heaven on earth.

What is the Unification Church’s purpose? It, too, follows the same path. The Unification

Church’s Rev. Moon did not begin living his life centered on himself. If God exists amidst all the

paths of religions, in the midst of such a chaotic environment, in the end we need to conform

ourselves in every way to the original will. Though there are many factories at present all

producing their own paraphernalia, we need to put together and create a product that God will

like best, based on his blueprint. If there is no blueprint or no movement on earth that can unite

the world as one based on that blueprint, God, who established religion, should himself fail.

We need to seek the path of God’s will. What is the path of God’s will? It is the path opposite to

the one followed by the devil. In this world, those who wish to live need to endeavor to live, but

the people who wish to go to the heavenly kingdom need to endeavor to die. These are complete

opposites, which is why it is written in the Bible that those who wish to die will live and those

who wish to live will die. It follows paradoxical logic. How can a religion become one that can

unite the world? How are we to endeavor to die? We need to be able to die as individuals, we

need to be able to die as families, we need to be able to die as tribes, we need to be able to die as

peoples and we need to be able to die as a world. When that religion becomes an ideology based

on whose doctrine we can return to God, we can then meet him. This is the conclusion we can

When the Unification Church moves, it moves not for the sake of the Unification Church itself.

Instead, it endeavors to invest itself and sacrifice itself for the greater good. In order to create any

great thing, smaller things need to be invested first. This is the principle for development. God is

designing an ideal united world in this great universe, and to promote the ideal realm for the

formation of this great universe, what will he need to do—rather than taking out the form of this

universe—to achieve the greater good? He will have to invest even this universe into something.

To achieve the purpose of the universe, for the universe to just sit still and do nothing is

unacceptable. Something needs to envelop the entire universe and must be big enough for the

universe to go into its embrace. Once the universe is in it, it needs to sit still for thousands of

years, because if it were to assert itself, the great ideal realm of the universe could not form. What

can bring about the unity of the religious realm? Not brute force. A recalcitrant child turns back

when they come across the love of his or her parents. Love manifests creative power in the world

of death. It is a great power that exercises the right of resurrection at the place of death./