Pyeong Hwa Gyeong 6 - 15. Let Us Open a New Era of Civilization

[대태양/김현수]

Let Us Open a New Era of Civilization

August 20,1995

Jangchung Gymnasium, Seoul, Korea
Youth Federation for World Peace Korean National Delegates
General Assembly

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 Soon-shin 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 be 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.