Pyeong Hwa Gyeong (020) - The Cosmos Is Our Hometown and Our Homeland
2. I devoted myself because I know His heart I am grateful that God gave me the opportunity to serve America, because American-led United Nations forces, in the process of saving my country during the Korean War, liberated me from a communist concentration camp where I had been imprisoned for preaching the word of God. Since receiving God’s calling as a boy of 15, I have delved into the meaning of God’s Will and fought against tremendous odds to fulfill the providence of restoration for the sake of human salvation.
I came to realize that God does not sit on a throne of glory and grandeur. Instead, God is a God of deep sorrow and profound suffering, who endeavors to save His children, who fell into hell. As a result of the Fall, human beings fell into spiritual ignorance. This meant that humanity was fundamentally ignorant regarding God’s existence, the meaning of human life, and the entire universe.
People did not understand how they needed to live their lives during their time in this world while they have physical bodies. They did not understand that there is a spirit world and that life in the physical world must be lived so that it would properly prepare them for the spirit world.
Knowing God’s Will and heart, I worked with single-minded determination as I devoted my entire heart and energy for the accomplishment of God’s Will, without regard to the time of day, changes in the seasons, or the environment around me. As I look back on the eighty years of my life and all the difficulties and persecution I received, I realize I would not be here with you today were it not for the help that God has given me throughout the years.
I have spoken publicly on some ten thousand occasions in many places around the world. These speeches have been published in a series of more than three hundred volumes. On this very significant occasion today when I am meeting some of the most distinguished leaders in the United States, I would like to share the essence of the guiding principles in my life and work under the theme, “The Cosmos Is Our Hometown and Our Homeland.”
The cosmos was created as an enormous house where human beings would live as the masters. Human beings, who are at the center of the universe, live in the context of relationships, fundamentally those of parent and child, husband and wife, and between siblings. The parent-child relationship can be described in terms of a vertical axis between above and below.
Since a husband and wife are on an equal level, their relationship can be described in terms of a horizontal axis between left and right. We can say that sibling relationships are on a third axis between front and back. Every individual exists within the sphere created by these three axes.
If the ultimate points on these axes are numbered 1,2,3,4,5 and 6, then God exists in the seventh position, at the center of the sphere. This is how God can guide us in our daily lives, even while existing at the central position that cannot be seen. |