The Road of Indemnity We Must Go

Today I will speak for a short while with the title “The Road of Indemnity We Must Go.”

Countless people live upon this earth. And countless peoples and countless nations exist. Though we human beings ourselves do not know it, when we look at an individual or at one nation, we must know the fact that they have paid countless prices of indemnity centering on God and stand upon the foundation of that price.

Some people live well, while some people live poorly. And while some nations boast before the world of being advanced nations and hold a consciousness of authority, on the other hand, some nations pant in the position of underdeveloped nations.

When we set before us the actual state of the world that has become so, there are things that can look good and things that can look bad. It is only that they are large or small; we know that such relationships hover around us from before and behind, left and right, above and below.

That a prosperous people lives well because it stands without fail upon a foundation of having paid that much of a price can be known when we look, centering on the history of that nation. And we can catch a glimpse of the fact that behind a poor nation there dwells a motive by which it can be poor.

Seen thus, when we ask whether the prosperous individual as an individual, or nation as a nation, has lived well from the past until now, it means it is not so. For a great nation to become a prosperous nation, there is content proportionally that in which they had to make decisions at the crossroads of life and death centering on wretched content.

You must know the fact that they have come forth holding such countless historic events. And that those events were settled was not because some individual was excellent, but because the citizenry and nation became one and staked the destiny of the whole and tried.

Even in resolving a national emergency and crossing over, we cannot deny the fact that by passing through a process in which the whole, above and below or left and right, united and broke open the crisis, and by bringing about a continuous result called development upon that foundation, that nation has become an advanced nation today.

On the other hand, when we look at backward people, behind those people there is no innovative content of having powerfully broken open a crisis for the sake of a hopeful tomorrow. They were negligent in the matter of staking their lives and seeking to break open a crisis and did not take responsibility for it. The whole citizenry, above and below and left and right, could not become one and move to break open such a crisis.

We must know the fact that the fewer the instances in which the whole people acted in unity in this way, the less a people could escape being an underdeveloped nation. History has become so.

If it is so when we look at the history of a nation, it is the same with us as individuals. When we consider the question of what work we shall leave in the new historical age that is to come, we can know that the factor determining that content lies not in the environment behind one but in oneself. Such a fact can be known even by looking at the advanced or underdeveloped nations of history.

It is the same with our individual destiny. Questions such as whether a person succeeds in his generation or not, or whether he welcomes an age of shining glory or leaves behind a sorrowful and grievous life, can be known by looking at the process in which he lives out the course of his life.

How much there is, in the process of his living from birth, of circumstances that can be in accord with the direction of history and the direction of the fortune of Heaven, or whether he holds content of having always collided head-on with the events that press in upon him with a heart (심정) that pursues the future beyond his life, holding such circumstances and such an ism, determines that person’s present character and the character that can remain in the future, and determines the question whether he becomes a center who can be revered or not.

The greater the wish and purpose, the greater is the process of struggle in comparison. There cannot but be that process of struggle. Struggle itself is not something anyone desires. But without struggle, the purpose one desires is not accomplished. This cannot but be an absolute fact.

If one is caught up in the present environment, one cannot seek one’s new purpose in that environment. One must ride over the present environment. If one would expand a new foundation of living, one must, grounded in an infinite subject awareness, set up the two words “revolution” toward one’s own environment and pass through the road called “struggle.” It means this is the road a person who pursues a purpose must inevitably go. At the point of result, anyone may welcome what is called success, but no one welcomes the past through which success passed, the process until success was achieved. The bygone days until success was harvested will have been a continuation of days full of han in history, at which one shudders to think and would wish to give up. It is the same with one’s parents, one’s siblings, friends, or children and spouse.

The past itself was a road of bloody struggle. Without breaking open this process in which such mutual conflicts intersect, one cannot accomplish the purpose. This is the same whether one takes a whole lifetime or takes a single day. In setting out on the day in the morning, one hopes that today may become a meaningful day, but it means it is not simple for that day to be knotted as a result of the meaningful day I await. It means that a person who welcomes such a day, which is not simple, and passes that day simply becomes a simple person. Our road of life must differ from the road of life of a person who lives with such a view of life.

When we look at the lifetime of an individual, or when we look at the nations that today claim to be advanced nations, we can know that behind them there is a long course of struggle.

You must know that the existence value of that individual or nation is determined proportionally to the price of the infinite struggle paid to kick aside an environment in which one could not but retreat.

Seen thus, what kind of road has our Unification Church itself walked?

With the new age of the Providence of Restoration of the seventies before us, I cannot but ask. What kind of road has the Unification Church walked? Has it walked a road of drifting? Or has it walked a road of development? In other words, are we pioneering the road of destiny we must go while paying the price? When we consider such questions, we have come until now paying the price, and are paying it even now.

Then must the standard of that price grow ever smaller? No. If one goes such a road, one perishes. Then do you hold content by which you can pay that price ever more greatly? And are you confident that you will not collapse here and will not perish? If you go forward holding a confidence such that you can say, “I will not collapse and will not perish. I can stand all the more firmly. I am confident that I can pay a greater price,” you will not become people who disappear amid the lamentation of this age today.

Those who applied a brake to us and imposed restraint upon us will without fail come to stand in the position of the defeated through us. Therefore, we must be able to digest and absorb such an environment, those conditions that make us pay a price, as things that stimulate our hope for tomorrow. We must consider them to be such instruments.

If we stand in this present reality holding such awareness and confidence, we cannot perish. Even though my hands are empty and my body is bare, there is a tomorrow of hope.

Then, when we look at centering on myself as a member of the Unification Church, what price have I paid for the church? One must become a self who can say, “In the past I paid this kind of price, and today I am paying this kind of price, and tomorrow I must pay this kind of price.”

Where must one pay that price?

There will be a providential line one must go, the supreme line where the destinies of nations collide; in other words, a central mainstream; it means one must pay it in that mainstream.

A person who here forgets the posture of going head-on and fails in the responsibility of paying the price will, however bright a new ideal age may come hereafter, on the contrary, feel it as an age of darkness and will feel his shame and insufficiency before those who paid that price and hold value. The greater the extent of his disbelief, the more the success that comes to him will be in inverse proportion. There his downfall and regret and lamentation and despair will dwell.

When such despair comes surging toward me, then indeed the whole of my environment will be wretched, and I will not be able to reveal my person before heaven and earth and will not be able to escape shame. You must know this.

Seen from such a point, though the Unification Church has a short history, how great was the price of indemnity that sustained the stage of development behind that history?

If this is on the scale of the Republic of Korea, it will pioneer the Republic of Korea; if it is worldwide, it will pioneer the world; if it is cosmic-historical, it will found a cosmic-historical history. Furthermore, if we have walked a road of suffering from a position of standing in God’s place, God will without fail come seeking within our sphere.

Before the road on which such a tremendous and vast Will goes, rugged mountains and valleys will remain. This will be wretched for us, but when we think of the fact that on the day such valleys of the satanic world are indemnified, a supreme pass of happiness comes in their place, what we collide with now is temporary, and what will draw near hereafter is eternal.

If there is a person who has truly and clearly attained this fact through experience, he will feel the infinite difference between that value and himself. The question is how confidently, meaningfully, and valuably one can pay a price commensurate with this. When we consider such questions, what have you yourselves, sitting here today, been like? We must reflect.

If all the factors of the development of the historical ages were so, and if the destiny of the people of this age too, which accompanies the destiny of eternal history, is determined by the standard of the price paid, then is the period of indemnity that remains in this Unification Church today an unhappy thing? It means it is not. Rather than avoiding this with the mind, one must become a people that can cross this gladly, not only in my generation but even passing through the second and third generations.

If there be such a people or such a person, that people and that person will not perish. They absolutely will not perish.

The process by which we human beings today, born bearing the han of the Fall, go forward from a fallen world to a world of happiness, in other words, to the ideal world of creation that God aims at, cannot but be wretched. In the world of the enemy, one must overcome the process of trial as an individual and find the family and the clan and the people, and the nation and the world, and it means various difficult problems lie here that must be overcome.

The social systems that unfold before us, or the whole world of organized phenomena that has appeared, or the whole world of the phenomena of the result that has appeared, do not send us applause of welcome but are always raising conflict. That is why we cannot but hold a relationship of confrontation with this.

We must strive to become selves who can strike this, push this aside, collide head-on with this, and remain.

If there is an individual and a people who make that a philosophy of living in their lives and fight on, that individual and that people will lead the ideal world hereafter.

You have often heard the words that one must go a course of Restoration through Indemnity beginning from individual Restoration through Indemnity and going on to the family, the clan, the nation, and the world. Then what kind of nation is the nation that can go a course of indemnity for the world? There will without fail be one nation that can represent the world.

Does Japan hold the authority and dignity of such a nation? No. Then is there such a nation among the nations that boasts of its national prestige and boasts of its greatness as advanced nations? Is there a nation that can go up upon the altar of indemnity representing the world? There is none. It means that the nations that now sing of happiness are not such nations. Only a people that writhed and waged a bloody struggle in the course of history and that connected worldwide events to itself and regarded them as its affairs and writhed, only such a nation can take responsibility for the world hereafter. You must know such things.

Then what kind of people must such a people be?

It must be a people that can pursue such a nation and uphold such a thing as its mainstream thought. It must be a people that is now carrying on a movement of presenting before the citizenry a thought that the whole citizenry of that nation, men and women, old and young alike, can accept a hundred percent in its thought and its action so that it rises as a symbol of hope and thus can make it the mainstream thought of that nation. It must be such a clan, such a family, such an individual.

Then what nation in this world would be such a nation?

There are countless nations in the world today, but the three-thousand-li peninsula, the Republic of Korea, is an insignificant and wretched nation, a nation that holds the sorrow and misfortune of being cut in half. Yet this nation is not a nation that disappears in misfortune but a nation that writhes, saying it will rather smash that misfortune and go clothed in the armor of a new world.

However much a historic han clings to it and blocks its road, if it knows this as a stage of trial it ought properly to take responsibility for, and throws in its life here and carries on a movement of national unity, a movement of national unification, that can push forward for one year, ten years, forty years, or half a century, a century, several centuries, it will become one nation that can take responsibility for a worldwide course of indemnity.

From this viewpoint, when we ask whether the Republic of Korea has come forth equipped with one national form in the winding history woven through the long span of six thousand years in which countless peoples perished, and countless peoples rose, can we indeed say so? Isn't the history of the Republic of Korea a sorrowful history? One must become a self who can recognize that. Now we must settle a history of many twists and hold the authority of victory. I have asserted that the nation of Korea in which I live can become such a nation.

Then can the Republic of Korea become a nation that can be called before God, a nation that pays worldwide indemnity?

It means it can become such a nation of indemnity. One must pay the price until one comes within a sphere where one can boast that it is certain. But with a small price, the resolution of han and its accomplishment for the nation is impossible.

In deciding a chronic history, to smash all the powers of death, one must wage an infinite struggle that can remove the frame of the nation. One must pay an infinite price of indemnity. And that price must be a price that can cross over the people. With a vague conviction, one cannot smash the power of death.

You must pave an actual foundation such that you can boast that it is such a nation.

Who must pave that actual foundation?

You will not have the confidence to say that you yourselves paved it. If one cannot hold confidence to say that I paved it, nor that our people paved it, then who must pave it? If the Unification Church today does not hold that confidence, who will pave it for us? Or if the Teacher does not hold that confidence, who will pave it? It is an unmistakable fact that a paved result will remain and will unfold as a stage of public righteousness. One must know how to consider who will pay the price of indemnity behind such an unmistakable fact.

That the Republic of Korea came to be able to develop toward the world is because some consciousness of purpose supported it and broke the chance of perishing and connected it to a chance of prospering. You must know that this could be so because an invisible stimulating power was continuously invested here, and a price of sacrifice was paid. When we look at the actual state that unfolds in our surrounding environment and at everything we feel, this nation could be victorious before the Will is because an infinite price of sacrifice was paid.

Then who paid this price?

God paid it. Who is that God? He is the parent of our humankind. Because He paid the price as the parent of humankind, because He paid the price not as the parent of the thirty million people of the Republic of Korea alone but as the parent of humankind, as the parent of the human beings of the historical ages, the fruit of that price is not reflected in the Republic of Korea alone. It was reflected in the historical ages, and it is being reflected to the utmost in the present as well. Not only that, but it is also inherited as one legacy before the world of the future. In other words, was it not a price paid before the human beings of the past, present, and future? In that respect, the view of value that the Principle of the Unification Church presents is revealed.

Then what does the Principle of the Unification Church assert?

It is to revive the great value of the human being before history. It is to revive that value together with the human beings of history. It is to reveal this together with those who have gone to the spiritual world, together with the people of the present world, together with our descendants of the future.

If one comes to hold with dignity the pride that I, and my family, and my clan can be such as will without fail reveal this, then from here the supreme standard of victory centering on the human being of the historical ages is determined. When we think of such a fact, we cannot know how tremendous a position this is. The price paid in this position must be paid with the utmost sincerity.

Everything felt through the five senses is necessary for the sake of the utmost sincerity, and one must not forget that even a single glance I cast is a fact necessary in pursuing goodness.

If one is a person who has discovered something new, a person who holds new hope, one must go this road one has chosen with the utmost sincerity and devotion of one’s life. It means one cannot but become an offering that devotes the utmost sincerity, centering on all the senses of hearing and seeing. A person who lives in this way lives in this present reality but is a person who lives together with history.

However much a whirlwind blows in the course of history and a rugged storm sweeps over, a person who lives holding the figure of a true human being from a state transcending that will be borne witness to by history, and will be borne witness to by the age, and will be welcomed by the future. How greatly and how greatly must Heaven await such a person!

In such a process, you yourselves must go through the Principle. To go the road the Unification Church presents, one must pay the price of indemnity and go. Concerning one’s own life, everyone seeks to take responsibility seriously. But when we consider whether one held a mind of seeking to take responsibility and then actually took responsibility, we rediscover that we have been thinking carelessly until now.

We must regard the value of life as precious and tread powerfully upon the present stage and go forward. A person who acts in this way, just as one knows clearly with the eyes how much worthwhile value I am investing in the present stage and what kind of result the invested value is bringing, will not perish though history perishes. Though thirty million of the Republic of Korea perish, he will not perish.

How much true value have we left behind in the historical ages?

And He has come until now, forgetting the value harvested, while being anxious over how much that true value will remain through the course of history. However difficult a crisis road of the environment there was in that process, it did not make that value pale; rather, centering on the content of that value, it raised the standard of value higher. It did not lower that value and wreck it. When we look from this viewpoint, have you become such as to say, in the course of history you have walked until now, “This much at least I have certainly paid as a price. Thirty million people, in this at least, model yourselves upon me. My brothers, in this at least model yourselves upon me. My parents, this at least is clear”? Even Satan, who opposes, acknowledges this much. Therefore, one must make it so that Satan too says, “Yes, it is so,” and the parents too say, “Very well,” and the people too say, “It is right. Of course it is so.”

If one has not held an ability to analyze and criticize by which one can drive back Satan, then crying out that one will be for the nation and for the world is itself no more than vanity. It is no more than acting rashly, and it is not active but passive. A passive being cannot gather a complete harvest. One can see the result of the harvest but cannot become the owner. Life does not remain by passively passing through. It is connected through an active relationship, through the core mainstream of religion. When one discovers that one is a grievous self holding a passive relationship with life, pursuing a passive price and value, and living while paying a passive price, how great must that shame be! Without becoming a self who can discover that one is an insufficient self who cannot even cover one’s shame and can weep aloud, one cannot go this road. It means that the repentance Christianity presents is necessary in this process.

I must become an individual who can be so. I must become a self who can refrain from giving up. One must become a wife who can be so, a husband who can be so. On the day such a man and woman meet and form one family, Heaven will place a greater expectation upon us.

In the process by which people holding different circumstances today come together, how serious were they in centering on such presented questions?

How serious were they in keeping the beat of their historic mission and the fortune of Heaven and victory hereafter, rather than thinking of the problems of their living?

We must found a world of relationships while valuing a relationship of husband and wife that can be so, and while holding precious the value of a human being who can be so.

If this does not come to an end in my generation, one must establish a successor and have it inherited. Therefore, how does one appear as a true parent who takes responsibility for and prepares this tremendous historic task of destiny and hands it on intact? This is what is important.

You have come to know that it is required that a price of indemnity be paid through yourselves. It is unmistakable that it is required that a price of indemnity be paid through my family. Not only the family; it is unmistakable that there remains content by which one must present a condition of indemnity through one’s own sons and daughters. It is unmistakable that there remains a road that must go through the children, through the clan, through the people, through the nation, to the world. How shall one pave in one’s own generation a sure road that can thus go to the world and leave it before one’s descendants?

Though that time and distance are far, we can conclude that the question whether one can go a victorious road without being defeated in an environment in which trials collide with one, and how one can overcome such an environment all at once, as parents if parents, as a family if a family, is a road of judgment that determines the question of your life and death.

Then what kind of position is the position of paying the price?

Is it that one departs abruptly from oneself and pays the price of the nation? It is not so. Because falsehood is interposed there, it will not do. What is true lies in a position that transcends distance. Truth lies in what can absorb the distance and digest that distance. This means that my individual self must pay the price in the position of a servant, centering on the nation. One must be able to digest it in my body and mind, in myself.

If I sidestep such a position, my value as an object before that subject decreases. If a family sidesteps it, that family’s value decreases before society. One clan too must pay a price before the world. There can be no formula called transcending. If there had been a formula by which one could transcend, God would not have suffered through the long span of six thousand years.

When we ask where you seek to pay this price and on whose account you pay this price, saying that one pays it for the nation, because of the nation, cannot be believed. It is impossible for a person who has not paid a price for himself to pay a price for the nation, and it is impossible for a person who has not paid a price for himself to pay a price for the clan and the family. On the contrary, if one does not pay the individual price, one inherits a compounded position of destiny in which one must pay a double price for the individual and the family.

That is why the living of the individual cannot be disregarded. It means that if one does not pay a price before the road, the truth and a true result can come out.

The people of the Unification Church today say that they work for our church. Or they say they work for our Republic of Korea, for Heaven. But it is by no means so. If in paying the price one does not discover a self in which Heaven is the center and which can conform to and harmonize with Heaven’s motive, then however much one pays a price, it becomes a result that set out from Satan and ended with Satan.

That is why in our Principle the completion of individual restoration comes out first. It is not the completion of national restoration. It is not the completion of world restoration. It means the completion of individual restoration is first.

For whom must one pay the price?

One must pay it for one's individual self. Heaven has not until now come seeking the world. Before there is a world, there must be a nation, and before there is a nation, there must be a clan, and before there is a clan, there must be a family, and before there is a family, there must be an individual, a man, and a woman.

From this viewpoint, religion until now has not found a man as a restored individual. There has been no religion holding such a doctrine of religion, such a spirit of religion, as pays a price as one family centering on a man and a woman. Only the Unification Church has brought this forward.

Then, since it was said that the road for paying this price is “the road of indemnity we must go,” the question is whether you are now going such a road of indemnity. When you are cold, you say, “Aigo, I must put on clothes.” When you are hungry, you say, “I must eat. Since I am to eat, I must eat something good. I must eat the very best.” But to eat the very best, one must pay a price greater than that. To eat the very best, one must pass through competition and struggle and transcendent content and then eat what is good.

The conditions of indemnity that establish these conditions of indemnity, which can become the source of eternal existence and the fountain of life and the fountain of power, are not so easy.

Where will you pay indemnity?

In paying, one begins from oneself. With what content of value does one pay? One must pay with content of worldwide value. That is why, when the time comes when one can say that one has done so, you become one whom the world needs.

In this sense, Jesus said,

“Abba Father, not as I will, but as the Father wills.”

That is what is different.

Until now we have pursued the present satisfaction and happiness of the individual. To obtain happiness and satisfaction, one must pay a price. Before a road that runs in inverse proportion, one must assert oneself with confidence and innovate one’s environment with content that breaks the mold. From a position of conflict between extremes, one cannot but pursue infinite value. That is why, before the road we go there is without fail a price that must be paid. It is not paid for the church. It is paid for yourselves.

You know the question of Cain and Abel well. My mind is Abel, and my body is Cain. In order for Abel to become Abel, one must pay a price. Only then is the substantial foundation at last achieved. What is called the substantial foundation is achieved only when the body completely submits to the mind and becomes one.

That is why human beings paid a price of sacrifice greater than what was paid while passing through the European War, or the Greater East Asia War, or the world wars, in the historical ages. The war of subjugating the body before the mind, the invisible struggle, continues.

In a world war, one can see the beginning and the process and can see the end as well, but the struggle of body and mind is eternal. It continues until this life ends. That is why one must pay a complete price.

Which moment of my life will be the one time when I can assert my value?

Will it be in my twenties, my thirties, my fifties? Or my seventies? If it cannot be in my generation, will it be after the second, third, tenth, or several thousandth generation? You must know that coming to seek such a course is the greatest struggle that is pursued today under the mask of religion.

All religions have come seeking the individual. Buddhism is a religion that reveres Shakyamuni and seeks to model itself upon him. Christianity is a religion that seeks to model itself upon Jesus alone. It has not gone beyond that. Jesus did not appear merely as an individual, as one worldwide central founder of a religion. If it ends centering on the individual, he perishes.

However much one cries out for a celibate life and tries, it means that it perishes. Behind that there is a religious ideology that can present a new family, a religious ideology that can present a new clan, and a religious ideology centered on the tremendous question of the restoration of the world and the Cosmos. They were soldiers who left home (출가병) and set out toward the age of Restoration. It means that no one accomplished that on the road of Restoration.

Here God labored for four thousand years and made the chosen nation called Israel to prepare an environment in which He could find the individual, and an environment in which He could find the family, and an environment in which He could find the clan, and an environment in which He could save the people and the nation. He prepared a base at which He could resolve the individual and at the same time resolve the family and the clan and the people and the nation all at once. That is why God gave to the full the content of labor He could give as a Father before the course such a son goes. Therefore, that God brought forth the nation called Israel as the result of such labor means that He paid the price of indemnity and paved a foundation on which this could be handled.

Here, when the people of Israel became one centering on Jesus, that would have been the first indemnity. Upon the victorious foundation of Jesus, which was based on individual indemnity, an environmental foundation had been prepared on which family indemnity, clan indemnity, people indemnity, and national indemnity could be achieved all at once; but because the people of Israel disbelieved, even the result of individual indemnity ended incomplete. Therefore, you must know that the fact that he could not hold a victorious realm of indemnity centering on spirit and body and paved only a spiritual road of indemnity became the han of Jesus, who came to this earth, and also became the han of God, who sent Jesus.

When we come to think that we are inheriting such a tremendous road of destiny called Restoration through Indemnity, how important a time is this present point today! You must not live only for yourselves. Because the nation needs you, you must fight for the nation. The most important point is believing in the Unification Church. In this, the Unification Church and the nation are being used for your sake. When we consider such a principle of the Providence of Restoration, such a principle of creation, you must, one way or another, take responsibility for yourselves. Then who takes responsibility?

Does God take responsibility?

Ninety-five percent of the responsibility is God’s doing, and five percent of the responsibility is the human being’s doing. These combine and become one hundred percent. This is the Principle of Creation. That is why one must be granted a privileged authority to take part in the authority of the Creator.

Thus, although ninety-five percent of the responsibility is God’s doing and five percent of the responsibility is the human being’s doing, because the human being did not cross this standard, history began and then, without even tasting a true world, faded away together with its beginning. And thus human beings came to live in a world that does not know the taste of a true world.

But because I am necessary, and because I have become the historic core, the world came into being for my sake. On whose account has the world situation today become like this? It has become so on my account. For whom did the Republic of Korea today come into being? It came into being for my sake. I am the owner. Before I go, the Republic of Korea cannot go. The road the Republic of Korea has walked since it came into being until now, it has not walked for the sake of the Republic of Korea itself. It has walked for our sake.

Therefore, when the citizenry feel the destiny of the Republic of Korea as their destiny and each becomes a citizen who seeks to take responsibility for the nation, that citizenry absolutely will not perish. Such a citizenry is the citizenry the Republic of Korea longs for today.

But when we look at the tremendous content called Cosmos-ism, even if the Republic of Korea crosses over this current of thought and is victorious, because that victory is still a victory of process, it means one must unite.

If there is an ism that can proclaim uniting again in this way and can make one resolve with a sense of urgency, that ism will without fail run majestically to the world. That is why what the Republic of Korea needs is to find the world.

What the world needs is to recover Cosmos-ism. It is to restore the absolute value and autonomy of the human being regarding heaven and earth and all created things. One must become a representative prince of God, who created the Cosmos, and, like a princess, must make bloom the flower of tomorrow’s hope.

One must become the thorn of this flower and remove all the elements opposed to it, and the day must come when I can praise victory, and the whole can praise, and when, becoming of one mind and one body with the whole, one can praise glory in that environment.

Now you must pay the price for yourselves. Have you paid it? If you have paid it, how valuable is it? Before such a value, for which one had to reveal a true figure even though the sword of death were laid upon one a thousand times and ten thousand times over, what must one do? When the crossroads of death draws squarely before me, it is the human instinct to think of avoiding it. It can appear as an automatic working. Therefore, from a position of pursuing a true world, one must become a tenacious self holding the subjecthood of the self who can make such things a footing.

Seeing such things, what can be called true, the truth that can remain eternally, is not two. It is one. The true standard of an individual is one. (Omitted owing to a break in the tape)

Gazing upon that position and feeling that the Father’s Will is great in comparison with one’s own will, when one paid the price according to the Father’s Will, saying, “Not as I will, but as the Father wills,” one sets out from there. Jesus too had to digest with joy the cross he came to bear. Only when Jesus gladly followed did a new history come treading. It becomes so.

But Jesus, who writhed to turn toward such a solemn position, such a figure of a true human being, such an absolute place where the true price was paid, could not enter the absolute realm. Though he could not enter the absolute realm, because that Will and the thought he left could gather this relative environment as something absolute, Christianity today founded the culture of the world, centering on that love. It prepared the external environment of the Providence of Restoration. Then who determined the value of that content? Jesus determined it. It is the same with you.

To whom would you like to entrust your life?

I mean, to whom would you like to entrust your life and ask him to live in your stead? You would not wish to do so. It means you absolutely would not wish to.

If you have been centering on the Unification Church for ten years, you must know what kind of person you yourself are, discover your true self, and then pay the price.

If among you there is a person who thinks he has paid indemnity, raise your hand. Without paying this price, one cannot go. A road does not arise. It means there is no road. Only after paying the price on the road of indemnity must you go; in the seven-year course, a road arises. It means the road of unification is made so that a road arises only after paying such a price. The new gospel of Christianity that Jesus established came into being after paying such a price.

Then who paid the price?

Did you pay it? No. Heaven paid it, and the pioneers paid it. If one has not paid it, one must, together with one’s life and together with death, keep pace with the body of an absolutely devoted servant and cross over that crisis road.

If one falls ill and cannot go, one must go even if carried on another’s back. Do you understand? If one is to go carried on another’s back, one must obey absolutely from an absolute position. One must cling absolutely. One must go with a mind saying, “I have no life,” feeling the wretched mind of one without life and pursuing that very thing that has life and is worthwhile. One must be at least at such a standard as to more than utterly demolish one’s own dignity and face. How much have you writhed to prepare such a standard and pay the price?

Is that distance far or near?

If it is far, how far is it? This is Heaven’s norm. We who are the descendants of fallen human beings, however much we writhe, are at the end of the earth. People are forgetting this.

Our church! Our Will! It is good. To face that Will, what must one do? When one says this word “Will!” here, Heaven is the very bottom board, and upon it the conditions of indemnity that the teacher writhed and piled up are the center. We must automatically acknowledge our Will. Have you stood upon such a foundation? One must stand upon it and then use the word, will. To use the words “our Will!” without standing upon it is exceedingly dangerous. “Our Will” will rather judge them.

When the sun rises, shadows fall. But when it is rising, there are no shadows. Then what is it that makes the sun good? It is because it governs inside and out. Into a position where one can welcome the sun, no one at all can enter. Without passing through a course of struggle, one cannot welcome it.

If one could welcome it first, everyone would desire it. If you all say you will be first, can everyone become first? First place is only one. Because this one is one that Satan can meddle with, one must enter a position where one can deny Satan. Heaven is only one.

The road of indemnity that must be paid! Unless there be a moment before you of gazing squarely upon these wounds, at which history staggered on this course of indemnity, and countless peoples suffered, and countless prophets and noble forebears were taken away, and this age too is collapsing, one cannot go this road. Without seeking the road, one cannot go.

In seeking it out, one must do it from oneself. I wish to assert my individual value directly before Heaven. In the family too, as a man, if one wishes to assert oneself with dignity. Is that not so? It is the same with a woman. Centering on such a man and woman, one must become a family that can assert itself with dignity before the whole nation if a nation.

Accordingly, our families, who must be victorious in such a situation and cross over, must not live confined as families in themselves but must become families equipped with such qualifications as can save the people and that can seek joy. It means one must become a family that can do at any time and anywhere what the people of the world cannot do.

Therefore, let the families of our Unification Church sally forth! The families must sally forth, must they not? The figure of struggling to say one will go even carrying a baby on one’s back is the true figure of a member of the Unification Church. In the history of the world today, there are no such families. In the family, when one kicks aside a difficult environment and goes forth, it is still easier for the man.

When one sees wives saying they will carry their babies on their backs and go the road of the Will, one can catch a glimpse of the fact that the Unification Church absolutely cannot perish. Is that not so? This is the pride of our Unification Church.

If the price I have paid until now as a true individual was slipshod and insufficient, it means one cannot stand before a price that can be paid through the family. If one has not been truthful in paying a price through the family, then even if the clan comes to have a true time of indemnity in paying its price, that family is not saved.

If the individual is not indemnified, the family is not indemnified, and the clan is not indemnified. That is why, when the time comes for the indemnity that a people can offer as a sacrifice before the nation, if the whole clan takes part and truthfully pays the content of indemnity before the people, the whole clan can be saved. It can take part in the victory. It becomes so.

That is why we believe in the church. We believe in religion. Because religion indemnifies centering on a national standard, on the standard of a nation, we believe in religion. Therefore, even if one cannot indemnify at the proper time, if I stand upon the foundation that religion has indemnified and paved in the historical ages and completely believe and become one body, I can escape the destiny of individual indemnity and can escape the destiny of family and clan indemnity as well. This is inner and, at the same time, outer. That is why human beings until now have believed in religion and have learned the truth through religion.

Yesterday too, a certain person going along the road said that the only person who has succeeded using religion as fertilizer is Teacher Moon of the Unification Church. And he says there is no one who can match the Unification Church. And he says that whereas religious people until now have all perished, when one looks at the people who believe in the Unification Church, they staggered as though they would perish and wandered about alone like beggars, and yet now they have families and bear sons and daughters and live, and those who wandered so are living, seen socially, in a way that need not envy others.

So he says the people of the Unification Church are truly extraordinary. Seeing such things, the road we go is a road with hope.

Everyone dislikes indemnity. Is that not so? That is why offerings come forth. But if that offering departs from the historical ages, it has no relation whatever to me. It flows away together with history. Only when it is made present together with my life, piercing to the very marrow and bone of my inner self and my substantial self, does that offering have relation to me. The history in which an offering was born is confirmed again by me. Is that not so? One must become a Unification Church that can present such things. Though to the eye it seems like nothing whatsoever, when we think of the fact that it is presenting precious content representing history, let us for now give thanks here and accept it. You understand, do you not?

Such a price of indemnity must be paid beginning from me. As an individual, one must pay it in the individual, and as husband and wife, one must pay it in husband and wife. What is the content of the indemnity that husband and wife must pay, and where is that road? It is to sacrifice for the clan. It means to sacrifice intact for the clan of Kim if one is a Kim. And it means that the clan of Kim must sacrifice for this Republic of Korea.

But the world today is the reverse. It means that if one were to make Kim Won-pil president, there would be no problem. But Kim Won-pil, before becoming president, must witness this citizenry. If it becomes so, becoming president comes about naturally. Is that so, or is it not? “It is so.” It is made so, is it not? For the Unification Church, this is different.

The Unification Church must not raise its hand and boast that it will take possession of one worldwide day of glory. To welcome the one day of glory, one must go into the very bottom of the world. It means one must become a physician who can cure cancer. When it becomes so, that person who has cancer can lay out all his property and authority before that physician’s knees and submit.

In this way we have come to know that the life called “I” is holy and precious. Accordingly, one must know where the ripples will strike if I stir. When a tense society is loosened, and the waves of left and right, having surged, become confident and retreat, and a quiet buffer zone appears before the world and before our descendants, what ripple will the Unification Church cast? What rock will it throw? What grain of sand will it throw? What kind of person will one become, and what kind of family, and what kind of clan, and what kind of people will one stand in place of? I, as the teacher who guides the Unification Church, think that I must leave behind such a factor of ripples in that regard.

Therefore, you must feel the worth of living as men of unification if men, and as women if women. When a man and woman join and form a family, there is worth. Because such a position is a position beyond the ideal before history and a position beyond the ideal after history, though we live upon the earth, we live in the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. Heaven existed before history and remains after history as well.

To find a self that can be so, one must pay a sufficient price of indemnity. Think about how serious a problem this is. You have cells and nerves that can gather sensation. Therefore, the moment when cells and nerves can be in accord is a worthwhile moment and a worthwhile position in which I can pay a price representing history.

When one becomes aware that one is a worthwhile man and woman who can pay a price in such a position, how solemn must that road one goes be! It is such a road that one must go holding one’s breath, and a road one must go carefully lest one be hurt, lest one be wounded, and such a road as can remain eternally as holiness itself. In such a quiet and solemn position, one must become a figure that can bloom like a flower and become a source of beauty that can raise a response all at once and can give off fragrance.

What kind of position would that be in which Heaven can forget all consciousness of existence and seep into this place and value can be joined?

It is a position you must go through in your lifetime. Such a position is a position in which one regards one’s own life as shameful and makes the origin of one’s own existence the supreme center. Therefore, we must be thoroughgoing. You must enter such a state. One must enter such a state embracing the family, and must enter such a state embracing the clan. The priestly office that stands in place of this must always press through adversity and go. To leave such a traditional thought in a solemn position, He sought to leave the norm of an individual priest, and then the norm of a family priest, and the norms of a clan, people, national, and worldwide priest; but because they all collapsed, this must be gathered again. Therefore, we must know how tremendous the mission of members of the Unification Church is today.

Even when you give and receive something, think of it from the side of staking your life and selling and buying life.

If one thinks so, it is serious, is it not? One must go holding such a heart (심정). In such a serious position, I hope you will become people who can say, “O God, is not the place where Thou art settled precisely such a position as this? I will charge toward that position.”

In that respect, when the Teacher sees the wives of Blessed Families going out to witness carrying their babies on their backs, he thinks how good it would be if they went holding such a mind. But when it is not so, he says he will pray for them in this place with such an inner heart (심정).

Therefore, you are not pitiful people. However much one goes hungry and however cold it is, one cannot leave this Will behind and go. Now, even if one should freeze to death and starve to death, one must conquer everything in that position. Even if a result called death should arise, your death will be alive eternally.

If a human being can go while receiving blessings from such a position, it means it is happiness among happiness. If there is a road in which one can be kept in the position of dying and can feel it after dying, we must go that road.

It means there is a road you must leave behind hereafter, holding such solemn content of indemnity. As a husband, if a husband, one must show a true road before one’s wife; as a wife, if a wife, before one’s husband; and as parents, if parents, one must show before one’s sons and daughters, before one’s descendants, before one’s clan, that going in this way is the true road a human being must go. Until that road appears, one cannot but pay an infinite price. You must become aware that if one does not present content of indemnity on the road of destiny, one must go and does not pay the price; one does not remain. This awareness is more valuable than finding the world. The position of stepping forth solemnly before Heaven with that awakened self is a solemn position that represents the office of priest and can stand in place of the world. That is why one must be given the title of son.

We must writhe, with the authority of a son and the authority of a daughter, to gaze upon the world and present content of indemnity. The greater that wound, the more it becomes a wound Heaven can touch; and the greater that sorrow, the more it becomes a sorrow that can participate in the Father’s sorrow.

This fact, that content that can surge beyond history has been presented before us, is a cosmic-historical event. We must hold the holy mind that we have shouldered the responsibility of handling this while gazing squarely upon this event.

Furthermore, we must become aware of the fact that we are moving in a position where the historic heart (심정) has been wholly combined, while the ancestors bow their heads and gaze upon us. We must know that that position alone is the position where we can present indemnity. You understand, do you not?