From the Inside

In Mark 8:27-30 Jesus asked his disciples who they thought He was. When Peter answered correctly, Jesus warned His disciples not to tell anyone. Many have accused the Unification Church of keeping secrets; not being straight forward as to what we believe. We believe that Jesus came just as Adam and was born to establish God’s lineage here on this earth. That God had no plan, desire or intention of seeing his children fall into the hands of what had become Satan. And God being unchanging, His plans never changing, the goal of His providence has been to do what he intended from the beginning by establishing a new Adam, a second Adam, Jesus to start God’s lineage here on this earth into which all would be engrafted, restoring all to God’s original intention. So when Jesus, Divine and one with God unlike ourselves, could not establish this family talk of a second coming began. And this second coming is of the same goal as Adam in the Garden of Eden and Jesus in Israel. The second c...

Originally posted June 8, 2010 I will keep this post current and new posts will follow. Reverend Moon's autobiography was a year long best seller in Korea and has now been translated into English. Having read the second addition here is  my review. It starts with a bit of altruism mixed into the events and people of Reverend Moon's early life before going into a more direct and detail telling of his childhood through young adulthood. It is a fascinating read, and understanding his family and background you can see well where the character and drive to become such an accomplished not only religious leader but world leader came from. Reverend Moon ripping a rail off a bridge walkway and using it to fight off Japanese police who were there to arrest him, as he was part of the Korean underground in his youth, one such memorable story. Turning more to stories of how and why he developed particular organizations it again becomes more altruistic. You get an idea of Reverend M...

Pragmatism, defined by dictionary.com as such; 2. a philosophical movement or system having various forms, but generally stressing practical consequences as constituting the essential criterion in determining meaning, truth, or value. An approach I was intending to take with this blog to address issues in the Unification Church. A Church of families scattered across the country, its members having sacrificed much, many with little to no perceptible rewards. Families who know many who have left for various reasons, including from harsh and criminal deprogramming techniques; techniques many would call torture in light of the war in Iraq. A Church where the leadership was raised up from among people who never saw themselves as seeking a ministry of any kind. A Church whose members did not share a common background. A Church where many of those who have left, having now turned back to the Church will not enter the Church proper, keeping a distance as they find it hard to respect the le...

When a Dr. Morton Kaplan, of the University of Chicago, was proposing a conference on 'The Decline of the Soviet Empire' in 1984, Reverend Moon met with him and insisted he declare the 'End of the Soviet Empire'. Eventually Dr. Kaplan made such a proclamation, the conference being held in 1985, before the Soviet Union fell. It was a PWPA conference, an organization founded by Reverend Moon . Though Dr. Kaplan held some trepidation in making such a statement, he did. The story told by Reverend Moon in his autobiography. The confidence in declaring an 'end' to the Soviet Union came from the principle that history works through certain numbers and that the Soviet Union was a satanic empire. So it had 66 years to expand from 1917 and would be completely gone within 70 years, a heavenly number. The Divine Principle is very specific in numbers throughout history. So can that theory be applied to the nuclear bomb? I haven't heard anything either way but have ju...

This is a bit of an addition to my previous post. One of the major efforts of Reverend Moon is to create a body in the United Nations, similar to the Senate in our own government, made up of religious leaders. Reverend Moon has said that the United Nations has failed. So what is the goal of His work? Here is how I see it. World government is the natural result of universally shared values. Do we really need to give one single body authority over the world? No. We need a body that can coordinate worldwide cooperation with disasters, space exploration, and in some regards resource management, but they don't need power over those underneath them. A world of shared values would eagerly recognize the value of arguments and plans well designed and based on truth, real facts not manufactured facts. In such a world, as today, governance in a more specific fashion is best done on a local level. We can see in the United States itself that the federal government has long left the people b...

Someone recently made a comment that for some religion and politics are the same thing. I am not sure if it was directed to me. And while the Unification Church has been a bastion for anti-communist activities in the past, this image of a single minded political world view looking to rule the world in a political sense is laughable to those who are actually members of the Unification Church. It is the bigots and hate mongers who want to promote that image. They want to create fear, to keep any knowledge of the true nature of the Church hidden. They don't want any inroads in the minds of others that our members are anything other than mind numb robots lacking any human characteristics, any individuality. Just objects... that can be disregarded,... disposed of. I myself had been part of the anti-communist work of our Church. I worked on campaigns in Rhodes Island to promote speakers such as Sir John Noble . The evening of his public speech a Hurricane was coming in near directly on...

A couple of months ago, my wife showed me a site on the Internet of a break away group of the Japanese Unification Church. It featured photos and profiles of the central people of the new organization. Many, my wife said, were very respected and prominent members of the Japanese Church. The reasoning behind their break was not opposition of Reverend Moon, so they claim, but a ... protest?... the taking of a stand? Trying to do things better? She couldn't find the right words in English or just didn't want to get into a long story. One of those profiles looked like a man I worked with many years ago in Rhode Island. At that time a young Japanese member, one of many, who had come to work in America. He was not truly steeped in the strict Samurai like traditions of the Japanese church, more of a street wise character with a bit of a wild streak. He worked under another young Japanese member and they didn't get along. They had heated disagreements and clashes of character. A...