From the Inside

At this moment Reverend Moon may very well have ascended to the next life. I do not know. He has been suffering from pneumonia since early August and recently has been on several life support machines. He has been cared for at St Mary’s Catholic Hospital in Seoul until a day or two ago. As His liver began to fail the doctor’s reported that medically there was nothing more they could do. Reverend Moon was transported to Cheong Shim Hospital at the Unification Church’s Cheong Pyeong Heaven and Earth Training Center in the mountains outside of Seoul. It is in a holy place, part of a much larger campus much like the Vatican, and the spiritual support and environment is much more uplifting for what ever the outcome may be. I myself feel inept and unworthy at such a pinnacle moment in history. I regret that I have not been able to bring those in my life, whether family, friends, my neighbors or larger community, an understanding of Reverend Moon as the True Parent and that these times...

This last Sunday I went to our Regional Church in Chicago to hear Reverend Moon’s son Kook Jin Moon speak on The Freedom Society . This is not related to any group using the words Freedom Society that can currently be found on the Internet. As the children of Reverend and Mrs. Moon take up leadership roles in the Unification Church, now more commonly called the Family Federation for World Peace, they are brining not only success and prosperity in the areas in which they invest themselves, but more importantly they are bringing clarity. The Unification Church has been diverse and in some ways divided along politics. For many of us this has been perplexing as the theology definitely suggests that this age is the time of the final struggle between good and evil. Good being exemplified by what the United States was, a Christian society leading free democracies, and communism with its clear ideology that represent the zenith of Satan’s ideology; attempt to rule man and the world in plac...

The bow is common place in many Eastern cultures. It was also commonplace in the West in days gone by. It is a gesture of respect or reverence, and most notably in both the East and West it is/was meant to indicate a hierarchy; an order. And so it is in the Unification Church. It is an expression of reverence and denotes a proper order. All bow to the True Parents, as well as children to their own parents. And the True Parents represent God as Jesus commanded all to “be perfect as God is perfect.” This is in line with the Unification Church teaching that no fall could be imagined or planned by God and that we were all meant to grow as loving families; the couple, the unity of husband and wife being God’s image on earth. Had Adam and Eve not fallen they would have embodied God (as we all are meant to embody God) and established God’s lineage, and being the beginning point would receive the greatest respect, equal to that of God. Their family, their heart towards all mankind as their s...

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...