Becoming the Second Reverend Moon
by Rev. Sun Myung Moon
May 19, 1984. East Garden (USA)
Edited by esgd
15 minutes
In what way do you make your recommitment? There are only two options: one is, I want to accomplish the goal, but I want to save my skin first. The other way is: I commit my life, my way of life and every ounce of energy, sweat and blood to achieve this goal. I will sacrifice for that battle.
We must realize that those Pilgrim Fathers made their pledge to God. Also the Independence Army soldiers pledged to God. We have this heritage, this tradition. Today we have the same mission, though now the worldwide Providence is in our hands. Therefore we should make the same pledge.
Now we know clearly to whom we pledge, and what kind of pledge to make. Which is your pledge: the one in which your own salvation comes first, or the one where the first thing is committing every ounce of your energy to the goal?
Remember that you made this pledge in front of God and the True Parents. That will be your source of power, your powerhouse. You can draw from it all the energy you need in your battle.
Join your hands, and look at your ten fingers. Pledge that you will not make your hand, your fingers, your body, your legs or your mind a betrayer. You will never become a betrayer to these “pledge hands.” Thank you all!
I Never Betrayed My Pledge
When I made this same pledge to God, I was only a teenager; not even my parents knew about my determination. Neither friend, nor relative knew my intention. I made the same pledge to God that you did this morning: Unto my life, and every drop of sweat and tears and blood, I shall uphold this pledge. And also I declared that through my entire life I would fight as a front line soldier and confront Satan. I pledged. As long as my life lasts, I will not betray that pledge.
After beginning my mission, I suffered a great deal. Many times I was imprisoned. However, I never betrayed my pledge. Rather, I was grateful, and always thankful. I always accepted joy and pleasure and left the consequences up to God, determined to do my absolute best according to my pledge, so that God’s will would be done. That was my attitude.
I have always thought that had I been all by myself with no mission or dispensation, I could have been killed many times. Who allowed me to survive? God. God wanted my mission to go on, that’s the only reason I was protected. And that’s why I am infinitely grateful to God.
Today, I feel exactly the same way. I am not moving even one iota against His will. I know that the mission of God will survive, no matter what. There is always a way to achieve God’s will. Though I may suffer, I welcome the suffering and am grateful for it. My position is not one of weakness. It is a front line battle all the time, a confrontation with Satan.
When Satan tried to choke me to death I said: “Go ahead. You think you can choke me to death? Impossible! Go ahead and try!” Satan marshaled all his power to try to finish this movement off and end my life, but I said: “Satan, I am just beginning! I am just starting, taking off slowly!”
Internally speaking there is an incredible unity forming around me in the minds of people. This internal victory is closely related to the meaning of this event here. Externally speaking, I have an extra layer of defense against unlawful, violent attack from outside.
The enemy has been thinking, “Rev. Moon seems to have a lot of money, so before we finish him off, why not squeeze some money from him? The best way to do this is to kidnap some of his children.” However, they cannot do it, for they fear the outcry of public opinion.
Internally, the most important victory of this time is that the worldwide Unification Church will be united like a rock. Solid unity will be formed by this. For that reason, I tremble not one bit, and feel neither fear nor worry.
Second Reverend Moons
Your pledge that you made today was your pledge as an individual. But now a new pledge will come forth, namely, that you will be not just an individual but a second Rev. Sun Myung Moon. You as a public person will take the role of Rev. Sun Myung Moon the second. Each one of you should feel today that you are the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, Junior. That means that if Rev. Moon for some reason left for a while, that would not bother you, because there would be hundreds of thousands of “Rev. Moons.” Can you make that second pledge to Heavenly Father?
I declare that this pledge is done today by 270 leaders gathered here, but it is not limited to this East Garden room. It will go on to all the Unification missions of the world, the membership in this country and abroad. This is the official position of the Unification movement.
The momentum we have created is a historical and universal event. So your way of life from tomorrow will be like this: Whenever you are facing difficulties, important decisions, or critical moments, don’t even think about yourself and say, “What shall I do?” There is no such question. You’ll think, “What would Father do? Since I am a second Rev. Moon, whatever he would do, I will do.”
Dominion Over Myself
When I initiated this movement, I had three principled goals in my life. The first was in the form of a prayer: In order that I can have a dominion of love over the universe, please, God, give me the power for the dominion over myself. Usually when the worst moments have come, my body tried to escape, taking the easy way. Whenever I was following a path of crucifixion, my body would say: “I don’t want to go there.” But I always said: “No, you stay there. I have dominion over you.”
I also strove for dominion over my eyes. The eyes always want to see something pleasant. But I told them: “Eyes, you are going to see reality now!” The mouth is always trying to eat good things. So I would say: “Stop, mouth! I have dominion over you now.” Ears always want to hear good words, so I would say, “No, you are going to hear reality.” The body always tries to feel comfortable; there is always sexual urge and sexual sensation. But I would say: “No, you’ve got a job to do.” Therefore my position was always that unless I could control myself, dominion over the universe would be impossible.
Until I had total control over myself, I wouldn’t even walk in front of a theatre or a bar. Also, I didn’t want to be praised by people, because I felt that would make me arrogant. The worst of all to overcome was sleep. Hunger is second, and third is the sexual urge. Those three physical desires are the worst of all to overcome. But I persevered without compromise, and I attacked the problem as a way of life.
Perhaps you think I was born a saint and always had a different character, and that all these problems were not problems to me at all. But that is not true. I am a super-sensitive person. Therefore I am very sensitive to all these desires, and needed extra energy to overcome them.
I always told myself: unless I can have complete dominion over myself, I cannot even think of having dominion over the world, the universe or spirit world. Adam and Eve fell simply because they lost dominion of themselves. I am sure you’ve heard this before but you never heard such an in-depth explanation. My hand, where does it go? My foot, where does it go? My thinking, where does it turn? I devoted every ounce of my flesh, body and emotion to the will of God, so that I would become one thousand percent the instrument of God, with naught else on my mind but how to do the will of God. That’s how I disciplined myself, and I succeeded.
You are in the same position as I was some time ago. You must achieve what I have achieved in gaining dominion over myself.
When I tried to quell sexual desire, Satan was always attacking me with incredible temptations. Satan’s chief base is SELF. Evil is not up in the sky, in the world or in wealth, but it is always you, and has your mind as an initial base. Unless you liquidate this situation, this initial base, it’s not thinkable that you can achieve any heavenly realm. Today you made a pledge, but the application of your pledge starts from right here, yourself.
Become the Second Self of God and Jesus
You haven’t known about the second goal of my life, because I have never spoken about it clearly. The goal was that I would become the “second self’ of God and Jesus, so that everything I would do would he done not just as the Rev. Moon, but as God and Jesus would do it. “I am representing God and Jesus.” This echoed in what you pledged to me earlier saying: “Yes, I am a ‘second self of Rev. Moon.”
When Jesus forgave his enemies in his time, at every moment he realized that God and the entire spirit world were following him. Today, the situation is exactly the same: when I move, the entire spirit world and power of God follow. When I think in that fashion, inevitably God on our side, along with the entire spirit world and Jesus. I am the “second self” of God and Jesus and you are my “second selves.” For you this is very real: You are the “second selves” of God, Jesus, True Parents and Heung Jin. Therefore, when you have a difficulty, you should pray to God, True Parents and Heung Jin with the heart of a “second self.” Then the past can be solved.
Since today is such an important day and meeting, I now expose the entire secret of my life. There is nothing to fear under the sun, in heaven and earth! When you make up your mind that your life is up, there is nothing to fear. Then what will happen? Are you going to love that life? No, of course not. You are going to restore that life to an even greater position and you will be victorious. Life comes with the victory. When you give up your life, the resulting victory will become your fighter. The victory will shatter your enemy. Victory and life both will be yours.
Love, Wisdom and Faith
My third goal and principle was to witness. I prayed for three things for my life: the love of Jesus, the Wisdom of Solomon and the faith of Paul and beyond. I wanted to have infinite trust, infinite faith to come to the point where there would be no more to believe, to even ask: “God, if there is something doubtful in your heart, give it to me, and I will believe it for you. Also if you have some worry, let me take it from you.”
Heavenly Father finally brought me to a love greater than Jesus’, a wisdom greater than Solomon’s and a faith greater than Paul’s. For that reason, any faithless person who comes to me loves me and wants to be close to me, because my heart is one of love and trust. I look at all women as God’s younger sisters, at all young men as God’s younger brothers. My attitude toward them is love and trust. Therefore they are bound to love me.
These are my three principled goals of life and prayer. The reason I talked to you about them is that from today you are meant to become second Rev. Moons and inherit my way of life. These goals can be realistically applied to daily life. They can be applied every minute of the day. When you deal with the day, you are challenged to love more than Jesus, to exercise wisdom every minute and to manifest your faith. When you have infinite faith and attack a problem, there is no problem. You simply say,” God, you are my subject; I am your object; I am your second self.”
Now you know clearly the source of my power, from which I get such endless energy, will power, commitment and determination. These are the sources, the way of principled life, experienced in these three principles.
Those who have already made up their minds to become second Rev. Moons, inheriting his tradition of life according to principles one, two and three, say Amen!
