God’s Will and the Ocean: Episode 74

God’s Will and the Ocean
True Father Speaks on: “True Parents” and “Indemnity”, page 240-243
August 1985, Berkeley

Unification through Indemnity

In 1975 and 1976, when I came to America and set up the theological seminary in Barrytown, and sent out missionaries to 120 countries, is the time when the American nation and the whole world came against me. I made those missionary teams from three people, if you remember; one American, one German and one Japanese. The reason that I did this is because they represent nations which were fighting each other in World War II. Why did I make the teams this way? They were enemies just one generation ago.

Look at it this way. The Japanese are small, but they are "go getters". Americans are tall and usually thin; they are like grasshoppers, leaping around and looking for just the good things in life. They are "go happy" and "be lucky" type of people. The Germans are precise like a machine or a robot. These three kinds of people were formed into teams, sent out to a foreign country, and they fought to their hearts' content. People wondered why I didn't select a more harmonious group which would get along together. It was a puzzle to many people, many leaders and members in the church. However, I could see the three points which these nations represented. The Japanese members who went on this mission boasted that they were the oldest members of the movement in the group. They had seniority in other words. That is always a very important point in Japanese culture.

On the other hand, America is the top nation in the world. No one can ever belittle the Americans and they insist on that. The Germans don't respect America, however, because they have better technology than Americans, they are more systematic in accomplishing things. The members formed teams, but because of such backgrounds, they wouldn't yield to each other. We not only had problems with pressure from outside, from persecution, but also we had problems within the teams themselves. The internal disunity was actually the greatest question. Then why would I send representatives from these three nations together? You already know the answer don't you? I did it for the purpose of indemnity. Since indemnity is the key to our work, I had to put such teams together.

The first step was extremely difficult because no one even spoke the same language. If you think about it, life can become quite interesting, quite unusual. If someone wants to say, "Let's have dinner," there is no way to say it with simple words. You have to do it with sign language. If you become harmonious in front of God, that is the highest, most stylish way of life. Not only that, but also none of the three spoke the native language of the country to which they were sent. You can imagine these three people earning to live together and not being able to speak the same language nor even speaking the native language. The resident people must have surely wondered what they were doing in the country in the first place.

Each nation experienced almost exactly the very same situation. Then, some of the nations began to talk to each other. They would ask, "How about in your country? Did this Unification Church send someone who could speak your language?" They had to reply, "Well, no. They sent three people who couldn't communicate with each other and they couldn't communicate with us either. But, they are here."

Each country wanted to investigate these strange missionaries, but no one could understand what the other was saying. In some of the countries, they took the missionaries to each of their respective embassies and asked for an interpreter. In this way, they investigated our church in their nation. They had to go to three different embassies. However, in some small countries, the embassy couldn't afford an interpreter, so it became quite difficult. Even though many of the embassies didn't support the Unification Church, nonetheless, they defended their own people. The German embassy defended the German missionary and the Japanese embassy defended the Japanese missionary and so on. In that way, we were able to make relationships in many different nations.

Now, I want to reveal the secret as to why I sent out teams like that. I knew that by sending members out in this way, attention would be brought to these missionaries. Since no one likes the Unification Church, they would try to kick them out of their nation. Each nation tried to investigate the Unification Church, but they had to go through an interpreter from that missionary's embassy. Each embassy had its own pride and didn't want to persecute its own people. At least not on foreign soil. The world wanted to come against these missionaries and run them down. However, the embassies provided some resistance to that because they at least wanted to protect their own people. Do you think this was a foolish strategy or, in understanding this time of persecution, was this the best strategy available? While there was an uproar in more than 100 nations against our movement, I somehow had to sow a seed in these countries. The undeveloped countries don't know so much about what is going on. They just accept what more developed countries say.

At any rate, I was very, very serious and had to make a foundation. The advanced countries were coming against me at this time. However, I sent missionaries into the less advanced nations so that eventually we could embrace the advanced nations. Is there any developed country in the world today which doesn't know the name of Reverend Moon? It's a household name by now, isn't it?

In the past decade, even though the advanced nations have come against me, we have established a strong foundation in many of the "third world" countries. Many of these nations don't want America to influence them anymore. They are putting up "Yankee Go Home" banners. Maybe we can start a new movement and have an effect upon that. There has been a lot of commotion about me in the developed nations like America and Japan, but, at the same time in many other nations, our foundation is growing.

The American government came against me with all that they had. However, the impact was opposite to their hopes. Thousands and millions of people do not believe that Reverend Moon was wrong and the government was right. While I was in Danbury, large segments of the Christian community, which initially came against the Unification Church, united with us and they united amongst themselves.

While I was in Danbury, I sent a package to every single minister in this country. It contained the Divine Principle book and Divine Principle tapes. We sent over 300,000 copies. Some of these ministers were astonished that we did such a thing, some were upset. In spite of that, many of them were drawn to either read the book or listen to the tapes. You know we have that kind of ability, don't you? People are actually fascinated about us and want to know what keeps us going.