Create Ideal Families 1c

VIDEOS

My goal is to make videos of the Principle and education that will be professional and clear. Father is right in saying the old style of witnessing on streets, then getting someone to lecture for hours on end and then getting new converts to some place out in nature for 7 or 21 days is too primitive. We have to reach millions and billions of people. We have to rely on video to teach. Father says our number one responsibility is to teach. He practices what he preaches. He constantly teaches. He says, "the primary function of the Unification Church members is ultimately to educate people." We simply cannot reach all of mankind by lecturing in person. We have to use media. There have been some articles in the UNews about members who have puts some videos made by headquarters on Cable TV. I have done that too. But we need to do more. We absolutely need to distribute a billion videos world wide.

TOOLS

In the past we used simple tools to build a log cabin. Now we need modern state-of-the-art tools to build a skyscraper. Videos are the tools we need. We have all experienced the time when it was impossible to do something, such as unloosen a bolt with our hand. We tried and tried and got nowhere. Then we found a wrench and in seconds with very little effort we got the job done. Videos are that wrench. We can't build a skyscraper with a hammer and some nails.

I am on the Internet with my version of the Principle that has excited some members. They are longing for the day when I print it in book form and make videos. If you are interested in helping me or have ideas to share, please E-mail me at JohnGodwin@hotmail.com.

Below are some words of Father using books and videos to witness from The Way of the Spiritual Leader and a speech given at East Garden:

Communists have used books to conquer the world up to now. Do you understand? You could not even think about this yet. You have been doing witnessing up to now, but you did not know how to do it with a book. If you do it with books, then the results would be astronomical; so the only way to restore the thirty million people is through books. Even if the rate was one percent, how many is that? If you look at the statistics, in Japan right now, about four percent are joining the movement. Looking at this, it is not possible for one to not be able to witness to at least ten people in a year. This can be confirmed even through scientific numbers. Do you understand? Do the church leaders gathered here understand? [Yes] When you go back this time, you should start on this campaign.

How much is the basic cost of the Principle book? How much is the basic cost? Five hundred won. You should give them to the members at the original cost. This is what we did in Japan. What should we decide upon as the price? . . . Let's set it at four hundred won. Four hundred won. Do you understand? If each person is to buy 30 books each, that is twelve thousand won; you should find a way to come up with twelve thousand won. Everyone without an exception must buy them. Do you understand? As a member, if you do not have thirty Principle books, then I will not consider you a member. The whole world is united on this. Can the central nation of Korea not fulfill this, when the whole Unification Church worldwide is acting in unison? You are false and useless ones. Tradition has not been established in Korea. Isn't this true? All of you should buy them.

All of the leaders, especially the leaders must carry this out from dawn. You cannot waste your time away by just sitting still. You cannot do that. Meeting one person each day and getting back one book from someone -- can't you do this? Do you think you can or cannot do this? [We can] You have no excuse. For those who do not carry it out, you should not even think about receiving blessing or good fortune, or anything else. [55-291, 1972.5.9.]

Then should the Unification Church members just sit still? We cannot just sit still. From now on, average members must buy thirty books each. In Japan, they give the books at the basic cost, at 500 Won each. So, at least twenty thousand books must be sold.

You have been running around every day doing witnessing, but is it going well? You are not doing so well. Rather than doing what you are doing, you should lend the books to the supporters in the countryside. You should lend one book for one month. Do you understand? They have plenty of time to read the book in a month. As long as you are diligent, you can push them to read it in two weeks. Do you understand? Using a book is easier than witnessing. How much is the Principle book? Since we are lending out for free these books that worth eight hundred Won . . .

This depends on how you publicize them. You should go around with it starting at dawn, advertising that it is a worthwhile book to be read to the children. You can lend out one book and get one back each day. If you lend out 30 books and give each person one month to read, then in a year, you would have lent out 360 times. 360 people would have read the book. If you can do it in two weeks instead, then 720 books, 720 people would have seen the Principle book.

When you look at Japan, the percentage of those who join after listening to the Principle lecture is four percent. Considering that four percent join through, lectures, a higher percentage of people will join through the books. If someone, who can read and understand the book, can join, then he can immediately work as a core member. However, this is not the case with those who join through lectures. Do you understand what I am saying?

Now, the foundation for free cultural exchange between Korea and America is sending out letters to the whole nation asking for donations. When they send out one hundred letters, usually they have two to four return letters. The rate is above two-percent. How many percent of the people who read the book would be touched? It is surely more than that. Just sending a letter out has a two-percent response rate, so the result must be better for us since we are visiting them personally to distribute the books. Do you understand? Even if it was just one-percent, how many people is that? Moreover, when you lend the books out, you shouldn't just do nothing. After you lend the books out, then about half way through their reading, you should ask them about their response, and for those who like the books, you can sell it to them. If we do this, I believe that we can sell many books.

Having done that, if there is someone who is interested in the Principle, you should distribute one book and say, "I will personally go and explain to all your relatives and family members, so please have them gather at one place." You should continue your lectures in this manner, and giving them a date by which they should finish the books, whether it is one week or two weeks, you should guide them in their studies by providing explanations.

If you can lay such a foundation is several places, then you can call your own father, mother, and relatives to gather at the lecturing site. In this way, if there can be just lecturing sites, if you can gather ten people in each place, then you can ask your parents or parents-in-law to come. "I am lecturing today, so would you like to come and see?" Father-in-law will say, "the rumor has it that you have been negligent in your household chores, but what are you talking about?" In response you can say, "It is good words, so why don't you come and find out?" If he objects, then you should speak about the Principle for the sake of witnessing to your father-in-law. Then, he will eventually say, "My daughter-in-law is great." If he listens to you for just one week, then he will give a firm support even if you do not request him to do so.

3) Witnessing Through Video

Unification church members should have thirty Principle books, thirty cassette tapes, and thirty videotapes. Moreover, all of you should own a VCR. In the future, all of you should own one. Do you understand what I am saying? Starting from the State Leader, you should all have it. Do you understand? [Yes] So what do you do if you do not have enough money? I have ordered a special individual financial activity just for this reason. [97-231]

Up to now we have been saying that we do not have enough people, but in reality that is true. However, if you prepare several tapes, then you can witness to ten or twenty households even if we lack manpower. Moreover, since they are not offended but rather are grateful, you can even receive some donations from them. Even if you do not go out and earn money, there will be ways that you can obtain the funds needed for your activities. Through this method, even a new member, someone who joined yesterday, can also take the tape and do witnessing with it. I believe that this is the only and the last way that we can have an explosive growth in membership all over the nation in a very short time. [65-341]

We have all the modern day weapons: videotapes, cassette tapes, books and publications.

Leaders' Meeting - December 22, 1994

Reverend Sun Myung Moon December 22, 1994 East Garden

Father is telling you that you should carry cassette tapes, videotapes or Divine Principle books, over 30 copies of them, which contain Divine Principle teaching. Even while you're driving or passing by some place, if you see somebody and you feel like you can talk to them, then get their address or talk to them, lend your cassette tapes or videotapes, whatever they want or can utilize, and then let them study Divine Principle. If you don't do this kind of work, in other words, you are not spreading the truth that you received from True Parents and God. Your ancestors from the spirit world will punish you, will persecute you. And your neighbors' ancestors even, because your neighbors' ancestors are anxious to see you teaching their descendants. They will criticize and persecute you by saying that "Your Family Pledge says this and that, but you don't practice that. What is it?" So if you have any good material, then you just share with your neighbors. Do you understand? (Yes.) If you don't practice this, what Father is teaching you today, when you join the spirit world, you will be penalized. It's like a contract, agreement with God.

POOR LEADERSHIP IN THE UC

I believe that the Unification Church ( UC) has made some fundamental mistakes and is to mainly to blame. Most members who write to me and give their idea of why the UC has failed to grow say they feel that the core reason is poor leadership. I agree. If there are problems in any organization it is usually because of poor leadership.

Lovelessness

In 1997 the editor of a journal titled The World Unificationist Student Review wrote the following criticism of the UC:

Unificationist Journal

It never ceases to amuse me that we can spill buckets of blood in service to the world, but once members of the world proclaim their allegiance to the Principle, we turn upon them as ravenous wolves, to suck from them whatever we can in our own quests to rise to the “top.” Jesus chastised the Jews of his day for doing the same thing! This is what got us into trouble years ago, sending Rev. Moon to an American prison and sending our American church plummeting into an abyss of memberlessness and ambivalence from which we have yet to really recover."

The Unification Church has struggled with communicating the exciting message of Divine Principle to the Christian world since Rev. Moon was a young man. In many ways, our movement failed to fulfill its greatest expectations because we never had, or forgot, many of the greatest elements of the Christian Church. St. Paul says in 1 Cor. 13 that no matter what skills or talents, or even spiritual talents such as speaking in tongues, a person may possess, if they cannot love their brothers and sisters in this world, then they are just a noisy gong.

For all the theological trouble that St. Paul is in these days, many of his insights are prescient to the Unification Movement’s past and present situation. Lovelessness has been a defining characteristic of the Unification Church for at least 15 years, in my experience. Ritual and legality has been the defining mode of our religious experience for a long time. Tens of thousands of Unificationists who were excited by Divine Principle left in search of more loving pastures. That is a great black mark on our own personal histories. I sometimes receive a lot of flak here at UTS because I often speak about this situation. Sometimes people tell me to quit living in the past, which is a true enough remark. But it does ignore the very real presence of pain in the people’s hearts.

... Where is our faith in Jesus Christ? Where is our faith in the Bible? Books like Proverbs, Psalms, Ecclesiastes, Job, contain rich guidance and profound wisdom.

St. Paul, who is often criticized for inventing his own brand of Christianity, nevertheless speaks to us today in words we can understand and appreciate, if we have an open mind. We all know from experience that the most remarkable Unification Church leader is poison to us if he or she has no love in their hearts to express. Heung Jin Nim asserts that “Heavenly Father is so heartbroken when He looks at the way the family that True Parents are trying to create out of the Unification Church in many corners has been turned into a cold organization, lacking heart and love.” (p. 26) We have all of us created resentment in our hearts because of the loveless treatment we have received from others. But we must repent of these things and go on with the Lord’s work of recreating this sinful world into a world of other-centered love. We need the joy of God to fully do what we are asked to do. “Just as the purpose of life is joy, the purpose of repentance is joy. The purpose of repentance is freedom.” (p. 77)

The purpose of this little tirade is to strongly assert the importance of resurrecting our Christian heritage, or inheriting the Christian foundation if we do not already possess it within our hearts, and becoming proud followers of Jesus Christ just as much as we are proud followers of Rev. Moon, through whom and with whom we Unificationists believe Jesus Christ is and has been strongly working. So what is the problem?

Why do we not do it? Are we afraid that we will lose our Unificationist Divine Principle faith? Do we think that Rev. Moon is the ultimate state of the human being? Are we nervous that we will somehow disrespect Rev. Moon’s great spiritual accomplishments for God by loving and serving Jesus, too? Maybe "yes" or some, and maybe "no" for others.

Let the reader decide.

But the Christian spirit is strong because it has 2000 years of holy struggle supporting it. We must inherit this foundation and work with it and through it in order to express the Divine Principle to the worldwide Christian base.

The author of the above does not have any specific proposals to cure the lovelessness in the UC. Love is a big word that is rarely defined. This book will attempt to show in depth and in clear language how the UC has not understood what true love is. Jesus said we are to love others as we love ourselves. There has to be balance between the public and private. Has the UC sacrificed the individual too much for the whole? Have we loved Cain people more than the Abel people too much? Have we won the world and lost our soul? Have we ran to third base instead of going to first? Shouldn't the UC be an oasis as well as boot camp?

I agonize over the tragic failure of the UC to bring the lifesaving words of truth to America. Hardcore members like to point out the work they have done on P.R. campaigns. 7000 ministers were sent to Korea. The Washington Times is loved by Reagan. President and Barbara Bush travel with Mother in Japan. Etc. Etc. The problem with this is that none of these things saved any lives. No one was transformed by the healing words of the Principle. The Republicans and some ministers appreciate the tons of money given them, but not one of them bow to True Parents as the saviors of the world. The Divine Principle book is not in every home in America. I believe it should have been after so many years since the first missionary came to America. P.R. work is secondary. Teaching the Principle is primary and there has been very little teaching in the last few decades.

MESSAGE OF HOPE

In this book I give some reasons why I feel the UC has not grown. And I give some ideas that I feel will help us grow if we are willing to stretch and change some of our unproductive habits. I pray that you will feel my message is a message of hope. We have a book in our movement called Communism: a Critique and Counterproposal. I am doing something like that. I am critiquing the UC and giving some proposals, that if followed, I believe will bring explosive growth.

In this book I hope to give my ideas of why Rev. Moon and his followers have not been able to make the Divine Principle a household name. If the UC had been united on better values and tactics in the last 40 years, it would have grown to be the largest religious movement in American history. Sadly, the first missionary to America came in 1959 and 40 years later in 1999 if you knocked on any 100 doors in America and asked if they knew about the Divine Principle, not one person would have known about it. The UC has been blind sighted. It is missing some key truths that hold it back from receiving God's blessing of explosive growth.

It is amazing that the followers of Rev. Moon have not even put the Divine Principle in most libraries. I recently moved to a city where there are around one million people. I went to see if the Divine Principle book was in any of the 40 public libraries and there was none.

I looked to see if there were any books by Rev. Moon. There were none. Let's reflect on this for a moment. If you go to the movement's website for their bookstore at www.hsabooks.com we find a number of books by Sun Myung Moon. These books are selected speeches he has given over the last 50 years. He personally picked 40 speeches he liked out of the many thousands he has given and had the church publish them in a book called God's Will and the World. (You can read the entire book at Damian Anderson's excellent Web site: Unification.net -- /www.unification.net/gww/) It is a magnificent book that is filled with the highest truths that have ever been printed. God is speaking clearly through him. I have read it over and over and am thrilled every time I read the awesome truths it teaches. If I asked 10,000 people at random if they had read this book, not one would even know it existed.

GREATEST WRITER AND BOOKS IN HUMAN HISTORY

What Father writes in this book makes him the greatest writer in human history. This book has the truth that will free this world from the terrible bondage of Satan. It explains the Bible. What could be more exciting? Doesn't it make sense that those who say they believe in this book would work frantically day and night to get this book into every library and every home? Wouldn't it seem logical that they would place ads in newspapers and magazines and on TV and radio telling every American to read the words of the greatest writer in human history? And yet after 40 years of endless hours of earning money and witnessing and giving blood, sweat and tears, this book is not in any library in the city I have moved to.

The only reasons that there is a Divine Principle book and books of speeches by Father in libraries in cities I have lived in over the past 30 years since I joined is because I personally put them there. I have even spent my own money to put ads in newspapers directing people to go the library and check them out.

VIDEO REVOLUTION

True Parents Unificationists have gone to Sunday service for decades and not one person has even thought of advertising Rev. Moon's books. It doesn't even occur to them that their main purpose of life is to teach the truth. Almost every home has a VCR and Disney movies. Why aren't there beautiful videos of Rev. Moon speaking and teaching in every home and public library? They film him hours on end and then bury the video tape in some vault somewhere. The reason is because the leaders at headquarters are incompetent. They major in minors.

My family cares and we are determined to get Father's books and my books into every home in the world. This is the focus of our life. We plan to make videos of all my books and distribute them worldwide also. The ultimate way to teach today is with video. Even Father has mentioned that we should only teach by video, but his words have fallen on deaf ears. Anyone should be able to go into any library in the free world and find videos in that nation's language on the Divine Principle and other aspects of life. Why don't we have a clear video that is so well done that a person can sit in the privacy of their own home and be converted without anyone present? This should be our number one goal. No religion or political party that I know of has videos in libraries that professionally and clearly explain their values and goals. The Catholic Church has 500,000 believers and yet I have never seen a video in any library I have been in that says in an organized way just what their core beliefs are. The Republican, Democratic, Libertarian and Socialist Parties do not have videos in my local library. There is not one video in the public library near me that explains how to have true love in a marriage and in a family. I pray that the members will demand that those in control over the video footage of Father get many of his speeches on videos and put into libraries. It is pathetic that the greatest man in human history has been filmed and no one can see speak. It is a disgrace and shameful that HSA books does not sell one video or audio tape of Father. The Bible says, "Is a lamp brought in to be put under the bushel basket, or under the bed, and not on the lampstand?" (Mark 4:21).

MY GOAL

My goal is to see that every library and every home in the world has books and videos that will be so powerfully done that people will understand clearly what God's will is for their life and will be persuaded and sold on the values I teach and will change their lives. In turn they will buy those books and videos and hand them out to their neighbors who in turn will be converted without having to attend a church service or lectures or study sessions with others. I have dramatically changed my life because I read some books. The official DP is too dry and academic. It doesn't even end by saying the Messiah is on the earth. I have written a Principle that some members have told me is clear and interesting. It is titled Divine Principle in Plain Language. You can read the entire text at my website: DivinePrinciple.com. Some day (soon I hope) I plan to print this book and my other books and then you can order them from Amazon.com.

I have been transformed sometimes by watching videos. I was converted to libertarian economics many years ago when I watched Milton Friedman's video series on PBS called Free to Choose that are based on his best selling book of the same name. Another young man was watching that same series the exact same time I was. He was a college student by the name of Arnold Schwarzenegger. He also was converted and like me, became a passionate believer and is still so today. Because the UC will not spend any of its billions of dollars to make videos and distribute them, I am taking on that responsibility. I am not holding my breath that they would help me at headquarters because I am completely anti-feminist while they believe in various shades of feminism. I will make videos that will clearly explain how we are to order our homes around absolute principles instead of the watered down mush that Unificationists teach. Eventually I plan on having some of my books become major motion pictures such as my book, 1620: The Pilgrims and the New Pilgrims, that tells the story of the Pilgrims. It is beyond my ability to express in words how tragic the UC is in not taking advantage of the video revolution. Many Unificationists love to watch movies but it never occurs to them that mankind should hear the greatest truths in the world on video. The UC bookstore has one video series on the Principle for sale. It is by Kevin McCarthy titled The Divine Principles. I bought them and showed them to my children. Kevin is good, but they are so unprofessional that they should not be put in libraries. If anyone reading this has any interest or ideas in this topic please let me know.

I hope you will help distribute Father's books also. At least put Father's books in all the public and school libraries near you.

PURPOSE OF LIFE -- THREE BLESSINGS

If we had to summarize the essence of the revelations God has revealed to Rev. Moon it would be that every person will find happiness when they achieve the purpose of life. The Bible says God's dream and desire is for every person to have Three Blessings -- to be "fruitful, multiply, and have dominion." In my book the Divine Principle in Plain Language (You can read the entire text of all 10 of my books at www.DivinePrinciple.com) we learn what those things mean. In my other books I go into more detail explaining each of these aspects of life. To help clarify the meaning of the Three Blessings I will use the words "Food" for the First Blessing, "Sex" for the Second Blessing and "Money" for the Third Blessing.

The UC has not had leaders that understood completely how we are to accomplish the Three Blessings. Unfortunately, they have often led members down false roads. I hope that leaders and members of the UC will have ears to hear and listen to what I believe are some things we have done wrong and some ideas that may sound ridiculous at first. I appreciate the efforts of leaders who did their best to build our movement, but we should have the courage to look at new ideas and try new approaches, especially when it is obvious we are not growing as fast as we should as individuals, as families and as a movement. If we compared our situation to football teams, we would be ranked at the bottom when it came to witnessing. The Mormons would be the national champion. What is it about the Mormons that give them so much power? I write it is because they and other growing churches, like the Southern Baptists, are taking the heat in our feminist society to stand up publicly for biblical family values. These churches teach patriarchy that honors the innate differences between men and women. These churches are anti-feminist and pro-traditional family. They are criticized because they don't let women lead men in their church, but this is one the core reasons they are growing so fast and have better marriages and families than most. More on this later when we look at the Second Blessing. Let's begin with the First Blessing.