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APOLOGY

This is an apologetic book. Apology can be defined in two ways -- as a defense and as saying one is sorry. I am doing both. I am defending the UC against its naive and vicious enemies, and I also apologize for the mistakes the UC and I have made. I apologize for the thousands of people I deceived when I fundraised. I told people I was fundraising for "Christian Youth Counseling." This is like President Clinton saying he did not have "sexual relations" with Monica Lewinsky. Words are important. Clinton did have sexual relations and I was not a Christian in the eyes of those I fundraised to. Clinton and I deceived people.

The ends do not justify the means. I was wrong as well as thousands of other members who did not clearly say the names Rev. Moon and Unification Church. In this book I will not focus on the wrongs of the UC. Dr. Durst does a good job of talking about the mistakes the UC made in his book that we will look at later. The focus of this book is to defend the UC against its critics.

I believe Rev. and Mrs. Moon have taken on the most difficult job ever given a couple -- the role of restoring Adam and Eve. They have worked to earn the position of being the first True Parents of mankind. They are not God and they do not teach that anyone is to become a god. When we say that the Moon's are perfect, we must define perfect as being mature. It does not mean that they or anyone else who grows to perfection does not make mistakes. Rev. and Mrs. Moon have succeeded in their role of being mankind's first True Parents. Jesus was murdered before he could marry and teach the revelations God gave him.

Many Christians are wrong in thinking that the goal of human history is for most of mankind to spend eternity in a burning chamber of horrors while the small minority of mankind, the fundamental and orthodox Christians, will live in heaven. God is greater than that. Christians have a weak God. They say that God will "allow" the vast majority of mankind to be tortured by Satan forever. God will not allow this to happen. Eventually the world will be restored, not doomed to eternal suffering. All things are possible with God. Christians accuse Moon of teaching that God is weak. The very opposite is the truth. In traditional Christian theology, God is weak because he cannot abolish evil. The Principle is the truth that will elevate Christian thought out of its childish belief that God will send the Messiah to save just them like some superman who will carry them off to a safe home. The DP teaches that we must grow up and take personal responsibility. Because mankind is tortured every day the Messiah feels God's urgency. Would you have a sense of urgency if your children were being tortured and you knew where they were? You would work round the clock until every one of them was restored to their home safe and sound. Rev. Moon feels God's urgency and teaches that we must not waste any moment. He is on the greatest crusade the world has ever seen. The Moons have given mankind the greatest dream and goal in history -- the vision of the ideal world. They have brought the blueprints of how to build it. They have brought the truth that explains the Bible, the greatest book in history. It doesn't matter that their course has been messy. Some of their own children reject them. Jesus was rejected by every one of his disciples when he went to the cross for being a dangerous enemy to the state. In time he has been shown to be a good man and his movement to be a good movement even though many of his followers have and are today brutal and evil.

Rev. Moon moved to America in the early 1970s and has worked hard every day to lead his movement to restore America to its founding beliefs such as traditional family values, free enterprise, limited government, freedom of religion, and sexual purity. In other words, he is championing Biblical values that most Americans have abandoned.

He has also brought something new -- the true view of Jesus and the Bible which says we are to build an ideal world on earth. No one believes that. But in time everyone will. Rev. Moon is famous with his followers of not getting very much sleep. He gets only two hours of sleep a night and even as he approaches 80 he outworks any member, no matter how young and fanatic that member may be. Why does he work so hard? Because God and Jesus have chosen him to be the Messiah who is a teacher of God's truth and vision. He teaches that we must be workaholics.

HONESTY

Rev. Moon has always taught and demanded for honesty. Sadly, many members have fundraised and not said Rev. Moon's name as he commanded them to do. They have often invited people to workshops and not said Rev. Moon's name, especially in the early days of the American church in the 1970s. I was witnessed to this way by Onni's New Age front organizations called International Re-Education Foundation. I lived briefly with Dr. Durst who later became the president of the UC. I saw a list of UC centers on a wall once and asked him who that group was. He told me they were "friends" and "associates" of their group. I was uncomfortable there and left. I traveled from California to my home state of Nebraska. I got the number of the Unification Church from the phone directory, called and asked if I could come over. I went over and discovered that Dr. Durst had deceived me. This is wrong and the church has paid dearly for this. I apologize for not saying Rev. Moon's name and church along with thousands of other stupid UC members when we made millions of dollars deceiving people at millions of doors. Durst writes in his book, To Bigotry, No Sanction, that he and Onni didn't know how to build a church. Obviously, they should have it a church instead of a giving it a secular name and never mentioning Rev. Moon until after a person had joined. When I met them in 1973, Joy Irvine sat next to me during a DP lecture. To me it was obvious that this was a religious organization. During a break, I told her I was excited to find what is obviously a church. I asked why they didn't call it a church. She said something about how there were already churches and they were building something brand new. The problem with this is that every other member in America were calling themselves the Unification Church. NBC exposed Onni.

Is Dr. Durst a satanic liar and deceiver like Satan is called in the Bible? Is it the true nature of Rev. Moon and his followers to see lying and deceiving as God's way? Dr. Durst meant no harm when he didn't tell me the whole truth. Technically, I never lied the four years in the 1970s when I knocked on tens of thousands of doors and said I was fundraising for "Christian Youth Counseling." I felt we were Christian, that we dealt with mainly young people who came over to our center and by hearing the DP lectures they were counseled and guided to become good, religious people. Many who visited were taking drugs and leading immoral lives. When they joined they changed. But it was wrong for us in the early days to say such things.

Some members look back at what they did in fundraising and have a clear conscience because they told people that they were getting donations for one of Father's organizations, such as CARP. This is the name of the Church's college organization. They also think that because in some cases the money they got went almost entirely to supporting their center and it was a legitimate organization that they are off the hook of being criticized. This is just a rationalization for wrong doing.

I saw a news show on TV by a consumer watchdog reporter on one of those news shows like Dateline or 20/20 in which the reporter warned people about a man who was obviously a scam artist but not doing anything illegal. He would advertise and ask donations for organizations that sounded like nationally respected health organizations such as The American Heart Association. I don't remember the exact wording, but he would change it slightly to something like The National Heart Association and people would donate money, sometimes large amounts of money to this guy and not realize they were donating to some creep working out of his house and doing nothing to help others with the money he was given.

Technically, he was not breaking any law. He registered the name of his many organizations that all sounded very close like all the nationally recognized charitable and research organizations. Those few people who have stayed since the 70s have this idiotic nostalgia for the days of the MFT and see it as a wonderful episode in their life of faith. As the members grow older and the Church matures, fundraising will decline. But there is still enough of it to still upset people when they learn that the check they made out to is one of Moon's many organizations. Because Father has such a rotten reputation we should go the extreme to not give any appearance of deceit.

There are several former members who have websites and denounce the church for the grueling hours they put in for years. They don't look back and see spiritual growth. They see abuse. Craig Maxim (xmoonies.com), Ingo Michehl (http://trancenet.org/moonism/) and Steve Hassan (freedomofmind.com) say their life on the MFT was a nightmare. Out of all the tens of thousands of words of Father they find a few that sounds like he is for slavery and lying. There are times when it is right to lie. The victims of Steve Hassan's cruel deprogrammings had the right to lie after they had been lied to. Hassan is a former deprogrammer who believed that the ends justify the means and used force on members to convert them to his view of life. He now says this was a mistake. No "zombie Moonie" has ever done such a heinous act as incarcerate people and abused them as Hassan has done. The "maniac" and "dangerous Hitler-like Moon" has never done such a vicious thing as Hassan has done. Yet Hassan accuses the church of using "coercion." They have never used coercion. Hassan and Hitler have, but not Moon.

Hassan now says he doesn't believe in deprogramming. Yet, his constant harassment of the church and relentless attempts to create an hysterical paranoia toward the church has caused many to resort to violent kidnapping and abuse in locked rooms that sometimes goes on for weeks and months. Steve has never apologized for his evil deeds. Steve feels he can make mistakes and move on, but others cannot. Dr. Durst has apologized for his stupidity and for the mistakes of those in the church. He eloquently states his case in his book To Bigotry, No Sanction. Hassan can't even be humble enough to apologize and what he did is light years more wrong than anything that Durst and the church have done.

Life is messy. We are all learning by trial and error in this fallen world. We all make mistakes. Dr. Durst's book correctly puts the mistakes of the church into proper perspective. Hassan, Maxim and Michehl make mountains out of molehills. They take a few quotes of Rev. Moon out of context and conveniently leave out the quotes that show the real truth. They don't mention that Christians have killed each other for 2000 years over passages of Jesus in the Bible. It is easy to see contradictions in all religions and political movements. People read Jesus and Thomas Jefferson and come up with totally different conclusions. For example, those who read Jesus and say he is a socialist, feminist and pacifist are wrong. From God's viewpoint Jesus is for capitalism, traditional family and defending oneself from aggressors. Everyone was in a frenzy to kill Jesus because they saw a dangerous virus that had to be eliminated for the safety of society. Many people also misjudge Rev. Moon with the same ignorant passion of bigotry. Hassan, Maxim, Michehl and Ross see themselves as some kind of Paul Revere riding through the night screaming "The Moonies are coming!" Most America hated George Washington. History has shown them wrong. And history will show that anti-Moonists were like all those pathetic people in history who jailed religious pioneers.