
Preface from
Young Soon Kim, the reporter
My mother was a
Presbyterian, She started going to church with her mother, and lived her whole
life in prayer. From my childhood to my maturity, and even when I was working
as a school teacher, my mother guided my faith, sometimes singing a hymn that
goes, "My soul is withered like a dry grass in the wilderness," and I
followed her guidance in meek obedience. I think that this sewed as a basis
upon which God could come to me. Upon my mother's religious conversion,
however, my faith underwent a great change.
While going to
the Presbyterian Church, she desperately prayed to see God, and during such a
prayer she experienced Jesus, who came with a pillar of fire, and through this
experience she joined the Unification Church, which was being persecuted as
heretic, and received the Blessing of marriage. She also led me to join this
church and receive Blessing. Supporting my husband, who chose the path of
ministry, I strove to keep to the straight way of faith.
One day, God's voice
came to me during a prayer: God wanted to put me into a burning furnace to melt
away my old self and remold me in the form of His daughter. Many people who
pursue religious faith hear "God's voice," and yet my case is quite
different from other people's experiences in that the voice I hear is concrete
and directly from God. During the three-year witnessing period after my
Blessing in 1968, I was preparing a special workshop.
I was very
tired and so lay on the bed to rest for a while, at which time a big hand
suddenly appeared in vision. Turning music sheets one by one, that hand and
told me to write down the message. I took down some of the message, but
afterwards, without understanding its significance, I did not pay much
attention to it. After a while, however, when our couple were asleep, a voice
came like a thunder and said, "You faithless child," which greatly
surprised us to wake up on our knees. The voice from heaven then shouted,
"Write down the new songs." For forty days from then, I took down
about a hundred songs, working day and night in tears and in exhaustion.
Thereafter, God
told me many new things. Since many of these divine messages were abstruse and
susceptible to misunderstanding by people, I agonized intensely over whether I
should publicly reveal them. The hundred children's songs I had received from
God were published only in 1992 under the title Yaho God, and the heaven's
messages in December 1996 under the title God, Who Came to Me.
As
I remember, it was in April 1997 that I started reporting correspondences from
the spiritual world on a full scale. That is when Dr. Lee, who was a director
of the Unification Thought Institute and had a close personal relationship with
me, suddenly passed on to the spiritual world. I was participating in his
funeral ceremony, when he appeared to me in spirit and said, "I will visit
you at home tonight." From that time on, he appeared to me at regular
times and conveyed what he had personally seen and felt in the spiritual world.
As
he had had burning curiosity about the spiritual world while on earth, in the
spiritual world he met many historic and providential figures and had many
different conversations. He met about thirty figures including such saints
religious giants as Jesus, Confucius, Sakyamuni Buddha, Mohammed, Socrates,
Swedenborg, and Sunda Sing; such providential figures in the Bible as Adam,
Eve, Abraham, Isaac, Judas Iscariot, and John the Baptist; and Karl Marx,
Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Dojo, Kishi, Eisenhower, Rhee Shing Man, Park
Jung Hee, Kim Hwal Lan, and Maria Park. The contents of Dr. Lee's conversation
with them have been published in the book The Reality of the Spiritual World
and Our Life on Earth.
The
present book, St. Augustine's Confessions from the Spiritual World, contains an
account of St. Augustine, who is one of the most prominent Christian
theologians and has met with Dr. Lee. What is revealed in this volume will
surely be shocking to the Protestants and Catholics, and I deeply anguished
over whether to expose to the public such a controversial content. I believe,
however, that this message will find its way to conscientious people of faith
in accordance with God's Will.
The
Holy Spirit of God, which irresistibly and infinitely overwhelms us, and the
power of the new truth, which presses on towards us from the spiritual world,
transcend human reason and judgment. The most essential of what God has said to
me when he came to me are: First, help people know about the living God;
second, help people know about the spiritual world; and third, help people
understand the law of indemnity, by which when we sin, we are punished and
judged.
The
God whom I know loves the world, and after the creation of human beings, He is
present in history and carrying out the tearful providence, sometimes in glow
and sometimes in tribulation, in order to restore the fallen people to the
original state. I sincerely wish that just as St. Augustine became the most
ardent lover and most faithful instrument of God through his mother Monica's
tearful prayer and love, so will all the readers of this book realize God's
boundless love towards us and live a great life on earth.
Here,
I would like to introduce Dr. Sang Hun Lee, who sewed as a bridge to channel
the messages for the present volume, and President Eu, who systematized and
wrote the Divine Principle.
Dr.
Lee was born in September 5, 1914 in Hwadong-lee Shinsang-myeon Jeongpyeon-gun,
Hamgyeongnam-do as the third son of a Confucian scholar Soo Young Lee, and
joined the Unification Church in 1956 and received the thirty-six couple's
Blessing from Rev. Moon. He systematized and wrote the Unification Thought and
VOC (Victory over Communism) Theory out of the teaching of Rev. Moon. He passed
away at the age of eighty-four, while he was preparing for the ninth
International Symposium on the Unification Thought as a professor of the Sun
Moon University.
Dr.
Lee's father, an ardent patriot who had once been in prison for joining the 3.1
Independence Movement, gave Dr. Lee a nationalist spirit and education from his
childhood. When Dr. Lee was a high school student, out of his burning
opposition against Japan, he participated in a nationalist movement led by
communists, which led him to prison and severe tortures by the Japanese
police.
After
graduating from Do Seong High School, he entered the Severance Medical School.
Meantime, he started having doubts about communist materialism and thinking
seriously about what true love for the nation and humanity is. Such
philosophical wondering led him to inquire about religion and eventually join
the Unification Church.
After graduating from the Severance Medical School and
before joining the church, he single minded walked the course of the medical
doctor, for instance, working at the Severance Medical School Hospital, Won San
Salvation Army Hospital, Young Dong Salvation Army Hospital, Young Dong State
Hospital of Chungbuk, and Korea Police Hospital, and opening the Gae Jeong
Central Hospital and Yee Seong Clinic of Internal Medicine.
Dr.
Lee marveled whenever he found a great insight from Rev. Moon's speech, and he
was able to ask Rev. Moon philosophical questions and receive much personal
teaching from him; finally, his such efforts culminated in the systematization
of the Unification Thought and VOC Theory.
For
many professors and leaders of various fields, home and abroad, he led seminars
on the Unification Thought up to the forty-third session, seminars on the VOC
Theory up to the seventh session, and about five hundred scholarly lectures,
thereby leading a movement for new spirit and value. On the other hand, as an
honorary chair of the Unification Thought section of the ICUS (International
Conference on the Unity of Science), he exerted his utmost in establishing the
present academic knowledge on the foundation of the Unification Thought.
Next,
I would like to turn to the late President Eu. He was one of the three couples
who were eldest of all members and Blessed first by Rev. Moon. His character
was compassionate, and his life exemplary. He was born on September 25, 1914 as
the second son of Jeong Han Eu, the father, and Shin Shil Lee, the
mother.
In
April 1933, he graduated from the Osan High School in Jeongju-gun, Pyeonganbuk-do,
and in April 1939, while he was a student in the medical school of the Kyeong
Seong Imperial University, he was attacked by a sudden disease and had to quit
school. In 1948, he served the society as an educator by establishing the Yeon
Bok Middle School in the Yeong Pyeong Island and becoming the first president
of the school. When the HAS-UWC (Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of
the World Christianity), commonly called the Unification Church, was founded on
May 1, 1954, President Eu was one of the founding members. He was appointed as
the first president of the church on October 14, 1960 and served in the
position until July 24, 1970, then he passed away at the age of fifty-seven.
In
early November of 1935, President Eu first encountered Rev. Moon's Divine
Principle manuscript. It is said that after the day of the encounter, he read
and hand copied the content numerous times, unceasingly exclaiming with
inspiration and joy. Thereafter, he took an overall charge of the education of the
Unification Church members and gave lectures for fifteen hours every day
despite his crippled leg.
When
he started on a Divine Principle discussion, he would be totally involved in it
without remembering meal or sleeping times and would never end the discussion
and explanation until he made sure that the conversing parties understood the
points at issue. He always maintained a heavy and tense schedule, giving
consultation to church members, taking care of administrative affairs, and
systematizing and compiling the Explanation of the Divine Principle. In this
intense situation, the first edition of the Explanation was published.
A
few years after this, the Divine Principle came out, which can be regarded as
the most remarkable of his life's work under the guidance of Rev. Moon. We
cannot neglect the merits of the two elders in systematizing and writing the
Unification Principle and Unification Thought. I have introduced the life,
thought, and faith of the two elders because I thought that it may help you understand
the messages of St. Augustine. I pray for your victory under God's protection.
Young
Soon Kim, The reporter, June 20, 2000