Sun Myung Moon

You know, subsequently after that first initial meeting, within two weeks, actually ten days, I was converted from a liberal Christian agnostic to a right-wing religious fanatic in the Moonies.

Uh, of course, they didn't tell me that it was called the Unification Church or related to Reverend Sun Myung Moon or something like that, because you don't give a baby steak, you know? And actually, the end justifies the means according to their belief, so therefore you can even lie to people in order to help them to separate from Satan and come back to God.

[chuckles] Pretty amazing, eh? So yeah, that's how I originally got in, and then after the seven-day workshop, there was a twenty-one-day workshop.

And the thing is, I'll actually kind of relate this to the, probably the most influential book on the topic, which I read afterwards in order to understand the phenomenon, the first one being Milieu Control.

They handed me one of Moon's own speeches that I recognize, and they just hand it to me and said, "Read this and tell us what you think, Steve." So it was a question.

And I'm reading from this booklet from the Moonies where he's, he's talking to congressmen and senators, and how he's saying he's so surprised anyone could believe that he, Reverend Moon, a Korean, could brainwash Americans, because he respects and loves Americans so much, and he's surprised at these accusations.

And I had the first negative thought in two and a half years.

I thought, "What a liar." 'Cause I had been with him at least 100 times in person, where he was tell- saying how terrible Americans were, how the Koreans were the master race, and how our brains were so dirty that needed to be washed, and, and I just knew it was a lie.

Mm.

You know? And I...

This was one of the lies, that Father wasn't married twice before.

Oh.

Somehow they think they are specially chosen to receive a message from God.

I recall years ago when the Reverend Moon claimed that Jesus appeared to him when he was 16 years old and commissioned him to do God's work.

The result was that he wrote a book called The Divine Principle, which consists of revelation from God, he claims.

Listen to this from one of his sermons.

So yes, the repercussions of Waco have continued for some time.

So let's return for a moment back to cults, not in the sense of a dangerous one like Jim Jones' People's Temple, w- but rather let's talk about the kind that was common in the 1970s, such as the Unification Church led by Reverend Sun Myung Moon and Divine Light Mission led by Guru Hans Rajneesh.

I'd like to revisit the question of mind control or brainwashing that in the book you cast doubt upon.

I agree with you that devotees of these groups were not literally turned into zombies with no free will.

So what, what i- you know, what, what is left? If the only ones who are believed claim, "I'm the Messiah.

I'm the new, I'm the new incarnation..." I, I have very little, uh, a- against the Reverend Moon a- and his, uh, and the Unification Church, what is derogatorily called Moonies.

Uh, that's why I even give them the, the benefit of be- calling them the right name.

But the Reverend Moon says he is the new embodiment of, of Jesus, uh, on this earth.

He is a divine being.

He has a large following.

Then a sign of the time of the false Christ and the false prophets that would come.

Our world is, you know, people are always looking for like Reverend Moon or guru this or that or this self-proclaimed Messiah or this false teacher or that false teacher.

And all of those things may be examples of false teachers and false prophets.

They may be exactly what Jesus Christ is talking about.

We'll get to it in a minute.

But yeah, they were started by a cult called the Moonies.

Do you know anything about the Moonies?

I do because we did a whole episode about an offshoot of them, the machine gun cult that was like the son of the founder of the Moonies or whatever.

Yeah.

And, you know, I'm just generally culturally aware of them, I suppose.

No,

I don't remember.

One speech of particular interest came in September 2021.

"Today, in honoring Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon and all of you, I would like to express my profound thanks for your tireless efforts through UPF, Universal Peace Federation, in resolving disputes in the world, especially in relation to the peaceful reunification of the Korean Peninsula." But who was Dr.

Hak Ja Han Moon, and why was Shinzo Abe praising her at this event? Well, that's because she and her husband, Sun Myung Moon, are the leaders of an international cult that has secretly been helping Abe's political party stay in power for 65 of the past 70 years.

Sun Myung Moon was born in 1920 in a small village in the Pyong An Province, about 80 miles from Pyongyang, now part of North Korea.

After Korea was liberated from Japan's rule at the end of World War II, Moon began preaching across Korea while developing the early version of his core doctrine, the Divine Principle, which centered on three main ideas: creation, the fall, and restoration.

Essentially, Moon said that God created a perfect world, but then humanity fell when Adam and Eve succumbed to selfish desire.

Restoration, then, was the rest of human history, steps in a divine repair plan.

Jesus, according to Moon, came close to completing it, but his mission went unfinished, apparently because he never married.

[laughs]

Reverend Moon doesn't get boo- didn't get booed.

[laughs]

Uh, David Koresh didn't get booed.

I was gonna ask.

Which has come under scrutiny.

Uh, Reverend Moon's family still controls United Press International and The Washington Times.

So there are groups that, uh, control media, and as a result, uh, they influence the daily lives of all of us to some extent, and they, they influence government.