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I began to pray as never before in my life. In fact, I prayed day and night. I asked Jesus: "Tell me; my Savior, what is this all about? Is it true? Is Sun Myung Moon the Antichrist, or is he you, returning under a new name?" At this time I prayed and studied without ceasing. I created an outline of the Principle book to make it easier to study. I fasted too, but especially I prayed -- hard.
Right from the beginning my spiritual eyes opened up, and I began to see things spiritually that I had never seen before. We designated one room in my house as a prayer room. Whenever I sat down to pray, I sensed the room was filled with people -- spirits. I could even see them, and the room was always full of light. I was drawn magnetically into that room at all hours.Many times I saw beautiful colors in there -- pink, white, royal blue, much gold, and a beautiful light green. It was such a wonderful feeling to sit in that room with so many spirit people and pray and talk to God. My prayers lasted for hours. Many times I even prayed through the night. I never wanted to leave.
These experiences were so wonderful that I didn't want to stop being in that spiritual realm. Soon I also found out that I had healing power, and many spiritual phenomena happened to me. I have always regarded myself as a rather down-to-earth man, and so have others. Therefore, I tested out all these spiritual experiences many times to verify them.
I kept yelling to God: "Father, You have to tell me whether this is the truth or not! I don't want to go to hell, but if this isYour work I definitely want to be a good disciple right away. I want to do asmuch as I can to restore this world to Your' All I wanted was a sign fromHeaven, a confirmation or rejection of what I was about to believe in. I wantedGod to come down and say: "Oh, my dear son, you served Me so well in thepast, and since you love Me so much I'm going to tell you that Sun Myung Moon is My beloved Son. Surely, surely, he is My Son. Go and serve him!"
But God didn't do that. Hour after hour I prayed. I never knew that it was possible to shed so many tears. This went on for six hours, but no sign came, no matter how much I cried to God. Finally, completelyexhausted and somewhat disappointed, but with a quiet prayer on my lips, I slowly drove home. I walked into my house and lay down on the couch. I began to cry and cry. My whole body was shaking and the whole couch with me. Iexperienced a suffering I never knew before. I could not stop crying. Tears ran down and soaked the whole area. A great sorrow went through my heart and I felt that I had to carry the suffering of the whole world myself. Then God said tome: "This is your sign. This is what I feel when I look at mankind:'
For three days I couldn't stop crying. My crying even wore out my body. It was shaking, vibrating with my sobs. This was my sign from God.I'll never forget it.
Even though I had felt right from the beginning that thePrinciple was true, and that the Messiah was on earth, I had to go through tremendous struggles to get my confirmation. I prayed day and night and studied the Bible and the Principle. When I connected with God and True Parents, I got confirmation after confirmation from Heaven that Father was the one. Then I said to God: "Now I know that Your son has returned, and I'll give my life, my heart, and my love to him:' I made up my mind to serve God and TrueParents faithfully. Wealth and power had been important to me, but all of a sudden nothing mattered as far as the material world was concerned. A much greater love replaced everything I had experienced before.
We had a nice family, and a good life. When I was confronted with the Principle, I knew that accepting the new Messiah meant total sacrifice. It meant giving up everything dear to me, everything I was and had, all my dreams and plans, even my wife and son. The simple truth thatChrist had returned and was restoring this fallen world back to God made such a deep impact on both me and my wife that our desire to help Him made us offer everything -- our lives, our hearts and our love for this cause.
We believed in the Bible as the word of God and expected Jesus to return in the clouds. Logically, we felt this was not possible by human reasoning, but with God, nothing is impossible.
Our struggle during the following weeks and months is hard to describe. Just thinking about it now, I’m reliving this difficult period, overcome by emotion.We studied the Principle, prayed, fasted and cried to God and Jesus for help.We wanted to be true to our faith and serve the Messiah at his Second Coming.But how could we be sure? We waited for the return of Christ and didn’t want to make the same mistake as occurred two thousand years ago. According to theBible he would have a new name. Could it be Sun Myung Moon?
In my agonyI turned to God for guidance. I fasted and prayed in tears and by studying the Principle many hidden things in the Bible became clear. My trust in God was so deep that I knew He would never forsake me and I felt surrounded by His love.The atmosphere was so high and I knew this was from God.