Christine: life-changing experience
One night I had an amazing experience where Jesus came to me in a dream. He told me I had a mission to fulfill. I was spiritually guided to meet a Japanese lady. She asked me: “Are you searching for truth?” I said yes! Hearing the lecture I had a “This is it” experience. This is what I have always been searching for. Jesus showed me the answer in the Unification Church of Rev. Moon.
It struck me then that I must not only know
who is God – but what is God’s will and desire
Meeting the strangerOne day I headed down 64th street toward Central Park. Just at that moment a very short Japanese lady, named Tomiko, came up to me on 5th Ave. She was very confident and friendly.
I thought she was very brave to come up and talk to me, a stranger, in the middle of NYC when she was having difficulty even to speak English very well. I concluded that she must have something very important to say.From the first few minutes that I met her, she asked me:
“Are you searching for truth?” I said yes!
“Do you think the religions of the world should be united?” I said yes!
“You know there is an Old Testament, New Testament – do you think we need a Completed Testament for this age we are living in?” YES!
I felt such a peaceful atmosphereShe invited me to take a walk up 5th Ave, towards the building where the Unification Church was located at that time. I walked into the building on 71st Street and felt like I had entered the United Nations. There was every nationality and language there before me – German, French, English, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Belgian, Mexican, and so on. They all looked so harmonious and were very excited and animated in their discussions.
I felt such a peaceful atmosphere and a sense of being in the right place at the right time. I thought right away, “Who is the leader who could bring people together like this?” I turned around as I looked about the room and there was a picture of Rev. Moon.
Tears involuntarily came down her cheeksWho is this man? I asked myself… His face looked so peaceful. Then, Tomiko asked me if I believed in God and began to speak about God’s hopes for humanity. She said that something so tragic had taken place for God and tears involuntarily came down her cheeks– I was really surprised. I had never met anyone as sincere as she was.
When she asked me to hear a lecture I said no at first. I was sick and tired of lectures. I had just graduated from college. But I could not say no after a while because she was so sweet and I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.
The first thing I heard that day was called “God’s Ideal of Creation.” It struck me then that I must not only know who is God – but what is God’s will and desire? If we love God, then we would naturally want to become closer to God, as God’s sons and daughters, who know God’s hopes, God’s will and what God feels and plans for us to do in this life.
This is itDuring this lecture I had a “This is it” experience. There was a popular book out at that time, called This is It, by Alan Watts… I thought of that book as I had a kind of spiritual experience…
The lecturer drew a diagram on the board of the “4-position foundation” – the ideal family with God at the center as the basis for harmony in the family, and a society, nation and world of peace, and this is when I heard as a shout in my mind, “This is it!
This is what you have always been searching for – and not only you, but all of your ancestors have always been searching for!” I began to feel a great flood of tears coming up, but I did not want to cry in front of them yet.
She finished the lecture and I was just quiet. It struck me with such a peace inside. I thought, “This is not an ordinary truth. This is not the postulation of a theory, nor the defense of a position or the argument of someone’s opinion, or just some information about life and the world.
This is really a message, some words from God.” That is what I felt. It was a truth about life, rooted in the heart of God – not just an intellectual exercise.
I just cried with joy; I had found a spiritual oasis in the desert. Tomiko asked me, “What do you think?!” I could only say, “Well this is true! I would like to study more.”
That was all for that day. But within 2-3 hours I was actually on a bus to Washington DC! Yet, destiny was no way to avoid. Here I am today a Unification Church member, proud to be Unificationist. But let me go back to the beginning of my search and the spiritual experience I had to prepare me.
My youth feelingsI don’t know why I had this tendency, but ever since I can remember, I have had some feeling of being interested in religion and making a peaceful world.
I also had some very deep experiences of an inexplicable love coming to me as a child, especially when running around out in nature, the woods and the back yard – it was so strong I almost found it overwhelming at times.
I think it made me extremely energetic. I could not stop running from place to place exploring everything I could get my hands on. As a child I used to read the Bible to animals and other such silly things.The peace movements of the 70'sThose of us who went to college in the late 60’s and early 70’s remember all the peace movements. I took these very seriously and I went to one huge rally in Washington, D.C. in 1971.
I had (at first) a wonderful experience carrying a candle during a peace vigil where the demonstrators walked across the bridge from Arlington Cemetery into DC. We were surrounded by “marshals” who had organized the vigil and were very eager to keep the march orderly and peaceful.
As the day went on I became more and more curious to find out who were the organizers behind this wonderful peace march. As I went from group to group, I met the Yippies, who were one of the main organizers.Boasting of their ties to MoscowThey were meeting and boasting about their ties to Moscow. I thought that was really cool at the time. However it bothered me that they called all the policemen “pigs.”
Later that night 2 of my friends went to the Yippie-led part of the demonstrations at Dupont Circle, where they were shouting “pigs” and throwing rocks until finally they got tear-gassed. To them this was proof of the evils of our government. To me it made me question thoroughly the validity of the entire “peace” movement all in one day.There is war deep within ourselvesAfter attending these peace marches I came home to my college dormitory and thought deeply about it. I came to the conclusion that there can be no world peace without God. Human beings are not capable of peace by themselves.
We are too much at war even deep within ourselves. I wanted to make a relationship with God and find an inner solution, and so I decided to take a year off from college in the middle of my sophomore year and plunged into a search into all kinds of religions.
As a culmination of all my searching, I had an amazing life-changing experience with Jesus. Amazingly enough, my mom had been searching for a church where the minister could speak about their own real experience of God in a convincing way.
The minister whose church I had attended (First Congregational) admitted to my mom that he was an agnostic when she questioned him. Finally she found a wonderful Presbyterian minister.
I was deeply moved by his capacity to come back again and again with, “God loves you, Christine! Jesus loves you!” even when I rejected him bitterly many times. At this time, my dad had his first heart attack and Rev. MacFarlane had the whole church pray for his recovery. The doctors said my dad’s recovery that time really was miraculous.Life-changing experience with JesusThen one night I had an amazing experience where Jesus came to me in a dream. I was standing before him under a big tree, as he turned the pages of the “book of life.” He was speaking to God about me.
I was filled with fear until he turned to me and handed me his staff. He told me I had a mission to fulfill, though he did not tell me what it was. I woke up at 3am and furiously wrote down everything that had happened in that dream. It was so real it was truly a life changing experience for me.Give my life to GodFrom that day I began more and more to feel a calling to give my life to God. I found hope and I found the capacity to forgive. That was the essence for me. I thought that if Jesus could forgive and love his enemies on the cross as they killed him, there must be something I can learn from him.
I wanted to develop that same capacity. I saw that as absolutely the only hope for me, for the world, for anybody to pass from hell to heaven, from inner turmoil to inner peace.
That was the key. Here was the true man I could believe in. Through this wonderful minister I experienced incredible love from God. I repented a lot and decided to change many things in my life. I also decided I had to give something back to God and to Jesus, but I did not know what yet what he wants from me until I met this Japanese lady and found the truth.
