Since November 11, 2012, Dr. Michael Balcomb, vice-president of the Unification Church USA, has been invited to visit, preach to, and meet Unificationists across the country. Following his recent visits to Unificationist communities in the Northeast, he will continue his speaking tour and travel to the Southwestern states.

He departs for his next destination of Phoenix, Arizona, this Friday on December 7, 2012, where he will attend an evening dinner and town hall meeting with local Unificationists. Denver, Colorado will be his next destination on Saturday, December 8th, where he will present the pilot version of the new Divine Principle that has been developed by Jonathan Gullery and Hee Sook Kibe. The following day, on December 9th, Dr. Balcomb will attend a meeting with local church leaders, deliver a sermon during Sunday Service, and host a Denver town hall meeting. On December 10th, he embarks for his third destination, Houston, Texas, where he will attend another dinner and town-hall meeting with Unificationists there.

Excerpts from his past four Sunday sermons from New York, Las Vegas, and Massachusetts are available below.

Excerpt from “After the Storm” sermon in New York City on November 11, 2012

“What is the rock, the foundation, of our life as Unificationists? That rock is the truth of the Divine Principle revealed by God to our True Father, Sun Myung Moon. I say this with the confidence of experience, because for most of the people of my generation, we learned the Divine Principle before we ever met True Parents and before we ever joined this church.

“The Divine Principle uniquely teaches us who God is. We learned that he is not only the Almighty Creator, but he is also the heartbroken parent who lost his only children. The suffering of all people throughout human history has been a never-ending tragedy he could see unfolding in slow motion; but because he placed so high a value on freedom and love, he was powerless to prevent.

“Divine Principle also teaches us who Jesus was: that he was not just the Messiah, but was supposed to marry and become the True Parent, able to give new life by starting a new lineage to restore the mistakes of our first ancestors. There are many churches, but none other teach this.

 “And finally, and most importantly Divine Principle teaches us that God’s work of restoration did not end 2000 years ago on the cross, but has continued to this day and time, coming to a new crescendo or climax with the coming of our beloved True Father, the Second Coming of Christ who has now ascended to Heaven.”

Excerpt from “Make Straight in the Desert” sermon in Las Vegas, NV, on November 18, 2012

“A voice cries out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord! Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God!’” (Isaiah 40:3)

“Those words have and amazing spiritual force that have echoed and reverberated down almost three thousand years of human history. George Frederick Handel immortalized them in music in his oratorio, Messiah, still one of my favorites. Just recently when I visited that new bridge down there at the Hoover Dam, I was not surprised that one of the plaques honoring the vision of the engineers and builders chooses that same verse: ‘Make Straight in the Desert a Highway.”

“The Gospel of Matthew interprets that passage in Isaiah to refer to the life and work of John the Baptist. So let’s reflect on John the Baptist, both from the traditional Christian view and with the insights of the Divine Principle. As we do so, let me remind you that the Principle says that in God’s work in the life of every major biblical figure there are lessons that apply to us today.

“When John began his mission to the Jewish people, what did he do? He did not mention the wonderful plan God had for their lives, nor that God loved them. He preached about the wrath of God and the need for repentance. Repentance paves a way in a heart of stone and makes the path easy, straight and level for the Lord and the new truth that he brings.”

“Time for a Check Up” sermon in Belvedere, NY, on November 25, 2012

“In the peace messages, True Father says:

“Your conscience knows and remembers not only every action you have performed, but also every thought you have entertained. Your conscience is aware of these things before your own teachers, parents or even God are. Hence, if you were to live in absolute obedience to the commands of your conscience, which is your teacher for eternity, you would be absolutely guaranteed to have eternal life. Such is the way of God’s creation.”

“Yet even so, the conscience can also be wrong. How is this even possible?

“It can be set wrong, like a watch that is set at the wrong time, or a GPS with a faulty fix. If we are not aware of this, we can wander far off track without even realizing it. We can turn away from God and what we once believed was true. We accept things that in our better days we would have never tolerated. As the journalist Sydney Harris said that once we convince ourselves that something is a “necessary evil” it quickly comes to seem more and more necessary and less and less evil.

“The Divine Principle makes a distinction between the “Original Mind” that comes from God and knows the difference between good and evil, right and wrong, and the conscience, a force that can be more or less close to the purity of the original mind depending on both our knowledge and more importantly our behavior and practice.”

“Things That Really Matter” sermon in Worcester, MA on December 2, 2012

“Not only are we one family under God, but we all go through the same course of life: birth, marriage, death. Or, as Father Moon often taught, and most succinctly in his final messages, about the three stages of life. The first stage is in our mother’s womb; which to the fetus is “larger than the entire universe” of its experience yet is in fact no bigger than an average size rice cooker.

“The second stage, our life on earth, is no doubt wider and larger in scale. Of course we know this earth is very large, but even if we travel all over it, we will not leave even this one planet, though our grandchildren might. But when we transition into the next world – and death is just our second birth – then as Father Moon says, and the Holy Scriptures concur, we will find that this world too, with all its experiences, is just a small rice cooker next to the eternal, infinite world of spirit which dwarfs even this wide world.

“But there is one very important difference. With the baby in the womb, the “due date” is pretty much known. It can vary by a week or two, but all children, of every race, culture and religion – it makes no difference at all – are going to spend more or less nine months or forty weeks in the womb, and then they will be born. Those 280 days are not a long time, but we now know that every day is crucial for the health of the baby. A good mum will weigh every action, every decision carefully, thinking about her baby to come.

“In contrast – and we can thank God for this – the “due date” of our second birth is known only to God. In His mercy he has chosen not to reveal this information to us. We would probably be miserable and paralyzed by fear if we did! Imagine how horrible it would be to know exactly when our “second birth” would take place!”