The Mount of the House of the Lord
"PEACE FATHER, PEACE MOTHER and PEACE to all of you: I am delighted to be here. This is my third time with you and each time I come I always leave feeling much better than when I came. I feel better from a physical point of view because you feed me well, but I also feel better from a spiritual point of view because the fellowship and the warmness and the love that I feel when I am with you just makes me feel as if I am a part of people that I can feel very, very comfortable with.
"I want to say that the thing that is most impressive to me each time that I have come is your sincerity and your commitment and your sense of purpose and sense of mission and sense of rightness, and I just want to say that I am pleased to have been invited to be here. I am also pleased because I think that the purpose for which we all are gathered here today is to spend a few minutes talking about and fulfilling a dream of having in this City and all Cities and all Towns and all Townships and all Countries across the world RIGHTEOUS GOVERNMENT. You know as we look at it, Philadelphia is a perfect place to be the International Country Town and it is the right place to be the Country Seat, because I think that if there is going to be a MODEL CITY anywhere in the whole world, PHILADELPHIA IS IT!
FATHER DIVINE'S Declaration re: The Country Seat of the World
"Philadelphia gave birth to this Nation and therefore gave birth to a free world, so to speak, because all of those who practice democracy around this globe are really guided from right here in this City, and therefore as we talk about this City as the International County Seat, it is very appropriate. And the one thing that I have said throughout the past two years is that the one thing I want is to see this government be a MODEL for the entire world. I want people to come here from all over the world to see how we do things. I want people to come here and see how we deal with those persons who are homeless, those persons who are less fortunate than we are, and deal with those persons who are young and who are living on the edge and deal with those persons who are elderly and who are living on the edge, and deal with those persons who are mentally ill and ill-housed and those who may be very well confused about many things in life--that this City must have the compassion not only to learn how to build tall buildings and build physical structures but also to learn how to deal with GOD'S Children. We must also have a heart that will reach out to those people who without us would not have anywhere to eat, sleep and have any kind of basic hope in life.
"I have a very deep sense about public service. I think it is an honor to serve, it is an honor to be elected as a servant of the people, and I said that people have a right to expect from their governmental leaders honesty, integrity, a sense of right. A public official should not lie, should not cheat, should not abuse or misuse his office."
"I want to just say about two other things and then take my seat, and that is, that I thought about the honor to be in this office and the real opportunity to serve, I feel very thankful to GOD that I have this opportunity and that GOD has given to me the skills and abilities, the talents and the wisdom and the judgment to be able to be mayor of a large complex City like this, and with that goes an awesome responsibility, an awesome responsibility, and no one who has had the opportunity to be where I am should ever take that mission lightly, and I don't. And that is why you will see that I will work hard and spend long hours, because GOD has given to me an unusual opportunity to do some unusual things. But you know GOD never sends you out any way without giving you the tools and that is why I don't believe that I would be where I am unless in fact I had the necessary tools to do what is needed."
"And if somehow in this City at this time we could capture the spirit in this room, if somehow we could take it and send it to South Africa and send it to Russia and send it to all parts of our world, and if somehow we could send it and take it to all parts of our City, that somehow I believe that we could begin to fashion here in the City the kind of City that all of us could be very, very proud of, and we are moving in that direction. We are moving in that direction and I am convinced that we can make it!
"Finally, I am very intrigued by Philadelphia as the International Country Seat of the world. I am intrigued by that, because we have to build in this world and we are building in this City a MODEL CITY that people from around the world can come and see how government ought to function and how people can live, one with the other, without any regard to race or religion or sex, but with all people, all people working towards a common purpose and a common goal. And I believe that this City, before we turn the 21st Century, can become the kind of International Country Seat FATHER talked about."
"The spirit that you show, the commitment that you show, the sense of purpose which I can see in your eyes and that I can feel when I shake your hand--the sense of mission that I can feel in this whole room, and I just hope that as the woman who spoke before I did, and what she said was what I want to close with and that is, that if we could somehow take from here the sense that every single day of the year will be the day where we will go out and practice Righteous Government, then this City, this Country and this World would be a better place to live. PEACE!"