Imagine a man claiming that he alone can understand the book of Revelation. Imagine that God had left us in the dark all these years. Imagine someone suggesting that the Bible is not adequate for our Christina maturity, that we needed his interpretations. Imagine a church that believes no other church has the truth. You actually don't have to imagine. This is the cult of the New Heaven and the New Earth (Shincheonji). It is dangerous and it is targeting Christian students in Ireland.
Like all cults its methods are underhand. You might get someone who invites you to a Bible study, not telling you that they think that your church is totally deficient. Like every distortion of Christianity they don't believe that the Bible is enough. You could even end up in a Zoom Bible study where you are surrounded by other seekers, who you think are just like yourself, but are actually planted there in order to give credibility to the cult's teaching.
A few months ago I was asked for coffee by a nice young man. Normally when someone asks to meet me for coffee they get to the point fairly quickly, they have a reason for wanting to talk. But I couldn't figure out why this guy wanted to meet.
Eventually we talked about church and faith. He said that he had encountered a church that preached the Bible in a way that he had not encountered before. He said that he felt that preachers today depend too much on commentaries. I actually wondered what he understood what a biblical commentary is - the commentaries I glean from are just the help of people who may be able to show me how the text is illuminated by the whole teaching of the Bible, how the original languages help us understand its meaning etc.
It was noticeable that this young man was vague about what his church was in. Then I heard him refer to 'The New Heaven and The New Earth'. I knew this to be a cult with roots in Korea. He fed me the unlikely story that its leader had been foretold in the book of Revelation. But why has no-one noticed that such a person was to come? He explained that just as Jesus' first coming had been misunderstood, so was their leader's coming. The fatal flaw in such reasoning is that no-one denies that the Old Testament prophesied the coming of the Messiah, they had just pushed their own political agenda on him. I suggested that it was inconsistent to say that we should not be reading the Bible alongside respected commentaries and then claim that we cannot understand the Bible without the teaching of a particular cult leader.
Why is this dangerous? Like all cults they will separate you from church family and biological family. They will tell you that the Bible is not sufficient without the accompaniment of their teaching. They teach things that are clearly untrue.
The thing that scares me about this cult is that I now know three people who have got entangled in it (thankfully one has left). They are all young adults and nice people. While this cult is so obviously off the mark it seems to be targeting young Christians and it will be targeting Christian Unions this term. Beware!
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