The “Heavenly Mother” Cult (Church of Ahnsahnghong)

This is a post dealing with the many aspects of the Korean cult known as World Mission Society Church of God (as well as: The Church of God, WMSCOG, COGWMS, The Church of Ahnsahnghong, Elohists). CARM has some helpfully concise information on the cult…

Jesus

  1. WMSCOG: The Church claims a man called Ahnsahnghong is the Second Coming of Christ. According to this church, Ahnsahnghong is Jesus.
  2. Bible: The Bible teaches clearly that Jesus Christ will return as a Jew visibly, not in a secret coming.
  1. “For false Christs and false prophets will arise and will show great signs and wonders, so as to mislead, if possible, even the elect. Behold, I have told you in advance. So if they say to you, ‘Behold, He is in the wilderness,’ do not go out, or, ‘Behold, He is in the inner rooms,’ do not believe them. For just as the lightning comes from the east and flashes even to the west, so will the coming of the Son of Man be,” (Mt. 24:23-27).
  2. Ahnsahnghong made false prophecies by predicting the end of the world in 1967 and 1988. This is a sin. Since Jesus never sinned and/or ever make a mistake, He and Ahnsahnghong are not the same person.
[….]

Incarnation

  1. WMSCOG: Believe Mother Jerusalem to be the female incarnation of God.
  2. Bible:
  1. This is definitely unbiblical since the Bible clearly teaches that Jesus is the unique incarnation of God as the one and only begotten Son of God who is God and man. Since Jesus is the unique incarnation of God, there are not other incarnations of God who are female.
  2. Jesus is God: John 1:1, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being . . . 14 And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” Jesus also created all things (Col. 1:16-17), is called God (Rom. 9:5, Heb. 1:8), and is worshipped (Mt. 2:2, 14:33), and prayed to (1 Cor. 1:2, Acts 7:55-60).
  3. Jesus is Man: Jesus rose from the dead as a physical man (Lk. 24:39, Jn. 20:19-20), ascended into Heaven as that same man (Acts 1:11), and is still a man right now since He is our Mediator as man (1 Tim. 2:5) and eternal High Priest as a man after the order of Melchizedek (Heb. 6:20, 7:25). Scripture also speaks of Him presently dwelling in bodily form (Col. 2:9).
  4. There is only one God: There is only one God in all existence (Is. 43:10, 44:6, 8). Therefore, there are not other gods who incarnate. Jesus is the only one.

(read more)

The following video is a great (albeit badly filmed) introduction to some of the concerns of WMSCOG presented by Professor Ji-il Tark via Steven Hassan’s “Freedom of MindYouTube Channel: Here is the video description followed by the video:

“The World Mission Society Church of God (Korean: 하나님의교회 세계복음선교협회) was founded by Ahn Sahng-hong (안상홍) in 1964. The church believes that he is the second coming of Christ. Ahn Sahng-Hong was baptized in 1948 and died in 1985 and the current leader of the church is Ahn’s spiritual wife, Zang Gil-Jah (장길자), known in the church as “the Heavenly Mother”, and the General Pastor is Kim Joo-Cheol.”

I shot this video in July 2010 of Professor Tark at a conference where many former members of a wide variety of destructive, totalitarian groups met. I had never heard of Professor Tark, but came to learn that his father was the most famous anti-cult minister in Korea. He was unfortunately assassinated by a cult member (not someone from WMSCOG). He is professor of Religion at Busan Presbyterian University. 

There is another video testimony by a 12 year ex-member/missionary for WMSCOG on Steve Hassan’s YouTube Channel HERE.

A partial — quick — dealing with WMSCOG can be found at Got Questions:

Question: “What is the World Mission Society Church of God, and what do they believe?”

Answer: The World Mission Society Church of God (WMSCOG) was founded by a man named Ahn Sahng-Hong in South Korea in 1964. He was born in 1918 to Buddhist parents and spent many years with the Seventh-day Adventists. He claimed to have rebuilt the Church of God—the same Church that Jesus established and with the same truths of the Early Church. Ahn Sahng-Hong died in 1985.

The WMSCOG believes in God the Father and God the Mother, who came to earth in the flesh. Ahn Sahng-Hong’s spiritual wife, Zahng Gil-Jah, is known as “the Heavenly Mother.” According the WMSCOG, “God the Mother is the core of our faith and the figure that guides us. . . . God the Mother stands by and prays for us whenever we face hardships.” The Bible does not teach the existence of a “heavenly mother.” God is consistently referred to as our Father. Revelation 21:2 describes the New Jerusalem as a beautifully adorned bride. But verses 9–10 show that the “wife of the Lamb” and the “New Jerusalem” are synonymous terms. Obviously, the New Jerusalem is a city, not a person. In this case, the city is the church, the redeemed of the Lord living in God’s heavenly city. The Lamb’s “wife,” then, is figurative, not literal.

[….]

Ahn Sahng-Hong was a false prophet. He predicted Christ would return in 1967, then changed the date to 1988. The WMSCOG believed the world would end in 1967, then 1988, and then at the end of 2012. History has proved Ahn Sahng-Hong wrong. It is noteworthy that one of the signs of the end times is the increase in false prophets and false messiahs. Ahn Sahng-Hong clearly falls into the category of false prophet and false messiah.

And here I wish to shift gears a bit and discuss a few of their false prophecies. Dueteronomy 18:20-22 reads thusly from a few different versions:

Deut 18_20-22

One commentator notes the following about the above verse:

  • False prophets could be detected in various ways. We have previously learned that they were false if they sought to lead the people away from the worship of the true God (13:1–5). Here is another means of detection: If a prediction failed to come to pass, that prophet should be put to death, and no one need fear any curse he might pronounce.

William MacDonald, Believer’s Bible Commentary: Old and New Testaments, ed. Arthur Farstad (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1995), 217.

So one-way to see a false prophet is by their fruits. Matthew 7:15-20 reads:

Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravaging wolves. You’ll recognize them by their fruit. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes or figs from thistles? In the same way, every good tree produces good fruit, but a bad tree produces bad fruit. A good tree can’t produce bad fruit; neither can a bad tree produce good fruit. Every tree that doesn’t produce good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. So you’ll recognize them by their fruit.

So here Jesus is analogizing “bad fruit” with false prophecies. How does this relate to WMSCOG? Because they made 3-major false prohecies. This came out in a court case where the cult lost hands down… here are some of the key portions, I will highlight them:

Defendant has published about 2,000 copies of a book titled “Researches on the New Religions of Korea 2002, Collection I (subtitled, Self-Claimed Reborn Jesus Christ of Korea) and distributed about 500 copies to the Christian bookstores nationwide. On pages 145 to 168 of the book, the following text is listed about the plaintiff church: Under the title of “The Church of God (World Gospel Association)”, and underneath it, it describes, “The Church of God is an organization that stemmed from the Adventist Church. But unlike the Adventist church which acknowledges general Christian beliefs of judgment, ethical salvation, as well as resurrection, eternal life, trinity, atonement of the cross, and Jesus Christ’s redemption, this organization believes that Sang Hong Ahn who died in 1985 is God, and as they have proclaimed that they are not Christians, they are actually not part of Christianity”. It goes on to say, “Aware that the continuing failures of the many end of the world theories that continued in 1988 and 1994 as well as the critical views of the society, as they all came to be not true, they have changed their name to the Church of God World Gospel Association to continue their activities. In 1999, particularly, they again came up with another end of the world theory by jumping on the wagon of the Y2K phenomenon, which they insisted to their believers, but it too also backfired and along with reports of the Church of God Sang Hong Ahn Witness Association, what went on in their organization was reported by the media. In 1988, they were reported to have proclaimed an end of the world theory, and after this year, they have continued to claim these theories every year to their believers, some of which resulted in some of their believers leaving their families, which resulted in the family members making petitions each year They then changed their name to Sang Hong Ahn Witness Association, but after it caused troubles in their missionary work, they changed their name to the Church of God. According to the teachings of Sang Hong Ahn Witness Association, the end of the world would come in 1988 at which time the world will disappear without a trace and except for 144,000 people who have been granted with God’s special protection, everything will be destroyed. It was believed that the first wife of Sang Hong Ahn, who was his so called spiritual wife, was Soo In Um. Um divorced her former husband before she began seeing Ahn, and she was the one who proclaimed that Ahn was Jesus Christ in 1978. After Ahn died, the Sang Hong Ahn Witness Association was divided into a sect called New Covenant Passover Church of God that worshipped Um as the wife of God and another sect that chose Gil Ja Chang as the wife of God in 1981 and believed the second spiritual wife as Mother. They wore white clothes that Ahn always wore when he was alive and insisted on living in shacks in the slums of Haewoondae. At worship meetings, they could not get into the building while wearing shoes, and women were required to wear veils on their head just like the Roman Catholic Church, all of which were some of their major doctrines. The Sang Hong Ahn Witness Association interpreted some of the Bible verses on their own in discretion in order to match with their claims, some of which were that in Psalms 132:10-18, there is a prophecy that David will grow horns. They insisted that the seven horns in the verse symbolize seven seasonal periods, and Ahn insisted after finding a doctrine about the periods that he was the little lamb in the last period. We must know that cults and heresies always target and approach people who are not satisfied and complain about their lives. What they are insisting are clearly pseudo-religious heresies that can only be accepted by someone with little knowledge about Christian beliefs, but they do not focus on Ahn being God to other people when they start missionary work. In February 29, 2000, a former member of the association named Chung left the organization and disclosed the truth about it after which he was surrounded by some 400 members and assaulted.”

[….]

In looking at the parts where the book described how the plaintiff church first proclaimed its end of the world theory in 1988, by which the members of the families of some of the believers who left their families pleaded every year, according to the combined arguments made in the documents 7 of (Article) number 7 and (Article) numbers 8 through 13 (including serial numbers), the plaintiff church did make a missionary paper which stated that the world will end in 1988, which was three years after the death of Sang Hong Ahn, and in 1999, it also conducted a survey about their prophecy of the end of the world in 1999 on their believers. Also within the church, there is another claim being proposed that the world will end in 2012. Additionally, the broadcasting stations KBS, SBS and MBC have collected information and tried to broadcast about the plaintiff church’s end of the world theory in their programs of “60 Minutes America”, “Cases and People”, and “PD Memos” respectively, and there is now an organization formed by husbands of the victims who have said that they were victimized by the plaintiff church’s end of the world theory. Considering all these acknowledged facts, it cannot be conclusively said that the book’s descriptions are untruthful facts even if there may be some incorrect or a little excessive expressions about how the end of the world theory was described.

There was also a false prophecy about the end of the world in 1967. But above we see also 1988; 1999, and 2012 were dates set for the end of the world as well.

Most cults have false prophecies: Jehovah’s Witnesses; Mormons; etc.

Here is another example of a false prophecy as detailed by Examining The World Mission Society Church of God site:

When we compare the Green Book in 1993 to the Green Book in 2010, we find some curious changes.

The “Second Coming Jesus” Writes About the Future “Second Coming Jesus”?

Just to be clear, Ahn Sahng-Hong never claimed anywhere in his writings to be Jesus Christ. Rather, it is the WMSCOG which claims he was the Second Coming of Jesus. Yet, we find that Ahn Sahng-Hong in his own writings in 1993 speaks about the future Second Coming of Jesus:

False Prophecy 695

(See more false prophecies in this index at Encountering the Cult of Ahnsahnghong)

So what should the layman walking around the college campus do when approached by these people knowing that their theology teaches that Ahnsahnghong will judge/save us (only God the Father, Christ, Ahnsahnghong and God the Mother [Heavenly Mother] can give people salvation), then you can quickly explain that the Bible forbids one to follow such salvific pronunciations because the Bible clearly teaches that we should “not be afraid of the false prophet.”

I will continue the topic on WMSCOG in the future.