"It’s not the devil… It’s my baby"
I was there for only a few months. I joined after I found out I was pregnant and my family didn't agree with my choice to parent and kicked me to the curb so to speak, and the people from the World Mission Society Church Of God seemed so nice and accepting of me. I thought it was a good place to restore my faith in Christ. I got baptized after the first two lessons, Sabbath and Passover because it felt right and the proof was in front of me. I’m no Bible wiz so I was amazed. I didn’t ask why they said "Ahnsahhong" during the baptism. It was really naive of me now that I think about it, but I believed that was just the Korean way of saying Jesus (because I heard "Christ" before that name) so I didn’t dwell. As I studied more it became difficult for me to travel (the church was in New Jersey and I live in Long Island, New York). I became sick due to the pregnancy and my belly was growing, so it was difficult for me to travel and have Saturdays off from work. I was living on my own and paying for everything on my own at that point. A couple of the sisters were getting frustrated with me telling me that I was not keeping [the] Sabbath and telling me that the devil was stoping me from coming. So I thought to myself, "it’s not the devil they are talking about–it’s my baby". I just couldn’t make that two hour drive to the church and the three hour drive back, pay those tolls, make an offering, pay my rent and bills, buy food and baby items, all at the same time by myself!!! When I tried to explain this to them they would tell me [to] pray about it. And I would like a good little lamb. But one day I didn’t make it and the sister that I’d gotten very close to was upset that I didn’t make it to yet another Sabbath. She became rude and disrespectful with me when I asked her if we could study the Bible by way of Skype or Oovoo. I thought it would be good because of my situation, it just made sense in my mind. But to her it was me being lazy and not caring about my salvation. And she blew me off that night. I can’t remember exactly what she said, but it was a pompus response to my humble question. I didn’t hear from her until 2 months later. She text me asking me to come back to the WMSCOG, and didn’t apologize. Instead, she made me feel minimal by telling me she understood that I simply "didn't know any better" and it wasn’t my fault and she "forgot about that". I decided to learn more about this church. I mean I know Christians who call themselves as such and conduct themselves as anything but. However those two conversations with her made my skin crawl. I went on the internet, as I should have done MONTHS ago and found a blog that had been a few years old and WMSCOG members were arguing with the rest of the world [For our readers, our friend is referring to this blog]. Just every faith ripping each other apart. It took me 3 days to read years of this one particular debate; is Ahnsahnhong the second coming of Christ? And I left that blog more confused then I had ever been about anything in my life. Everyone made valid points and quoted Bible passages and even Atheists were making sense. Who is this "mother god" lady they spend their last penny to visit in Korea? And is it true that no WMSCOG member has or will die as long as they have the Passover? That’s what I’ve been told and its such a hard concept to wrap my head around. I’ve never told any of my friends or family members what I’ve been through and the demons that are haunting me because of the WMSCOG. I also should mention that I left the church right before the "father and mother god" study. Before I did my own research, when they mentioned "father and mother", I just thought they meant God was not of a specific gender, but had both male and female qualities. That was enough to explain "elohim" to me. Little did I know I was worshiping a dead man and a living woman. Shameful. I’m young and haven’t experienced many things in life. I’m vulnerable and I always want to believe in the best of people. And I also want to believe in the truth. I’ve been on a downward spiral since the experience and it’s won me nothing but confusion and anger.
How The WMSCOG Turned My Life Upside Down Part 1 – How I Got Involved
I first visited the World Mission Society Church of God in Ridgewood, NJ for the first time back in October of 2009 after being invited by two co-workers of mine. One of my co-workers told me that she had recently joined a church that she really enjoyed attending. My other co-worker, having been a member of the WMSCOG for three years, didn’t mention any details about the organization’s beliefs either. One day I asked my co-workers if I could visit the church with them. I was surprised that they suggested that we go that very night and offered to pick me up. I found this a bit strange because I expected that I would have to wait for a specific day to visit the church for a service or something.
I remember that it was a Monday night around 7:30 pm when I arrived at the WMSCOG with my two co-workers, not knowing what I was getting myself into. I was greeted by a few smiling faces at the front desk, which they call "admin", and given an application to fill out. The application consisted of a few basic questions like what my religious background was and if there were any specific questions I had about God or the Bible. Then I was introduced to a missionary that would teach me my first Bible study lesson. The four of us went to a small room that had a dry erase board and a small table with a few chairs. My first lesson was about the Saturday Sabbath. Being somewhat of a conspiracy theorist, in about 30 minutes I was convinced that all of my life I had been deceived into going to church and worshiping the Lord on the wrong day! I was told that Constantine, a Roman Emperor, abolished the Sabbath and forced Christians to worship on Sunday and thus worship the pagan sun "god". Then I was asked if I would like to do another study, so I said sure why not.
The missionary asked me if I thought that I was going to heaven. I answered that I hoped that I would be saved and allowed in to heaven. I mean I thought that I was generally a good person, no one is perfect, and I worked in a field where I helped people every day. She would soon prove me wrong. The missionary began to explain that humans were angels that had been kicked out of heaven for sinning against God. As we flipped back and forth through the Bible, which I admit I wasn’t very familiar with at this point in my life, I became convinced that I had committed a sin against God in heaven that afforded me the "death penalty" on earth. I found it strange that we continued flipping back and forth through the Bible, ignoring the context around any of the verses, but it somehow seemed to make sense at the time. So then the question was, what do I do in order to be saved and allowed into heaven? She explained that baptism was the first step and that despite having been baptized into a Catholic church as a child, that previous baptism did not count because Catholics worship on Sunday. After all, I had just learned that Sunday worship was really pagan sun "god" worship right?
Then the missionary asked me if I would like to get baptized. Since I was impressed with the way that I was able to "understand" the Bible all of the sudden, I agreed. I was then taken to another room down the hall where there was what looked like a large stand-in shower, given a robe-like top and shorts to wear, and asked to change. After I changed I was asked to kneel in the shower while a Deacon that I had never met poured water over my head and baptized me in the name of Jehovah, Jesus, and then another name I had never heard before. Since the Deacon was Caucasian, I had no idea that what he said was actually in Korean. While this was going on my friends were singing in the room with veils on their heads. I thought that this was weird but since my co-workers, who I had also befriended and trusted, seemed happy I didn’t think to ask.
After I changed back into my normal clothes, I was taken in to another room in the same hallway, to partake in the "Passover bread and wine". I was shown a few verses in the Bible where Jesus said that we must eat his flesh and drink his blood in order to have eternal life. So I said to myself, "who doesn’t want eternal life?" and did as I was told. Then the Deacon brought out this huge book and asked me for my name, address, phone number and next to my info he wrote down the names of my two co-workers.
Next, I was told that after baptism they always take a picture of the new member. I jokingly said, "oh great after my hair is wet and make-up is smeared". One of my co-workers told me not to worry, that I "looked great", and that it was just for their records. I reluctantly agreed and let them take a polaroid of me.
As my co-workers and I were leaving, they asked when I would be returning to continue to study. I answered that I wasn’t sure because I was taking dance classes on some evenings during the week. I was told that I could return at any time during the week so I didn’t feel pressured to return right away.
Then the missionary asked me if I would like to get baptized. Since I was impressed with the way that I was able to "understand" the Bible all of the sudden, I agreed. I was then taken to another room down the hall where there was what looked like a large stand-in shower, given a robe-like top and shorts to wear, and asked to change. After I changed I was asked to kneel in the shower while a Deacon that I had never met poured water over my head and baptized me in the name of Jehovah, Jesus, and then another name I had never heard before. Since the Deacon was Caucasian, I had no idea that what he said was actually in Korean. While this was going on my friends were singing in the room with veils on their heads. I thought that this was weird but since my co-workers, who I had also befriended and trusted, seemed happy I didn’t think to ask.
After I changed back into my normal clothes, I was taken in to another room in the same hallway, to partake in the "Passover bread and wine". I was shown a few verses in the Bible where Jesus said that we must eat his flesh and drink his blood in order to have eternal life. So I said to myself, "who doesn’t want eternal life?" and did as I was told. Then the Deacon brought out this huge book and asked me for my name, address, phone number and next to my info he wrote down the names of my two co-workers.
Next, I was told that after baptism they always take a picture of the new member. I jokingly said, "oh great after my hair is wet and make-up is smeared". One of my co-workers told me not to worry, that I "looked great", and that it was just for their records. I reluctantly agreed and let them take a polaroid of me.
As my co-workers and I were leaving, they asked when I would be returning to continue to study. I answered that I wasn’t sure because I was taking dance classes on some evenings during the week. I was told that I could return at any time during the week so I didn’t feel pressured to return right away.
How The WMSCOG Turned My Life Upside Down Part 2 – The Creeping Time Commitment
After being a member for about two weeks, I invited my boyfriend of about one year to come to the church for a Bible study. Things were rocky between us at the time and I thought that going to church together and learning more about God might help. He seemed a little reluctant at first, but he agreed. I was allowed to be present during my boyfriend’s first study with a WMSCOG Deacon. He also opted to be baptized immediately after his first study about the Sabbath.
Soon after we began attending Tuesday and Saturday services and occasionally visiting during the week for a study. After all, we had a list of about twelve basic studies to complete. We would study separately from now on. I noticed that married couples and families did not study together unless there was a longer study being offered on a Sunday afternoon. Even during these 6 hour long studies, women and men sat separately. I remember finding it strange that women and men were seated on opposite sides of the sanctuary during worship times as well. I was told that the seating arrangement was to prevent gossip, distractions, and men looking at women with a romantic interest or vice versa. One of the members said, "this way we only focus on God". It didn’t take long for the seating arrangement to seem normal. During one of the services I attended, I remember the pastor mentioning how outsiders find this seating arrangement weird. Then he shouted "but brothers and sisters, we don’t find Zion customs weird right?" This was followed by everyone shouting "Amen!"
For about two months we only attended one of the three services held on Saturdays. I remember being surprised to find out that most members spent their entire Saturday, from about 9 am to 10 pm, in the church attending services and in between, studying the Bible, watching videos (usually about Zhang Gil Jah or disasters), or reading books written by Ahnsahnghong and others. I remember asking someone there why it was necessary to spend all of Saturday in the church. The "older sister" replied that "God commanded the Sabbath day not the Sabbath hour or one Sabbath service". This topic would be touched upon during services as well. I remember one of the missionaries mentioning that members of strong faith don’t question the amount of time you are supposed to spend in the church on the Sabbath. I started to view these subliminal messages during services as ways to suggest feelings of guilt among members. I decided to keep my concerns about this to myself. It didn’t take long for the pressure to build, so we started attending two services on Saturdays.
Shortly after, I began receiving text messages on Fridays or Saturdays from the "older sister" assigned to watch over me, asking what time I would be there for service. My boyfriend would receive the same from one of the "older brothers" assigned to watch over his progress. This "buddy system" that I observed seemed increasingly odd as the frequency of the text messages increased to every day. I remember being at work and getting a text message that read something like "GBU sister, when do you think you will be coming to Zion to continue your Bible studies?" Again, I felt that this was more pressure to spend more time in the church.
Two months into my membership at the WMSCOG, my boyfriend did something that really hurt our relationship. I went to the pastor for guidance on the situation and he advised my boyfriend and I that it was not good to be together and that we should be with other people. He suggested that if we loved one another and wanted to be together, then we should get married. Despite how heartbroken I was, I forgave my boyfriend. Four months later we were engaged. Four weeks after that, we bought a foreclosed home that required a lot of construction. So between work, the construction, and planning the wedding that would take place four months later, we really didn’t have much free time. My now fiancé also worked part time a few nights per week. We were both completely overwhelmed but we continued to spend as much time in the church as possible.
After a while, Saturdays were not enough. We were pressured to return on Sundays too. The WMSCOG holds what they call a "preaching assembly" on Sunday mornings followed by recruiting for the rest of the afternoon. When members return, they typically spend more time in the church studying. Those members that were not experienced enough to go out recruiting would attend an approximately 6 hour long group study. There were also times when members would gather on Sunday evenings to watch movies that were determined by the WMSCOG to have some "spiritual" content.
And then there were the feasts during which members were required to attend services at 5 am and then again at 7:30 pm for sometimes 10 days at a time. I tried the 5 am services but it was nearly impossible for me considering that I normally went to bed around 2 am. So I would attend the 7:30pm services despite being exhausted after a long day at work.
During the first year of my membership at the WMSCOG, my family was quite concerned with the amount of time that I was spending at the church. I tried numerous times to get my family to join the church with me to no avail. I was initially disturbed by their resistance because I really believed in the WMSCOG’s claim that one could not be saved without their many requirements (Sabbath, Passover, other feasts, etc.). I was told by my "older sisters" not to worry and that God will make them come if I provide a good example for them to follow. I soon found myself feeling pressured to choose between the WMSCOG and my family. I remember telling my sister that I could not attend my nephew’s birthday party because it was on a Saturday. I dropped off a gift and went on my way to the church for the rest of the day. I regret this now. But this would only be the beginning of conflicts with my family due to my involvement with the WMSCOG.
How The WMSCOG Turned My Life Upside Down Part 3 – Why I Left
Before my husband and I left for our honeymoon, the pastor advised us to pray during the service times and spend the Saturday that we would be away, reading a book written by Ahnsahnghong. My husband and I agreed and we were off on our way to Mexico. Little did I know, that would be the last vacation we would spend together.
When we returned, the pressure to spend more time in the church increased even more. There was also a huge focus on "bearing ten talents" or recruiting. I remember going out with "sisters" to "preach" to new members. I had a sense that we were targeting people in their 20s and 30s since we never approached anyone that appeared to be older than that. We always went to crowded areas like stores and shopping malls. I was told that crowded areas were best and we would get to talk to the most people. I had a difficult time with this because I didn’t feel comfortable walking up to strangers and asking them if they had "ever heard about god the mother in the Bible". The rejection from most people didn’t help. A lot of people would just walk away or tell us that they were atheists. Security asked us to leave after receiving complaints from customers.
A few months before the wedding, one of my friends sent me an email that refuted the WMSCOG’s claim that Constantine abolished the Sabbath. This email had been bugging me for a few months and now that I had some time to think, I decided to do some research on the topic. I thought that it would be great to find some information that supported what I was taught during my first study about the Sabbath at the WMSCOG. I had trouble finding information in bookstores so I finally turned to the internet. I had avoided the internet after having heard that the internet was evil and considered by the WMSCOG to represent the modern day "tree of knowledge of good and evil" [more info on this]. A simple google search and I was lead to an article titled "Did Constantine Abolish The Sabbath In 321 AD?" [For our readers, she is referring to this article]. I was shocked to find out that Christians had been worshipping on Sunday long before Constantine was even born. So Constantine didn’t abolish the Sabbath did he? The WMSCOG’s studies that I thought were rock-solid seemed to be starting to crumble one at a time.
This lead me to do a google search on the WMSCOG. To my surprise, I found a website that claimed that the WMSCOG was a cult! [The site is no longer online]. My anxiety levels continued to increase as I sat reading information about the contradictions in the WMSCOG doctrine, questionable practices, and former members’ stories about how they had been hurt by the WMSCOG. The most disturbing information that I had come across was that the WMSCOG was said to have been using the same mind control tactics used on US prisoners of war in N. Korea. I also learned about Robert J. Lifton’s thought reform model [more on this]. When I finally read an article that explained how the Jehovah’s Witnesses used the same tactics to control their members I could not ignore the similarities to what I had experienced in the WMSCOG. [For our readers, she is referring to this article].
I discussed the information that I had come across on the computer with my husband that evening after work. He was in his second day of a three day fast. I cannot recall the occasion for the fast, but fasting at the WMSCOG means no food or water. Participation in the fast is expected from all members including children and infants. I remember hearing a "sister" explaining "my baby needs salvation too". I found this outrageous so I refused to participate.
It was a Tuesday evening so we were scheduled to attend the 3rd day service. After confronting my husband with the information that I found on the internet, he was shocked too. He admitted that we had been fooled and wondered why an organization would take advantage of people like this. He said that he felt "lost" and didn’t know where to go now. He was starving so we went to dinner and decided not to attend the service that evening. The WMSCOG takes attendance during services so it was soon obvious that we did not show up. We were both contacted that evening regarding our absence and I remember replying something to the effect that I had found some information on the internet that caused me to consider whether or not we would be returning. We were encouraged to attend a meeting with the pastor where all of our questions about the information on the internet would be answered. We were assured that the negative information on the internet was all lies.
My husband and I went to the WMSCOG a few days later to meet with the pastor. When we arrived in his office there were three other WMSCOG members present (a deacon, a deaconess, and another male member). The meeting started with an explanation of how people persecute the WMSCOG on the internet by spreading lies about "father and mother". I was assured that all of my questions would be answered.
I remember asking the pastor why members in the WMSCOG had separated from their non-believing spouses. After all, the girl who recruited me had just left her husband because he decided to stop attending the church. I pointed out how in 1 Corinthians 7, the apostle Paul states that married members of the church should not separate from their non-believing spouses. The pastor explained that the church does not encourage divorce, but instead encourages married couples to stay together. So again I asked, if this is true then why are there so many divorced or separated members? He explained that the members had no choice but to leave their spouses because of the persecution they received. He went on to explain that the non-believing spouses usually had a problem with how much time the member spent in the church and usually would end up trying to make the member choose between the church and the marriage. The deaconess sitting to my right went on to explain that she divorced her husband due to similar circumstances and that her husband had also committed adultery. It is important to point out that she had never once mentioned that her husband had committed adultery to me before. The other times that she had discussed leaving her husband with me, her reasons were that he had tried to stop her from tithing and attending the church as often. I thought, how convenient.
I then pointed out the contradiction from "The Mystery of God and the Spring of the Water of Life" pg. 465 where Ahnsahnghong writes "Jesus Christ went up to the temple and preached every day during the Feast of Tabernacles,…". In the Bible (John 7:14) it says that Jesus did not preach in the temple courts until the middle of the Feast of Tabernacles. The WMSCOG believes that Ahnsahnghong and Jesus are the same like water exists in three chemical forms (solid, gas, liquid) so does God (Father, Son, Holy Spirit). But how could Ahnsahnghong and Jesus be the same and tell different versions of the same story? Did Jesus preach every day of the feast or did He wait until the middle of the feast? It cannot be both because God does not make mistakes. The deacon explained that "Jesus preached every day". I pointed out that in the beginning of John 7 it clearly explains the reason for Jesus having waited until the middle of the feast. In John 7, Jesus tells his brothers to go ahead of him to the Feast of Tabernacles, and afterwards travels in secret because He knows that people are looking for him to try and kill him. Jesus could not have traveled alone in secret, and preached during the 2 1/2 day journey (on foot) from Galilee to Judea. If Jesus traveled alone in secret, that obviously means that he was not telling anyone who He was right? It was at this point that the pastor explained the reason for the contradiction. The particular edition of the book was written in Korean on the left page and in English on the right. The pastor pointed to a word that was mistranslated, underlined it (중에), and explained that it was an error in translation. According to the pastor, the word he underlined (중에) should have been translated to "middle" instead of "every day". So therefore, according to the pastor there was no contradiction between Ahnsahnghong’s writings and the Bible. He explained that the people who translated the books from Korean to English, made a mistake because English was not their native language. He assured me that he would be notifying the general assembly in Korea to correct the error. I was still skeptical at this point. Why wasn’t I given that explanation in the beginning? [For our readers, by request, we asked our correspondent for a picture of the word in her book, and she sent us the photo below]:
I was determined to find out the truth about this alleged "mistranslation". A few days later, I asked my husband to drive me to a nearby town where many Korean folks live. I know it sounds crazy but I had to know. I approached random Korean people on the street and asked what the underlined word (중에) meant. Some just pretended that they didn’t speak English probably because they thought I was trying to recruit them. Some didn’t know enough English to tell me what the word meant. Some were too Americanized and didn’t know enough Korean to read the word and tell me what it meant. I was becoming frustrated because it was around midnight at this point and I still hadn’t found anyone to help me with the translation. I had just about given up when I found a couple in a diner that was willing to talk to me after I started the conversation with "I’m not trying to preach to you, I just need to know what this Korean word means in English". The gentleman that was willing to look at the book told me that the underlined word (중에) meant "during" and not "middle". He also pointed to a word in the next line that said "every day" (날마다). That meant that there was no error in the translation! Ahnsahnghong really did write that Jesus preached every day during the feast. I was completely shocked!!! That meant that the pastor lied to me. I couldn’t believe that he would lie to me just to placate me. When I told my husband what the Korean man in the diner said, he was less than moved. I couldn’t understand why this seemed not to bother my husband. My husband ignored the blatant contradiction between Ahnsahnghong’s book and the Bible, and continued to attend. [For our readers, there are many more contradictions between the writings of Ahnsahnghong and the Bible listed here] . Despite confirmation of the translation with Google, my husband was somehow convinced by a WMSCOG missionary that the word did in fact mean "during". I remember even asking one of the Korean "sisters" what the underlined word meant as I was in line to use the bathroom. She also told me that the word (중에) meant "during". Some time later my husband eventually admitted that the pastor did in fact lie to me, but excused his actions. According to my husband, the pastor lied to me in an attempt to "save" me. I don’t understand why, but he continued to ignore the contradiction between Ahnsahnghong’s statement and the Bible. I asked my husband why the pastor would point to Ahnsahnghong’s writings and lie if the pastor believed that those words were written by "god". Would he point to the Bible and do the same? When did Jesus or any of his apostles lie to someone in an attempt to save them? Never.
The last service that I attended at the WMSCOG after this incident was a reality check for me. First, I was made to sit next to my husband, which is a big no-no in the WMSCOG. I was later told by a deaconess that "sometimes married couples sit together" though I had not observed this in the past year of my membership. Then toward the end of the service the pastor mentioned that it was only acceptable for new members who hadn’t finished their studies to ask questions about contradictions they read on the internet. According to the pastor, if the member asked questions after having completed the basic studies, it was "stupid". I thought, wait a minute, didn’t he just tell me a few days ago that I could come to him with any questions that I had and that they would be answered. Why would the pastor encourage me to ask questions and then call me "stupid" for doing exactly what he encouraged me to, in front of the whole congregation a few days later? Was this an attempt to humiliate me?
My husband later admitted to me that the seating arrangement had been made prior to my arrival in an attempt to keep me from "contaminating other sisters" with my doubts. So the deaconess lied to me too? At this point I felt manipulated and I had had enough of the lies and secrecy. I would not be returning to the WMSCOG. I wondered, and worried, what it would be like now that I had decided not to return to the WMSCOG and my husband had decided to remain a member.
How The WMSCOG Turned My Life Upside Down Part 4 – The NDA
Shortly after, I began receiving text messages on Fridays or Saturdays from the "older sister" assigned to watch over me, asking what time I would be there for service. My boyfriend would receive the same from one of the "older brothers" assigned to watch over his progress. This "buddy system" that I observed seemed increasingly odd as the frequency of the text messages increased to every day. I remember being at work and getting a text message that read something like "GBU sister, when do you think you will be coming to Zion to continue your Bible studies?" Again, I felt that this was more pressure to spend more time in the church.
Two months into my membership at the WMSCOG, my boyfriend did something that really hurt our relationship. I went to the pastor for guidance on the situation and he advised my boyfriend and I that it was not good to be together and that we should be with other people. He suggested that if we loved one another and wanted to be together, then we should get married. Despite how heartbroken I was, I forgave my boyfriend. Four months later we were engaged. Four weeks after that, we bought a foreclosed home that required a lot of construction. So between work, the construction, and planning the wedding that would take place four months later, we really didn’t have much free time. My now fiancé also worked part time a few nights per week. We were both completely overwhelmed but we continued to spend as much time in the church as possible.
After a while, Saturdays were not enough. We were pressured to return on Sundays too. The WMSCOG holds what they call a "preaching assembly" on Sunday mornings followed by recruiting for the rest of the afternoon. When members return, they typically spend more time in the church studying. Those members that were not experienced enough to go out recruiting would attend an approximately 6 hour long group study. There were also times when members would gather on Sunday evenings to watch movies that were determined by the WMSCOG to have some "spiritual" content.
And then there were the feasts during which members were required to attend services at 5 am and then again at 7:30 pm for sometimes 10 days at a time. I tried the 5 am services but it was nearly impossible for me considering that I normally went to bed around 2 am. So I would attend the 7:30pm services despite being exhausted after a long day at work.
During the first year of my membership at the WMSCOG, my family was quite concerned with the amount of time that I was spending at the church. I tried numerous times to get my family to join the church with me to no avail. I was initially disturbed by their resistance because I really believed in the WMSCOG’s claim that one could not be saved without their many requirements (Sabbath, Passover, other feasts, etc.). I was told by my "older sisters" not to worry and that God will make them come if I provide a good example for them to follow. I soon found myself feeling pressured to choose between the WMSCOG and my family. I remember telling my sister that I could not attend my nephew’s birthday party because it was on a Saturday. I dropped off a gift and went on my way to the church for the rest of the day. I regret this now. But this would only be the beginning of conflicts with my family due to my involvement with the WMSCOG.
How The WMSCOG Turned My Life Upside Down Part 3 – Why I Left
Before my husband and I left for our honeymoon, the pastor advised us to pray during the service times and spend the Saturday that we would be away, reading a book written by Ahnsahnghong. My husband and I agreed and we were off on our way to Mexico. Little did I know, that would be the last vacation we would spend together.
When we returned, the pressure to spend more time in the church increased even more. There was also a huge focus on "bearing ten talents" or recruiting. I remember going out with "sisters" to "preach" to new members. I had a sense that we were targeting people in their 20s and 30s since we never approached anyone that appeared to be older than that. We always went to crowded areas like stores and shopping malls. I was told that crowded areas were best and we would get to talk to the most people. I had a difficult time with this because I didn’t feel comfortable walking up to strangers and asking them if they had "ever heard about god the mother in the Bible". The rejection from most people didn’t help. A lot of people would just walk away or tell us that they were atheists. Security asked us to leave after receiving complaints from customers.
A few months before the wedding, one of my friends sent me an email that refuted the WMSCOG’s claim that Constantine abolished the Sabbath. This email had been bugging me for a few months and now that I had some time to think, I decided to do some research on the topic. I thought that it would be great to find some information that supported what I was taught during my first study about the Sabbath at the WMSCOG. I had trouble finding information in bookstores so I finally turned to the internet. I had avoided the internet after having heard that the internet was evil and considered by the WMSCOG to represent the modern day "tree of knowledge of good and evil" [more info on this]. A simple google search and I was lead to an article titled "Did Constantine Abolish The Sabbath In 321 AD?" [For our readers, she is referring to this article]. I was shocked to find out that Christians had been worshipping on Sunday long before Constantine was even born. So Constantine didn’t abolish the Sabbath did he? The WMSCOG’s studies that I thought were rock-solid seemed to be starting to crumble one at a time.
This lead me to do a google search on the WMSCOG. To my surprise, I found a website that claimed that the WMSCOG was a cult! [The site is no longer online]. My anxiety levels continued to increase as I sat reading information about the contradictions in the WMSCOG doctrine, questionable practices, and former members’ stories about how they had been hurt by the WMSCOG. The most disturbing information that I had come across was that the WMSCOG was said to have been using the same mind control tactics used on US prisoners of war in N. Korea. I also learned about Robert J. Lifton’s thought reform model [more on this]. When I finally read an article that explained how the Jehovah’s Witnesses used the same tactics to control their members I could not ignore the similarities to what I had experienced in the WMSCOG. [For our readers, she is referring to this article].
I discussed the information that I had come across on the computer with my husband that evening after work. He was in his second day of a three day fast. I cannot recall the occasion for the fast, but fasting at the WMSCOG means no food or water. Participation in the fast is expected from all members including children and infants. I remember hearing a "sister" explaining "my baby needs salvation too". I found this outrageous so I refused to participate.
It was a Tuesday evening so we were scheduled to attend the 3rd day service. After confronting my husband with the information that I found on the internet, he was shocked too. He admitted that we had been fooled and wondered why an organization would take advantage of people like this. He said that he felt "lost" and didn’t know where to go now. He was starving so we went to dinner and decided not to attend the service that evening. The WMSCOG takes attendance during services so it was soon obvious that we did not show up. We were both contacted that evening regarding our absence and I remember replying something to the effect that I had found some information on the internet that caused me to consider whether or not we would be returning. We were encouraged to attend a meeting with the pastor where all of our questions about the information on the internet would be answered. We were assured that the negative information on the internet was all lies.
My husband and I went to the WMSCOG a few days later to meet with the pastor. When we arrived in his office there were three other WMSCOG members present (a deacon, a deaconess, and another male member). The meeting started with an explanation of how people persecute the WMSCOG on the internet by spreading lies about "father and mother". I was assured that all of my questions would be answered.
I remember asking the pastor why members in the WMSCOG had separated from their non-believing spouses. After all, the girl who recruited me had just left her husband because he decided to stop attending the church. I pointed out how in 1 Corinthians 7, the apostle Paul states that married members of the church should not separate from their non-believing spouses. The pastor explained that the church does not encourage divorce, but instead encourages married couples to stay together. So again I asked, if this is true then why are there so many divorced or separated members? He explained that the members had no choice but to leave their spouses because of the persecution they received. He went on to explain that the non-believing spouses usually had a problem with how much time the member spent in the church and usually would end up trying to make the member choose between the church and the marriage. The deaconess sitting to my right went on to explain that she divorced her husband due to similar circumstances and that her husband had also committed adultery. It is important to point out that she had never once mentioned that her husband had committed adultery to me before. The other times that she had discussed leaving her husband with me, her reasons were that he had tried to stop her from tithing and attending the church as often. I thought, how convenient.
I then pointed out the contradiction from "The Mystery of God and the Spring of the Water of Life" pg. 465 where Ahnsahnghong writes "Jesus Christ went up to the temple and preached every day during the Feast of Tabernacles,…". In the Bible (John 7:14) it says that Jesus did not preach in the temple courts until the middle of the Feast of Tabernacles. The WMSCOG believes that Ahnsahnghong and Jesus are the same like water exists in three chemical forms (solid, gas, liquid) so does God (Father, Son, Holy Spirit). But how could Ahnsahnghong and Jesus be the same and tell different versions of the same story? Did Jesus preach every day of the feast or did He wait until the middle of the feast? It cannot be both because God does not make mistakes. The deacon explained that "Jesus preached every day". I pointed out that in the beginning of John 7 it clearly explains the reason for Jesus having waited until the middle of the feast. In John 7, Jesus tells his brothers to go ahead of him to the Feast of Tabernacles, and afterwards travels in secret because He knows that people are looking for him to try and kill him. Jesus could not have traveled alone in secret, and preached during the 2 1/2 day journey (on foot) from Galilee to Judea. If Jesus traveled alone in secret, that obviously means that he was not telling anyone who He was right? It was at this point that the pastor explained the reason for the contradiction. The particular edition of the book was written in Korean on the left page and in English on the right. The pastor pointed to a word that was mistranslated, underlined it (중에), and explained that it was an error in translation. According to the pastor, the word he underlined (중에) should have been translated to "middle" instead of "every day". So therefore, according to the pastor there was no contradiction between Ahnsahnghong’s writings and the Bible. He explained that the people who translated the books from Korean to English, made a mistake because English was not their native language. He assured me that he would be notifying the general assembly in Korea to correct the error. I was still skeptical at this point. Why wasn’t I given that explanation in the beginning? [For our readers, by request, we asked our correspondent for a picture of the word in her book, and she sent us the photo below]:
I was determined to find out the truth about this alleged "mistranslation". A few days later, I asked my husband to drive me to a nearby town where many Korean folks live. I know it sounds crazy but I had to know. I approached random Korean people on the street and asked what the underlined word (중에) meant. Some just pretended that they didn’t speak English probably because they thought I was trying to recruit them. Some didn’t know enough English to tell me what the word meant. Some were too Americanized and didn’t know enough Korean to read the word and tell me what it meant. I was becoming frustrated because it was around midnight at this point and I still hadn’t found anyone to help me with the translation. I had just about given up when I found a couple in a diner that was willing to talk to me after I started the conversation with "I’m not trying to preach to you, I just need to know what this Korean word means in English". The gentleman that was willing to look at the book told me that the underlined word (중에) meant "during" and not "middle". He also pointed to a word in the next line that said "every day" (날마다). That meant that there was no error in the translation! Ahnsahnghong really did write that Jesus preached every day during the feast. I was completely shocked!!! That meant that the pastor lied to me. I couldn’t believe that he would lie to me just to placate me. When I told my husband what the Korean man in the diner said, he was less than moved. I couldn’t understand why this seemed not to bother my husband. My husband ignored the blatant contradiction between Ahnsahnghong’s book and the Bible, and continued to attend. [For our readers, there are many more contradictions between the writings of Ahnsahnghong and the Bible listed here] . Despite confirmation of the translation with Google, my husband was somehow convinced by a WMSCOG missionary that the word did in fact mean "during". I remember even asking one of the Korean "sisters" what the underlined word meant as I was in line to use the bathroom. She also told me that the word (중에) meant "during". Some time later my husband eventually admitted that the pastor did in fact lie to me, but excused his actions. According to my husband, the pastor lied to me in an attempt to "save" me. I don’t understand why, but he continued to ignore the contradiction between Ahnsahnghong’s statement and the Bible. I asked my husband why the pastor would point to Ahnsahnghong’s writings and lie if the pastor believed that those words were written by "god". Would he point to the Bible and do the same? When did Jesus or any of his apostles lie to someone in an attempt to save them? Never.The last service that I attended at the WMSCOG after this incident was a reality check for me. First, I was made to sit next to my husband, which is a big no-no in the WMSCOG. I was later told by a deaconess that "sometimes married couples sit together" though I had not observed this in the past year of my membership. Then toward the end of the service the pastor mentioned that it was only acceptable for new members who hadn’t finished their studies to ask questions about contradictions they read on the internet. According to the pastor, if the member asked questions after having completed the basic studies, it was "stupid". I thought, wait a minute, didn’t he just tell me a few days ago that I could come to him with any questions that I had and that they would be answered. Why would the pastor encourage me to ask questions and then call me "stupid" for doing exactly what he encouraged me to, in front of the whole congregation a few days later? Was this an attempt to humiliate me?
My husband later admitted to me that the seating arrangement had been made prior to my arrival in an attempt to keep me from "contaminating other sisters" with my doubts. So the deaconess lied to me too? At this point I felt manipulated and I had had enough of the lies and secrecy. I would not be returning to the WMSCOG. I wondered, and worried, what it would be like now that I had decided not to return to the WMSCOG and my husband had decided to remain a member.
How The WMSCOG Turned My Life Upside Down Part 4 – The NDA
During my research on the World Mission Society Church of God, I came across various internet blog entries written by people who had family members involved in the group. Soon an obvious pattern emerged. I read story after story about how the WMSCOG had either ruined their marriage or family. Since my husband had decided to remain a member of the WMSCOG, naturally I became very concerned. I discussed my concerns with my husband and he promised me that he would not let the church come between us. Little did I know, the WMSCOG was well on its way in doing just that.
My husband would soon explain that he needed to spend more time in the church because he needed to "learn and study more". This of course made me furious because it appeared to be a blatant attempt to cannibalize all of my husband’s time in order to keep him away from me. If the WMSCOG didn’t allow me to sit next to the other "sisters" during the last service I attended in order to prevent me from "contaminating them with my doubts", how much more would they attempt to keep my husband away from me for the same reason?
The arguments between us increased and the time we spent together decreased. One night my husband told me that I was going to hell because I was no longer keeping the Sabbath. I thought that God was the only one that could decide that? I was furious. It seemed that my husband was looking down upon me like I was a lesser being because I no longer wanted to attend the WMSCOG. Soon he began going to the church every day after work and coming home after midnight. We were newlyweds and we rarely saw each other or spent any time together. I became increasingly frustrated and angry as time went on. Six months after I left the WMSCOG my husband was convinced that I was being "used by Satan" in order to try and stop him from going to the church so he moved out one Friday while I was at work. When I got home from work all of his things were gone. I couldn’t believe he would do such a thing! I was completely devastated! It seemed like the WMSCOG was driving him crazy.
We sat down to talk during the evening on the day that he moved out. I explained to him that what he was doing was not Biblical. In the Bible, it states that marriage is a covenant, God hates divorce, and that a man should not leave his wife except for adultery. [Note to our readers, there is much controversy among Catholics and Protestants concerning the definition of the Greek word πορνείᾳ used in Matthew 19:9. Some view it as "adultery" while others view it as "illicit union". That argument is beyond the scope of this site]. In the year that I was a member, the topic of marriage and its importance was never discussed in the WMSCOG. He went on to explain that he could no longer live with me because my "message would spread like cancer" (quoting 2 Timothy 2:17 ). This just didn’t make any sense. The verse that he quoted refers to Hymenaeous and Philetus preaching the message that the resurrection of Jesus never occurred (see 2 Timothy 2:18 Corinthians 15:12 1 Corinthians 15:12). He believed that because I had begun attending a Christian church on Sunday that this practice would somehow force him to do the same. How this would happen, I do not know. Members of the WMSCOG consider Sunday worship a pagan practice. I still don’t understand the connection between my attending church on Sunday, and those mentioned in the Bible that preached that Jesus had not resurrected. Just another verse that was taken out of context by him at the WMSCOG. Needless to say, the conversation was not productive because he left and refused to tell me where he would be going.
Two days later, my husband agreed to come over and talk to me again. I asked him to please come back home. He said that the only way he would move back in, would be if I agreed to attend one Sabbath service per week. Sound like coercion? I reluctantly agreed, and he moved back home. Even though I knew the teachings were wrong, and refused to take part in the prayers, I agreed to sit through the services in order to try and save my marriage. Things would be ok for a few days but it was the calm before the storm.
My husband insisted that I do all of the studies over again. I scheduled time to study with the deaconess that I had befriended during the first year of my membership. She never seemed to be available once I arrived at the church though. Unbeknownst to me, I would be studying with the pastor. My husband was present during the first study with the pastor but the study didn’t go well. It seemed that the pastor would become very frustrated when I asked questions. At the end of the study I asked the pastor to tell me what the Bible says about divorce. He wouldn’t answer. Instead he explained that he could not get involved in my relationship with my husband and that it was our "personal decision" if we wanted to stay together or not. Funny because I didn’t ask him for his opinion on the topic, I asked him to explain what the Bible tells us about divorce. I said that I needed to understand why my husband was under the impression that it was ok to leave me. He became very frustrated and said "what difference does it make if you’re both gonna die". He alluded to the belief that my husband and I should be more concerned about our salvation (which by the way can only be obtained by keeping the Sabbath, Passover, tithing, and many other requirements according to the WMSCOG) than our marriage. After that statement, the study was over. I would only study once more about two weeks later, without my husband.
The first service I attended after being gone for 6 months was quite uncomfortable. I told my husband ahead of time that I wanted to sit with him during the service. After all, I had been made to sit next to him before so I didn’t think it would be a problem. I was wrong. When I got there, I told the "sister" in charge of the seating arrangement that I wished to sit with my husband. Suddenly no one knew where he was. I was suddenly allowed to sit with the "sisters" again, sandwiched in between a deaconess and a missionary. Maybe they would be the buffers between my doubts and the other "sisters". After the service I confronted my husband about the seating arrangement. He explained that a deacon told him that it would be best if we didn’t sit together because he wouldn’t be able to focus on the message being given during the service. The deacon thought that my husband would be distracted by me. Why wasn’t this a concern of theirs before? This was just another inconsistency to add to the list.
About a month after I started attending the church again, my husband informs me that I am not allowed to return. He told me that the pastor "found out" that I had posted some negative information about the church online. He also mentioned a facebook page but did not offer anymore details. My husband assured me that they had shown him irrefutable evidence that I was the one that posted the negative information about the church online. I asked my husband to show me the facebook page on the computer but he said that he didn’t remember how to get to the page. About two days later I called the pastor and asked him what facebook page he was referring to? The pastor stated "you come here and I’ll show you". I agreed to meet with him later that afternoon.
When I arrived at the church, I would soon be joined by my husband who had lied to me about where he was before the meeting. He had arranged to attend this meeting without my knowledge. I would sit down with the pastor, a deacon and my husband to discuss the matter at hand. To my surprise I was greeted with a two page non-disclosure agreement. The deacon explained "we prepared this to protect you and to protect us…mentioning that we won’t say anything about you in the same way that you won’t say anything bad about us". I thought to myself, why do I need protection? I hadn’t done anything wrong.
He went on to explain that in the past people have visited their church and then “lied very bad” about them on the internet. I requested that they show me the "evidence" that my husband claimed they had. My request was denied. The deacon stated, "we don’t make anything on you having problems with Mark…is it ok if I read things in front of Mark?" I declined which of course made my husband upset, but he was advised by the pastor to leave the room. Here are the comments that the deacon read to me from some papers he had in front of him:
"My husband is so brainwashed by these people. It’s ridiculous. I am now having these arguments with him. All he ever answers to any of my points is if not this church then where? Basically because no other church celebrates the Sabbath on Saturday and Passover. He openly admits that he can not interpret anything in the Bible without the Church of God teachings. I can’t stand it. So when I read verses in the Bible that are clearly understood by anyone who reads them, he says you are applying your own mind".
"As far as the calendar goes and how they calculate the dates of the feasts, as per one of the deacons after one of the services a few weeks ago, only the general pastor in Korea knows the formula. Apparently it is secret information that no one but the general pastor is allowed to know. If you ask, they will tell you that the Jews miscalculate all the dates citing the example of when they start to celebrate the Sabbath. The Jews, from what I understand, start the Sabbath on Friday evening. According to the Church of God this is wrong, therefore all of their dates are wrong. Go figure".
I asked the deacon to explain what parts of the comments that he read in his opinion, were lies? He said "the part about him being brainwashed". He explained that everyone is entitled to their opinion, but their opinion may be a lie. They refused to tell me what website these comments came from. The deacon would explain that these comments had been posted on "some forums" with my personal email address. Then he proceeded to accuse me of posting links to other websites about the church on RickRoss.com. Again I asked for the pastor and the deacon to please show me where they obtained the information. The deacon then asked, "Would you like to sign this before I show you?". I declined to sign the non-disclosure agreement and again requested that I be shown proof of the accusations being made against me. The deacon then insisted that I read the agreement in front of me. The pastor explained "it’s nothing it’s like we protect each other". I still didn’t understand why I needed protection. Why would I need protection from the World Mission Society Church of God? I read the agreement and it basically said that I could not discuss anything that I read, studied, or heard in the church with anyone except my husband. I do not recall the agreement containing any statements to guarantee that the church would not "say anything bad" about me as stated earlier by the deacon. The pastor said, “What if someone bad mouth your personal life do you like it?” Was this a threat to defame me?
The pastor explained that if I leave the church, I do not need to take any intellectual property with me. Interestingly, the WMSCOG has most of the "studies" on their official website. I have also seen their members copy and paste them into responses on various blogs. What the WMSCOG teaches isn’t exactly secret is it? The pastor then said that if I left the church and "bad mouth" the church then he would "have to do something…hire a lawyer". He then mentioned how other people have accused them of "sue everybody". He also admitted to suing "several people" for "exposing everything" about the church and went on to say that if I am "not one of them then I just want to protect you but if you are one of them then you got a trouble". The pastor then stated "through this message clearly it should be you". At this point it was obvious that the pastor was threatening to sue me. The pastor and the deacon would not allow me to take a copy of the agreement that they requested I sign so that I could have it reviewed by an attorney. The deacon then said that he would send a “more revised version” to my attorney if I had my attorney contact them directly. Again the pastor issued what I considered to be another threat when he said, "if it’s not about you it’s ok but if it is you it’s a problem". They again refused to show me any evidence of their accusations. They also claimed that they requested my IP address and email address from the forums and that the forums sent them all of the information that they requested. Again I was assured that after I signed the agreement they would be able to show me "all of the evidence no problem". Most forums, including facebook, do not just give out their contributors’ email addresses and IP addresses because of a mere request. Disclosure of this type of personal information is only given out if the requestor provides a subpeona issued by a court. If the WMSCOG did in fact have my email address and IP address attached to any comments that they alleged I posted, I would have to question how they obtained this information. I have seen comments on forums and even videos on YouTube that accuse people in the WMSCOG of hacking websites. I started to wonder, was this one of those cases?
I wondered if the WMSCOG did this often. Do they monitor the information about them on the internet? If so, why? I remember the pastor saying, "we found out something that is not good for us that’s why we called you and told you to come and check it out…we tried to find out who is a believer". Is monitoring internet activity how the WMSCOG tests the faith of their members? Are other churches concerned with what is written about them online? Do other churches ask their members to sign non-disclosure agreements before they get kicked out? This type of behavior sounds more like a business than a church.
During this meeting, the pastor and deacon mentioned more than once that they were not trying to cause problems between my husband and I. If that was true, why would they confront my husband with this so called "evidence" days prior to having my husband notify me? But later the pastor said that in this situation if my husband read these comments and found out that I was the one that posted these comments "how can you be together like that?" It seemed pretty obvious to me that their intention was to cause division between my husband and I. My husband had already made up his mind when they confronted him days before this meeting. He viewed my refusal to sign the non-disclosure agreement as an admission of guilt. But I explained to my husband that I was under no circumstances going to sign away my right to free speech. Why would a church want to silence one of their former members?
It would not be long before my husband would be turned completely against me…
How The WMSCOG Turned My Life Upside Down Part 5 – My Marriage Destroyed
After my meeting with the WMSCOG, things between my husband and I would only get worse. My husband admitted that he had already made up his mind. There was no doubt in his mind that I had been posting "lies about the church" on the internet. My husband went as far as to accuse me of turning against God.
As the days went on, it seemed that his involvement in the WMSCOG continued to turn my husband against me. My husband became less attentive and less affectionate towards me. Our anniversary was fast approaching and my husband seemed disinterested in making plans to do something special. I suggested that we go away for a couple of days and he refused. He explained that he could not be away from the WMSCOG because "father was coming soon" and he needed to be ready when the time came. On the day of our one year anniversary, he still hadn’t committed to any plans or even made any suggestions about what we would be doing together. We subsequently spent the early part of the day arguing. He finally admitted that he felt guilty spending any time with me after I posted "lies about the church" on the internet. He left and spent the rest of the day and evening at the WMSCOG. I was no longer worthy of his time.
The next day, my husband took me out to dinner and gave me a card in which he wrote that we had enough love to make it through. Just when I thought that things between us would get better, he informs me that he had been recently chosen to participate in an intense Bible study training course where he would learn to teach 30 subjects in 30 days. That would mean that he would spend every day in the WMSCOG until very late at night and all day Sunday being tested from 9am to 6pm in the afternoon. I thought that it was pretty convenient that he would be "chosen" for this "intense training" that would make it nearly impossible for us to see each other, not too long after I was kicked out. The goal of this training sounded unrealistic and seemed like a ploy to set members up to fail. Why not set unattainable goals for your members to keep them focused, working hard, and feeling guilty and inadequate when they can not meet your demands?
Now going to the WMSCOG right after working and coming home after midnight was not enough. My husband would also stay up reading the WMSCOG books until almost 2 am. Then he would wake up at 5 am to pray. The WMSCOG was keeping the both of us sleep deprived. The strain on our marriage continued.
My husband had always told me that he wanted to have children and start a family. This was no longer the case after I was kicked out of the WMSCOG. He told me that he would not bring a child into this world and have the child’s blood on his hands because he knew that I would not allow our child to be baptized by the WMSCOG, and thus they’d be "spiritually dead". So our plans to have a family were no longer important either.
At this point, things seemed to be hopeless. I wasn’t spending any time with my husband because he was never home. When he was home, he would pretend that I didn’t even exist. How could my husband of only one year, who I believed loved me very much before, have so much resentment for me only 6 months after I initially left the WMSCOG? A few weeks after our anniversary, my husband informed me that he no longer wanted to be with me. He decided that it would be best for the both of us since he felt that we would never agree about his involvement with the WMSCOG. He admitted that "the church was always the problem" and he would under no circumstances compromise the amount of time he spent at the WMSCOG in order to try and work on our marriage.
I was at my wits end. I believe that this was what the WMSCOG wanted all along. Why else would they have pushed him so hard? Why would they go on the internet and try to monitor my personal activity? Why would they want to track down my IP address? And what about the way that the WMSCOG pastor threatened me during the meeting? How could he just ignore their distasteful behavior? I tried everything to get my husband to see the contradictions to no avail. I just couldn’t take the emotional abuse and neglect anymore and about a week later, I gave my husband an ultimatum. It was the cult or me. He chose the WMSCOG and moved out again that very evening.
I am completely heart-broken over the decision that my husband made to just abandon me the way that he did. He rarely even speaks to me these days. He says that it upsets him that I speak out about my experience with the WMSCOG and how it destroyed our marriage. But if I can help even one person out there to avoid the pain and suffering that I am enduring because of this destructive organization, then it is worth the embarrassment of posting my story online for everyone to read.
I love my husband very much and all I can do now is pray that he wakes up and returns home soon.
"What’s More Important, Your Mother or God?"
I was a member of the World Mission Society Church of God for about 5 months. I wasn’t recruited on the streets like most people. I was invited by a good friend of mine. She had been a member for less than a year at the time. So after several invitations from her Ifinally said to myself, what the heck let me go check this out. I was really interested because my friend kept telling me about how this church was different because they did not deny evolution and dinosaurs. In the past I had trouble with religion not being able to reconcile with scientific evidence that the world existed for a lot longer than six thousand years old. The WMSCOG seemed to have an answer for everything.
My first study was about the Sabbath. It seemed to make sense at the time. And not being all that familiar with the Bible and not having belonged to a specific church, this made me an easy target. I was baptized the very same day. Right after that study, it was impressed upon me that if I believed everything in the study then what would be the point of waiting to be baptized. I felt pressured, but then again because it was my friend who invited me, and I knew her to be smart and anything but gullible, I felt that she wouldn’t steer me in the wrong direction.
I began going to the church to study every day so that I could finish the "basic studies". Being the skeptic that I am, I began to think that it was weird that everyone there was always smiling and happy all of the time. I was told by some members that "once you are in the truth you are happy all of the time". (Kinda reminds me of the cult called shiny happy people in the movie "Bubble Boy" lol). One day when I was there, I was waiting for the person who I was going to study with, and heard a member commenting to another about her appearance. She stated "if I knew we were going preaching I would have dressed better". So I turned to her and asked what difference it made what she was wearing if she was going to "preach the Word". She answered, "well it’s for father and mother and you always want to look your best for father and mother". It was at that point that I realized that appearance was very important to members in this organization. I asked the person that I was studying with about the question I asked the other member and she responded that "if you are doing something for God then you should be at your best". I thought this was weird because to my knowledge Jesus was never worried about what He wore when he preached right?
I noticed that I saw less and less of my friend as the weeks went by. I attributed this to her just being busy with other stuff. I also was really tired because I went from going to church sporadically to going everyday. I justified my going so often due to the fact that I was new and I had a lot of studies to get through before I could understand everything that was going on in the church. Fortunately for me, I joined at a time when there were a lot of these "feasts" going on. During these feasts that I didn’t fully understand, I was expected to be in the church by 4:30 am for prayer services. I would then go to work and have to come back for the 7:30 pm services. I was exhausted! Due to the increasing demands for my time from the organization, things were tense between me and my family. Of course when I told the girl assigned to study with me and watch over me (this is typical of the way they work) about the issues with my family’s concern with my involvement, she advised "this is persecution, satan will try to use the people closest to you to try to keep you from coming to the church and learning the truth". This was disturbing. It made for a frustrating time because I had to defend why I was going to the church so often to my family. I would say that I was just going to church and there shouldn’t be anything wrong with that, or so I thought. I said that it wasn’t like I was going to be in the church 24/7, or so I thought. I was under the silly impression that once I was done with the basic studies, I wouldn’t be spending as much time there. Ha Ha Ha
Slowly but surely they tried to nudge me into changing the way that I dressed. I mean I don’t dress provocatively, I just favor darker colors (the non-shiny happy people colors
). I didn’t exactly adhere because I really didn’t have the expected wardrobe of skirt suits or pant suits like everyone else was wearing. I still made an effort to go appropriately dressed and sort of blend in.
I also began asking "who is this Korean lady in this picture" and "who is this lady on this calendar"? The member next to me said "don’t worry about that, you will learn about that later". This was so weird. I also noticed that people obsessively cleaned the church on their hands and knees. I was told that it was a great honor to be chosen to beautify the temple. I just thought to myself, why don’t they just use a mop…
I once noticed one of the women complaining about her weight. So I suggested that she join a gym. I mean 30 minutes a day a few times a week should do the trick. She answered, "oh no I don’t have time because I’m too busy doing things for father and mother". I still didn’t know who this "mother" person was but I thought this was very suspect.
During one of the breaks between feasts, I decided to just attend Tuesday and Saturday services. On that Sabbath I was approached by one of the missionaries questioned why I hadn’t been there since Tuesday, and I bluntly said that I attended on Tuesday and Saturday, had finished my basic studies and didn’t see a reason to come any more often. She then said that I didn’t really need to go just to study and I should want to go everyday. I thought to myself, why would I do that? I mean I have other obligations. I came to realize that the expectation was that I be there everyday and that the only activities I should be involved in outside of the church were sleep and work. Forget about family obligations. It seemed that the only obligations were to the "church family". At this point I still hadn’t kept a full Sabbath.
So after being there for about three months I started tithing. There was a lesson dedicated to this topic during which I asked, "who pays the pastor?". They claimed that the pastor doesn’t get paid and that the mortgage for the church was really high (about $20,000 per month or something crazy like that). I was informed that the money was used for food, church activities, donating to the UN, etc. It seemed that a lot of pressure was put on everyone to tithe and failing to do so was like stealing from God. Then I was shown different envelopes for other types of offerings. In my head I was like I don’t make that much money! But I guessed that they assumed that I wouldn’t have a need to pay my cable bill because I wouldn’t have time to watch TV. I also hadn’t seen my friends in a long time. My involvement in the church caused conflict because I would have to choose between family functions and attending services at the church. So when I had to leave on a Sabbath to go and do something for my Mom, one of the deaconesses said, "what’s more important, your mother or God". I said to myself, God would not make me choose. It was at that point that I became really suspicious and uncomfortable about their motives.
During one of the feasts, I was discussing the tension with my mom again. I said that I don’t lie to my mom, even if I know she isn’t going to like what I’m going to say or do. The deaconess then said, "well you know that there is such a thing as a righteous lie". As I walked away I thought, no there isn’t a lie is a lie.
So I had just about had enough when I noticed that my friend that had invited me in the first place had been MIA for several services. Every time I questioned one of the members in the group that I was assigned to about my friend, I was told that she wasn’t feeling well. So I said to one of the girls in my group that I was going to have to take the time to go and see my friend because I was concerned. It was at this point that she became somewhat evasive and changed the subject.
Not too long after, my friend actually called me as I was on my way to one of the last feast services and told me that she wanted to speak to me and not to let the church members know that I had spoken to her. I wanted to turn the car around right away but instead I went ahead and attended the short service. Throughout the service, every time that they said the name Ahnsahnghong, I said Jesus Christ in my head. I thought to myself, they have been really evasive lately so I really need to pray for a sign to let me know if this was the place for me or not. I didn’t want to quit just because I was challenged, but all of the little things that didn’t add up suddenly snowballed.
When I saw my friend later that evening, she told me that she found a lot of contradictions about the church and that she was lied to by one of the high ranking members of the church. So that was enough for me. I had had enough of this charade. I was done! Needless to say, members would not stop calling. After not answering numerous phone calls and text messages, eventually they showed up unannounced at my doorstep. They of course tried to convince me to return to the church and do the basic studies over again from the beginning. I told them that I had all of my notes and I also had come across 1 John 2:27 that says "you do not need anyone to teach you". One of the members basically told me that I could not understand the Bible on my own. I felt so disgusted with myself for not being able to see through their "shiny happy people" facade. At the same time I felt sorry for them because I knew that not all of them were in on what I would call this scheme to take people’s money. Having just woken up, I realized that these people who had become my friends were still stuck there. I realized that I could not be their friend because they would not have any time for me outside of the church and that was the only thing we had in common. I really didn’t want to hurt their feelings or insult anyone. I just wanted to be left alone to go on with my life. At this point I told them twice that no one will come between me and my family. They advised me that I could return whenever I was ready. But I told them that I could not be a hypocrite and go to their church and pray to someone that I did not believe in. I told them that they did have some truth in their church but it was of no use because it was mixed with lies. They gave up and left shortly after.
I hope my story helps people to avoid this organization. Jesus Christ our only Lord and Savior!
"Your Son Is A Man, You Have No Right To Take Him To The Doctor"
My son has been in the World Mission Society Chuch of God since July 2008. My husband and I did not find out until October 2008. He hid it from us all that time.
We were away for a week at the time, and had left him in charge of the house. Being extremely responsible at the age of 20 we trusted him. He was meant to come away with us but had to remain to complete a short course at university. By the time we got back, he had already apparently been baptised within 2-3 days of knowing them in our home. The WMSCOG apparently came knocking on the door offering their literature which consisted of small leaflets about “God the Mother” and the “second coming”. As we were away for a week I had my parents pop in to check on him. My dad said he found 4 glasses, one of them had lipstick on it. He joked with my son about the lipstick, as though he’d been entertaining. My son admitted to nothing.
He obviously listened to what they had to say. Within 3 days after meeting the WMSCOG recruiters, he dropped his class at university to study daily with these people.
When we got back, we noticed he became extremely interested in the Bible and started showing us different verses. He was jumping all over the Bible. We’re Christians but not over the top religious and were not very knowledgeable about the Bible at the time. Our son wanted to read the Bible every night with us however, we’d just end up arguing about it. All we were doing was fighting over the Bible. He was trying very hard to convert us without our knowledge and to believe these weird doctrines. We argued that these were very strange interpretations of the Bible. We tried hard to explain to him that he was confused and his interpretations were a bit “off track” (He had attended a Christian school, so he already had prior knowledge of the Bible – he even studied religion as a subject).
As we read the Bible together, I noticed he would reveal things very slowly. He’d come to a certain "prophecy", and then say I’ll reveal the rest tomorrow. I’d want to continue, but he would tell me I was not ready to hear the “truth” yet.
During one of our readings of the Bible he explained that "Jesus had already come back in secret". By this point I was getting very upset, as he was revealing this slowly and suspiciously. I thought he was going to tell me he was Jesus Christ! After a couple of days he finally revealed what he said was Jesus’ second coming, however he did not mention anything Korean or Ahnsahnghong or “mother”. I was in shock. At this point we told him he needs help -Spiritual and psychological.
Over the next few months, my son kept telling us he was extremely busy on Saturdays, helping out a friend with work. This of course was extended to Tuesday nights. The excuse was the same. He had to help his friend with his business. My son also had a part time job, so when the feast days would come up, he would tell us he had to open the grocery store he was working in on his own at 5am. He simply lied to us the whole time.
By around September 2008, our son told us he was going to go to Korea for a holiday to study with a friend from University. He told us he was a very good friend who had invited him to go to Korea with him. He kept telling us it was a great opportunity to visit the country and may not be able to again. This just didn’t sound right to us but we couldn’t really say why. But he said he really wanted to go. Our response of course was that we were concerned because we didn’t even know this mysterious friend. We tried hard to talk him out of it, but he reassured us it was a holiday to study and explore a new country.
About three days before he was meant to go, we found out he was really going to Korea to meet “god.” We confronted him with this and asked him what he was involved in. He told us the truth that he was involved in the WMSCOG and that it was not a cult to him.
We spoke to our local priest who came and spoke to him the following evening. Our priest tried to point out that the Bible interpretations he was presenting were totally off-beam when compared to normal Christian interpretations. The priest also tried to point out the craziness of going to Korea. He told him to hold off a while as 3 months of attending this church was not enough time to be placing so much trust in them and to be leaving the country. My son agreed and swore he would cancel his ticket the next day.
The next morning our son was a totally different person and was acting very suspiciously. I actually managed to ring the travel agent myself and cancelled the ticket. But of course, the travel agent notified the pastor who alerted my son about the cancellation. When my son found out he was absolutely furious with me. My son had never sworn at me his whole life, but that day he called me every bad thing you can imagine. He showed me the cancelled ticket and said he was not going and that the members were angry with him, as I placed him in an uncomfortable situation. I don’t think any of that was true though. He went on to tell me that in his fit of anger he threw his passport away. I realized then, that he was still lying and planning to leave somehow. He had given his luggage and passport to the WMSCOG. In the following days leading up to the trip he continued acting very suspiciously.
This just was a total shock to us. I did have the perfect child. He was very close to us and we had a great relationship. What was happening was like a death in the family. He sold all of his possessions including iPods, cameras and a watch to fund his trip to Korea. I go into his bedroom now and there’s nothing, just the bed he sleeps on. He has kept the computer we bought him as he needs this for his study. Although, I did have to stop him from selling it in the beginning.
He eventually went to Korea. He pretended to go to work early in the morning on the day of departure. He called us that evening from the airport and said he would be back in two weeks. I was devastated. I needed a lot of medical attention to get me through those two weeks. When he got back he told us that he’d met "god" and this was "his church" and he was "never going to leave it".
The day after he returned from Korea, he wanted his father and I to attend his "church". I didn’t want to go at all but my husband thought we should give it a try so we can see what he is involved in. On arrival at the church, which was just a house, everyone was welcoming and saying “god bless you” to us. They made me wear a veil on my head. I was in disbelief during the service as there was a lot of singing and NO worship of Jesus. They prayed and sang to “christ Ahnsahnghong” and “mother god” who they call "mother jerusalem". The men sat on one side of the room and the women were seated behind them. The women all wore veils on their heads. I was expected to wear one. The pastor was very forceful during his address to the congregation. He choose bible passages and interpreted them with his own spin. Everyone was friendly as long as you didn’t begin to question anything. The members read from their own Korean/English Bibles. They have “song books”. The fellow who had converted my son sat with us during the service and guided us through the singing. He kept encouraging us to join in but that was the last thing we could do. They expected my husband to sit at the front with the men and they wanted me in the back with all the women. But I refused to separate from him.
My son works part-time but he never has any money. I’m not sure if they have access to his bank account. From what I understand there’s a 10 per cent tithing on earnings plus many other offerings. There are also the offerings during all services attended on Saturdays.
I know my son marks the roll of attendance at every service to see who has turned up. If a member is absent, they will phone or physically go to that person’s home and ask why they didn’t come to church. He goes "preaching" from 8 am to 10 pm on most days. He has spent all of his time recruiting during semester breaks from college. Most of the time it’s as if he’s not there, like we’ve lost him as a person. He reads the Bible and WMSCOG literature all the time. The change in his personality is astounding.
There was an occasion where I had to take my son for a medical appointment, as he needed medical attention. They must have advised him not to go. They kept him busy the whole day. I had a lot of difficulty contacting him because he turned off his mobile phone. I went to the “church” to find him. I was approached by the pastor’s wife who told me “he was a man” and I had no right to take him to the doctor. I told her how upset I was as he needed to see a doctor. I continued to tell her how upset I was that he was part of this "church". The pastor’s wife then told me to get off of the property or she would call the police. She turned very nasty towards me. Other members came outside and urged me to leave also. When I told my son about how abusive the pastor’s wife was towards me, he defended her and told me I should never have gone to find him to go to the doctor. He told me I was on private property and the pastor’s wife had every right to tell me to leave or call the police.
About a year ago I had a local newspaper reporter approach me for my story. I told him my story which he wanted to publish. However the week before it was to be published, the local paper had written a small article about the church, which included a small quote about my son selling everything to go to Korea. Apparently members from the church went charging into the office telling them how wrong they were. They had to print another article written by one of their pastors. In this article they claimed what I said was not true. I was furious! The reporter told me they were quite abusive and they called the police. Because of their intimidation, the reporter was too afraid to publish my full story. You can imagine my disbelief.
Friends have tried to keep in touch with my son but he has distanced himself from them. He had tried hard to convert all his friends but they didn’t want to know about it. So he cut off all ties with them. One friend (his closest) had supported him through the whole ordeal but he has now given up hope as my son has cut ties with him also. Our son is still trying to get us into the church and tells us that we will one day become members. He says this because “mother” told him he shouldn’t worry because we would all eventually enter his "church". He tells me one day we will see the “truth”.
As a family there are many things we can’t do together anymore. We have not had a Christmas or Easter together for the past three years because he doesn’t believe in those holidays anymore. On Christmas day my son will leave around 6 am and not return home until after midnight. He has told me that Christmas makes him “sick” and we are all wrong to celebrate it. He will not set foot in our church (or any other church for that matter) because he says they are the "wrong churches". He refuses to attend and has missed out on many family functions such as weddings, christenings etc. My biggest fear is a funeral. Both my husband and I have elderly parents, so the realization that he will not attend these is heartbreaking for us.
Our son has gone through periods of fasting when he does not eat or drink for up to 7 days. He says he does this because it will make his prayers more meaningful. He also tells us that we’re all wrong and he’s the only one in the right church and he’s trying very hard to save us. We have found some ex-members who have written emails to us about their experiences but when we show him these he just dismisses them. I’ve given him so much information and have encouraged him to do some other bible studies and branch out and look at other things. I constantly print information from different sites to give to him. He always just dismisses the information. He tells me he has no time to read it and that it’s wrong anyway. If I show him testimonies from ex-members, his response is that they fell out of the truth and didn’t fully understand.
Our son has been to Korea twice. He had not notified us of the second trip either. Instead, he just called from the airport letting us know that he was leaving. He does still live with us but it is very difficult. We live with a total stranger. However, I live with the hope that he will “wake” up from this nightmare and come back to us. The fact that he believes the things that the WMSCOG claims makes me ill. His whole person has changed to someone we really don’t know and can’t trust anymore. The people in this group can appear to be very loving but they can be very harmful at the same time. This honestly has devastated and ruined my family.
"My Boyfriend Dumped Me And Was Married Off To A Member Of The WMSCOG One Month Later"
I was raised Pentecostal/Apostolic and I was dating a guy from the World Mission Society Church of God. He has been a member of the WMSCOG for about 2 years now. He broke up with me because I would not convert to his religion. I just could not enter that church! I got such a strange and scary feeling the one time I got near it. The Saturday after we broke up his pastor arranged for him to marry a Korean member from the church because according to him, "she would help him grow spiritually". I suspect that this was in order to get her US citizenship. I mean she barely speaks English. So he married her only one month after our break-up. After he got married I asked him if he loved her and he responded "god the mother will bless us". I wouldn’t exactly take that as a yes.
I pray that he will wake up and open his eyes. I don’t know how likely the chances are of this happening now that he has married a devoted church member. The last few months haven’t been easy but I have prayed (to Jesus Christ) to give me the strength to move on. The Lord has blessed me since!
My husband would soon explain that he needed to spend more time in the church because he needed to "learn and study more". This of course made me furious because it appeared to be a blatant attempt to cannibalize all of my husband’s time in order to keep him away from me. If the WMSCOG didn’t allow me to sit next to the other "sisters" during the last service I attended in order to prevent me from "contaminating them with my doubts", how much more would they attempt to keep my husband away from me for the same reason?
The arguments between us increased and the time we spent together decreased. One night my husband told me that I was going to hell because I was no longer keeping the Sabbath. I thought that God was the only one that could decide that? I was furious. It seemed that my husband was looking down upon me like I was a lesser being because I no longer wanted to attend the WMSCOG. Soon he began going to the church every day after work and coming home after midnight. We were newlyweds and we rarely saw each other or spent any time together. I became increasingly frustrated and angry as time went on. Six months after I left the WMSCOG my husband was convinced that I was being "used by Satan" in order to try and stop him from going to the church so he moved out one Friday while I was at work. When I got home from work all of his things were gone. I couldn’t believe he would do such a thing! I was completely devastated! It seemed like the WMSCOG was driving him crazy.
We sat down to talk during the evening on the day that he moved out. I explained to him that what he was doing was not Biblical. In the Bible, it states that marriage is a covenant, God hates divorce, and that a man should not leave his wife except for adultery. [Note to our readers, there is much controversy among Catholics and Protestants concerning the definition of the Greek word πορνείᾳ used in Matthew 19:9. Some view it as "adultery" while others view it as "illicit union". That argument is beyond the scope of this site]. In the year that I was a member, the topic of marriage and its importance was never discussed in the WMSCOG. He went on to explain that he could no longer live with me because my "message would spread like cancer" (quoting 2 Timothy 2:17 ). This just didn’t make any sense. The verse that he quoted refers to Hymenaeous and Philetus preaching the message that the resurrection of Jesus never occurred (see 2 Timothy 2:18 Corinthians 15:12 1 Corinthians 15:12). He believed that because I had begun attending a Christian church on Sunday that this practice would somehow force him to do the same. How this would happen, I do not know. Members of the WMSCOG consider Sunday worship a pagan practice. I still don’t understand the connection between my attending church on Sunday, and those mentioned in the Bible that preached that Jesus had not resurrected. Just another verse that was taken out of context by him at the WMSCOG. Needless to say, the conversation was not productive because he left and refused to tell me where he would be going.
Two days later, my husband agreed to come over and talk to me again. I asked him to please come back home. He said that the only way he would move back in, would be if I agreed to attend one Sabbath service per week. Sound like coercion? I reluctantly agreed, and he moved back home. Even though I knew the teachings were wrong, and refused to take part in the prayers, I agreed to sit through the services in order to try and save my marriage. Things would be ok for a few days but it was the calm before the storm.
My husband insisted that I do all of the studies over again. I scheduled time to study with the deaconess that I had befriended during the first year of my membership. She never seemed to be available once I arrived at the church though. Unbeknownst to me, I would be studying with the pastor. My husband was present during the first study with the pastor but the study didn’t go well. It seemed that the pastor would become very frustrated when I asked questions. At the end of the study I asked the pastor to tell me what the Bible says about divorce. He wouldn’t answer. Instead he explained that he could not get involved in my relationship with my husband and that it was our "personal decision" if we wanted to stay together or not. Funny because I didn’t ask him for his opinion on the topic, I asked him to explain what the Bible tells us about divorce. I said that I needed to understand why my husband was under the impression that it was ok to leave me. He became very frustrated and said "what difference does it make if you’re both gonna die". He alluded to the belief that my husband and I should be more concerned about our salvation (which by the way can only be obtained by keeping the Sabbath, Passover, tithing, and many other requirements according to the WMSCOG) than our marriage. After that statement, the study was over. I would only study once more about two weeks later, without my husband.
The first service I attended after being gone for 6 months was quite uncomfortable. I told my husband ahead of time that I wanted to sit with him during the service. After all, I had been made to sit next to him before so I didn’t think it would be a problem. I was wrong. When I got there, I told the "sister" in charge of the seating arrangement that I wished to sit with my husband. Suddenly no one knew where he was. I was suddenly allowed to sit with the "sisters" again, sandwiched in between a deaconess and a missionary. Maybe they would be the buffers between my doubts and the other "sisters". After the service I confronted my husband about the seating arrangement. He explained that a deacon told him that it would be best if we didn’t sit together because he wouldn’t be able to focus on the message being given during the service. The deacon thought that my husband would be distracted by me. Why wasn’t this a concern of theirs before? This was just another inconsistency to add to the list.
About a month after I started attending the church again, my husband informs me that I am not allowed to return. He told me that the pastor "found out" that I had posted some negative information about the church online. He also mentioned a facebook page but did not offer anymore details. My husband assured me that they had shown him irrefutable evidence that I was the one that posted the negative information about the church online. I asked my husband to show me the facebook page on the computer but he said that he didn’t remember how to get to the page. About two days later I called the pastor and asked him what facebook page he was referring to? The pastor stated "you come here and I’ll show you". I agreed to meet with him later that afternoon.
When I arrived at the church, I would soon be joined by my husband who had lied to me about where he was before the meeting. He had arranged to attend this meeting without my knowledge. I would sit down with the pastor, a deacon and my husband to discuss the matter at hand. To my surprise I was greeted with a two page non-disclosure agreement. The deacon explained "we prepared this to protect you and to protect us…mentioning that we won’t say anything about you in the same way that you won’t say anything bad about us". I thought to myself, why do I need protection? I hadn’t done anything wrong.
He went on to explain that in the past people have visited their church and then “lied very bad” about them on the internet. I requested that they show me the "evidence" that my husband claimed they had. My request was denied. The deacon stated, "we don’t make anything on you having problems with Mark…is it ok if I read things in front of Mark?" I declined which of course made my husband upset, but he was advised by the pastor to leave the room. Here are the comments that the deacon read to me from some papers he had in front of him:
"My husband is so brainwashed by these people. It’s ridiculous. I am now having these arguments with him. All he ever answers to any of my points is if not this church then where? Basically because no other church celebrates the Sabbath on Saturday and Passover. He openly admits that he can not interpret anything in the Bible without the Church of God teachings. I can’t stand it. So when I read verses in the Bible that are clearly understood by anyone who reads them, he says you are applying your own mind".
"As far as the calendar goes and how they calculate the dates of the feasts, as per one of the deacons after one of the services a few weeks ago, only the general pastor in Korea knows the formula. Apparently it is secret information that no one but the general pastor is allowed to know. If you ask, they will tell you that the Jews miscalculate all the dates citing the example of when they start to celebrate the Sabbath. The Jews, from what I understand, start the Sabbath on Friday evening. According to the Church of God this is wrong, therefore all of their dates are wrong. Go figure".
I asked the deacon to explain what parts of the comments that he read in his opinion, were lies? He said "the part about him being brainwashed". He explained that everyone is entitled to their opinion, but their opinion may be a lie. They refused to tell me what website these comments came from. The deacon would explain that these comments had been posted on "some forums" with my personal email address. Then he proceeded to accuse me of posting links to other websites about the church on RickRoss.com. Again I asked for the pastor and the deacon to please show me where they obtained the information. The deacon then asked, "Would you like to sign this before I show you?". I declined to sign the non-disclosure agreement and again requested that I be shown proof of the accusations being made against me. The deacon then insisted that I read the agreement in front of me. The pastor explained "it’s nothing it’s like we protect each other". I still didn’t understand why I needed protection. Why would I need protection from the World Mission Society Church of God? I read the agreement and it basically said that I could not discuss anything that I read, studied, or heard in the church with anyone except my husband. I do not recall the agreement containing any statements to guarantee that the church would not "say anything bad" about me as stated earlier by the deacon. The pastor said, “What if someone bad mouth your personal life do you like it?” Was this a threat to defame me?
The pastor explained that if I leave the church, I do not need to take any intellectual property with me. Interestingly, the WMSCOG has most of the "studies" on their official website. I have also seen their members copy and paste them into responses on various blogs. What the WMSCOG teaches isn’t exactly secret is it? The pastor then said that if I left the church and "bad mouth" the church then he would "have to do something…hire a lawyer". He then mentioned how other people have accused them of "sue everybody". He also admitted to suing "several people" for "exposing everything" about the church and went on to say that if I am "not one of them then I just want to protect you but if you are one of them then you got a trouble". The pastor then stated "through this message clearly it should be you". At this point it was obvious that the pastor was threatening to sue me. The pastor and the deacon would not allow me to take a copy of the agreement that they requested I sign so that I could have it reviewed by an attorney. The deacon then said that he would send a “more revised version” to my attorney if I had my attorney contact them directly. Again the pastor issued what I considered to be another threat when he said, "if it’s not about you it’s ok but if it is you it’s a problem". They again refused to show me any evidence of their accusations. They also claimed that they requested my IP address and email address from the forums and that the forums sent them all of the information that they requested. Again I was assured that after I signed the agreement they would be able to show me "all of the evidence no problem". Most forums, including facebook, do not just give out their contributors’ email addresses and IP addresses because of a mere request. Disclosure of this type of personal information is only given out if the requestor provides a subpeona issued by a court. If the WMSCOG did in fact have my email address and IP address attached to any comments that they alleged I posted, I would have to question how they obtained this information. I have seen comments on forums and even videos on YouTube that accuse people in the WMSCOG of hacking websites. I started to wonder, was this one of those cases?
I wondered if the WMSCOG did this often. Do they monitor the information about them on the internet? If so, why? I remember the pastor saying, "we found out something that is not good for us that’s why we called you and told you to come and check it out…we tried to find out who is a believer". Is monitoring internet activity how the WMSCOG tests the faith of their members? Are other churches concerned with what is written about them online? Do other churches ask their members to sign non-disclosure agreements before they get kicked out? This type of behavior sounds more like a business than a church.
During this meeting, the pastor and deacon mentioned more than once that they were not trying to cause problems between my husband and I. If that was true, why would they confront my husband with this so called "evidence" days prior to having my husband notify me? But later the pastor said that in this situation if my husband read these comments and found out that I was the one that posted these comments "how can you be together like that?" It seemed pretty obvious to me that their intention was to cause division between my husband and I. My husband had already made up his mind when they confronted him days before this meeting. He viewed my refusal to sign the non-disclosure agreement as an admission of guilt. But I explained to my husband that I was under no circumstances going to sign away my right to free speech. Why would a church want to silence one of their former members?
It would not be long before my husband would be turned completely against me…
How The WMSCOG Turned My Life Upside Down Part 5 – My Marriage Destroyed
After my meeting with the WMSCOG, things between my husband and I would only get worse. My husband admitted that he had already made up his mind. There was no doubt in his mind that I had been posting "lies about the church" on the internet. My husband went as far as to accuse me of turning against God.
As the days went on, it seemed that his involvement in the WMSCOG continued to turn my husband against me. My husband became less attentive and less affectionate towards me. Our anniversary was fast approaching and my husband seemed disinterested in making plans to do something special. I suggested that we go away for a couple of days and he refused. He explained that he could not be away from the WMSCOG because "father was coming soon" and he needed to be ready when the time came. On the day of our one year anniversary, he still hadn’t committed to any plans or even made any suggestions about what we would be doing together. We subsequently spent the early part of the day arguing. He finally admitted that he felt guilty spending any time with me after I posted "lies about the church" on the internet. He left and spent the rest of the day and evening at the WMSCOG. I was no longer worthy of his time.
The next day, my husband took me out to dinner and gave me a card in which he wrote that we had enough love to make it through. Just when I thought that things between us would get better, he informs me that he had been recently chosen to participate in an intense Bible study training course where he would learn to teach 30 subjects in 30 days. That would mean that he would spend every day in the WMSCOG until very late at night and all day Sunday being tested from 9am to 6pm in the afternoon. I thought that it was pretty convenient that he would be "chosen" for this "intense training" that would make it nearly impossible for us to see each other, not too long after I was kicked out. The goal of this training sounded unrealistic and seemed like a ploy to set members up to fail. Why not set unattainable goals for your members to keep them focused, working hard, and feeling guilty and inadequate when they can not meet your demands?
Now going to the WMSCOG right after working and coming home after midnight was not enough. My husband would also stay up reading the WMSCOG books until almost 2 am. Then he would wake up at 5 am to pray. The WMSCOG was keeping the both of us sleep deprived. The strain on our marriage continued.
My husband had always told me that he wanted to have children and start a family. This was no longer the case after I was kicked out of the WMSCOG. He told me that he would not bring a child into this world and have the child’s blood on his hands because he knew that I would not allow our child to be baptized by the WMSCOG, and thus they’d be "spiritually dead". So our plans to have a family were no longer important either.
At this point, things seemed to be hopeless. I wasn’t spending any time with my husband because he was never home. When he was home, he would pretend that I didn’t even exist. How could my husband of only one year, who I believed loved me very much before, have so much resentment for me only 6 months after I initially left the WMSCOG? A few weeks after our anniversary, my husband informed me that he no longer wanted to be with me. He decided that it would be best for the both of us since he felt that we would never agree about his involvement with the WMSCOG. He admitted that "the church was always the problem" and he would under no circumstances compromise the amount of time he spent at the WMSCOG in order to try and work on our marriage.
I was at my wits end. I believe that this was what the WMSCOG wanted all along. Why else would they have pushed him so hard? Why would they go on the internet and try to monitor my personal activity? Why would they want to track down my IP address? And what about the way that the WMSCOG pastor threatened me during the meeting? How could he just ignore their distasteful behavior? I tried everything to get my husband to see the contradictions to no avail. I just couldn’t take the emotional abuse and neglect anymore and about a week later, I gave my husband an ultimatum. It was the cult or me. He chose the WMSCOG and moved out again that very evening.
I am completely heart-broken over the decision that my husband made to just abandon me the way that he did. He rarely even speaks to me these days. He says that it upsets him that I speak out about my experience with the WMSCOG and how it destroyed our marriage. But if I can help even one person out there to avoid the pain and suffering that I am enduring because of this destructive organization, then it is worth the embarrassment of posting my story online for everyone to read.
I love my husband very much and all I can do now is pray that he wakes up and returns home soon.
"What’s More Important, Your Mother or God?"
I was a member of the World Mission Society Church of God for about 5 months. I wasn’t recruited on the streets like most people. I was invited by a good friend of mine. She had been a member for less than a year at the time. So after several invitations from her Ifinally said to myself, what the heck let me go check this out. I was really interested because my friend kept telling me about how this church was different because they did not deny evolution and dinosaurs. In the past I had trouble with religion not being able to reconcile with scientific evidence that the world existed for a lot longer than six thousand years old. The WMSCOG seemed to have an answer for everything.
My first study was about the Sabbath. It seemed to make sense at the time. And not being all that familiar with the Bible and not having belonged to a specific church, this made me an easy target. I was baptized the very same day. Right after that study, it was impressed upon me that if I believed everything in the study then what would be the point of waiting to be baptized. I felt pressured, but then again because it was my friend who invited me, and I knew her to be smart and anything but gullible, I felt that she wouldn’t steer me in the wrong direction.
I began going to the church to study every day so that I could finish the "basic studies". Being the skeptic that I am, I began to think that it was weird that everyone there was always smiling and happy all of the time. I was told by some members that "once you are in the truth you are happy all of the time". (Kinda reminds me of the cult called shiny happy people in the movie "Bubble Boy" lol). One day when I was there, I was waiting for the person who I was going to study with, and heard a member commenting to another about her appearance. She stated "if I knew we were going preaching I would have dressed better". So I turned to her and asked what difference it made what she was wearing if she was going to "preach the Word". She answered, "well it’s for father and mother and you always want to look your best for father and mother". It was at that point that I realized that appearance was very important to members in this organization. I asked the person that I was studying with about the question I asked the other member and she responded that "if you are doing something for God then you should be at your best". I thought this was weird because to my knowledge Jesus was never worried about what He wore when he preached right?
I noticed that I saw less and less of my friend as the weeks went by. I attributed this to her just being busy with other stuff. I also was really tired because I went from going to church sporadically to going everyday. I justified my going so often due to the fact that I was new and I had a lot of studies to get through before I could understand everything that was going on in the church. Fortunately for me, I joined at a time when there were a lot of these "feasts" going on. During these feasts that I didn’t fully understand, I was expected to be in the church by 4:30 am for prayer services. I would then go to work and have to come back for the 7:30 pm services. I was exhausted! Due to the increasing demands for my time from the organization, things were tense between me and my family. Of course when I told the girl assigned to study with me and watch over me (this is typical of the way they work) about the issues with my family’s concern with my involvement, she advised "this is persecution, satan will try to use the people closest to you to try to keep you from coming to the church and learning the truth". This was disturbing. It made for a frustrating time because I had to defend why I was going to the church so often to my family. I would say that I was just going to church and there shouldn’t be anything wrong with that, or so I thought. I said that it wasn’t like I was going to be in the church 24/7, or so I thought. I was under the silly impression that once I was done with the basic studies, I wouldn’t be spending as much time there. Ha Ha Ha
Slowly but surely they tried to nudge me into changing the way that I dressed. I mean I don’t dress provocatively, I just favor darker colors (the non-shiny happy people colors
). I didn’t exactly adhere because I really didn’t have the expected wardrobe of skirt suits or pant suits like everyone else was wearing. I still made an effort to go appropriately dressed and sort of blend in.I also began asking "who is this Korean lady in this picture" and "who is this lady on this calendar"? The member next to me said "don’t worry about that, you will learn about that later". This was so weird. I also noticed that people obsessively cleaned the church on their hands and knees. I was told that it was a great honor to be chosen to beautify the temple. I just thought to myself, why don’t they just use a mop…
I once noticed one of the women complaining about her weight. So I suggested that she join a gym. I mean 30 minutes a day a few times a week should do the trick. She answered, "oh no I don’t have time because I’m too busy doing things for father and mother". I still didn’t know who this "mother" person was but I thought this was very suspect.
During one of the breaks between feasts, I decided to just attend Tuesday and Saturday services. On that Sabbath I was approached by one of the missionaries questioned why I hadn’t been there since Tuesday, and I bluntly said that I attended on Tuesday and Saturday, had finished my basic studies and didn’t see a reason to come any more often. She then said that I didn’t really need to go just to study and I should want to go everyday. I thought to myself, why would I do that? I mean I have other obligations. I came to realize that the expectation was that I be there everyday and that the only activities I should be involved in outside of the church were sleep and work. Forget about family obligations. It seemed that the only obligations were to the "church family". At this point I still hadn’t kept a full Sabbath.
So after being there for about three months I started tithing. There was a lesson dedicated to this topic during which I asked, "who pays the pastor?". They claimed that the pastor doesn’t get paid and that the mortgage for the church was really high (about $20,000 per month or something crazy like that). I was informed that the money was used for food, church activities, donating to the UN, etc. It seemed that a lot of pressure was put on everyone to tithe and failing to do so was like stealing from God. Then I was shown different envelopes for other types of offerings. In my head I was like I don’t make that much money! But I guessed that they assumed that I wouldn’t have a need to pay my cable bill because I wouldn’t have time to watch TV. I also hadn’t seen my friends in a long time. My involvement in the church caused conflict because I would have to choose between family functions and attending services at the church. So when I had to leave on a Sabbath to go and do something for my Mom, one of the deaconesses said, "what’s more important, your mother or God". I said to myself, God would not make me choose. It was at that point that I became really suspicious and uncomfortable about their motives.
During one of the feasts, I was discussing the tension with my mom again. I said that I don’t lie to my mom, even if I know she isn’t going to like what I’m going to say or do. The deaconess then said, "well you know that there is such a thing as a righteous lie". As I walked away I thought, no there isn’t a lie is a lie.
So I had just about had enough when I noticed that my friend that had invited me in the first place had been MIA for several services. Every time I questioned one of the members in the group that I was assigned to about my friend, I was told that she wasn’t feeling well. So I said to one of the girls in my group that I was going to have to take the time to go and see my friend because I was concerned. It was at this point that she became somewhat evasive and changed the subject.
Not too long after, my friend actually called me as I was on my way to one of the last feast services and told me that she wanted to speak to me and not to let the church members know that I had spoken to her. I wanted to turn the car around right away but instead I went ahead and attended the short service. Throughout the service, every time that they said the name Ahnsahnghong, I said Jesus Christ in my head. I thought to myself, they have been really evasive lately so I really need to pray for a sign to let me know if this was the place for me or not. I didn’t want to quit just because I was challenged, but all of the little things that didn’t add up suddenly snowballed.
When I saw my friend later that evening, she told me that she found a lot of contradictions about the church and that she was lied to by one of the high ranking members of the church. So that was enough for me. I had had enough of this charade. I was done! Needless to say, members would not stop calling. After not answering numerous phone calls and text messages, eventually they showed up unannounced at my doorstep. They of course tried to convince me to return to the church and do the basic studies over again from the beginning. I told them that I had all of my notes and I also had come across 1 John 2:27 that says "you do not need anyone to teach you". One of the members basically told me that I could not understand the Bible on my own. I felt so disgusted with myself for not being able to see through their "shiny happy people" facade. At the same time I felt sorry for them because I knew that not all of them were in on what I would call this scheme to take people’s money. Having just woken up, I realized that these people who had become my friends were still stuck there. I realized that I could not be their friend because they would not have any time for me outside of the church and that was the only thing we had in common. I really didn’t want to hurt their feelings or insult anyone. I just wanted to be left alone to go on with my life. At this point I told them twice that no one will come between me and my family. They advised me that I could return whenever I was ready. But I told them that I could not be a hypocrite and go to their church and pray to someone that I did not believe in. I told them that they did have some truth in their church but it was of no use because it was mixed with lies. They gave up and left shortly after.
I hope my story helps people to avoid this organization. Jesus Christ our only Lord and Savior!
"Your Son Is A Man, You Have No Right To Take Him To The Doctor"
My son has been in the World Mission Society Chuch of God since July 2008. My husband and I did not find out until October 2008. He hid it from us all that time.
We were away for a week at the time, and had left him in charge of the house. Being extremely responsible at the age of 20 we trusted him. He was meant to come away with us but had to remain to complete a short course at university. By the time we got back, he had already apparently been baptised within 2-3 days of knowing them in our home. The WMSCOG apparently came knocking on the door offering their literature which consisted of small leaflets about “God the Mother” and the “second coming”. As we were away for a week I had my parents pop in to check on him. My dad said he found 4 glasses, one of them had lipstick on it. He joked with my son about the lipstick, as though he’d been entertaining. My son admitted to nothing.
He obviously listened to what they had to say. Within 3 days after meeting the WMSCOG recruiters, he dropped his class at university to study daily with these people.
When we got back, we noticed he became extremely interested in the Bible and started showing us different verses. He was jumping all over the Bible. We’re Christians but not over the top religious and were not very knowledgeable about the Bible at the time. Our son wanted to read the Bible every night with us however, we’d just end up arguing about it. All we were doing was fighting over the Bible. He was trying very hard to convert us without our knowledge and to believe these weird doctrines. We argued that these were very strange interpretations of the Bible. We tried hard to explain to him that he was confused and his interpretations were a bit “off track” (He had attended a Christian school, so he already had prior knowledge of the Bible – he even studied religion as a subject).
As we read the Bible together, I noticed he would reveal things very slowly. He’d come to a certain "prophecy", and then say I’ll reveal the rest tomorrow. I’d want to continue, but he would tell me I was not ready to hear the “truth” yet.
During one of our readings of the Bible he explained that "Jesus had already come back in secret". By this point I was getting very upset, as he was revealing this slowly and suspiciously. I thought he was going to tell me he was Jesus Christ! After a couple of days he finally revealed what he said was Jesus’ second coming, however he did not mention anything Korean or Ahnsahnghong or “mother”. I was in shock. At this point we told him he needs help -Spiritual and psychological.
Over the next few months, my son kept telling us he was extremely busy on Saturdays, helping out a friend with work. This of course was extended to Tuesday nights. The excuse was the same. He had to help his friend with his business. My son also had a part time job, so when the feast days would come up, he would tell us he had to open the grocery store he was working in on his own at 5am. He simply lied to us the whole time.
By around September 2008, our son told us he was going to go to Korea for a holiday to study with a friend from University. He told us he was a very good friend who had invited him to go to Korea with him. He kept telling us it was a great opportunity to visit the country and may not be able to again. This just didn’t sound right to us but we couldn’t really say why. But he said he really wanted to go. Our response of course was that we were concerned because we didn’t even know this mysterious friend. We tried hard to talk him out of it, but he reassured us it was a holiday to study and explore a new country.
About three days before he was meant to go, we found out he was really going to Korea to meet “god.” We confronted him with this and asked him what he was involved in. He told us the truth that he was involved in the WMSCOG and that it was not a cult to him.
We spoke to our local priest who came and spoke to him the following evening. Our priest tried to point out that the Bible interpretations he was presenting were totally off-beam when compared to normal Christian interpretations. The priest also tried to point out the craziness of going to Korea. He told him to hold off a while as 3 months of attending this church was not enough time to be placing so much trust in them and to be leaving the country. My son agreed and swore he would cancel his ticket the next day.
The next morning our son was a totally different person and was acting very suspiciously. I actually managed to ring the travel agent myself and cancelled the ticket. But of course, the travel agent notified the pastor who alerted my son about the cancellation. When my son found out he was absolutely furious with me. My son had never sworn at me his whole life, but that day he called me every bad thing you can imagine. He showed me the cancelled ticket and said he was not going and that the members were angry with him, as I placed him in an uncomfortable situation. I don’t think any of that was true though. He went on to tell me that in his fit of anger he threw his passport away. I realized then, that he was still lying and planning to leave somehow. He had given his luggage and passport to the WMSCOG. In the following days leading up to the trip he continued acting very suspiciously.
This just was a total shock to us. I did have the perfect child. He was very close to us and we had a great relationship. What was happening was like a death in the family. He sold all of his possessions including iPods, cameras and a watch to fund his trip to Korea. I go into his bedroom now and there’s nothing, just the bed he sleeps on. He has kept the computer we bought him as he needs this for his study. Although, I did have to stop him from selling it in the beginning.
He eventually went to Korea. He pretended to go to work early in the morning on the day of departure. He called us that evening from the airport and said he would be back in two weeks. I was devastated. I needed a lot of medical attention to get me through those two weeks. When he got back he told us that he’d met "god" and this was "his church" and he was "never going to leave it".
The day after he returned from Korea, he wanted his father and I to attend his "church". I didn’t want to go at all but my husband thought we should give it a try so we can see what he is involved in. On arrival at the church, which was just a house, everyone was welcoming and saying “god bless you” to us. They made me wear a veil on my head. I was in disbelief during the service as there was a lot of singing and NO worship of Jesus. They prayed and sang to “christ Ahnsahnghong” and “mother god” who they call "mother jerusalem". The men sat on one side of the room and the women were seated behind them. The women all wore veils on their heads. I was expected to wear one. The pastor was very forceful during his address to the congregation. He choose bible passages and interpreted them with his own spin. Everyone was friendly as long as you didn’t begin to question anything. The members read from their own Korean/English Bibles. They have “song books”. The fellow who had converted my son sat with us during the service and guided us through the singing. He kept encouraging us to join in but that was the last thing we could do. They expected my husband to sit at the front with the men and they wanted me in the back with all the women. But I refused to separate from him.
My son works part-time but he never has any money. I’m not sure if they have access to his bank account. From what I understand there’s a 10 per cent tithing on earnings plus many other offerings. There are also the offerings during all services attended on Saturdays.
I know my son marks the roll of attendance at every service to see who has turned up. If a member is absent, they will phone or physically go to that person’s home and ask why they didn’t come to church. He goes "preaching" from 8 am to 10 pm on most days. He has spent all of his time recruiting during semester breaks from college. Most of the time it’s as if he’s not there, like we’ve lost him as a person. He reads the Bible and WMSCOG literature all the time. The change in his personality is astounding.
There was an occasion where I had to take my son for a medical appointment, as he needed medical attention. They must have advised him not to go. They kept him busy the whole day. I had a lot of difficulty contacting him because he turned off his mobile phone. I went to the “church” to find him. I was approached by the pastor’s wife who told me “he was a man” and I had no right to take him to the doctor. I told her how upset I was as he needed to see a doctor. I continued to tell her how upset I was that he was part of this "church". The pastor’s wife then told me to get off of the property or she would call the police. She turned very nasty towards me. Other members came outside and urged me to leave also. When I told my son about how abusive the pastor’s wife was towards me, he defended her and told me I should never have gone to find him to go to the doctor. He told me I was on private property and the pastor’s wife had every right to tell me to leave or call the police.
About a year ago I had a local newspaper reporter approach me for my story. I told him my story which he wanted to publish. However the week before it was to be published, the local paper had written a small article about the church, which included a small quote about my son selling everything to go to Korea. Apparently members from the church went charging into the office telling them how wrong they were. They had to print another article written by one of their pastors. In this article they claimed what I said was not true. I was furious! The reporter told me they were quite abusive and they called the police. Because of their intimidation, the reporter was too afraid to publish my full story. You can imagine my disbelief.
Friends have tried to keep in touch with my son but he has distanced himself from them. He had tried hard to convert all his friends but they didn’t want to know about it. So he cut off all ties with them. One friend (his closest) had supported him through the whole ordeal but he has now given up hope as my son has cut ties with him also. Our son is still trying to get us into the church and tells us that we will one day become members. He says this because “mother” told him he shouldn’t worry because we would all eventually enter his "church". He tells me one day we will see the “truth”.
As a family there are many things we can’t do together anymore. We have not had a Christmas or Easter together for the past three years because he doesn’t believe in those holidays anymore. On Christmas day my son will leave around 6 am and not return home until after midnight. He has told me that Christmas makes him “sick” and we are all wrong to celebrate it. He will not set foot in our church (or any other church for that matter) because he says they are the "wrong churches". He refuses to attend and has missed out on many family functions such as weddings, christenings etc. My biggest fear is a funeral. Both my husband and I have elderly parents, so the realization that he will not attend these is heartbreaking for us.
Our son has gone through periods of fasting when he does not eat or drink for up to 7 days. He says he does this because it will make his prayers more meaningful. He also tells us that we’re all wrong and he’s the only one in the right church and he’s trying very hard to save us. We have found some ex-members who have written emails to us about their experiences but when we show him these he just dismisses them. I’ve given him so much information and have encouraged him to do some other bible studies and branch out and look at other things. I constantly print information from different sites to give to him. He always just dismisses the information. He tells me he has no time to read it and that it’s wrong anyway. If I show him testimonies from ex-members, his response is that they fell out of the truth and didn’t fully understand.
Our son has been to Korea twice. He had not notified us of the second trip either. Instead, he just called from the airport letting us know that he was leaving. He does still live with us but it is very difficult. We live with a total stranger. However, I live with the hope that he will “wake” up from this nightmare and come back to us. The fact that he believes the things that the WMSCOG claims makes me ill. His whole person has changed to someone we really don’t know and can’t trust anymore. The people in this group can appear to be very loving but they can be very harmful at the same time. This honestly has devastated and ruined my family.
"My Boyfriend Dumped Me And Was Married Off To A Member Of The WMSCOG One Month Later"
I was raised Pentecostal/Apostolic and I was dating a guy from the World Mission Society Church of God. He has been a member of the WMSCOG for about 2 years now. He broke up with me because I would not convert to his religion. I just could not enter that church! I got such a strange and scary feeling the one time I got near it. The Saturday after we broke up his pastor arranged for him to marry a Korean member from the church because according to him, "she would help him grow spiritually". I suspect that this was in order to get her US citizenship. I mean she barely speaks English. So he married her only one month after our break-up. After he got married I asked him if he loved her and he responded "god the mother will bless us". I wouldn’t exactly take that as a yes.
I pray that he will wake up and open his eyes. I don’t know how likely the chances are of this happening now that he has married a devoted church member. The last few months haven’t been easy but I have prayed (to Jesus Christ) to give me the strength to move on. The Lord has blessed me since!
*As found on: http//www.examiningthewmscog.com/
*Como se encuentra en: http//www.examiningthewmscog.com/
