world mission society church of god

IntroductionAfter a long day of failing to sell my car to sketchy people on craigslist, I decided I would spoil myself with a plate of multi-thousand calorie homemade nachos. I am staying at my Uncles condo in Atlantic Station, so all I had to do was walk across the street to a local Publix. The only items I needed were canned chicken and re-fried beans, so before I knew it I was daydreaming and walking back across the street on my way to a delicious heart attack.

I was snapped out of my daydreaming when I realized a very well dressed early 30’s man was holding his hand out to shake mine, and asking me if I had a moment for a quick question. I am not sure why, because I usually say something really clever in these situations like “no thanks”, but I had nothing going on, and I was genuinely interested in what he was going to ask, so I shook his hand and said sure. At this point I realized he had a friend, also very well dressed, clean cut, and wearing an overall wholesome appearance. As he shook my hand the first man said “My name is Jay, this is Jerome, we are theology students, and we are wondering if you have ever heard of God the mother?” Now, when I heard this I am not going to lie, I fought back laughter as I replied, no. “There is God the Father, God the Son, but where is God the mother? You cant have a son without a mother and a father.” Jay said. I responded that God the Father and God the Son are just titles that help us understand the relationship between Jesus and God. I told them that God is our spiritual Father and He didn’t need to biologically reproduce to have a son. Jay retaliated by suggesting the fact that God created man and woman in His image, and that this meant there must be a woman god. After all if Eve was truly created in God’s image, then God must be a female. My response was that image did not have anything to do with biology. God is love, so humans love. God creates, so humans also create. God is eternal, humans are eternal. We as humans have characteristics of God, and this is what it means to be created in His image. I explained that the reason we have man and woman is to represent Jesus and His relationship to the church displayed through marriage. I said that people did not fully understand marriage until Jesus came and sacrificed Himself for us.

Ephesians 5:31-32
For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This mystery is profound, but I am speaking about Christ and the church.
They weren’t having it. Jay claimed that the “New Jerusalem” as mentioned in Revelation 21:2, was biblical proof of god the mother.

Revelation 21:2
I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

I said that the “New Jerusalem” was the kingdom of God coming with Him in the clouds. The bible says the New Jerusalem was prepared as a bride. It does not say it is a woman God, and you will NOT find a woman god anywhere in the bible. This was just the beginning of more than an hour discussion the three of us had. Jay eventually looked at his watch, said “its 9 oclock, we need to be going”, and we soon departed ways. The entire discussion was completely cordial, and the interaction was eye opening. Not because I buy into what they were saying, but because I realize I need to become a student of the bible so that I can better point out flaws in thinking like this. Here are some of their key beliefs I gathered from our conversation;

1) There is a God mother
2) You must follow Jesus exactly to be saved (if you don’t do passover you are damned)
3) Jesus’ second coming has already happened and His name was Ahnsahnghong
4) Ahnsahnghong is the only way to have salvation now

They never once claimed anything that they didn’t back up with scriptures. The problem was, they misinterpreted scriptures and ignored the rest of the bible as they did so. For instance; they believe that you must obey Jesus’ law in order to have salvation. The main verse they used as justification of this was in John.

John 6 :53-56 “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, I will raise them up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them.”

They take this verse very literally, and believe that Jesus meant salvation comes from doing the ritual of the Passover. They believe that if you do not actively live by everything Jesus said, you are not saved. They ignore the myriad of scriptures that contradict their beliefs in order to believe one text that is clearly symbolic. Here are just a handful of scriptures that refute some of their beliefs:

Concerning Works-Based Salvation:Luke 23:41-43 “And we indeed justly, for we are receiving what we deserve for our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.” And he was saying “Jesus, remember me when You come into your kingdom!” And He said to him, “Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise.”

The criminal on the cross with Jesus did not take Passover, or do any work that made him deserving of salvation. In fact he did the opposite, he was being crucified for breaking the law. He was actually guilty by his own admission, but he still obtained salvation THROUGH CHRIST.

Romans 6:14 For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace.

Romans 7:4 Therefore, my brethren, you also were made to die to the Law through the body of Christ, so that you might be joined to another, to Him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God.

Romans 10:4 For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.

Ephesians 2:8 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God

Galatians 2:21 “I do not nullify the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died needlessly.”

Concerning Jesus’ Second Coming:Revelation 1:7 Behold, He is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him; and all the tribes of the earth will mourn over Him. Even so. Amen.
Acts 1:11 and they also said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into the sky? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in just the same way as you have watched Him go into heaven.”

Matthew 16:27 “For the Son of Man is going to come in the glory of His Father with His angels; and will then recompense every man according to his deeds.”

Clearly the Bible does NOT teach works based salvation. If you are living a fruitless life, you should question whether you are saved or not, but the bible is crystal clear about works.

Matthew 16:15-17 He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” And Simon Peter answered and said, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered and said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.

Matthew 16:15-17 makes it abundantly clear, we cannot even come to the realization that Jesus is the Messiah without God allowing us to. I wish I had researched this Ahnsahnghong guy before talking with these men, because his life fulfilled no prophecy of the second coming of Christ. He grew up as a Buddhist, AKA worshiping a false god. It is a sin to worship anything but God, so I’m pretty sure Jesus would not live half of his life as a sinner. As I previously mentioned, Ahnsahnghong was born. The second coming of Jesus will be in the clouds in all of His glory, not born as a sinner to grow old and die of a heart attack (which is how Ahnsahnghong died BTW). Ahnsahnghong was NOT perfect, he sinned, he was just a human. The bible warns us of false prophets who will claim they are the Christ, and I believe through evidence in the scriptures that Ahnsahnghong was just one of these false prophets. One further point of evidence against Ahnsahnghong as the Christ (as if any more evidence was needed), he predicted the second coming of Christ would happen within 10 years in 1956. Why would Jesus predict his own coming to be in the future if he were already here? The answer of course is that the “World Mission Society Church of God” is a cult and Ahnsahnghong was just a man.

This experience speaking with these men taught me that we as Christians have to be very well versed in the bible. We have to become students of Gods word. Maybe we wont buy into something like this when it is presented to us, but if we do not have a thorough understanding of the bible, we may not be able to witness to those people preaching false doctrine. I was NOT convinced by these two men, but I was NOT well prepared to refute them either. When I was telling my brother, Daniel, about them he of course dropped some wisdom on me. He said that the devil knows the bible better than any Christian on earth, so of course he is going to manipulate it and use it to make people stumble. These men knew the bible very well, or at least the parts their cult was concerned with, but they had been mislead by false interpretations. I could paraphrase a lot of scripture to show what they were saying as false, but I could almost never word for word quote the scripture I was talking about, and I certainly could not recite the exact chapter and verse.

Bottom line, I am thankful to God for bringing these two men into my life. For nothing else than the fact that it convicted me of my ignorance to the bible I am thankful. We have to be better, not for ourselves, but for the billions of people on this planet who are lost. As followers of Christ we need to get in the word, not just reading everyday, but studying the scriptures. Write down bible verses, think about what God is saying through them, and memorize scriptures. I promise you our enemy knows the word of God very well, and if he tried to use it against Jesus Christ, he will try to use it against you and I.

Cite: Faucett, J. (2017). World Mission Society Church of God. Faucett Journal. Retrieved from http://www.faucettjournal.com/articles/world-mission-society-church-of-god