The shocking news behind International Korean Christian Coalition Against Heresy (IKCCAH)

I would not even call it a "shocking truth", lest I rashly judge without an adequate understanding of the background; but I would call it a "shocking news". Popular Korean national newspaper, The Korea Times, in a Korean language article dated 31 January 2012, reported that the International Korean Christian Coalition Against Heresy (IKCCAH), the organization that slandered Pastor Kwang-su Ryu and the Darakbang church*, has been called an anti-Christ organization. The original news article is in Korean, and therefore, hidden from the reading of the majority English readers who have no command of Korean language.

An English translation of the news article in Korea Times (original article URL: http://m.koreatimes.com/article/709926), rendered the article as follow:

‘IKCCAH’, an antichrist organisation?
Published: Jan 31, 2012 (Tue)

Translated by: Kwon In Hyeok

A Korean religious newspaper publisher in America has published an article at the end of last year criticising that ‘International Korean Christian Coalition Against Heresy’ which was formed in Korea is ‘centred in antichrist-like heresy’, and it seems that it will have a great influence on Korean churches in America.

The Christian World, USA  (100 Old York Rd., Suite 3-140, Jenkintown) which is based in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, provided a comment on the first page of the article that 'IKCCAH' is "a coalition which consists mainly of the heretics who are frantic and desperate to make heresies" as the article enumerated in detail the heathenism and the problems of Pastor ManPoong Kim (Washington Global Mission Church), the President representing USA in the coalition, and the key members together with pictures (Published by Joel Kang).

Among the figures criticized as heretics by the paper are Pastor HyungTaek Park, the early former President of the coalition, Pastor YongSik Jin, Senior Ordained-Deacon InKyu Lee and Pastor ChangDeok Han, the members of the standing committee, and Pastor SamKyung Choi, the Chairperson. With regards to, especially Pastor SamKyung Choi, this paper published an article titled 'The final arbiter is the one who is picked as the most evil heretic by the Christian Council of Korea'. One Korean pastor in Washington said that the paper being published for 78 times means that if it was issued every week, it is almost being published in the community for 2 years and there is no choice but to take the fact seriously that many Korean churches have viewed the Southern Baptist Churches as a heresy.

IKCCAH has Pastor YoungSun Song (Philippi church) as one of its co-representatives other than Pastor ManPoong Kim, and 87 staffs who are against heresy gathered and participated in the Inaugural assembly which took place last year November in Daerim Methodist Church in Shingil-dong, Seoul.

The paper tried to contact The Christian World, USA, failed to reach it.

This article said that the reason that IKCCAH has been called an anti-Christ or anti-Christ-like organization is because of some very questionable people sitting in the committee, the most notorious of which, is Pastor SamKyung Choi. I am not here for to personally discredit Pastor SamKyung Choi but even a casual background "cut and paste" google search of his name ("SamKyung Choi"or "Choi SamKyung"  최삼경) revealed that he has been called the "most evil heretic" and preaches tritheism.

The Christian Telegraph, in a report dated 4th June 2013, revealed that Pastor SamKyung Choi used to be the president of the Heresy Handling Committee of PCK (The Presbyterian Church of Korea), the biggest denomination in Korea, a member of the Heresy Handling Committee of the Christian Council of Korea(CCK) and the president of Heresy Counseling Center. With those titles he had enormous power and spearhead the attack and passing heretical condemnations. Unfortunately with such great power, he yielded into the temptations of money.

This has bring a lot of bad names to CCK and tarnished the reputation of CCK (just google "Christian Council of Korea" and see the Wikipedia entry, and you will understand what I mean) because of the fabrications of its committee member, Pastor SamKyung Choi. In reality, CCK is a strong affiliate with World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) and they held joint thanskgiving ceremony together, and will hold the 2013 WEA General Assembly together, as reported the reputable evangelical Christian news portal in United States, The Christian Post. see article: http://www.christianpost.com/news/world-evangelical-alliance-christian-council-of-korea-hold-joint-thanksgiving-service-62051/)

CCK has since expressed its regret to the poor handling of this matter and be willing to reexamine these false accusations and slanders (see another article in the Christian Telegraph: http://www.christiantelegraph.com/issue19779.html)

Also, CCK has then expelled Pastor SamKyung Choi together with all those associated with him such as Pastor Hyungtaek Park and Pastor Yongsik Jin (Reference: http://www.christiantelegraph.com/issue19779.html)

Coming back to Pastor SamKyung Choi, according to the report quoted earlier in the Christian Telegraph:

"He (Pastor SamKyung Choi) demanded many churches to donate to his ministry and they had to give him bribes, tens of millions of won to hundreds of millions of won (tens of thousands of US dollars to hundreds of thousands of US dollars). These bribes are now being exposed one by one. Some churches capitulated with him so that he would not make a negative decision capitulated with against their churches and gave him bribes because they were afraid of being embroiled in heretical controversies. But some others that did not give him bribe had to suffer from various difficulties.


Today, to our amazement, Samkyung Choi, such an infamous heresy examiner, is being publicly revealed as a blasphemer and the one who has proffered heretical theory. It has recently been reported that he has passed heretical condemnations on sound and proper churches with various forms of fabricated data. He has threatened many pastors of great churches with distorted and fabricated data indicating heresy in their churches and he shamelessly demanded a great amount of money from them in bribes.

He has his own interpretation of the Bible and always passes judgment and condemnations on all the other pastors and churches that are not in full agreement with his own standards. He also performs reckless and merciless persecutions and threats against those who do not meet demands. With such inappropriate use of power he gained enormous profits and showed all kinds of unrighteous and lawless deeds including conspiracy and collusion to blackmail, factioning, and fabrication with the intent to drive many churches and pastors into the category of heresy. Much of his fabrication and threats have now been publicly revealed in Korea." (Reference: The Christian Telegraph - The Heretical Controversies in Korean Christianity. URL: http://www.christiantelegraph.com/issue19877.html)

 
With such a dubious character sitting in the committee of IKCCAH, how could we ever trust the report that slander Darakbang and Rev Kwang-su Ryu? Most Malaysian Christians and churches who join in the band to slander Darakbang and Rev Kwang-su Ryu have no idea what they are getting themselves into. They no idea the can of worms that they are opening, as a result of the intense church politicking in South Korea that undergirds this report. Most Malaysian christians, being a minority population in Malaysia, of a mere ~ 9%, probably cannot comprehend the degree or intensity of church politics that are happening in Korea, but this is the reality of it. Why? Because such politics in Korea involve lots and lots of money through sales of books, curriculum, donations, etc.

The same Christian Telegraph article reports:

"There are approximately 300 different denominations of Christianity that currently exist in Korea. Although they serve one God and read the same Bible, each of them has differences in their interpretation of the Bible and in the doctrine they chose to follow. However, because of these minor differences in interpretation and doctrine, one group, frequently and without due process, has caused a church or a missionary organization to be classified, condemned, and rejected as a heretical sect.

However the greater pity is that they have not been doing it based on biblical grounds, but instead make a scapegoat out of targeted churches or organizations for politically pragmatic purposes. Thus, if you understand how a church is victimized as a political scapegoat, you will also be able to understand how a church is condemned as a heretical sect in the Korean churches.

Many of the mega-sized churches in Korea had increasingly fallen into troubles due to controversial issues of heresy. For example, a church known to have the world’s largest congregation and its Senior Pastor and founder Rev. David Yonggi Cho (formerly known as Paul Yonggi Cho), the Yoido Full Gospel Church (Assemblies of God), has been condemned as being heretic for a long time by many Christian organizations and is still condemned by a few.

It is a matter of fact that the heretical condemnations have been carried out by just a few people within the community of Korean Christian churches. They have been nicknamed “the heresy examiners”. They have been condemning others with their own standards and not by biblical standards....

The churches that were unilaterally condemned as heretic in this way had no chance to defend themselves and were subsequently alienated and abandoned by Korean Christian society. Many suffered from it for a long time. For this reason, many Korean churches accepted the heresy examiners’ requests and their bribes out of fear of also being involved in the controversial disputes" (Reference: http://www.christiantelegraph.com/issue19877.html)

Of course, to be fair to IKCCAH, we must not fall into the logical fallacy of argumentum ad hominem. The credibility or non-credibility of the messenger has no absolute bearing on the veracity of the message. Mother Teresa can say 1+1 = 3 and is still wrong, Hitler can say 1+1 = 2 and is still right. In my next post, I will expose the lies and fallacies behind the report, one-by-one.

Note
* For an English translation of the report that accuses Darakbang as heresy, click here:  http://foraletheia.com/?p=48
For the original report in Korea, click here: http://ikccah.org/3084

What defines a cult?

There are many doctrinal differences between churches but at the very core of it, what defines a cult is whether that particular church believes the sufficiency of the work of Christ on Cross as his/her soteriological basis.

Ravi Zacharias says it well (from minute 4.00 onwards in the video):

"A cult is generally defined as that which claims to be rooted in historic Christianity but has deviated or abandoned the finished work of Christ or compromised on His Person. In strict Christian’s terms, Christ is not sufficient… It is important that we understand that Jesus said we are complete in Him, and we add or subtract, you can give whatever name we want, you are impugning the completed work of Christ on the Cross."

At the conclusion of his talk at minute 7.00, Ravi added:

"To use the term “cult” in a general sense, in a general community, to a general audience, is not a wise way to do it. You use that in a setting of theological debates and dialogues and discussions. When the word is tossed around like that in a public setting, because of all the issues we have with people like Jim Jones and others, it brings baggage with the term that makes it much more than what a mere theological discussion would be. So that’s a term we leave for the classroom, not for a public arena because it says much more than what I think one is intending to say with a statement like that. We need to be wise and be mindful of the implication of a loosely used word. It is a very technical word reserved for a theological discussion around the table or a lecture hall."

I agree with what Ravi said. The term "cult" tossed around, even if used correctly, carries a lot of negative connotations, or "baggage" as he called it; what more, if it is applied wrongly, it causes a lot of stresses, hurt, bitterness, shame and causes unnecessary divisions. 

Witness Lee's Local Church a cult or not a cult? Fuller Theological Seminary and Christian Research Institute say no. What say you?

Many Christians, including Malaysian Christians, are quick and gullible to condemn another christian or church as cult or heretic. Unfortunately many Christians are too rash and use their own standards rather than the Biblical standards. What if, one day, the condemned church or group is found not a cult? Would we be willing to eat humble pie? I might not agree with a lot of doctrinal teachings of a church, but I should be clear what is the definition of cult that I am going to use, what is or are the criteria that I am using? One such church that is often labelled rampantly as cult is the Witness Lee's Local church.  Today, however, although there are still a number of questions on the doctrine of the Local church (see links from GotQuestions.org below) a number of evangelical Christians no longer consider Local Church as a cult.
 Hank Hanegraaff, from the reputable apologetic ministry, Christian Research Institute (CRI) founded by Walter Martin, for example, says in an article titled "We were wrong!" wrote:

This reality began to surface in 2003 when I asked Gretchen Passantino and Elliot Miller, editor-in-chief of the CHRISTIAN RESEARCH JOURNAL, to join me for a meeting with representatives of Living Stream Ministry. During the meeting I heard stirring affirmations of the very doctrines the local churches allegedly denied. One by one, and in their own words, representatives of the local churches testified to their belief in one God, revealed in three persons who are eternally distinct; to the reality that human beings can never ontologically attain Godhood; and to the fact that they were “only the church” as opposed to being “the only church.”  (Hanegraaff, H. We were wrong! CRI website. Available online at: http://www.equip.org/articles/we-were-wrong/ Accessed 01 October 2013).

In fact, Hanegraaff and Passantino published an e-book, in which, they delineated on the extensive interviews they had with the Local church leaders. This e-book is available at: http://www.contendingforthefaith.com/eBooks/Hanegraaff-Passantino-Fuller.pdf

In January 2006, Fuller Theological Seminary released a two-page statement that basically says:

"Fuller Theological Seminary (Fuller) and leaders from the local churches and its publishing service, Living Stream Ministry (LSM), have recently completed two years of extensive dialog" and that "It is the conclusion of Fuller Theological Seminary that the teachings and practices of the local churches and its members represent the genuine, historical, biblical Christian faith in every essential aspect." (This statement can be obtained from http://www.lctestimony.org/FullerDialogue.html)

S. Michael Houdmann from Gotquestions.org, in an article titled "Are the teachings of Witness Lee and the Local Church biblical?", aptly tells the sources of misunderstanding between Lee's teachings and the Western perception of his teachings:

Regarding Lee’s views on the theological doctrines of God and man, the controversy centers around statements which are “red flags” to evangelicals, particularly those in the West. This is an important factor in this discussion because it appears much of the controversy could have been avoided if only Lee and his followers had made an effort to understand the Western Christian culture into which they were moving. Part of the training of Western missionaries sent to foreign countries is sensitivity to other cultures. Unfortunately, in bringing their doctrines to the West, no effort was made to “Westernize” them, and this was the source of much of the confusion, misunderstandings, and recriminations that resulted. For one thing, Lee’s method of teaching—to make radical statements and then balance them elsewhere in his teachings—proved to be antithetical to the Western idea of “say what you mean and mean what you say.” Lee’s doctrinal statements on the nature of God and the nature of man are perfect examples. In one of his messages, he states, “The traditional explanation of the Trinity is grossly inadequate and borders on tritheism” (Life Messages, p. 164). Naturally, this is enough to inflame Western evangelicals, who proudly affirm the doctrine of the Trinity as it has been passed down from the great theologians of our Western Christian heritage. To judge it to be “grossly inadequate” by Lee raised legitimate concerns about Lee himself. Closer scrutiny of Lee’s teachings elsewhere, however, brings to light that they actually agree with evangelical orthodoxy. (Read more: http://www.gotquestions.org/Witness-Lee-local-church.html#ixzz2gRmFzwjN)

From the passage above, 2 lessons can be learned from the Local Church saga

1.    Many of the so-called allegations are in fact due to misunderstandings and lack of sensitivity of the differences of cultures. 

2.    Interviews and open communications help. Through extensive interviews and dialogues a number of confusion in the theology of the Local church has been cleared.

Perhaps we should remember what the Bible says
 "Judge  not, that you be not judged. For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you. (Mat 7:1-2 NKJV).

Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice.
(Eph 4:31 NKJV)