Cults, Christ, and the Empty Tomb

I was walking through the mall the other day and a couple of young men approached me. They asked me if I wanted to join them for a Bible study. I told them I was a Christian, to which they responded by asking me if I had heard of mother god. I proceeded to invite them to come sit down with me and talk for awhile. For the next thirty minutes or so, we talked together about their views of Scripture, mother god, the Trinity, and the Sabbath. I eventually had to leave, but I exchanged phone numbers with one of the guys. He and I continued texting for another day or two until he didn’t respond to my text anymore. These two young men are in a cult called The World Mission Society Church of God. I began to research this organization. They believe, amongst other things, that Christ has already come back in the form of a Korean man named Ahn Sahng-hong. You won’t have to do too much research to learn that Ahn Sahng-hong died in 1985. But their movement is alive and well, and has, according to Wikipedia, 3.3 million registered members.
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Perhaps you read the above anecdote and thought to yourself, “how could someone possibly believe such things?” My heart breaks for him. He couldn’t have been much older than 20 years old, if that. And he was not Korean. In our texting back and forth, I kept encouraging him to read the New Testament for himself. He kept pushing back on that. He seemed to think he couldn’t properly interpret it for himself. Pray for him.

The Old Testament is replete with Messianic prophecies that were fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ. The writers of the New Testament go to great lengths to show how the Hebrew Scriptures point to Jesus as the Messiah. We are told that no one can come to the Father except through Jesus. Peter explains that there is no other name by which men can be saved. Salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. And this Jesus, THE JESUS, is not dead, lying in a grave in South Korea. The Jesus we serve is alive and well and seated at the right hand of the Father. We serve a Resurrected Lord Who is coming again for us one day. Look to the sky. Our Redeemer lives. This is why we celebrate. He is Risen. He is Risen indeed.