Date Posted:09:10:43 01/07/05 Fri Author: Chris Subject: Re: Remarks about Yonggi Cho In reply to:
ts
's message, "Re: Remarks about Yonggi Cho-" on 05:44:11 01/07/05 Fri
Hi TS, wanted to post the following on the Off Topic Board, but I only get "internal server errors".
Which book you were talking about? He has written several books. Some are more heretical than others. I was talking about the book "Prayer: Key to revival." There is another book "The forth dimension" that seems to be even more extreme.
When I was in UBF, I read his book about prayer and also thought it was inspiring. But even at that time I stumbled over the passage with the bike, the chair and the table and was bewildered. However, I was used to quickly jump over anything that I found to be strange, as I was accustomed from UBF. If I would read the book today, I would probably find more errors. But the mentioned passage alone is for me evidence enough to identify Yonggi Cho as a false teacher. And I think he did not simply become corrupt over time, but his doctrines were heretical from the very beginning.
You should know that cult leaders are able to write books which appear to be very inspiring and orthodox at a first glance. Another example is Ellen White, the leading (wrong) prophet of the Adventist cult. Some of her books gained much popularity even among evangelical Christians as they found her books inspiring. In these books, she does not mention much of her heretical teachings. But even in these books, if you read carefully, you will observe the heretical mindset in one or the other passage.
Back to Yonggi Cho, here again the links I already quoted:
www.cephasministry.com/paul_yonggi_cho.html
www.myfortress.org/PaulYonggiCho.html
wayoflife.org/fbns/occulthealing.htm
I think that Cho managed to fool a lot of non-Korean Christians about his true teachings, many have been probably blinded by the sheer numbers, i.e. the size of his church and the growth rate. The idea behind is always the same: Because it is successful, it must be good, we have to copy him, or we have to learn from him. But I think meanwhile many have understood that he is indeed a false teacher.
Quote from the last article mentioned above:
A trait of Korean Christianity is the tendency to see Christianity as a path to material prosperity. That tendency is a residue of shamanism, the native folk religion in Korea and other northeast Asian countries for centuries. In Shamanism, you ask the shaman (a sort of medicine man or woman) to intercede with the spirits to ensure your health or business success. There is in Korean shamanism a great spirit, above the other spirits, who couldn't be contacted by the shamans. That helped Christianity get off the ground, says David Susan, a Lutheran missionary, because "when the early Christian missionaries came and said, 'There's an almighty God who judges you at your death,' Koreans said, 'Ah, yes, we've heard of that god before.'" But in a sense, it made Christianity too easy for Koreans to accept. Many Korean professing Christians still consider the gods of shamanism and the God of Christianity kindred spirits.
This can also explain a lot of what we have seen in UBF.
