Victory Altar (New Religious Movement)
The Victory Altar (English Victory Altar , Korean SeungNiJeDan ) is a new religious movement that in 1981 South Korea emerged. It teaches that Jesus Christ was a false Messiah and that the real Christ is its founder, Cho Hee-Seung (1931-2004), "the victorious Christ". The movement had approximately 400,000 members in the early 1990s, but lost its existence after Cho was arrested in 1994 and died in 2004. In 2017 the movement had an estimated 100,000 members.
origin
Cho Hee-Seung was on 12 August 1931 in Gimpo in the province of Gyeonggi-do in Korea born. As a Christian, he was imprisoned by North Korea in the Korean War ; after his liberation he went to Methodist and Wesleyan churches as well as Presbyterian churches . Crucial to Cho's subsequent religious activities was his encounter with Park Tae-Seon (1915–1990), the founder of the olive tree (Jundokwan), a Korean Christian new religion that had a following of 1.5 million people in the 1970s before their number decreased in the following decades and, through various divisions, created several other Korean religious movements. In the 1960s and 1970s, Cho worked as a missionary for the olive tree and founded several churches in South Korea.
In 1980, Cho retired for a long time to one of the Olive Tree Belief Villages near Bucheon , South Korea. Here it was initiated in a building known as the “Secret Chamber” (“MilSil”) by Hong Eup-Bi, a female member of the olive tree who was considered a “shaman”. The Altar of Victory claims that on October 15, 1980, Hong in Cho recognized the "victor Christ" and "God in flesh", which prompted him to abandon the olive tree and set up his own new religious movement, the Altar of Victory (SeungNiJeDan), in Bucheon to found. The movement grew rapidly and completed its headquarters in Bucheon on August 12, 1991. In a few years the Altar of Victory gained 400,000 followers, mostly in South Korea, but with offshoots in Japan, Australia, New Zealand, the United States, and the United Kingdom.
Controversy
Because of his criticism of Jesus Christ and his own messianic claims, Cho was attacked by the Christian churches of Korea, which launched a media campaign against the Altar of Victory and accused its founder of various wrongdoings. In 1994, Cho was arrested and spent seven of the last ten years of his life in prison. He was charged with fraud and incitement to murder six former members who became militant opponents of the Victory Altar. In a first trial in 1996, Cho was convicted of fraud charges but found innocent of the murders. In a second trial in 2004 he was found guilty of both and sentenced to death. He was found innocent again on appeal. South Korea has three levels of jurisdiction: the prosecutor appealed the verdict, which was beneficial to Cho, to the Supreme Court, but Cho died shortly before the trial on June 19, 2004. Cho's indictment, and especially his death, was strong Setbacks for the movement as many followers believed he was physically immortal. Therefore, a period of decline began, even if there were still 40 victory altars with around 100,000 members in Korea in 2017.
Faith
According to the Altar of Victory, all of mankind's great sacred scriptures, including the Bible , the classics of Buddhism and ancient prophetic books from Korea, proclaim the "original promise" of God, or that people can attain physical immortality. This is the only real immortality, and the idea that a soul separated from its body would live in heaven for all eternity is a misinterpretation of the scriptures. It was also part of the message of Jesus Christ so that it proves that Jesus was a false prophet and actually the "only son of Satan". According to the Altar of Victory, more evidence that Jesus Christ was not the divine incarnation comes from the fact that he was the son of a Roman soldier named Pantera who may have raped his mother Mary , and then Mary Magdalene , who was largely believed to have fallen Girl was known, married. The sources for these claims are the Roman anti-Christian philosopher Celsus and the book The Holy Grail and His Heirs , which also influenced the phenomenally successful 2003 novel The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown .
Jesus Christ is not part of the sequence of divine incarnations and prophets proposed by the altar of victory. Instead, they include Adam and Eve , who were divine and immortal and formed the original Trinity with God. However, since God is not omnipotent, he could not prevent Satan from capturing Adam and Eve and depriving them of their immortality. It took 6,000 years and a series of prophets before God was able to defeat Satan and restore physical immortality to people. Some of these prophets are Noah , Abraham , Isaac , Jacob, and Dan . The latter is the legitimate successor of Jacob (as evidenced by the victory altar in the biblical Book of Genesis , 49:16) and so is also of his people, the Danites, who migrated to Korea and whose mystical first king was known as Dangun or King Dan . Korea is home to the second set of prophets, including the founder of the olive tree, Park Tae-Seon, the woman who initiated Cho, Hong Eup-Bi and Cho herself, as well as the founder of two other Korean new religions, Choe Je-u of the Donghak Movement and Gang Il-Sun from Jeunganism.
The central role in the sacred history of mankind, as it is told by the altar of victory, belongs to Cho himself, who through his initiation in 1980 came over the "blood of Satan", which is still present in all people and identified with their ego, became the "victor Christ", or a divine incarnation through which God came to earth, defeated Satan and finally restored physical immortality for people. In fact, Cho was the first person to become physically immortal after Adam. Even though he had to lay down (or rather transform) his body because of the viciousness of his opponents, the movement believes he is still physically present and directs the religious services of the Victory Altar, where his image is projected through videos. Worship services are held daily, while five festivals are held annually: Victory Day (October 15), Cho's birthday, which is called Christmas (August 12), Messiah Day (December 25), Holy Day (January 1) and Parents Day (May 8th).
The “holy dew”, also known as “hidden manna” in the movement, is smoke, fog or fire, which came from his body and portraits during Cho's lifetime and is now emitted from his photographs. The Altar of Victory insists that the Holy Dew is real and can be captured by cameras. It serves as evidence of Cho's divinity and as spiritual nourishment for his followers. According to the Victory Altar, Cho has also demonstrated his divine status by keeping the "five covenants" he promised his followers: the destruction of communism in the world; the end of typhoons in South Korea; copious harvests in South Korea; the stopping of the rainy season (June 15 to July 15) there; preventing a new Korean war and uniting the two Koreas. The movement believes that the final federal treaty is in the process of being realized, and that at any time Cho miraculously stopped both the return of communism to Russia and North Korea's aggression plans against South Korea.
However, Cho's main promise is that at least some people could regain physical immortality. Belief in Cho is not sufficient for this purpose. The Altar of Victory teaches that pretending that faith alone can save is another fallacy that was propagated before Jesus Christ. Only those who fully practice the "Law of Freedom" by overcoming their ego and identifying as one with their fellow human beings can one day purify their blood of Satan's inheritance and become physically immortal. As old members get older and die, it becomes more difficult to insist on physical immortality, which has been suggested as another cause of the decline in movement. However, many hold on to hope and proclaim that at least some of them will never die.
swell
- Han, Gang-Hyen (2016). "The Essence of the Maitreya Buddha & The Hidden Mandarava in Pure Land: Focus on the Perspective of Prophecies in the Sacred Sutra." Journal of International Academy of Neohumans Culture 4: 29-202.
- Han, Gang-Hyen (2017). "The Hidden History of the Lost Dan Tribe and the Secrets of New Jerusalem." Journal of the International Academy of Neohumans Culture 5: 37-73.
- Headquarters of SeungNiJeDan (2017). The SeungNiJeDan: The Immortal Science. A New Theo-Science Beyond Religion . Bucheon: Headquarters of SeungNiJeDan, Department of International Affairs & Academy.
- Holland, Clifton L., with Linda J. Holland (2014). PROLADES Encyclopedia of Religion in Latin America & the Caribbean. I. A Classification System of Religious Groups in America by Major Traditions and Family Tipes . 2nd edition [first edition: 1993]. San Pedro (Costa Rica): PROLADES.
- Introvigne, Massimo (2017). "Victory Altar" . World Religions and Spiritualities Project, Virginia Commonwealth University. Accessed November 8, 2017.
- Kwon, Hee-Soon (1992). The Science of Immortality . Seoul: Hae-In Publishing.
- Kim, Young-Suk. (2013). The Hidden Secret of the Bible . Bucheon: GeumSeong.
- Lee, Dong-Chul. (2000). Bright Star . Seoul: Hae-In Publishing.
- Victory Altar (2008-2009). "A brief history of St. Cho, HeeSeung" . Accessed November 8, 2017.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Introvigne (2017).
- ^ Introvigne (2017).
- ^ Victory Altar (2008-2009).
- ^ Holland and Holland (2014), 202.
- ^ Introvigne (2017).
- ^ Holland and Holland (2014), 203.
- ^ Introvigne (2017).
- ^ Introvigne (2017).
- ^ Introvigne (2017).
- ^ Holland and Holland (2014), 203.
- ^ Introvigne (2017).
- ^ Introvigne (2017).
- ↑ Han (2016).
- ↑ Kwon (1992), 96.
- ↑ Kwon (1992): 98-99.
- ↑ Kwon (1992), 98-101.
- ^ Lee (2000), 20.
- ↑ Headquarters of SeungNiJeDan (2017), 11.
- ↑ Han (2017).
- ↑ Headquarters of SeungNiJeDan (2017), 12.
- ↑ Kwon (1992), 120-121.
- ^ Introvigne (2017).
- ↑ Headquarters of SeungNiJeDan (2017), 36-37.
- ^ Lee (2000), 89-97.
- ^ Introvigne (2017).
- ↑ Han (2016), 135-141.
- ^ See Kwon (1992).
- ^ Introvigne (2017).
- ↑ See Han (2016), Han (2017).