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2013-01-29 |
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Letter to 12 million Christians in the Korean Churches
 Quoted from The Kukmin Ilbo issued on December 21, 2012
Statement
Letter to 12 million Christians in the Korean Churches
There were so many Christian missionaries, believers and martyrs of faith to stand on as a base for the Christian Church in Korea that it previously made great growth and revival that are said to be uniquely unprecedented in world Christian history. However, the growth has become stagnant or is even losing ground because the church in Korea has not been able to overcome its limitations. In 2013 The Christian Council of Korea (CCK) is planning to spearhead in bringing a great revival to twenty million Christians in one hundred thousand Protestant churches. They plan to keep and maintain the pureness of the faith of the Korean Churches by exposing and purging the forces of heresy and pseudo religions that have been splitting the Korean church and thereby the Council intends to once again bring about the great revivals made in 1970s and 1980s to the Korean churches.
However it is regrettable that that there have been disturbances in the Korean ministry in handling heretical sects that must be addressed—including the case where some unqualified examiners condemned the accused as being heretic without giving them a chance for defense. Without any factual evidence an unbelievable rumor spread throughout the nation of Korea saying "a church that gives [bribe] money is orthodox, a church that doesn't give it is heretic". In the situations where there was no clear proof, most of the leadership in the Korean Churches asked, "How could such a thing happen?" and hoped it might not be true.
Recently a pastor's declaration of conscience revealed that it is true. Pastor Inkang Lee ministering to the Amen the Faithful Church stated that a Korean religious magazine Church and Faith had requested a great amount of money in the form of a bribe from her—many tens to hundreds of millions in won (many tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of US dollars) — in the name of solving a controversial matter involving her church within the Presbyterian Church of Korea (PCK).
For the last few decades, PCK (The Presbyterian Church of Korea) has caused its heresy examiners (in facto, 'heresy fabricators') to condemn dozens of pastors who belong to other denominations as heretical leaders. These pastors have been wrongfully and unreasonably accused as heretics by the largest denomination of the Korean churches without even being given a chance to defend themselves. Some pseudo religions were announced including the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, commonly known as the 'Unification Church'; and the Shinchonji Church of Jesus the Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony, commonly referred to as 'Shinchonji'. The number is not just a few for normal pastors who had been unreasonably condemned as heretics on the grounds that their teachings are different from the theological principles and standards of the PCK.
What is worse yet, using only their own standards, the PCK condemned a pastor as a heretical leader whose name was recognized among those of world-renowned pastors and who is considered to be 'a pride of the Korean Churches'. Later they were officially compelled to reverse their statement concerning him. One of the biggest inconsistencies of the PCK is that they have sheltered a real heretic who teaches that Jesus was conceived through the menstruation of Mary and that there are three Gods. They even appointed this person as the president of the Heresy Handling Committee.
The fourth clause of Article 3 in the Disciplinary Provision of the Constitution of PCK states, "A heretical act and the act that actively participates in the former shall be punished through the disciplinary inquisition of a trial." Despite this provision, they have never conducted such an investigation and trial for the pastors who belonged to other denominations prior to stripping them of the chance to defend themselves in such a trial. Instead, like conducting witch-hunt, they one-sidedly condemned the pastors as having heretical points or of being pseudo-religious.
Pastor Samkyung Choi, who has been closely bound up with those contradictory affairs, made an incoherent and nonsensical statement saying that 'it is better not to give the victims a chance to vindicate themselves', and subsequently deprived them of the right to defend themselves. He also said, "In examining and judging heretics and pseudo religions, especially in urgent situations in which the harm caused by those forces are serious and other churches must be urgently protected from them, the Heresy Handling Committee of PCK has never allowed the party that was said to be heretical or pseudo-religious to vindicate themselves. It is usual that questions are not presented concerning the explanatory vindications of the denomination the defendant belongs to." This is a typical act of arbitrary oppression of mega-sized denominations.
The duties of the Heresy Handling Committee of PCK are covered in the articles of association as follows: "It shall investigate and examine heretical points of a Christian member and an organization." There is no article that permits the Committee to judge and condemn heretics and heresy-supporters. The Committee is only allowed to investigate and examine them, but they have gone way above and beyond that in violating the articles of association of the PCK. When they submitted the investigation report to the PCK Assembly, the victims were easily condemned as heretic or heresy-supporters without having a chance of vindication and thus had to suffer severe disadvantage, loss and harm.
One pastor's wife was so severely shocked it resulted in death, and another pastor suffered such extreme stress that all his teeth came out. In Christianity, it is considered to be spiritual murder to condemn a pastor as being a heretical leader. But the Presbyterian Church of Korea, based simply on data supplied by Samkyung Choi— who cannot be said to even be qualified in such matters— has unilaterally announced many pastors as being heretics without giving them a chance to vindicate themselves. When the Heresy Handling Committee of PCK submitted the data of investigation to the Assembly of PCK, the board directors of representatives of the Assembly were so busy with other accumulated works that they adopted the data without any further examination, and then condemned the accused as heretics.
Samkyung Choi is a blasphemer and heresy fabricator. He's the worst of heretics in the history of the Korean Christian Church. He has not only been closely tied to the administration of the Heresy Handling Committee of PCK, but also served as a member of the Heresy Handling Committee of the Christian Council of Korea and has served as President of Heresy Counseling Center. He has played the Korean churches all along with his absolute power in handling heretical affairs. As a result, the Korean churches have had to groan and suffer from severe factions and controversial disputes.
Therefore, we officially declare the investigations on heresy performed by Samkyung Choi and his followers and supporters including Hyungtaek Park (The Korean Presbyterian Church), Yongsik Jin (The General Assembly of Presbyterian Church in Korea), Byungkyu Choi (The Presbyterian Church in Korea), and Yongkyu Park (Professor of Chongshin University and Seminary) are demonstrably unfair, and the reasons are as the following:
1. Samkyung Choi himself is a profane heretic and blasphemer; therefore, he has never met the qualifications to talk about heresy or pseudo religion.
He has asserted the Deity of Three Gods in which he says God is three Spirits, and the Conception through Mary's Menstruation in which he says Jesus was conceived in the menstruation of Mary, and these were announced as heretical assertions by The Christian Council of Korea and The General Assembly of Presbyterian Church in Korea, and many others. When the CCK gave him a chance of vindication, he rejected it and since then he has neither demonstrated repentance nor has he officially apologized.
2. Samkyung Choi threw reckless and impertinently slanderous words at pastors in the representative leadership of the Korean Churches. He even caused accusations for litigation to be brought against a few pastors in the senior leadership of each denomination.
He openly criticized senior pastors such as the late Dr. Joongon Kim who served as President of Korea Campus Crusade for Christ, Pastor Yong-gi Cho (Yoido Full Gospel Church), Pastor Gyumil Na (Juan Presbyterian Church), Pastor Seo-jeaon Yoon (Yonsei Central Baptist Church), and late Pastor Yong-jo Ha (Onnuri Community Church).
3. Samkyung Choi is a fabricator of heretics.
The phone conversation between Samkyung Choi and the late Myunghwan Tak, President of the International Religion Affairs Institute, was publicly exposed. Both the persons involved were secretly plotting to fabricate a scheme against former Senior Pastor of Pungkang Cheil Presbyterian Church, Pastor Yoonshik Park, as a heretic. Their phone conversation was recorded and openly exposed. The conversation says that in order to announce Pastor Yoonshik Park as a heretic, they would instigate public opinion through press reports and seminary students' demonstrations and then appeal to the Presbytery Assembly to arrange for him be announced as a heretical leader. The recent press reports say that Pastor Samkyung Choi was secretly yet mainly attributed to the incident in which Senior Deacons Kyungho Ha and Seokdoo Yoon attending the First Presbyterian Church of Kangbuk were unjustly and wrongfully accused of being members of the Shinchonji Church of Jesus the Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony, commonly referred to as Shinchonji. Despite this exposure to the press reports, Samkyung Choi is not repenting but still trying to conceal his malice, and by saying they are rather heresy-supporters, he even made a nonsensical rebuttal of the Christian press and journalists that criticized him.
4. Samkyung Choi's fabrication of heresy is not free of bribery.
Samkyung Choi was provided with various data concerning a heresy investigation by a Christian magazine Church and Faith. Recently it has been confirmed that its former president, Elder Kwanghyun Nam, had asked Pastor Inkang Lee who ministers to Amen the Faithful Church, for a bribe of hundreds of millions won (hundreds of thousands of dollars US) saying to her they would solve the issue of heretical problem that had occurred in the denomination. Samkyung Choi is the executive director of the magazine Church and Faith, and deeply involved in managing it. Its former president, Kwanghyun Nam, is an elder of the Light and Salt Church whose senior pastor is Samkyung Choi. Though Samkyung Choi says he is innocent of the bribery, he cannot avoid taking the moral responsibility of this bribery.
5. Samkyung Choi has always prevented victims from having a chance of vindication.
Samkyung Choi's investigation of heretical controversy looks like a witch-hunt. Concerning the investigation on controversial sects, he once said, "If we are to meet with suspects ahead of investigation, the pureness of investigation may not be preserved. What kinds of other data can be said to be more reliable than their sermons and books? If investigation on heretical controversy is made possible only through having interviews with those suspects, no one can investigate on them transcending space and time."
The Christian Council of Korea, as a representative organization of the union of the Korean Churches, is lamenting the fact that such unrighteousness was rampant, and they are feeling sorry in light of the heavy responsibility of it. For that reason, after receiving their request for retrial the Christian Council of Korea is willing to reexamine the pastors, and Christian press media that was unjustly condemned as heretics without having the least chance of vindication by the Presbyterian Church of Korea (PCK) and the Communion of Churches in Korea (CCIK) in both of which Samkyung Choi has played a decisive role.
The Christian Council of Korea, as a representative organization of the Korean Churches, does not want to condemn a pastor or a church as heretic in a one-sided manner, but instead wants to come forth as a council that loves, forgives, edifies, and intends to give victims a chance of vindication. Thus, through direct examination, it is recommended by CCK that those who were unjustly accused shall be cleared of false accusations and those who are said to have some controversial issues but yet have an intention to correct their claims in accordance with the instruction of the orthodox Christian churches, will be guided to edification; but those who have no intention to correct their controversial issues will be strictly disciplined and punished.
Some denominations that have recently broken away from CCK formed CCIK (Communion of Churches in Korea), and the organization promptly scouted Samkyung Choi and his followers and, to our lament, let them organize a heresy-handling organization called the 'Committee of the Protection of the Proper Faith.'
From now on, CCK will concentrate on edifying the organizations that have controversies ahead of condemning them. CCK will surely provide those victims that have been listed as heretics and heretical with a chance of vindication and edification, and will help to instruct so as to return to the Bible and the Reformed Theology. CCK will also give a chance for re-examination even to Samkyung Choi and his supporters who have asserted Jesus was born through the menstruation of Mary and the issue of there being three Gods so that they will turn back from such an unbiblical theology and return to the right pathway of faith. We officially declare that we will not allow for the Presbyterian Church of Korea (PCK) and the Communion of Churches in Korea (CCIK) to recklessly condemn the pastors and Christian press that belong to other denominations as heretic without proper investigation and trial.
In conclusion, we make certain that we are giving a chance of vindication and reinvestigation to the organizations, denominations, churches, or pastors that have been condemned as heretic or heretical by Samkyung Choi and his supporters. Therefore, we are humbly asking them to send us the reinvestigation request according to the proper procedures of CCK. CCK also says that it is severe infringement on fundamental rights to condemn a pastor or a church as a heretic without the proper trial. We will make all our efforts so that the freedom of religion may not be violated and anyone unlawfully condemned as a heretic in the protection of the Bible and the reformed theology. Now rather than carelessly condemning anyone as a heretic, we will do our best to bring any victim to forgiveness, reconciliation, and edification with the fundamental spirit of Christianity.
The condemnation of heresy without the chance of vindication never holds validation. CCK will root out any more harm from those who were unreasonably accused by heresy-fabricators and determine to exterminate wicked forces of heresy. All these things will be surely performed, thoroughly based on the Bible that is the Word of God.
December 21, 2012
Heresy and Pseudo Religion Handling Committee of CCK
President: Pastor Geonho Lee,
Vice President: Pastor Taeseop Nam
Secretary: Pastor Deoknam Yoon
Treasurer: Pastor Byeongsoon Lee
Members: Pastor Kiwon Kang, Pastor Wonnam Kim, Pastor Taekjoong Jin, Pastor Changsoo Kim, Pastor Yongho Do, Pastor Taeseon Lee, Pastor Eungsun Kim
Experts Department of Heresy and Pseudo Religion Handling Committee of CCK
Director: Pastor Mankyu Kim
Vice Director: Dr. Yonghwa Na
Secretary: Dr. Jangchun Yoo
Members: Dr. Youngyeop Cho, Dr. Heungok Yoo, Dr. Namshik Kim, Dr. Jongjin Jung, Dr. Hyangjoo Kim, Dr. Youngwoo Kim, Dr. Woosam Park, Dr. Jongkeol Kim, Dr. Kyungjik Kim
THE CHRISTIAN COUNCIL OF KOREA
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