1. Parables
A parable is meant to help the listener understand more easily when conveying a difficult situation. However, today’s churches and pastors, under the pretext of parables, interpret and explain even words and numbers as they please, thereby distorting and corrupting even the original meaning, sense, and essence of Scripture. Under the guise of parables, they disregard the inherent meaning and significance of words, and thus employ forced parables that can be twisted, damaged, and corrupted at will according to the desires, tastes, and thoughts of the teachers. This has become the common practice in Christianity today.
Since parables are taught and received without any consistent standard or foundation, the interpretations and explanations vary from teacher to teacher and from listener to listener. As a result, all manner of forced claims, distortions, and heresies inevitably spread like leaven across the earth, appearing as though they were truth. This is the fundamental reason why countless heresies upon heresies, and lies upon lies, continue to arise without end.
The fundamental reason why so many sects and denominations have arisen today, and why heresies upon heresies have been formed, is because they have placed parables—based on word-by-word interpretations twisted to suit their own tastes—at the forefront. Even today, the new religion Shincheonji puts forward what they claim to be the mysteries of God, yet all of these are rooted in parables that disregard the original meaning of words, twisting them into false interpretations and explanations in order to suit their own preferences, thereby deceiving countless believers.
God never uses man’s way of relying on human intellect and reasoning—through words and numbers interpreted as parables—in order to make people know and understand. Such parables are the product of humanistic thought and judgment, standardized by theories that stem from pastors’ reliance on worldly scholarship and human intellect.
If a word is made into a parable, what true meaning or value can that word have? If the message an author intends to convey is completely altered depending on who interprets it, and if its original meaning shifts from one interpreter to another, then is not the interpretation nothing more than a multitude of contradictions? If the meaning of a word differs depending on the perspective of the reader, then the value of words as a means of communication becomes useless. And so, according to such parables, the message of Scripture is inevitably altered.
As a result, instead of preserving the essence of God’s Word, people create endlessly distorted and corrupted ‘other Scriptures’ through parabolic interpretations. In this way, human assertions are exalted above the Word itself, and interpretations come to occupy the place of the Word as the central authority. This, indeed, is what has provided the very background and cause for heresies upon heresies to be continually produced—parables.
The reason so many believers today possess nothing more than empty shells of titles without even the first faith (the first love), and lack even the power of faith as small as a mustard seed, is because they do not follow the true essence of the Word in the faith of Christ. Instead, they pursue parables, interpretations, and explanations that have completely distorted and corrupted the essence of the Word. Therefore, their faith cannot but remain without fruit or testimony.
The most fearful Satan, devil, heresy, and leaven spread throughout the earth today is none other than human parables, interpretations, and explanations that distort and corrupt the essence of the Word. The fundamental reason that countless sects and denominations continue to divide and arise, and heresies sprout up endlessly like mushrooms, is precisely because even single words and numbers are twisted under the pretext of parables, being interpreted however people please. If God had hidden His mysteries in word-by-word interpretations, then would this not imply that only those with superior intellect and cleverness could teach and be saved? But in truth, God lowers human wisdom and intelligence, and instead uses those who appear foolish and weak, in order to despise human knowledge and common sense that rely on intellect. He grants His mysteries and truths only to those who obey the Word according to His holy will, walking in the sanctified heart that follows the love of the cross.
It is not through human intellect, knowledge, or scholarly study that one sees, hears, and learns, but through the power, wisdom, and mystery of love that blooms within a sanctified heart. These things can never be understood by human intellect or head, but only received through the power and authority of God. Yet the pastors who teach you base their claims only on knowledge and learning acquired through human intellect and common sense, and therefore they cannot comprehend what God’s mysteries and wisdom truly are. For this reason, they can only produce heresies upon heresies without end, and this is why Christianity has become one of the religions that has birthed the greatest number of heresies on earth. The root problem lies in humanistic thought and judgment derived from worldly scholarship.
From now on, through me—who have been sent with the Word of God—you will be given the opportunity and occasion to see, hear, feel, and receive what the true wisdom and mystery of God’s power really is. You will behold a mirror that clearly reveals what God’s truth, wisdom, and mystery, which transcends all things, truly are.
Most of those who put parables at the forefront share the same characteristics: they create ideologies, doctrines, and sermons rooted in corruption and heresy, attempting to serve both God and the world with materialism. Thus they present teachings and inspirations that, while appearing to guide people, never turn them away from the path of sinners—a path where sin is constantly repeated according to worldly desires and selfish interests. Or else they promote nothing more than false testimonies and forced claims, grounded in theories, scholarship, and common sense. They swell believers’ hearts with the false notion that if they follow their words and believe in God, all their desires, ambitions, and happiness will quickly be fulfilled. In this way, believers are deceived into chasing false sermons and teachings about God’s blessing and peace, which are nothing but fleeting emotions and temporary comfort that vanish the moment one turns away.
And now, what remains in your faith? Is it a weary heart worn down by life in the world, increasingly exhausted and worn down? Is it only a deepening thirst from a heart growing ever more lacking? Or is it a faith driven by vain pride, ambition, and false conviction, which kills even your good conscience, mistaking it for zeal, for a calling, or for a talent before God?
The call to repent from a life of sin—where sin is repeated endlessly according to one’s interests—was spoken to those who have not been born again, who continue in the pit of sin, repeating the same sins over and over. But you, who do not take up your cross and follow, are nothing but adversaries and enemies, having no part in the love of the cross. Repentance that is nothing but vain reflection and regret, repeating sin without change, is not true forgiveness of sins. Therefore, you are not true Christians who have been born again through the forgiveness of sins in the love of the cross, but merely churchgoers who follow the world.
Such faith is nothing more than a squirrel running endlessly on a wheel, going nowhere. It is faith without first love, faith without first belief, trapped in the yoke of sin that endlessly repeats sin and regret. It is a foolish faith and senseless religion that cries only vain prayers for selfish blessings, never escaping from the cycle of sin, and never attaining the true love of the cross.
2. Word Interpretation
Words are a mutual agreement to communicate intentions. However, if words are subject to interpretation and explanation, then their value serves only those particular individuals who interpret them, and they no longer function as a proper means of conveying intentions that many people can see, hear, understand, and grasp. In other words, the Word becomes confined to a select few, and the essence and true meaning of the Word inevitably differ depending on the one who interprets and explains it—for the interpretations and explanations themselves vary from person to person.
Teachings and learning based on Hebrew roots, Greek roots, Hellenistic roots, or even Chinese character roots—all arising from uncertain claims of men—are founded upon human theory and scholarship. Because most believers have mistaken such study, acquired through human intellect and learning, as though it were the Word and truth of Christ, Christianity today has become one of the religions that produces the greatest number of heresies on earth. The number of heresies created by Christianity today is beyond imagination, spreading like poisonous mushrooms across the world as if they were truth. The fundamental reason Christianity continues to fragment into sect after sect, denomination after denomination, and heresy after heresy, is because human-centered interpretations and explanations, driven by intellect and humanistic thought, have distorted and corrupted the true essence of the Word.
The Word is not teaching gained by seeing, hearing, feeling, and understanding through human theory, but the truth that arises from the fruits produced according to the living gifts, truth, and wisdom of God’s authority and power. It is the wisdom of love, obtained within the love of God who is the source of love, and it is the wisdom of the Word taught and learned through the wisdom of God working in a sanctified heart. This is the true light that builds our conscience and the mirror of light that exposes all darkness and sin, leading us to turn back. I am a messenger of the Word who has brought the true mirror of light that exposes all darkness and sin. I am a true witness who has come to testify the Word of light that reveals darkness and sin upon this earth.
I am a man of God, sent to fulfill the Word that was appointed before the foundation of the world. The limits of human interpretation, explanation, and preaching—based on human intellect, scholarship, and theory—have already produced nothing but corruption, heresies, and fruitless tares, destined only for judgment. Instead of being the salt and light that provide example and model, the love of the cross has been degraded into mere moral and ethical values, corrupted into pretension and hypocrisy, becoming an object of scorn and ridicule. The holy will and name of God have been reduced to something less than worms by churches, pastors, and believers. Thus, Israel, which claims to believe, has become an adversary to the love of the cross and an enemy before God. Foolish, arrogant believers do not even realize that their faith has turned the love of the cross into shame, and made them enemies of God. They are blind to the fact that their zeal, pride, confidence, and determination actually kill the standard of a good conscience that discerns right from wrong. This is a world where blind leaders teach blind followers, and both live and die as blind faiths that repeat sin throughout their lives according to worldly interests.
The essence of the Word is not to interpret and explain it through human intellect, but to see and hear it with the eyes and ears of a good heart. The essence of the Word is not simply to see, hear, and feel, but to bear fruit from what is seen, heard, and felt. Understanding without fruit is no different from the understandings of false religions. The fruits according to the essence of the Word are the abundant liberality and overflowing gratitude and joy, by which our hearts are built into the temple of God, accompanied by the glory and testimony of the living power and authority of God.
Faith without love is dead faith. And those who feel and understand yet bear no fruit are worse than those who never felt or understood at all—for their sin is greater and heavier. O consciences that claim forgiveness of sins! Do you not realize that the sin of Israel, which claims to believe in God, is greater than that of the Gentile nations? Therefore the Lord struck Israel, who claimed to believe, with the Gentiles. And who was it that killed all of God’s apostles, Christ, and His disciples? Was it not the pastors and believers who claimed to believe in God and Christ? Alas, you who claim to believe! From the foundation of the world you have been adversaries and enemies before God.
Why did God create mankind? Because He, the source of all things and the foundation of all foundations, wished to make man into perfect children of God’s perfect nature. He created mankind to instill in them the most essential nature of God. This is why He sent the love of the cross into the world—to form in us the nature of God, the love of the cross. Therefore, the love of the cross is the way, the truth, and the life that makes us worthy to become children of God. It is the qualification and the seal that makes us worthy to enter the kingdom of God.
3. Blessing and Inspiration
Lest there be any fornicator, or profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright. For ye know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.(Hebrews 12 : 16~17)
O you vain ones who believe you have accomplished repentance! If indeed you had truly fulfilled the repentance of being born again, then how is it that you remain bound in the path of sinners, repeating the sins of envy, jealousy, hatred, pride, lust, and falsehood according to your interests, never escaping the yoke of sin, but only clinging to worthless reflections that change nothing?
O you abominable ones who claim to have received forgiveness of sins! Have you borne your cross and followed the love of the cross, testifying of it as an example and model throughout the earth, and proclaiming this true gospel? Since you are without the love of the cross—which is the supreme law and the highest commandment—how can you, who spend your lives repeating sin according to your interests, ever enter the kingdom of love?
This is your last chance to soberly examine yourselves and turn back, lest your faith be like that of Esau, who exchanged the glory of salvation for the perishable desires, ambitions, and blessings of this world. Are you truly Christians who, according to God’s holy will, are fulfilling the love of the cross? Or are you merely churchgoers who attend services, yet have nothing to do with the Word?
Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.(1 John 2 : 15~17)
Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts. Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.(James 4 : 3~4)
People! What is it that you truly believe in, and upon what do you rely when you call it faith? Do you not mistake as Christian faith the act of relying on God to fulfill your perishable happiness, blessings, ideals, and desires—chasing after the insatiable cravings and lusts of the world and the flesh?
But such faith is like that of Esau, who failed to bring forth true repentance, for it seeks only personal happiness, ambitions, and blessings. This is why, though there are many believers and many churches that claim to believe in God, they alike cast aside the love of the cross which God desires from us, and instead seek only their own gain, their own happiness, and their own blessings.
Thus, they are no different from the people of the world: always repeating sin according to their interests, unable to be born again, left only to repeat worthless reflections and hollow repentance over and over again.
That ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God; Strengthened with all might, according to his glorious power, unto all patience and longsuffering with joyfulness; Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light: Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son: In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins:(Colossians 1 : 10~14)
Because sin is continually repeated according to one’s interests, repentance becomes nothing more than a worthless cycle, with sin never being cut off. Thus, it must now become a stepping stone and an opportunity to clearly discern whether your faith has in fact turned into a falsehood and distortion—created by your own pride and assertions that rationalize sin—exalting them as though they were the Word of God Himself.
Since sin inevitably repeats itself according to personal interests, true rebirth cannot take place. Yet people claim as though they had accomplished the repentance of Christ and received the Holy Spirit. Such falsehood and distortion have spread like leaven across the whole earth, and this is the lamentable reality of Christianity today.
You must now soberly and strictly judge by the Word whether your own claims, thoughts, and judgments are truly accurate, genuine, and aligned with truth and faith—or whether your faith has veered away from the true repentance of Christ and from the love of the cross, which alone is worthy to lead fully to salvation, and from the spiritual gifts and fruits of God.
And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world.(1 John 4 :16~17)
Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.(1 John 4 : 7~11)
How can those who spend their whole lives chasing after selfish desires, blessings, and ambitions while only committing sin ever gain a heart that bears the love of the cross, and thereby receive forgiveness of sins and salvation? The teaching of the cross is that if you, like the Lord, bear your cross and practice and follow the love of the cross, you will come to salvation. This is abiding in the love of God, who is the very source of love. Those who attempt to serve God while clinging to the world and material things cannot belong to the love of the cross. They remain bound to the path of sinners, adding sin upon sin according to their interests, never turning back, never being born again, and thus they are nothing but slaves of sin, endlessly repeating it.
Within a faith that prays only for their own perishable success, happiness, and blessings, there is no love. Therefore, they can never receive forgiveness of sins in Christ, nor true faith, nor wisdom, nor gifts, nor the Holy Spirit, which are united only within love. For this reason, the inspirations that you receive for your blessings and happiness are by no means God’s inspiration, teaching, or grace. They are merely the deceit of pastors who pretend to be shepherds of God, yet possess the spirit of Satan, leading you to desire the perishable things of the world so that you may pile up more sin according to your gain and interests. They are false shepherds disguised as the shepherds of Christ, the gods of words and theories disguised as truth, deceiving spirits who tempt with the things of the world, and blind pastors ruled by the god of materialism who only guide people to seek wealth.
Deceived by the sermons and words of heresy that are corrupted—sweetened as though they were blessings—you are drawn to pursue worldly desires, happiness, and blessings. As a result, you live your whole lives only repeating the same empty cycle, unable to be born again, holding fast to worthless repentance (mere reflection) that you repeat thousands upon thousands of times. Most churches today are such that they, instead of leading people to turn from the path of sin that comes through selfish interests, teach believers to become accustomed to sin, to treat it lightly, or even to grow bold in it, driven by pride.
Such inspirations, teachings, and tears are not God’s grace nor His teaching, but merely the moral and ethical values of legalists and hypocrites who seek to serve both God and the world with material gain. They are nothing but corruption and leaven.
The worldly teaching of “after hardship comes comfort”—the idea that through toil and effort one will surely reap fruit and success—has nothing to do with salvation. It was created to rationalize a life that belongs to the world, opposing God’s holy will and becoming an enemy to the love of the cross. Cloaked in the pretext of God’s blessing, it inflates believers with false comfort and hope, as if all their desires, ambitions, and problems would soon be resolved. Yet such hope and comfort are nothing more than fleeting inspirations and teachings, like leaven swelling a lump of dough, that vanish the moment one turns away.
What they truly seek is not the love that is worthy of salvation, but only worldly success, prosperity, happiness, and ambitions. This is the root reason for their faith, prayers, and religion. Such faith exists only to pursue selfish desires and ambitions no different from those of unbelievers in the world. Therefore, theirs is a faith that must inevitably repeat sin until death, a faith with no rebirth, no repentance, and no end to sin. The inspirations and teachings of those who possess only such vain faith and prayers are nothing more than the tears and emotions of Esau, who, like them, sold eternal glory for his own perishable blessing and happiness.
Brethren, if any of you do err from the truth, and one convert him; Let him know, that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins.(James 5 : 19~20)
They say still unto them that despise me, The LORD hath said, Ye shall have peace; and they say unto every one that walketh after the imagination of his own heart, No evil shall come upon you. For who hath stood in the counsel of the LORD, and hath perceived and heard his word? who hath marked his word, and heard it? Behold, a whirlwind of the LORD is gone forth in fury, even a grievous whirlwind: it shall fall grievously upon the head of the wicked. The anger of the LORD shall not return, until he have executed, and till he have performed the thoughts of his heart: in the latter days ye shall consider it perfectly. I have not sent these prophets, yet they ran: I have not spoken to them, yet they prophesied. But if they had stood in my counsel, and had caused my people to hear my words, then they should have turned them from their evil way, and from the evil of their doings.(Jeremiah 23 : 17~22)
And now, O ye priests, this commandment is for you. If ye will not hear, and if ye will not lay it to heart, to give glory unto my name, saith the LORD of hosts, I will even send a curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings: yea, I have cursed them already, because ye do not lay it to heart. Behold, I will corrupt your seed, and spread dung upon your faces, even the dung of your solemn feasts; and one shall take you away with it. And ye shall know that I have sent this commandment unto you, that my covenant might be with Levi, saith the LORD of hosts. My covenant was with him of life and peace; and I gave them to him for the fear wherewith he feared me, and was afraid before my name. The law of truth was in his mouth, and iniquity was not found in his lips: he walked with me in peace and equity, and did turn many away from iniquity.(Malachi 2 : 1~6)
The truth, Word, wisdom, and mystery of God and of Christ never rely on interpretations, explanations, words, or parables that exalt human intellect or head. This is the very reason why humanistic thinking and preaching prevent you from bearing the perfect fruit of Christ according to the Word.