Dr. Clever's Defence of Jeong Myeong-seok

[Peter]

A Californian member, Dr. Clever ( I kid you not, that appears to be his real name) has posted a rather long defence of Jeong and the JMS cult in general.

http://providence.nu/TESTIMONIES/index.html

Well, it's good to see members having the guts to put their beliefs on publically viewable sites.
The defences are the usual I hear, but he goes into more detail than I recall seeing anywhere else.
However ridiculous I feel his defences are, I admire his decision to so openly state his support for his jailed messiah. That's not a common trait amongst the leaders of JMS. One pastor in particular is most keen to not have his name attached to the messiah he so happily worships behind the closed doors of his not-so-secret cult.

I'll certainly be commenting on some / all of his points, and I think some others will be too, but for now I'll just copy and paste the content and hope the cult appreciates me posting their perspective. 

And as always, if Dr. Clever should want to register and post, he is most welcome to.

In Defense of Jeong, Myeong-seok (정명석)
 
Jeong, Myeong-seok (정명석) is the controversial leader of a new religious movement generally known as Providence.  His Korean name is not중뮹석, as the variant Romanization (1) of his name Jung, Myung Seok would suggest, but 정명석.   His Western name is Joshua Jeong, or, using the older Romanization, Joshua Jung.  He is also known as Seon Saeng Nim (선생님), the Korean word for teacher, as R for Rabbi, the Hebrew word for teacher, or as Pastor Joshua. 

Defamation Rebuttal

Rape Allegations

Jeong, Myeong-seok has not been convicted of any crime in any country at any time.  However, he has been accused of rape in South Korea, China, and Japan.  He has also been referred to as “false Messiah” and “international fugitive.” 

First, what the rape charges are concerned, I cannot say it any better than an answer (2) in the faq section of providencetrial.com (3). 

“To those who are familiar with the details of the allegations, there appears to be a consistent pattern that has emerged: the gathering of anonymous “victims” together in a public news conference in order to present allegations of rape. Only after the sensational details from the unknown victims have been reported by tabloid news media are any of the police agencies notified. The result is that there is no victim accountability, for when a victim’s identity remains unknown even to the police there can be never be a true investigation and the number of potential victims becomes limitless. A situation such as this provides no means for a fair trail; the news networks have already broadcast to the viewing public the sensational details of a crime for which no witnesses or evidence has ever been presented.”   

Need I say more? 

The Word for This Time Period

I find it perfectly believable that his word is the word for this time period.  Families, which make up the basic structure of our society, are falling apart left and right.  Sex, which used to be the cement holding a marriage together, now is its solvent (“one woman for the rest of my life - unimaginable”).  More and more children grow up in split families with disastrous consequences.  So it is not unreasonable to believe that the impetus of God’s course correction for our present society would focus on the family, and on sex.  And it is precisely because this is where our modern world has most dramatically veered off course, that Seon Saeng Nim’s teachings are so counter-cultural and so difficult to follow. 

But the harsh and uncompromising nature of his word makes it convincing that Providence is a religion that does not promulgate an image of God which we created in our own minds.  It is easy to fall into the trap to cherry-pick sections of the Bible we like, and from that create a fictional image of God based on how much we understand, and then only attribute characteristics to Him that agree with the way we would prefer Him to be.  This pretty much means we ignore the Old Testament because we do not like the way God is portrayed.  In fact, Jeong-Myeong-seok’s teachings are the most compatible with both the Old and the New Testament of any denomination I am familiar with. 

At the time of Jesus, a man could divorce a woman just by giving her a certificate of divorce (4).  Jesus strongly rebuked that behavior and insisted on the indissolubility of marriage (5).  In order for a person to get divorced in California,  all that is needed is a checkmark next to “irreconcilable differences,” and that is the end of it, no further questions asked.  The only difference to the time of Jesus is that both men and women are now allowed to give each other a certificate of divorce.  This is not a minor accomplishment, but in terms of indissolubility of marriage, nothing was added.  So we are right back there where we started from.  2000 years of Christianity have made no difference. 

Another reason teacher Joshua’s word is so credible is its source.  Jeong, Myeong-seok is a mystic.  He spent 20 years in the mountains praying and fasting and never went to seminary.  Mystics first appeared in the Fourth Century.  The Church at that time had become a church of thinkers, not doers.  Philosophizing about theology became more important than following Jesus and living a Christian life.  The direct response to that were "confessors," "ascetics," and "mystics."  They went out into the desert as hermits in order to experience God by way of fasting and praying.  Their emphasis was an experiential, rather than an academic understanding of God.  Out of this grew the monastic movement (6). 

Mystics were widely misunderstood and very suspect to the official church   Mystics only became recognized for what they accomplished after they were safely dead (7).  It is not surprising that the incredible insights into the meanings of Biblical passages that Seon Saeng Nim gave us came from a mystic and not a theologian.  Mystics are not experts in theology, they are what Maxwell Maltz, in his seminal book on psycho-cybernetics, calls “inperts.” (  Maxwell Maltz continues that all major breakthroughs in science came from “inperts.”  They are not bound by their knowledge to only think inside of the box.  It can be very much expected that God would reveal major course corrections through mystical “inperts.” 

There is a natural resistance to course corrections.  People do not like it.  People did not like what Isaiah had to say (he was sowed in half), and they certainly did not like Jesus’s word.  So, opposition is to be expected.  In fact, if there was no opposition, something would be wrong. 

That the opposition would target their allegations where it could inflict the most pain in terms of discrediting Seon Saeng Nim’s teachings is also not surprising (what a coincidence!).  If the allegation had been that Seon Saeng Nim was a pick-pocket at Wol Myeong Dong, it would have been more believable.  People do not like to have all their basic assumptions questioned, that is why most of the prophets were killed …  We do not even have to go back that far:  A reporter once asked Edison: “Everybody knows that there is no future in electric light.  Why do you insist on continuing your experiments after you have already failed 5000 times?”  To this Edison replied: “I have not failed 5000 times, I have successfully identified 5000 ways that do not work.”  Or, just think of how much Sigmund Freud was ridiculed for his theories on child sexuality, not to even speak of Copernicus and Galileo …

Unification Church

It is surprising to see how hard it is for some people to believe that Mun, Seon-myeong (문선명) of the Unification Church and Jeong, Myeong-seok (정명석) of Providence could have developed similar teachings independently.  There seems to be a real danger that we will witness another Newton versus Leibniz controversy.  The argument on who should be considered the inventor of calculus engulfed the scientific communities in England and Europe for a long time, and as a result both sides suffered.  There is now general agreement that both men invented calculus independently, Leibniz in 1685, 10 years after Newton, but Leibniz published his work 20 years before Newton did (9). 

Do you know who invented the automobile?  The British think the inventor was from Britain, the French are convinced that the inventor was French, and the Germans believe that he was German.  I am from Germany, so to me the inventor of the gasoline powered automobile is Karl Friedrich Benz (like in Daimler Benz). 

Similarity in revelation does not mean equality.  Probably the most important characteristic of all Christian Churches is, by definition, the focus on Jesus Christ.  Everything in Providence revolves around Jesus.  The Unification Church believes Jesus was a failure and he is barely mentioned (10). 

If that is not enough of a difference, I do not know what would be. 

International Fugitive

Jeong, Myeong-seok (정명석) did not respond to the charges first leveled against him in Korea, but instead fled to China.  This might appear to be good cause for us to dispense with our usual conviction “Innocent until proven guilty.”  But before reaching a rash judgment let us consider the following three points:

There are many examples of miscarriage of justice in the history of humanity.  How many people were executed in the United States and post-mortem found innocent?  Great Britain, the country with the oldest and probably most reputable criminal justice system has terrible incidences of miscarriage of justice.  The Guilford Four, dramatized in the movie “In the Name of the Father,” maybe the most famous example (11).  After a media feeding frenzy it is pretty much impossible to guarantee a fair trial, everybody has already made up their mind.  That is why important trials get moved to another location for the defendant to at least have the benefit of a “fairer” trail.  Now enter Korea.  To insure a fair trial after the media pretty much decided whether somebody is guilty or not, the trial would have to be moved outside of the country.  That, unfortunately, is impossible. 
Heads of state are routinely granted immunity so they have enough time running the country rather than fighting off frivolous lawsuits filed by political opponents.  In the best case scenario, fighting off charges against him made by unscrupulous detractors would have been a full-time job for Pastor Joshua for a long time. 
Jeong, Myeong-seok spent the first twenty years of his life in the mountains praying and fasting (recall from the previous discussion that he is what is commonly known as a mystic).  He would have certainly surrendered to the authorities had he felt that that was what God called him to do. 
I am in no position to second-guess Seon Saeng Nim’s decision. 

Secrecy in Providence

New people in Providence are not routinely taught everything there is to know about Providence.  They have to learn the 30 lessons first, and pretty much in the right order, to really understand what Providence is all about and what it attempts to do, in other words, … you have to find out for yourself, just as in therapy.  Everybody who has ever visited a therapist realizes that advice given by a therapist in the form of  “This is what you need to do, 1), 2), and 3)” is worthless. 

Is it fraudulent that the therapist keeps charging you money for more and more consecutive sessions even though he or she might have known since the first meeting exactly what you needed to do to get out of the rut? 

Is it fraudulent for a movie theater to charge you $10.- and then not even tell you what the outcome of the movie is?  Don’t you have a right to know?  Don’t you especially have a right to know before you put down your money?  Nobody likes “spoilers.”  They are despised because they rob you of the experience. 

Everybody who wants to learn statistics properly is first taught probability theory, then the student learns about probability distributions, and finally he or she finds out how these probability distributions can be used for statistical inference.  This is bottom-up education - you learn how the formulas are derived before you apply them.  A top-down statistics class just gives you the formulas and lets you plug in the numbers.  “Statisticians” graduating from that class tend to make a lot of mistakes. 

So in Providence you are taught Bible interpretation from the bottom up, and not from the top down.  In a way, this is the complete opposite of indoctrination since you are constantly challenged to find out for yourself and to realize for yourself.  Nobody gives you the answers ahead of time. 

Jeong, Myeong-seok as Central Figure

A central figure is the main person through which God works in a particular time period.  Noah, Abraham and Moses were central figures in the Old Testament, as were all the prophets.  In the New Testament period the central figures were Jesus, Augustine, Luther and Calvin.  Central figures are usually charged by God to implement badly needed course corrections. 

Whether Jeong, Myeong-seok is a central figure is subject to debate.  Different people have different opinions.  Personally, I am certain that Jeong, Myeong-seok is a central figure beyond a shadow of a doubt.  The step from traditional Christianity (Catholic, Protestant or Orthodox) to Providence is too dramatic, his insights too profound for there to be any room for doubt. 

I was raised Roman-Catholic.  So I was never told that Jesus would come back on the clouds.  The Catholic belief is that the Second Coming of the Lord will occur at the end of the world, a cataclysmic event just as Jesus coming back on the clouds (12).  We would not have to worry about missing the event, just as the Jewish people believed they could not miss the coming of their Messiah.  Jesus surprised them once, but the next time it will be different?  I cannot be that stupid anymore! 

Am I going to go back to believe that the most important event in God’s history with humanity, the Fall, happened because Adam and Eve ate the wrong apple?  Or am I going back to ponder hundreds of different interpretations of the Fall, each one designed to support the particular theologian’s pet-theory? 

Could I entertain the thought that at the end of the world all the dead will rise from their graves and that the earth will resemble scenes in the movie The Night of the Living Dead? 

At one point science and theology will have to converge.  They describe the same reality.  Providence’s theology is the most compatible with modern science that I am aware of.  If Providence had been around at the time of Charles Darwin, he would have continued to be a devout Christian. 

Am I going to go back to traditional Christianity where people place so little priority on understanding the Word of God that they do not even take notes during the homily or sermon?

Conclusions

When seen from a historical perspective, none of the arguments and charges brought forth against Jeong, Myeong-seok (정명석)  are very surprising.   Indeed, they were to be expected. 

We do not live in a deterministic world.  Nothing is impossible, except for us to avoid death and taxes.  But the probability that Jeong, Myeong-seok’s revelations did not come from God is so small that I am not willing to take my chances.

About Myself

I am a transportation engineer by profession having received my Ph.D. in Transportation Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley.  I do not have any particular mission or title in Providence, I am just a regular member.

 

[rb]

edit: I'll repost what used to be here later

[WasNotWas]

Like Pete, I welcome Reinhard's posting - I'm impressed by the fact that it is named, and quite open about several things. I encourage him to post on this site and engage with us. His identity as a scientist is clearly of great importance to him, but he's obviously responding in places to arguments on this site - it's a shame his enthusiasm for intellectual openness doesn't extend to linking directly to what he is criticising.

There are a lot of problems with his piece, but they are revealing. I'll take it sequentially in the main:

Rape Allegations
He relies very heavily upon the ProvidenceTrial defence, when trying to explain away the rape allegations. We've dealt with a lot of the nonsense there elsewhere - have a look at this post, or this where RB lists a lot of the misrepresentations and lies on ProvidenceTrial. The simplest response to the claim that Jung is the victim of trial by media, and that no evidence has been produced, is that the reason for this Jung's strange aversion to fighting the claims in court. The bluster over the fact that some of his victims have protected their identities during press conferences is completely disingenuous, as Naomi Kim and Ho-Myung Lee, the anonymous authors of ProvidenceTrial are well aware. As the 2006 resignation letter from Paul Kim shows, the upper echelons of American Providence are well aware that Jung 'touches girls', and that Providence leaders were responsible for violently assaulting the father of one of JMS' most ardent critics in Korea. With a record like that, it's completely unremarkable that the girls wanted to protect their identities, quite apart from the issues of trauma and public shame that accompany coming to terms with their ordeal, and speaking in public about it.


The Word for This Time Period
There is a telling admission in this section. Reinhard admits one of the central criticisms that we have articulated on this forum for a long time - the 30 lessons display a sinister fixation with sexual morality. He tries to explain this away by suggesting that family breakdown is the greatest problem in the world today, and hence requires the greatest attention from the 'Central Figure' of the age. So, the number of single parent families, is apparently a larger problem than Climate Change, the myriad wars that are currently underway across the globe, the fact that a child dies of hunger somewhere in the world every five seconds, the possibilities for nuclear/biological/chemical warfare that modern technology have wrought...  Reinhard just illustrates our point - Providence is obsessed with questions of sexual propriety out of all proportion to reason or sense.


In response to the sentance "It is easy to fall into the trap to cherry-pick sections of the Bible we like", I'm just linking to this list of Bible readings warning against false prophets etc. A partial and context free cherry-picking of bible readings is the essence of Providence teachings.

The whole 'Word for this Time Period' section is historically illiterate - if Dr. Clever is really interested in science, there are some very compelling evolutionary arguments for an inherent tendency towards infidelity, which I'll gladly share with him if he posts in response to this piece. Suffice to say, it is a perennial feature of social life, as much as the ideal of monogamy is. Attitudes towards sexual behaviour are culturally specific, and the strictness of sexual mores come and go throughout history. The fact that it is easy to get divorced in California is completely irrelevant - we could take the case of Victorian England in contrast: before 1857 a couple needed to get a private act of parliament to divorce - parliament literally had to vote on whether to annul the marriage. The very same year it was estimated that one in every sixty houses in London was a brothel, and one in every sixteen women a prostitute. I really don't think modern California can really compete with that in terms of what Reinhard would describe as immorality, it is simply more open about some things. The idea that we live in a society which is so deeply warped in sexual terms that it requires divine intervention is just daft.

The idea that Jung's mysticism gives him credibility is similarly dubious. The stories about Jung's fabled 'lost years' where he fasted for eons, meditated, lived in the mountains and read the bible thousands of time are clearly nonsense, but a complete lack of prior learning is a recipe for misinterpretation, not revelation. I've not read the book on Inperts, but either it's wrong, or Reinhard is exaggerating. Newton had been a lecturer at Cambridge for 8 years when he came up with his laws of Motion, Watson and Crick (discoverers of DNA structure) were both employed in Cambridge, working at postgraduate level, and Darwin had studied Natural History while studying at Edinburgh. I imagine that the line "all major breakthroughs in science came from 'inperts'" is a reference to the fact that Einstein was working in the Swiss patent Office during the year in which he published much of his most famous work, 1905. However, he had been studying physics for years, and was in the process of completing his Phd that year - it was submitted in July of that year. I would imagine that the 'inperts' theory is that people who are new to a field are likely to have novel and interesting perspectives on it, but this is not the same as a complete lack of formal training, which is what Jung has.

This is followed by the idea that the resistance to Jung's ideas somehow proves that they are valid. This kind of circular logic is typical Providence thinking - the criticisms, flaws and problems are used to somehow justify it. Basically, Jung's ideas are so revolutionary people are of course resistant to them. They can, therefore, never be shown to be wrong - all signs of criticism and disagreement are  substantiating. As a scientific man, Reinhard will of course, be interested in the ideas of Karl Popper, founder of the philosophy of science. Popper would have called out this idea as a classic example of an unfalsifiable thesis, and therefore as a nonsensical and unscientific statement (in fact the conspiracy theories example on the Wikipedia entry on this is very reminiscent of so much of providence thinking). The fact that Jung's ideas are resisted could possibly mean he's a misunderstood Genius, but the more likely explanation is that he's just plain wrong   


Unification Church, Secrecy and Conclusion

The most interesting thing about Reinhard's piece though, is his treatment of the similarity with the Moonies (he uses their official name 'The Unification Church'). Basically his response is that it is merely coincidence that Jung's teaching is so similar to them, essentially copying from ProvidenceTrial again, but illustrating it with examples of scientific discovery. This just makes the idea that Jung dreamed up this stuff while meditating all the more implausible - Reinhard's examples are all men who were well versed in the technological and scientific advances which came before them, and so independently made the next step (the fact that Crick and Watson were racing against others who were likely to come upon the structure of DNA first would be another example). This is completely different to the myth of Jung's 6,000 readings of the bible and complete lack of formal eduation. The idea that Jung had a youthful dalliance with the Moonies because of the  similarity with his revelations is convenient for explaining away both the similarity and Jung's time as a Moonie, but it's nuts. If they are so similar, how did Moon come across the ideas? Did he meditate in the mountains for several years too? If so, doesn't that mean that he was also in receipt of divine revelation? Jung's teaching isn't so revolutionary if someone else could come up with it too.

Again Paul Kim's letter is revealing in this respect, although the language is rather confused in the relevant passage. He makes it quite clear that all the early members of Providence were Moonies, and studied the divine principle - essentially confirming that JMS was originally a breakaway sect of the Moonies. The line that the main difference between the two is the treatment of the figure of Christ is nonsense. First of all they both share the view that Jesus didn't complete his task on earth, and both try to deny it so as to pass themselves off as Christian sects - this is illustrated very well in a series of Moonie youtube videos Smugs posted. The point of both sets of teaching is to establish the deliverer of the teaching as the 'central figure of the age', and so the idea that both Moon and Jung could come up with it completely invalidates it. That Jung is the central figure is the 'secret' end revelation of the 30 lessons that Reinhard goes on to defend as necessary, and as much as all MS's are taught to deny and obscure it in public, it is very neatly illustrated by Reinhard's line that
"I am in no position to second-guess Seon Saeng Nim’s decision."  - The teachings merely exist to establish the unquestionable pre-eminence of the teacher, after they have done that job, all that is left is to obey him without question.

You can't simultaneously claim that the teachings are so revelatory as to justify such obedience, and that two men independently came up with them within 20 odd years of each other - they can't both be the central figure of the age. Moon is just as likely to be the Messiah as Jung, and from what we know about their lifestyles I'm thinking the probability is not very high at all.
 

[Peter]

Time for me to have a crack at this one. I won't respond to it all (yet), just the points that stand out the most for me.

In Defense of Jeong, Myeong-seok (정명석)
 
Jeong, Myeong-seok (정명석) is the controversial leader of a new religious movement generally known as Providence.  His Korean name is not중뮹석, as the variant Romanization (1) of his name Jung, Myung Seok would suggest, but 정명석.   His Western name is Joshua Jeong, or, using the older Romanization, Joshua Jung.  He is also known as Seon Saeng Nim (선생님), the Korean word for teacher, as R for Rabbi, the Hebrew word for teacher, or as Pastor Joshua. 

Yes he does have a point here. The correct romanization is Jeong Myeong-seok. I'm guilty of using the briefer Jung Myung-seok or Jung Myung Seok, more for convenience than anything else, but since I do do some editing for the Keimyung Engish Gazette and that involves trying to ensure Korean names are romanized correctly, I don't really have an excuse for using the incorrect spelling.

Jeong's name has recieved a variety of spellings including Cheong from I believe one of the Taiwan articles. And interesting, Providencetrial.com still uses Jung Myung Seok at times: http://www.providencetrial.com/Others/The-Wolmyungdong-Experience.html

I don't see it as a major issue. The most important thing is that whether people read about Jung Myung-seok or Jeong Myeong-seok, they know that it's the same man, the same cult leader, and the same "alleged" serial raper.

For consistancy, I'll try to stick with Jeong Myeong-seok. I can't change the url www.jungmyungseok.com, but I'm glad that's there for those searching for that spelling on the Internet.

And it is good to see Providence members actually using Jeong's name, as opposed to the generic "Joshua" and "R" titles that I feel sure were designed to decrease the chance of recruits discovering too early that their new TV pastor was wanted by Interpol and not the globe-trotting humanitarian superhero Providence made him out to be.

Rape Allegations

Jeong, Myeong-seok has not been convicted of any crime in any country at any time.  However, he has been accused of rape in South Korea, China, and Japan.  He has also been referred to as “false Messiah” and “international fugitive.” 

True, Jeong Myeng-seok hasn't been convicted of any crimes yet, but that would be on account of him fleeing Korea in 99 and then becoming a fugitive after Korean prosecuters laid several charges against him. As a defence, that is about as pathetic as they come.
Worth pointing out that Adolph Hitler and Jim Jones weren't convicted of any crimes either. And I think before too long, Jeong will be convicted of quite a few crimes.

First, what the rape charges are concerned, I cannot say it any better than an answer (2) in the faq section of providencetrial.com (3). 

“To those who are familiar with the details of the allegations, there appears to be a consistent pattern that has emerged: the gathering of anonymous “victims” together in a public news conference in order to present allegations of rape. Only after the sensational details from the unknown victims have been reported by tabloid news media are any of the police agencies notified. The result is that there is no victim accountability, for when a victim’s identity remains unknown even to the police there can be never be a true investigation and the number of potential victims becomes limitless. A situation such as this provides no means for a fair trail; the news networks have already broadcast to the viewing public the sensational details of a crime for which no witnesses or evidence has ever been presented.”   

Need I say more? 

I wish you would.
The defence above suggests that the police filed charges after simply watching a TV news report.
Ridiculous.

No victim accountability? How do you know this? You are assuming the Police never interviewed, nor even know the identity of the victims. Do you really believe the police filed numerous charges, not all of them rape, without talking to a single witness?

And what about the crimes JMS members have been convicted of, the bashing of the father of the Exodus father?
Reinhardt, I would really apreciate it if you would share your thoughts on fellow Providence members who turn to voilence.

Another reason teacher Joshua’s word is so credible is its source.  Jeong, Myeong-seok is a mystic.  He spent 20 years in the mountains praying and fasting and never went to seminary.   

Interesting because according to several Providence books and websites, Jeong did attend a seminary. Albeit a seminary I could find no evidence it existed:
http://www.jmscult.com/gacp/www.gacp.org/index.html  Go to "About Us" and then "Founder"
And we have honorary doctorates from dubious institutions.

As to his 20 years praying and fasting (and avoiding work on the family farm) I consider that as about as plausible as Jeong's claims that while a fugitive, NASA sent some scientists to meet with him. (link to audio coming later)

So, opposition is to be expected.  In fact, if there was no opposition, something would be wrong. 

The presence of opposition is also an indication that there is something worth opposing.
Hitler was opposed, bad example considering Jeong praised Hitler, but I'm sure non-Providence members will get my point.

That the opposition would target their allegations where it could inflict the most pain in terms of discrediting Seon Saeng Nim’s teachings is also not surprising (what a coincidence!).  If the allegation had been that Seon Saeng Nim was a pick-pocket at Wol Myeong Dong, it would have been more believable.

I focus on the rape allegaions and charges because they are the most serious and speak to what I have no doubt is the real purpose of Providence: the systematic rape of female followers.  Rape is a serious crime. With so many allegations and rape charges against Jeong, why would critics not focus on them? Do you think rape an insignificant crime? Guilty or innocent, it is a fact he has been charged.

A reporter once asked Edison: “Everybody knows that there is no future in electric light.  Why do you insist on continuing your experiments after you have already failed 5000 times?”  To this Edison replied: “I have not failed 5000 times, I have successfully identified 5000 ways that do not work.”  Or, just think of how much Sigmund Freud was ridiculed for his theories on child sexuality, not to even speak of Copernicus and Galileo …

The comparision with such men of learning, intelligence, and impact is ludacrous. What has Jeong managed to do other than convince a few thousand people he is God and gotten himself arrested?

Unification Church

It is surprising to see how hard it is for some people to believe that Mun, Seon-myeong (문선명) of the Unification Church and Jeong, Myeong-seok (정명석) of Providence could have developed similar teachings independently.

It is very surprising indeed, especially considering both men claim to be the "sole" recipient of this identicle knowedge.

There seems to be a real danger that we will witness another Newton versus Leibniz controversy.  The argument on who should be considered the inventor of calculus engulfed the scientific communities in England and Europe for a long time, and as a result both sides suffered. 

There's not a danger at all, 99.9% of the people who have heard of Moon and Jeong know them to be the self-serving leaders of personality cults that they are.  While Moon may not have been the first to come up with the whole "Korean Messiah Offers Savation Through Sex" deal, he clearly used it before Jeong. 

Do you know who invented the automobile?  The British think the inventor was from Britain, the French are convinced that the inventor was French, and the Germans believe that he was German.  I am from Germany, so to me the inventor of the gasoline powered automobile is Karl Friedrich Benz (like in Daimler Benz). 

Both Moon and Jeong are Korean. 

And Moon was born a good few deades before Jeong. Come on Reinhardt, this isn't rocket science, it's simple addition and subtraction:

• When did Moon start his Church?
  Answer:In the late 1940s.

• When did Jeong start his Church?
  Answer: In the late 1970s.

• Who's "church" was Jeong a member of before starting his "church"?
  I'll give you a hint, the founder's surname starts with the letter "M".

Similarity in revelation does not mean equality.  Probably the most important characteristic of all Christian Churches is, by definition, the focus on Jesus Christ.  Everything in Providence revolves around Jesus.  The Unification Church believes Jesus was a failure and he is barely mentioned (10).

 

No, everything in Providence revolves around Jeong, just as everything Moonie revolves around Moon. If you don't believe that, I suggest you pay more attention to the sermons he gives. Incase you don't have them available for review, I will make more available here in the coming weeks.
Or, why don't you simply read the blogs of your colleages?
Here's what Ralph posted a couple of days ago. He's repeating a question Jeong posed to followers:

That's why Sunsangnim asked, "In what ways do you love me?"

Jeong didnt ask, "In what ways do you love Jesus," he asked, "In what ways do you love me"

Quite a difference between the two questions, don't you think?

Secrecy in Providence

...you have to find out for yourself, just as in therapy.  Everybody who has ever visited a therapist realizes that advice given by a therapist in the form of  “This is what you need to do, 1), 2), and 3)” is worthless.  Is it fraudulent that the therapist keeps charging you money for more and more consecutive sessions even though he or she might have known since the first meeting exactly what you needed to do to get out of the rut?

Yes. And it isn't the therapist job to "know" or discover what is wrong with the client. It is the therapists job to explore issues and areas with the client. Counsellors are not dicatators, but given your successful indoctrinaion into a cult, I'm not surprised you would confuse the work of a cousellor with that of dictator.

Is it fraudulent for a movie theater to charge you $10.- and then not even tell you what the outcome of the movie is?  Don’t you have a right to know?  Don’t you especially have a right to know before you put down your money?  Nobody likes “spoilers.”  They are despised because they rob you of the experience. 

You compare having The 6th Sence spoiled with joining a "peace" group that you later discover is headed by a Hitler-paising "alleged" serial rapist?

I am glad you have acknowledged the lies and omission of key information from the recruitment process - thanks for that. I would like you to a little mental exercise: Try to imagine yourself the mother of a 15 year old girl who joins a modeling group. Would you not want to know before involvement begins that the founder of this modelling group claimed to be the messiah and had been charged with rape?

You liken the giving of that essential information with being told that Bruce Willis' character is dead?
People go to movies to be entertained and surprised. Girls do not join modelling groups to meet serial rapists.

Jeong, Myeong-seok as Central Figure

A central figure is the main person through which God works in a particular time period.  Noah, Abraham and Moses were central figures in the Old Testament, as were all the prophets. 

Yes, Jeong claims to be a central figure and the successor to Jesus. Concerning those claims we are in agreement.
I just don't happen to believe those claims, but I cetainly agree that that claim is made.

Am I going to go back to believe that the most important event in God’s history with humanity, the Fall, happened because Adam and Eve ate the wrong apple? 

I would like you to expand on this. What does Providence teach was the reason for the fall? Sex, right?
And what is the cure for this Fall that Jeong brings? Sex with him, right? (At least for girls)
If you respond to nothing else, I really hope you respond to that and clarify Providece teachings concerning the fall.

Providence’s theology is the most compatible with modern science that I am aware of.  If Providence had been around at the time of Charles Darwin, he would have continued to be a devout Christian. 

A smilie speaks a thousad words:

Am I going to go back to traditional Christianity where people place so little priority on understanding the Word of God that they do not even take notes during the homily or sermon?

Interesting admission here. Jeong's sermons are the Word of God.
While you may believe that, I'm sure most reading this don't.

When seen from a historical perspective, none of the arguments and charges brought forth against Jeong, Myeong-seok (정명석)  are very surprising.   Indeed, they were to be expected. 

They are aso to be expected if they are true.
Do you not find it more than a little disturbing that the description of Jeong has a serial rapist offers a plausible explanation for this entity that is your church? The phallic symbols of Wol Myomgdong, Jeong's obsession with the female form, the rape charges, his flight from justice, and his labelling of his critics weeds and evil-doers. We do not need to invoke God or the supernatural to undersand what Jeong and providence are all about.

I appreciate your site and you taking the time to defend Providence, but seriously Reinhardt, wake up and smell the coffee.

[Peter]

Am I going to go back to traditional Christianity where people place so little priority on understanding the Word of God that they do not even take notes during the homily or sermon?

Dr. Clever places great importance on the fact that some Providence members, perhap all - I don't know, take notes during Jeong's sermons. I have to wonder why that is. Why not just ask for a transcript? Or why not ask me? I have hundreds of hours of Jeong's sermon in tanscript, video, and audio form.
 

If the sermon is so important and the Word of God, why does PJ delete the files so quickly, robbbing members of the cance of studying them? Why is my site the only place in the world were Jeong's sermons are available? If these words are so great, how come PJ and other rmembers haven't posted them all over google, youtube, or hosted them privately?

And what is so great about taking notes anyway? While writing your full attention is not on what is being said at that time, and at least part of your attention is on what you are writing.
And isn't it a little rude to be scribbling away on a pad when someone is giving a speech / sermon?

Well Dr. Clever, if you happened to miss a few important points, head on over to the Video / Audio board on this forum. I added a few more speeches for you.

[Peter]

Well Dr. Clever, if you happened to miss a few important points, head on over to the Video / Audio board on this forum. I added a few more speeches for you.

Mmmm, I'm thinking I was a little ruder in my posts that I should have been.
It may not have come through, I certainly didn't fantasise about your death as Ralph did mine, but nevertheless I did great your document with a certain amount of disdain. And while I find your ideas worthy of disdain, I should try harder to seperate the ideas from the person.

Certainly I think member's like Ralph and PJ are dangerous nuts who are accessories to rape, but I think I need to be mindful not to let my disgust for those individuals cloud my judgement of more junior members.
Demonising enemies is something JMS, and all cults, do a lot of.
And perhaps I'm guilty of that myself.

Reinhard, as I said above, I do appreciate you posting your defence of Jeong, and I hope you won't let the tone of my above comments get in the way of some discussions.

Having observed the Brahma Kumaris cult awareness site, www.brahmakumaris.info, I was honestly surprised to see that both critics and members post freely. I certainly always hoped JMS members would post here, but that hasn't really happened so far, and I think that's a shame.  I don't believe I am totally to blame for that given the extent of the demonisation of critics and accusers, but nevertheless, I think I could have done things differently in the past to lower the amount of friction between myself and members.

Actually email exchanges between myself and PJ have been quite cordial, but I'm not so sure that his politeness in emails extends to the descriptions of me and my site he gives to members (he mentioned my messy room in his blog lol!). But anyway, some antaganism is to be expected given the serious nature of the charges, Jeong's messiahship claims, and the documented voilence of Korean members.  But, I would still like this place to be a site that members are not afraid to visit and voice their opinions and concerns.

We have a couple of senior JMS members registered already but have yet to post, again, please don't be shy. And the forum's newest registered user has the promising username "Providence," so I hope you'll post and I look forward to exchanging ideas, opinions, and facts.
Let's not be afraid to disagree.