When a revealed word comes to a final prophet through spirit entities (angels, the Spirit of prophecy, Jesus, or God), it is important to test the message. When analyzed carefully, some claims do not seem real. For example, in Mr. Lee`s book, he writes that seven messengers (pastors) from a church in South Korea prepared the way for Jesus` second coming just like John the Baptist did in the first coming.
¨Just as John the Baptist worked as the messenger who prepared the way for Jesus at the time of the first coming, these seven messengers, who act as lamps, prepare the way for the work of Jesus in the time of the second coming¨ (Creation of Heaven and Earth, p. 556).
Is this claim real? Why should we be critical of this statement?
First, the Church of the Seven Lampstands was another apocalyptic movement in South Korea with problems of its own. See history of Mr. Lee before Shinchonji. Mr. Lee was a member of this and other apocalyptic movements before starting Shinchonji.
Second, when the Lord God sent John the Baptist into the world, he was a loud testimony to all of Israel. All the leaders in Jerusalem - the center of the Jewish faith - knew of John and sent priests and Levites to ask him questions (Jn. 1:19). Crowds regarded John as a prophet, which is why the Jewish authorities feared saying publicly that his teachings were from men (Mk. 11:32). Even secular rulers, like king Herod, knew of John and feared silencing him because of the people (Mt. 14:5).
Josephus, an important Jewish historian in the first century, wrote of John the Baptizer as a godly man (1). John the Baptist`s influence impacted men like Apollos, who was from the city of Alexandria, Egypt (Ac. 18:24,25). Years later, Paul met some men in Ephesus who knew of John the Baptist´s baptism (Ac. 19:1-3). Peter assumed that Cornelius, a Roman centurion, had heard of God´s testimony through John the Baptist (Ac. 10:37).
The point is that when God sent John the Baptist to the Jewish world, the Jewish authorities and rulers of Israel knew of him. John was called to prepare people´s hearts for the Messiah´s appearance.
With this in mind, who has heard of the seven pastors in the Church of the Seven Lampstands? Christians across the planet - in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the United States, and China - should know about them. Christian leaders and Christian schools should be talking about them, like the crowds spoke of John the Baptist in the first century.
When we analyze this claim, we see that the ¨seven messengers¨ are not ¨just like¨ John the Baptist. The comparison between these seven pastors and John the Baptist is not the same.
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(1) Josephus, Antiquities. http://www.josephus.org/JohnTBaptist.htm#Purification
