Lee Man-hee and the Shincheonji Church

Who Lee Man-hee Is

Lee Man-hee is a South Korean religious leader, born in 1931, who founded Shincheonji Church of Jesus, the Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony, in 1984. He teaches that the book of Revelation is written in figurative language whose meaning stayed sealed until the prophecy was physically fulfilled in Korea in his own lifetime, that he personally saw that fulfillment, and that he is therefore the promised pastor and the one who overcomes named in Revelation. Members treat his testimony as the key that opens Scripture, and the group holds that no one outside it can read Revelation correctly.

Shincheonji became known to the wider world in February 2020, when a coronavirus cluster in its congregation in the South Korean city of Daegu became the focus of the country's national outbreak response. Before that, and since, the group has been known inside Korea for two things: a doctrine that places one living man at the centre of biblical prophecy, and a recruitment method that ordinarily withholds the group's name from the person being recruited until late in the process.

This page covers one man and one movement: where he came from, what the group teaches in its own terms, how it approaches new members, what the legal record shows, and what Catholic teaching says in response. The general question of what makes a group a cult and how to test any teacher belongs to our page on cults and Christianity, and the scriptural tests for a prophet are worked through on our page on false prophets. Neither of those is re-argued here.

Early Life and the Groups That Came Before

Lee Man-hee was born in 1931 in North Gyeongsang Province, in the south-east of the Korean peninsula, during the period of Japanese colonial rule. By his own public account he grew up in a farming family with little formal education beyond the early school years, and he has said that he served during the Korean War. Details of his early biography come mainly from his own telling and from the movement's publications, so this page reports them as his account rather than as independently established fact.

What matters for understanding Shincheonji is the religious landscape he entered. Korean Christianity grew with extraordinary speed in the twentieth century, and alongside the mainstream Presbyterian, Methodist and Catholic bodies there developed a series of independent movements built around a single founder who claimed a special role in the last days. Lee passed through two of them.

The Olive Tree movement

In the 1950s and 1960s Lee was associated with the movement founded by Park Tae-son, known in Korean as Jeondogwan and in English as the Olive Tree movement. Park drew very large crowds to revival meetings, was credited by followers with healings, built self-contained faith villages, and came to be regarded within the movement as a figure of unique authority. Korean Presbyterian bodies expelled Park and condemned the movement. The pattern of a founder who is identified with a figure in prophecy was one Lee encountered there first.

The Tabernacle Temple

Lee later joined the Tabernacle Temple, a small group established in the 1960s in the Cheongpyeong area east of Seoul around a leader named Yoo Jae-yeol and a body of associates the group referred to as the seven messengers. That community declined and broke apart amid internal conflict and accusations of financial and doctrinal failure.

The collapse of that small congregation is central to Shincheonji doctrine. Lee teaches that the rise, corruption and fall of the Tabernacle Temple was the literal, physical fulfillment of the letters to the seven churches in Revelation 2 and 3, of the beast that made war on the saints, and of the appearance of a betrayer and a destroyer. On this reading the events of Revelation are not future and not symbolic of the Church across history. They happened in a specific Korean valley, they were witnessed by a specific man, and that man is Lee Man-hee.

Christian readers should notice what this does. It moves the decisive events of prophecy out of Scripture and into the biography of the founder, where they cannot be checked against anything except his testimony. Any assessment of Shincheonji has to start there.

The Founding of Shincheonji in 1984

Lee Man-hee founded Shincheonji Church of Jesus, the Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony, in 1984, with its centre at Gwacheon, a city on the southern edge of Seoul. The founding is presented within the movement as the establishment of the new spiritual Israel promised in Revelation, gathered after the fall of the earlier tabernacle.

Growth was slow for the first decade and accelerated sharply from the 1990s onward, in a period when South Korea's large Protestant churches were themselves growing and then plateauing. The group opened branch congregations across South Korea, built a network of teaching centres, and later established congregations and study groups in other countries.

The group's own membership counts have long been disputed. During contact tracing in 2020 the group supplied lists of members to South Korean health authorities, and those lists put South Korean membership in excess of two hundred thousand.

Source of the membership figure: the member lists Shincheonji itself supplied to South Korean health authorities during contact tracing in February and March 2020, as described in news coverage of that process at the time. The figure is self-reported by the group and has never been independently audited. This page gives no figure for membership outside South Korea.

The Name, the Twelve Tribes, and the Structure

The name Shincheonji translates as new heaven and new earth, taken from Revelation 21:1, and the fuller Korean title adds the Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony, an image drawn from Revelation 15:5. The group's self-understanding is contained in that name: it holds itself to be the place where the promised new heaven and new earth have already begun.

Members are organised into twelve tribes named after apostolic and biblical figures, each covering a region and each headed by a tribal leader. The tribal structure is doctrinally loaded rather than merely administrative. Twelve tribes of twelve thousand produce the 144,000 of Revelation 7, and the group treats the sealing of that number as an ongoing work being carried out now.

Alongside the tribes sit the teaching arm, known as the Zion Christian Mission Centre network, and a set of associated organisations working in peace advocacy, volunteering and youth activity, described further below. Lee Man-hee holds the position of chairman and is the doctrinal authority of the whole body. The group also has a women's leadership structure, and questions of succession have been the subject of internal dispute and outside reporting, which this page does not attempt to resolve.

The Parable Method: How Shincheonji Reads the Bible

Shincheonji's method of reading Scripture is the engine of everything else it teaches, and stating it accurately comes before responding to it. What follows is the group's own approach, described in the terms it uses.

The claim that the Bible is written in parables

Shincheonji teaches that God speaks in figures throughout the Bible, citing texts such as Psalm 78:2, Hosea 12:10 and Matthew 13:34 to argue that prophecy is deliberately veiled. On this account every image in prophecy has a fixed real-world counterpart. A mountain stands for a kingdom or an organisation, a tree or a cedar for a person or a group of leaders, seed for the word, water for the word, wind for the spirit, stars and lampstands for messengers and congregations, and so on. The group calls this pairing the secret of parables, and its teaching materials work through the pairs systematically.

The claim that the pairs cannot be matched without a witness

The second step is the decisive one. Shincheonji teaches that a person can know the figures and still not know the fulfillment, because prophecy is confirmed only when it comes to pass and only the one who saw it happen can testify to it. Revelation 10, where John is given a scroll to eat and told to prophesy again, and Revelation 22, where an angel testifies to the churches, are read as describing that appointed witness. On this account, ordinary study, seminary training and the historic commentaries of the Church cannot arrive at the meaning, because they lack the eyewitness.

The claim that the fulfillment already happened

The third step applies the method to recent Korean history. Shincheonji teaches that the letters to the seven churches, the war on the saints, the appearance of the destroyer, and the gathering of a new congregation were fulfilled physically in the rise and collapse of the Tabernacle Temple and in the founding of Shincheonji. Members are taught the correspondence in detail, matching named individuals and events to the text.

The Claim to Be the Promised Pastor

Lee Man-hee's personal claim is the centre of the system. In Shincheonji teaching he is the promised pastor, the one who overcomes, and the appointed witness to whom the opened scroll was given, and members hold that Jesus works through him to deliver the revealed word in this age.

Several points need care, because outside descriptions of Shincheonji frequently overstate the claim in one direction and the group's public relations material understates it in the other.

What the group does and does not say about him

Shincheonji does not teach that Lee Man-hee is God, and its representatives reject that characterisation firmly. The published position is that he is a man, that Jesus is the Saviour, and that Lee's role is to testify to what he was shown. What the group does teach is that the word of revelation for this age comes through him, that entry into the new spiritual Israel comes through the teaching he delivers, and that those who reject his testimony are outside the fulfillment. The practical effect of a role defined that way is what Christians assess, and the practical effect is that one living man stands between the believer and the meaning of the Bible.

The question of his death

Shincheonji teaching has emphasised that those sealed and alive at the fulfillment enter an age in which death is overcome, and former members have described the expectation, held within congregations, that Lee Man-hee himself would not die. The group's official statements have not been uniform on this point, and press coverage during his hospitalisation and advanced age noted the tension it created for members. This page states the expectation as one reported by former members and does not attribute a fixed official position to the group.

Why Christians treat this as a defining issue

Jesus gave a specific warning about claims of a hidden or localised advent. He told the disciples that if anyone says the Christ is in the wilderness, do not go out, and if anyone says he is in the inner rooms, do not believe it, because the coming of the Son of Man will be as visible as lightning from one side of the sky to the other (Matthew 24:26 to 27). At the ascension the angels told the apostles that Jesus would return in the same way they had seen him go (Acts 1:11). A fulfillment that happened quietly in one country and can only be recognised through the testimony of one man is the exact shape Jesus told his followers not to accept. Our page on the second coming of Christ sets out what the Church expects of his return.

Salvation, the Sealed 144,000, and the Great Multitude

Shincheonji teaches that salvation in this age comes through being sealed into the new spiritual Israel, and it reads the 144,000 of Revelation 7 and 14 as a literal count of living people organised into twelve tribes. Those sealed are held to become priests and kings who reign with Christ, and the great multitude in white robes described in Revelation 7:9 is understood as a further body joined to them.

The practical consequence inside the group is significant. Membership is recorded, attendance is monitored, and progress through the teaching programme is examined and graded. Former members have described a culture in which missing classes, failing a test or falling behind in recruitment carries real weight, because the stakes are presented as one's place among the sealed.

What the Church holds about the number

Catholic teaching, in common with most Christian reading across traditions, takes the 144,000 as a symbolic figure. Twelve tribes of Israel multiplied by twelve apostles multiplied by a thousand signifies the complete people of God, gathered from the covenant with Israel and from the apostolic mission. The strongest internal evidence is that Revelation itself moves in the same chapter from the counted number to a multitude which no one could number, from every nation, tribe, people and tongue (Revelation 7:9). A closed roll of exactly 144,000 living Koreans and their fellow members sits badly with a vision that immediately declares the saved to be uncountable. Our page on the 144,000 in Revelation works through the passage in detail, and our page on the book of Revelation covers the wider structure of the book.

What the Church holds about salvation

Catholic teaching holds that salvation comes through Jesus Christ, that there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all (1 Timothy 2:5 to 6), and that grace reaches people through Christ's own work applied in the sacraments and in a life of faith and charity. Our page on salvation in Catholic teaching sets that out. No count, no roll and no human teacher stands between a soul and the mercy of God.

How Shincheonji Recruits

Shincheonji's recruitment method is described consistently by former members, by counselling ministries run by Korean churches, and by mainstream news reporting in Korea and abroad. The distinguishing feature is that the group's name is ordinarily withheld from the person being recruited until well into the process.

First contact

Approaches are made in ordinary settings. Former members and news reporting describe street surveys, personality or culture questionnaires, invitations to free classes, volunteer projects, language exchanges, campus clubs, and friendships formed by members who do not disclose their affiliation. The invitation that follows is typically to a free Bible study or an introductory course run under a name that does not identify Shincheonji.

Staged disclosure

Teaching proceeds in stages, beginning with material that would be uncontroversial in most churches and moving gradually towards the parable method, the physical fulfillment narrative and the role of Lee Man-hee. Former members describe being told to keep the studies private from family or from their existing pastor while they are still learning, on the grounds that outsiders would misunderstand or interfere. Where a recruit asks directly whether the group is Shincheonji, former members report scripted deflection rather than confirmation.

Harvesting inside existing churches

The practice that made Shincheonji notorious among Korean Protestants is what the group's own vocabulary calls harvesting. Members join an existing congregation without disclosing their affiliation, take part in its life, and work to move individual members across, sometimes over a long period and sometimes reaching positions of responsibility inside the host church. Korean churches have reported instances in which whole small congregations, including their pastors, were absorbed. This practice, more than the doctrine, produced the open hostility between Shincheonji and the Korean Protestant mainstream.

How the group defends the practice

Shincheonji's stated defence is that public hostility and denominational condemnation make a fair hearing impossible if the name is given at the start, that people are free to leave at any point, that nothing taught is hidden once a person is in the course, and that the group faces persecution rather than fair criticism. The defence deserves to be stated, because the group does state it, and because the hostility it points to is real.

The defence does not survive contact with the Christian standard, which is set out below. A separate difficulty stands on its own. A recruitment method built on delayed disclosure is hard to tell apart from one built on deception, and the method creates that difficulty by itself.

Inside the Zion Christian Mission Centres

The Zion Christian Mission Centre is Shincheonji's teaching institution, and completing its course is the ordinary route into membership. The programme runs over a period of months, is presented as free of charge, and is organised into levels, commonly described as beginner, intermediate and advanced, with examinations at each stage and a graduation ceremony at the end.

Several features are consistently reported. Attendance is tracked closely and absences are followed up. Recruits are frequently accompanied by an existing member, sometimes the person who introduced them, who attends alongside them and appears to be a fellow student. Former members describe this role in the group's own vocabulary as a leaf or a helper attached to a fruit, and describe the effect as constant companionship that makes drifting away difficult.

Graduation ceremonies are large public events, with graduates in gowns filling stadiums, and the group publicises them heavily as evidence of growth. Those events are real, and the crowds in the photographs are real. Attendance counts given for them come from the group.

Descriptions of the mission centre programme in this section come from published accounts by former members, from Korean church counselling ministries that work with families, and from mainstream news reporting. Shincheonji disputes characterisations of the programme as manipulative and describes it as free biblical education.

The Peace and Culture Organisations

Shincheonji operates through a set of affiliated organisations working in peace advocacy, volunteering and youth activity, of which the best known is Heavenly Culture, World Peace, Restoration of Light, usually abbreviated to HWPL and chaired by Lee Man-hee. Associated bodies have included an international youth peace group and an international women's peace group, and an earlier volunteer association that operated in the 2010s.

These organisations run conferences, peace forums, interfaith dialogue events, sporting and cultural festivals, and campaigns for an international declaration on peace and the cessation of war. They have at times drawn participation from public figures, religious leaders and officials in a number of countries, some of whom later said publicly that they had not known of the connection to Shincheonji when they took part.

Two things can be true at once, and both belong on a fair page. Volunteer work, litter collection, disaster relief and peace conferences are worth doing, and members who take part in them are usually sincere. At the same time, an organisation whose religious sponsor is not obvious to its participants is functioning, whatever its other merits, as a route of first contact. Where public figures have complained after the fact that they were not told, the complaint is about disclosure rather than about peace advocacy.

How Korean Churches Responded

Major South Korean Protestant denominations have formally classified Shincheonji as heretical, and Korean congregations have responded with unusual practical measures. Notices at church entrances stating that Shincheonji members are not admitted are a common sight in Korea, congregations run screening and education programmes for new attenders, and denominations operate counselling ministries specifically for families of members.

The Catholic Church in Korea has likewise warned Catholics about the group's approaches, and Catholic parishes have carried notices where recruitment has been active. The Catholic objection runs along the doctrinal lines set out later on this page.

Shincheonji describes this response as religious persecution by an established religious establishment protecting its own numbers, and points to the practical difficulties its members face in Korean society, including reported pressure at work and within families. That characterisation is the group's own. The denominations reply that the objection is doctrinal and that the practical measures exist because of the harvesting practice rather than because of competition.

The relationship between the group and the Korean Protestant mainstream has therefore been adversarial in a way that has few parallels, and reporting from either side needs to be read with that in mind. This page has tried to attribute claims to whoever makes them.

Families, Estrangement, and Coercive Removal

The harm reported most often around Shincheonji is family breakdown. Families in Korea and elsewhere have described adult children who withdrew from contact, concealed their involvement for long periods, gave large amounts of time to the group's programme, or left education and employment to work for it. Similar reports exist around many high-demand religious movements, and our page on why people leave church touches on the wider dynamics of leaving and returning.

A second and opposite harm belongs in the same section. Some Korean families have responded by arranging coercive removal programmes, in which an adult member is confined by relatives and pressured to renounce the group. In 2018 a woman who belonged to Shincheonji died in South Korea in the course of such an attempt, a case that was widely reported and that the group has used prominently in its campaigning against forced conversion practices. That campaigning is on solid ground. Confining an adult against their will is a crime in South Korea as elsewhere, regardless of what the person believes, and Catholic teaching holds firmly that no one may be coerced in matters of religion.

The Second Vatican Council stated the principle plainly in Dignitatis Humanae: the human person has a right to religious freedom, no one is to be forced to act against their conscience, and the propagation of religious belief must avoid any conduct that could suggest coercion or dishonourable persuasion. That standard binds in both directions. It rules out abduction as a means of rescue, and it rules out concealment as a means of recruitment.

The 2020 Outbreak in Daegu and the Charges

In February 2020 South Korean health authorities traced a rapidly growing cluster of coronavirus cases to the Shincheonji congregation in Daegu, after a member who had attended services was confirmed as an early case. Within weeks South Korean health authorities were attributing the great majority of the country's confirmed cases to that congregation and its contacts, and Daegu became the centre of the national outbreak.

Features of the group's worship were reported as contributing to transmission: large numbers of members seated close together on the floor of a hall for extended services, without the distancing measures that were not yet in place anywhere. Authorities closed the group's facilities across the country and demanded complete membership lists and attendance records for contact tracing, and the group supplied lists.

Public anger was intense, and it was directed both at the group and, in places, at individual members, some of whom reported losing employment. On 2 March 2020 Lee Man-hee held a press conference at which he apologised for the spread of the virus and bowed to the ground before television cameras. He said the outbreak was not intentional and asked for forgiveness.

The charges

In August 2020 Lee Man-hee was arrested and indicted in South Korea. The charges reported at the time included obstructing the national epidemic response under South Korea's infectious disease control law, by allegedly providing incomplete membership and facility information to the authorities, together with embezzlement of church funds and obstruction of business relating to the use of public venues for the group's events. Prosecutors alleged concealment. Lee and the group denied deliberate concealment, said the lists provided were complete, and argued that the prosecution reflected public hostility rather than evidence.

This page does not track the outcome of that prosecution or of any appeal. Reporting on the case moved through multiple stages in the Korean courts, and stating a final result without being certain of it would be worse than stating none.

Shincheonji Outside Korea

Shincheonji operates outside South Korea, with congregations, study groups and affiliated peace organisations reported in a number of countries across Asia, Europe, North America, Africa and Australasia. Activity has been reported particularly around universities and among young adults living away from home for the first time.

Churches in several countries have issued warnings to their congregations after reporting or complaints about approaches in their area, and university chaplaincies and student unions in a number of places have done the same. Those warnings typically describe the same pattern set out above: an unnamed Bible study, a friendly and persistent invitation, and a group identity disclosed late.

The group's international presence is difficult to quantify. It does not publish audited figures by country, and outside estimates vary widely. This page gives no numbers for membership outside South Korea. What can be said is that the pattern of approach reported in other countries closely resembles the pattern reported in Korea, which is the practically useful point for a reader who wants to recognise it.

Readers looking for the wider context of Christianity's growth and the movements that have arisen alongside it in East Asia may find our page on Christianity in China useful, and our page on Iglesia ni Cristo covers a different Asian church with its own distinct claims.

What This Page Does Not Claim

Parts of this record are contested, unresolved, or beyond what can responsibly be stated without web access to current sources. Saying so is better than filling the gaps.

• This page does not state the verdict in the criminal case against Lee Man-hee at any level of the South Korean courts, and does not track any appeal. It states the charges and the denial.
• This page gives no membership figure for Shincheonji outside South Korea, and reports the South Korean figure only as it was described in news reporting during contact tracing in 2020, based on lists the group itself supplied.
• This page gives no figure for the group's finances, property or revenue. Such figures circulate as estimates and are not established.
• This page reports attendance counts for graduation ceremonies and peace events as claims made by the group rather than as audited numbers.
• This page treats Lee Man-hee's account of his own early life, including his war service and his time in earlier movements, as his own testimony rather than as independently verified biography.
• This page makes no allegation of wrongdoing against any individual member, official or public figure who has appeared at an event organised by an affiliated organisation. Attending an event is attending an event.
• This page reports no developments after mid-2026.
• This page passes no judgment on the eternal standing of Lee Man-hee or of any member of Shincheonji. That judgment belongs to God alone. What is assessed here is a published body of teaching and a documented public record.

The Catholic Response

The Catholic response to Shincheonji runs along four lines: whether revelation can be added to, who may interpret Scripture, what the second coming will look like, and whether a person may be recruited without being told what they are joining.

Whether revelation can be added to

Shincheonji presents Lee Man-hee's testimony as the revealed word for this age. Catholic teaching holds that public revelation was completed in Jesus Christ and closed with the death of the last apostle, that no new public revelation is to be expected before the glorious manifestation of Christ, and that even a private revelation the Church recognises as authentic cannot correct or complete the deposit of faith (CCC 66 to 67). Christ is the fullness of what God has said, and there is nothing left to be supplied by a later witness. Our page on Scripture and Tradition works through how the deposit is transmitted and guarded.

Who may interpret Scripture

Shincheonji's method makes correct interpretation depend on one man's eyewitness testimony. Catholic teaching holds that the task of giving an authentic interpretation of the Word of God has been entrusted to the living teaching office of the Church, which exercises that authority in the name of Jesus Christ and stands under the Word of God as its servant (CCC 85 to 86). Two features of that answer are worth naming for a reader weighing the two systems. The Catholic authority is public, is held by an office rather than by a person's private experience, is answerable to a text and a tradition that anyone may read, and does not die with any individual. It also does not conceal itself. Everything the Church teaches is published, in full, for anyone to check before they join anything.

What the second coming will look like

Shincheonji teaches a fulfillment that has already begun in a particular place and can be recognised only through its founder's testimony. Jesus warned against exactly this shape of claim, telling his disciples not to go out after a Christ announced in the wilderness or in the inner rooms, because his coming will be as unmistakable as lightning across the sky (Matthew 24:26 to 27). He also said that no one knows the day or the hour, not the angels, nor the Son, but the Father only (Mark 13:32), which rules out any system that claims to have located the timetable. Our page on the end times gives the Catholic framework, and our page on the seven churches of Revelation covers the letters that Shincheonji reads as a coded record of a Korean congregation.

Whether a person may be recruited without being told

This is where the Catholic objection is sharpest, and it does not depend on any disputed fact. Paul described his own method to the Corinthians in terms that leave no room for a staged disclosure: we have renounced disgraceful and underhanded ways, we refuse to practise cunning or to tamper with God's word, and by the open statement of the truth we commend ourselves to everyone's conscience in the sight of God (2 Corinthians 4:2). To the Thessalonians he said his appeal did not spring from error or uncleanness or any attempt to deceive, and that he never used a pretext for greed (1 Thessalonians 2:3 to 5).

Catholic teaching on truthfulness runs the same way. The Catechism teaches that truth as a virtue means giving oneself in word and deed to what is true, that lying is the most direct offence against the truth, and that it consists in speaking a falsehood with the intention of deceiving (CCC 2464 to 2468, 2482 to 2483). Dignitatis Humanae adds that in spreading religious faith all conduct must be avoided which could give the appearance of coercion or of dishonourable or unworthy persuasion, especially towards the uneducated or the poor.

A gospel that has to hide its name in order to be heard has already conceded something about itself. The Church's own claim is public, printed, and available in full to anyone before they walk through the door, and any person considering it is free to read the whole of it first and then say no.

How to speak about members

Firmness on doctrine and gentleness with people is the Catholic pattern. Members of Shincheonji are, in very large numbers, people who wanted God, wanted the Bible explained, and were given an explanation Christians cannot accept. Many gave years to it. Some lost families for it. Peter tells believers to be ready to give an answer for the hope that is in them, and to do it with gentleness and reverence (1 Peter 3:15 to 16). Ridicule persuades nobody and closes the door that argument might have opened. Our page on wolves in sheep's clothing applies the scriptural tests for a teacher without abandoning that tone.

If Someone You Know Is in Shincheonji

The practical advice from families and counsellors who have been through this is consistent, and it is worth setting out plainly.

Keep the relationship open. Estrangement is the mechanism by which a high-demand group becomes a person's whole world, and every remaining tie outside it matters more than any single argument. A person who knows they can come home is in a different position from a person who believes they cannot.

Ask questions rather than issuing verdicts. A person deep in the teaching has answers prepared for accusations and few answers prepared for a calm question about why the name was withheld at the start, or why the meaning of a public book should depend on a private witness, or what happens to the count when the founder dies.

Never use force. Coercive removal is a crime, it has caused a death in South Korea, and it hands the group a genuine grievance that confirms everything its members have been told about outsiders.

Learn the material yourself. A family member who knows Revelation well enough to hold a conversation about it without flinching is in a far stronger position than one who does not. That is ordinary Bible study, done steadily, and it is available to anyone. For the wider question of how to stay in contact with someone inside any high-control group, our page on cults and Christianity sets out the general approach in detail.

Prefer to give instead of buy? You can support this ministry with a donation.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Lee Man-hee?

Lee Man-hee is a South Korean religious leader, born in 1931, who founded Shincheonji Church of Jesus, the Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony, in 1984. He teaches that the book of Revelation was written in figurative language whose meaning was sealed until it was physically fulfilled in Korea, that he witnessed that fulfillment, and that he is therefore the promised pastor and the one who overcomes spoken of in Revelation. Members address him as chairman and treat his testimony as the authoritative key to Scripture. Korean Protestant denominations have formally classified the group as heretical, and Catholic teaching cannot accept the central claim either.

What does Shincheonji believe?

Shincheonji teaches that the whole Bible is written in parables, that every figure in Revelation stands for a real person, place or event, and that the pairs can only be matched by someone who saw the prophecy fulfilled. The group identifies that witness as Lee Man-hee. It teaches that the events of Revelation began their fulfillment in a small Korean congregation in the twentieth century, that Shincheonji is the new spiritual Israel gathered out of that fulfillment, and that the 144,000 of Revelation 7 and 14 are a literal count of sealed members organised into twelve tribes, joined by a great multitude in white robes.

Is Shincheonji a Christian church?

Shincheonji presents itself as the fulfillment of Christianity and uses the Bible as its only text. Mainstream Christian bodies have concluded that its teaching falls outside Christian faith, and major South Korean Protestant denominations have formally declared it heretical. The reasons are doctrinal. Shincheonji makes the understanding of Scripture depend on the testimony of one living man, ties membership in a counted body to salvation, and reads the second coming as an event already unfolding quietly in Korea rather than the public and glorious return of Christ that the creeds confess.

How does Shincheonji recruit people?

Former members, Korean counter-cult ministries and mainstream news reporting describe a staged approach in which the group is not named at the start. Contact is often made through a free Bible study, a culture or volunteer programme, a street survey or a personal friendship, run under a name that does not identify Shincheonji. Interested people are moved into a course at a Zion Christian Mission Centre lasting several months, and the group's own identity and the claims about Lee Man-hee are disclosed later in the sequence. Shincheonji has defended withholding its name by arguing that prejudice against it prevents a fair hearing.

What happened between Shincheonji and the 2020 coronavirus outbreak in South Korea?

In February 2020 a large cluster of coronavirus cases in South Korea was traced to the Shincheonji congregation in Daegu, and for a period the great majority of confirmed national cases were linked to the group and its contacts. Authorities closed the group's facilities and demanded full membership lists for contact tracing. Lee Man-hee apologised publicly in early March 2020 and bowed before television cameras. In August 2020 he was arrested and indicted on charges that included obstructing the national response under the infectious disease control law, embezzlement of church funds, and obstruction of business. He denied deliberate concealment. This page does not track the trial outcome or any appeal.

What does Shincheonji teach about the 144,000?

Shincheonji reads the 144,000 of Revelation 7 and 14 as a literal headcount of people sealed in the present age, organised into twelve tribes named after apostolic figures, who will reign as priests and kings, with a great multitude in white robes joining them. Catholic teaching reads the number as symbolic. Twelve tribes multiplied by twelve apostles multiplied by a thousand is the fullness of God's people rather than a quota, and the same chapter describes the saved as a multitude that no one could number, which is difficult to reconcile with a closed roll.