Shincheonji lesson 17: figurative tree and bird

Where SCJ’s reading conflicts with the Bible

This lesson starts with John 15, where Jesus says, “I am the true vine,” and ends with “the tree represents the pastor of God and his organization.” Students are told their hope is to belong to “the right tree” at the second coming, that branches cut off “perish,” and that fruit is the people evangelists bring in. Questions about who the tree is today are deferred: “save our questions about the second coming for later.” SCJ’s The Explanation of Parables (p. 15) supplies the answer: at the second coming, the tree of life is “the shepherd born again from the seed of the word like Jesus,” and believers must “join the true shepherd” to have eternal life. Every passage the lesson uses keeps the tree centered on Jesus himself.

1. 1. John 15: The vine is Jesus, not a pastor

   The lesson builds its whole picture on John 15, then concludes the tree is “the pastor of God and his organization.”

   • Jesus says, “I am the true vine and my Father is the gardener” (15:1). “I am the vine; you are the branches” (15:5).
   • The branches are everyone who remains in him: “Remain in me, and I will remain in you” (15:4). And “apart from me you can accomplish nothing” (15:5).
   • Jesus explains what remaining means: his words remaining in them (15:7), remaining in his love by obeying his commandments (15:9-10) and his commandment is “to love one another just as I have loved you” (15:12).
   • The notes say anyone “connected to Him and His disciples would have life.” John 15 says remain in me. The connection is to Jesus, not to his disciples or an organization.

   Jesus calls himself the “true” vine. He doesn’t leave that role open for a future pastor.

2. 2. One vine, one shepherd, one teacher, one foundation

   • “I am the good shepherd … there will be one flock and one shepherd” (John 10:14-16).
   • Jesus is “the great shepherd of the sheep” (Hebrews 13:20) and “the Chief Shepherd” (1 Peter 5:4).
   • Jesus told his disciples that “you have one Teacher and you are all brothers … you have one Teacher, the Christ” (Matthew 23:8-10).
   • Paul, who planted churches himself, says: “no one can lay any foundation other than what is being laid, which is Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 3:11).

   Pastors in the New Testament are under-shepherds who give “a shepherd’s care to God’s flock” (1 Peter 5:1-4). None of them is the vine, the tree of life or the source of life.

3. 3. The tree of life is given by Jesus, to those washed by him

   The Explanation of Parables (p. 15) says believers must “join the true shepherd (tree of life), eat the fruit of that tree, and become the people of heaven who have eternal life.”

   • “Blessed are those who wash their robes so they can have access to the tree of life” (Revelation 22:14). Revelation explains how robes are washed: “in the blood of the Lamb” (7:14).
   • Jesus himself gives access: “To the one who conquers, I will permit him to eat from the tree of life that is in the paradise of God” (2:7).
   • Nowhere does Revelation say the tree of life is a human shepherd or that you must join one to eat from it.

4. 4. Revelation 22: The leaves are in the new creation

   The lesson says the leaves of the tree, which are “for the healing of the nations” (Revelation 22:2), are evangelists who surround the pastor.

   • The tree of life in Revelation 22 stands in the new Jerusalem, after the final judgment, in the new heaven and new earth (21:1-2). In the city “there will no longer be any curse,” and God’s servants “will see his face” (22:3-4).
   • It is a picture of the finished new creation, not of a present-day organization with a pastor and evangelists.

5. 5. Genesis 2: God planted both trees

   The Explanation of Parables (p. 15) labels the “Tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil from Satan’s seed → Hell.”

   • Genesis says the opposite: “The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow from the soil,” and “the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil were in the middle of the orchard” (Genesis 2:9).
   • God planted the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It was forbidden, but it was not Satan’s tree or grown from Satan’s seed.

6. 6. “Tree (Wood) = Person (People)” and Jeremiah 5:14

   The lesson uses Jeremiah 5:14 to establish “Tree (Wood) = Person (People).”

   • The verse is a judgment: “I will make the words that I put in your mouth like fire. And I will make this people like wood, which the fiery judgments you speak will burn up.”
   • The wood is fuel for God’s judgment, not a symbol for a pastor and his organization.
   • Jesus does use trees as an image for people: “a tree is known by its fruit” (Matthew 12:33; 7:16-20). But that applies to anyone, and especially to testing teachers: “Watch out for false prophets … You will recognize them by their fruit” (7:15-16).

7. 7. Fruit: Character, not recruits

   The lesson says fruit is words, and also people: “Saints, born of the Word, are akin to fruits that emerge from the teachings of evangelists.” Disciples “produce others … in order to bring more people.”

   • James 1:18 says God “gave us birth through the message of truth, that we would be a kind of firstfruits.” God gives the birth, not evangelists.
   • Paul names the fruit: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23).
   • In John 15 itself, bearing fruit is tied to keeping Jesus’ commandment to love (15:8-12).
   • Paul prays that believers would be “bearing fruit in every good deed” (Colossians 1:10).

   Making fruit mainly a count of the people you bring in turns faithfulness into recruitment.

8. 8. The mustard seed: The kingdom grows, not an organization

   The Explanation of Parables (p. 139) says the mustard tree “means that the word of the kingdom of heaven spreads to form an organization (church).”

   • Jesus says, “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed,” which grows into a tree “so that the wild birds come and nest in its branches” (Matthew 13:31-32). The point is that God’s kingdom begins small and becomes great.
   • The image echoes Ezekiel 17:22-23, where God plants a sprig of cedar on a high mountain of Israel and “Every bird will live under it.” It is a picture of God’s messianic kingdom giving shelter to the nations.
   • Jesus doesn’t say the tree is an organization headed by a pastor.

9. 9. The birds: The same symbol, opposite meanings

   The lesson says a bird “can represent the Spirit” (Matthew 3:16), but Satan’s birds are evil spirits (Revelation 18:2).

   • In the sower, the birds are the evil one taking the word (Matthew 13:4, 19). At Jesus’ baptism, the Spirit of God descends “like a dove” (3:16). In the mustard seed, birds nest in the kingdom’s branches (13:32).
   • The same image means different things in different passages. That’s true, and it shows that each passage must be read in its own context.
   • It also undercuts the method the course claims to use, that each symbol has one definitive meaning (see Lesson 15). If a bird can be the Holy Spirit or an evil spirit, the interpreter decides which, and that power rests with the teacher.

10. 10. The teacher says “the Bible alone suffices”

    The teacher says, “There is no need for additional books to understand it; the Bible alone suffices.”

    • That’s a good principle. But the class’s definitions (the tree as pastor and organization, the leaves as evangelists, the mustard tree as an organization) come from SCJ’s book The Explanation of Parables, not from the Bible.
    • When the Bible is read alone, the vine is Jesus (John 15:5), the shepherd is Jesus (John 10:14) and the tree of life is reached by robes washed in the Lamb’s blood (Revelation 7:14; 22:14).

11. 11. Told to “save our questions about the second coming for later”

    The lesson defines the hope as belonging to “the right tree,” defines that tree as a pastor and his organization, and then tells students to “save our questions about the second coming for later” and, if they haven’t found their tree, to “be patient.”

    • This creates a need (find the right pastor and organization) and holds back the answer.
    • Paul did not hold back from announcing “the whole purpose of God” (Acts 20:27). Jesus taught publicly and “said nothing in secret” (John 18:20).
    • A student is entitled to ask now which pastor and which organization the lesson means.

12. 12. Branches that become “fallen fruit that eventually decays”

    The lesson warns that disconnected branches “perish in that state,” and those “lying on the ground” become “fallen fruit that eventually decays.”

    • John 15:6 does warn that anyone who does not remain in Jesus is thrown out like a branch and dries up. That warning is real.
    • But the branch is cut off from Jesus, the vine. Leaving a pastor or an organization is not leaving Christ.
    • Applying John 15:6 to leaving a group makes separation from that group feel like spiritual death, before the student even knows which group is meant.