Shincheonji lesson 24: figurative censer

Where SCJ’s reading conflicts with the Bible

The board defines the censer: “Censer = A Person, one’s heart.” The fire is the word and the incense is prayer. Only a censer with both fire and incense makes smoke that rises to God, so prayer without “the Word” doesn’t reach him. The lesson says “angels present our prayers to God,” and warns students not to look things up online, where they’ll find “a thousand different opinions.” SCJ’s books narrow the picture. The Physical Fulfillment of Revelation (p. 175) says the golden censer of Revelation 8 “figuratively represents the promised pastor who offers up prayers like incense,” and that “most prayers … go through the hands of the angels.” The Explanation of Parables (p. 31) says Satan’s censer is “the world’s false shepherds,” and “it is the devil who receives their prayers and worship.” The lesson is right that incense pictures prayer. But the rest conflicts with what Scripture says about how prayer reaches God.

1. 1. Incense is prayer: That part is right

   • Revelation 5:8 says the golden bowls full of incense “are the prayers of the saints.”
   • “May you accept my prayer like incense” (Psalm 141:2).

   That should be affirmed. Scripture explains this symbol itself. Notice that the explanation is in the text, not in a code.

2. 2. 1 Corinthians 4:6 warns against favoring one teacher

   The lesson cites 1 Corinthians 4:6 to tell students to stay inside Scripture and not look things up online.

   • The full verse: “so that through us you may learn ‘not to go beyond what is written,’ so that none of you will be puffed up in favor of the one against the other” (1 Corinthians 4:6).
   • Paul was rebuking the Corinthians for lining up behind particular teachers: “I am with Paul,” “I am with Apollos” (1:12; 3:4). His remedy: “So then, no more boasting about mere mortals! For everything belongs to you, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas” (3:21-22).
   • The verse warns against exactly the kind of loyalty to one teacher that this course is building.
   • Staying with Scripture is good. But Scripture also says “there is success in the abundance of counselors” (Proverbs 11:14), and the Bereans checked even an apostle’s teaching, “examining the scriptures carefully every day to see if these things were so” (Acts 17:11). Warning students away from outside sources while the course supplies every definition is not staying within Scripture.

3. 3. The tabernacle: Every shadow points to Christ

   The lesson uses Hebrews 9:9 and 10:1 to say, “Each part of the Tabernacle illustrated something God intended to fulfill in the future.”

   • Hebrews tells us what that future fulfillment is: “But now Christ has come as the high priest of the good things to come … he entered once for all into the Most Holy Place … by his own blood” (9:11-12). “Christ did not enter a sanctuary made with hands … but into heaven itself, and he appears now in God’s presence for us” (9:24).
   • The law possesses “a shadow of the good things to come” (10:1), and “we have been made holy through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (10:10).
   • The tabernacle’s shadows are fulfilled in Jesus. Hebrews doesn’t leave them waiting for a modern pastor or organization.

4. 4. Revelation 8:3-5: The censer is an object, and it’s thrown down in judgment

   The board says the censer is a person. Physical Fulfillment (p. 175) says the golden censer of Revelation 8 is “the promised pastor.” Read the passage:

   “Another angel holding a golden censer came and was stationed at the altar … The smoke coming from the incense, along with the prayers of the saints, ascended before God from the angel’s hand. Then the angel took the censer, filled it with fire from the altar, and threw it on the earth, and there were crashes of thunder, roaring, flashes of lightning, and an earthquake.” (Revelation 8:3-5)

   • The censer is something the angel holds, fills and throws. Nothing makes it a person.
   • If the censer were the promised pastor, the angel would be filling the pastor with fire and hurling him onto the earth, setting off thunder and an earthquake. The book’s identification doesn’t fit what the text says happens to the censer.
   • In context, this is God answering the saints’ prayers with judgment. Earlier, the martyrs cried out, “How long, Sovereign Master … before you judge those who live on the earth and avenge our blood?” (6:10). In Revelation 8, the prayers rise, and fire falls.

5. 5. Prayer doesn’t need angels or a pastor to reach God

   The lesson says “angels present our prayers to God.” Physical Fulfillment (p. 175) says “most prayers … go through the hands of the angels.”

   • Paul writes that “there is one God and one intermediary between God and humanity, Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5).
   • Jesus “always lives to intercede for them” (Hebrews 7:25). Christ Jesus is the one “who is at the right hand of God, and who also is interceding for us” (Romans 8:34).
   • And “the Spirit himself intercedes for us with inexpressible groanings” (Romans 8:26).
   • Hebrews says, “let us confidently approach the throne of grace” (Hebrews 4:16).
   • Jesus taught his disciples to pray directly: “Our Father in heaven” (Matthew 6:9), and “pray to your Father in secret. And your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you” (6:6).
   • Revelation 8 is a vision of heaven’s worship, not a teaching that prayers need an angelic courier. In Revelation 5:8, the bowls of incense are held by the living creatures and elders, not angels.

   Believers pray to the Father, through the Son, helped by the Spirit. No angel or pastor needs to carry the prayer.

6. 6. Jesus is the high priest who offers prayers

   Physical Fulfillment (p. 175) says the golden censer is “the promised pastor who offers up prayers like incense.” That’s a priestly role.

   • Hebrews says “we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God” (4:14), and “he holds his priesthood permanently since he lives forever” (7:24).
   • All believers are built up “to be a holy priesthood and to offer spiritual sacrifices that are acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 2:5). They are “a royal priesthood” (2:9).

   The priestly role of offering prayers belongs to Jesus, and every believer approaches God through him. It isn’t held by a promised pastor.

7. 7. The book says “it is the devil who receives their prayers and worship”

   The Explanation of Parables (p. 31) says Satan’s censer is “the world’s false shepherds,” and “it is the devil who receives their prayers and worship.”

   • That means the prayers of Christians outside SCJ, under their own pastors, are received by the devil.
   • Scripture shows God hearing prayers from people outside any special group:
     • Cornelius, a Gentile who hadn’t yet heard the gospel, was told: “Your prayers and your acts of charity have gone up as a memorial before God” (Acts 10:4).
     • The tax collector who prayed, “God, be merciful to me, sinner that I am!” went home justified (Luke 18:13-14).
   • Paul writes, “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Romans 10:13).

8. 8. Who is righteous?

   The lesson uses James 5:16 and 1 Peter 3:12 to say God hears the righteous, and that a righteous person is one with “The law of God is in their heart.” It says good deeds, missions and church attendance don’t make someone righteous.

   • That last part is true: righteousness isn’t earned by works. Scripture says where it comes from: “the righteousness of God through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ for all who believe” (Romans 3:22). “God made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we would become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).
   • James’s example of the righteous person whose prayer worked is Elijah: “Elijah was a human being like us” (James 5:17). An ordinary believer.
   • The righteous whose prayers God hears are those made righteous in Christ, not those who have mastered a course’s definitions.

9. 9. How to pray

   The lesson teaches students to pray Scripture back to God, and implies prayer without the word yields “No smoke.” John 15:7 is read as a condition.

   • Praying with Scripture is good, and John 15:7 is a real promise: “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you want, and it will be done for you” (John 15:7).
   • But Scripture also shows honest, raw prayer being heard. Hannah prayed in deep distress (1 Samuel 1:10-17). The lament psalms do the same. The Spirit helps us when “we do not know how we should pray” (Romans 8:26).
   • Jesus invites prayer in his name (John 14:13-14; 16:23-24). A believer doesn’t need to perfect a method before God will listen.

10. 10. The closing prayer: “Please harvest my family and me”

    The lesson’s closing prayer asks God to “harvest my family and me.”

    • In this course, the harvest has already been defined as people being gathered out of their churches (see Lessons 1, 10 and 15), and SCJ’s book calls the barn “the Twelve Tribes of Mt. Zion.”
    • Jesus says “The harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels” (Matthew 13:39). Students are being taught to pray their families toward the group.