Shincheonji lesson 25: figurative cooking pot

Where SCJ’s reading conflicts with the Bible

This lesson defines the cooking pot as “a church,” with the meat as people, the fire as the word and the wood as the pastor. It says Satan’s pot was the synagogues of the Pharisees, where people were “offered to Satan” without knowing it, and God’s pot was Jesus’ church. Then it asks students, “which pot am I being cooked in?” and answers that “the place where God cooks will give prophecy and fulfillment.” SCJ’s The Explanation of Parables (p. 33) says at the second coming God’s pot is “God’s temple (church) from which the truth comes (Rv 15:5),” while “Satan’s pot is Satan’s church, the false shepherds’ organization.” The lesson’s main passages don’t describe churches at all, and its memory verse comes from men God condemned.

1. 1. Jeremiah 1:13: The next verse explains the pot

   The lesson’s main reference is Jeremiah’s boiling pot “tipped away from the north” (Jeremiah 1:13). God explains it immediately:

   “From the north destruction will break out on all who live in the land. For I will soon summon all the peoples of the kingdoms of the north … They will come and their kings will set up their thrones near the entrances of the gates of Jerusalem.” (Jeremiah 1:14-15)

   • The boiling pot is a picture of invasion and judgment coming on Jerusalem from the north, which happened when Babylon attacked.
   • It isn’t a church, and the lesson doesn’t read the explanation God gives in the next verse.

2. 2. Ezekiel 11:3: The memory verse is a saying God rejects

   The memory verse is Ezekiel 11:3: “the city is a cooking pot, and we are the meat in it.” The notes read it as the people sensing that doom was coming.

   • God tells Ezekiel who said it: “these are the men who plot evil and give wicked advice in this city” (11:2).
   • Their saying was a boast. They saw themselves as the choice meat, safe inside the walls of Jerusalem like meat protected in a pot.
   • God answers: “This city will not be a cooking pot for you, and you will not be meat within it; I will judge you at the border of Israel” (11:11).
   • In the same chapter, God promises the exiles: “I have been a little sanctuary for them among the lands where they have gone,” and “I will give them one heart and I will put a new spirit within them” (11:16, 19).

   The lesson builds its definition of the pot on a slogan God condemned. God’s answer was to be a sanctuary for his people wherever they were scattered, not inside one pot.

3. 3. Matthew 5:14: A city on a hill is not a pot

   The notes link Matthew 5:14, “A city located on a hill cannot be hidden,” to Ezekiel’s city as a pot to conclude that the church is the pot.

   • Jesus’ picture is about light: “You are the light of the world. A city located on a hill cannot be hidden … let your light shine before people, so that they can see your good deeds” (5:14-16).
   • Ezekiel’s city is Jerusalem under wicked leaders. Linking the two because both use the word “city” chains unrelated verses together by a shared word. It doesn’t read either one in context.

4. 4. Ezekiel 24 and Micah 3: Fulfilled centuries before Jesus

   The notes say Ezekiel 24 and Micah 3 had a “first coming fulfillment” in the Pharisees.

   • Ezekiel 24 is dated precisely: “Son of man, write down the name of this day, this very day. The king of Babylon has laid siege to Jerusalem this very day” (24:2). The pot is Jerusalem under Babylonian siege, around 588 BC.
   • Micah prophesied “during the time Hezekiah was king of Judah,” as Jeremiah confirms (Jeremiah 26:18). Micah 3 ends: “Zion will be plowed up like a field, Jerusalem will become a heap of ruins” (Micah 3:12), describing judgment on the Jerusalem of his era.
   • Jeremiah 26:19 even records that Hezekiah responded to Micah’s warning, and the Lord did not destroy them as he had threatened.

   These prophecies addressed the leaders of their own day. Micah’s charge that “her priests proclaim rulings for profit” (3:11) is a warning about any religious leaders who make teaching a business.

5. 5. Zechariah 14: Every pot becomes holy

   The lesson uses Zechariah 14:20-21 as the promise of God’s pot, fulfilled by Jesus and his church. Read the text:

   “On that day the bells of the horses will bear the inscription ‘Holy to the Lord.’ The cooking pots in the Lord’s temple will be as holy as the bowls in front of the altar. Every cooking pot in Jerusalem and Judah will become holy in the sight of the Lord of Heaven’s Armies …” (Zechariah 14:20-21)

   • Zechariah’s point is that on that day, every pot, even ordinary kitchen pots, will be holy. The line between sacred and common disappears because God’s holiness fills everything.
   • That’s the opposite of a picture with one holy pot and every other pot belonging to Satan.
   • The passage ends: “On that day there will no longer be a Canaanite in the house of the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.” When Jesus cleared the temple, he said, “Do not make my Father’s house a marketplace!” (John 2:16).

6. 6. The wood: The notes contradict themselves, and Jeremiah says something else

   The notes say the wood is “the leaders like a pastor,” and later that “the wood was Jesus himself as the true pastor.”

   • Jeremiah 5:14, the verse used for the fire, says: “I will make this people like wood, which the fiery judgments you speak will burn up.” The wood is the people consumed in judgment.
   • The notes give two different meanings, and neither is Jeremiah’s.

7. 7. The Pharisees’ followers: Jesus had compassion on them

   The notes say people who followed the Pharisees were offered to Satan: “And the people did not know it.”

   • Jesus’ response to the crowds was compassion: “he had compassion on them because they were bewildered and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” (Matthew 9:36).
   • He even told the crowds, “The experts in the law and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat. Therefore pay attention to what they tell you and do it. But do not do what they do” (Matthew 23:2-3). He condemned the leaders’ hypocrisy without declaring every synagogue member offered to Satan.
   • The idea that people are being “offered to Satan” without knowing it prepares students to see everyone in other churches that way.

8. 8. The claim that “the place where God cooks will give prophecy and fulfillment”

   • This is the same test the course set up in Lesson 5, and no verse states it. Many groups claim to be the place of fulfillment, and their claims contradict each other.
   • Scripture gives other marks: the gospel preached (Romans 1:16), gathering in Jesus’ name (Matthew 18:20), love (John 13:35) and the confession that Jesus is the Christ who has come in the flesh (1 John 4:2).

9. 9. Revelation 15:5: What comes out of the temple is plagues

   The Explanation of Parables (p. 33) says God’s pot at the second coming is “God’s temple (church) from which the truth comes (Rv 15:5).”

   • Revelation 15:5 says “the temple (the tent of the testimony) was opened in heaven.” It is in heaven.
   • The next verse says what comes out of it: “the seven angels who had the seven plagues came out of the temple” (15:6). They are given seven golden bowls “filled with the wrath of God” (15:7).
   • Revelation 15:5 doesn’t describe a church on earth from which truth comes. It describes the heavenly temple from which God’s final judgments come.

   SCJ’s full name is Shincheonji Church of Jesus, the Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony. The book uses this verse to point to SCJ’s organization, but the text places the temple in heaven and has plagues coming out of it.

10. 10. Emmaus: “This class is fashioned the same way”

    The teacher says that, like Jesus on the road to Emmaus explaining the Scriptures before revealing himself, “This class is fashioned the same way.” Questions should wait: “Be patient.”

    • On the road to Emmaus, Jesus explained “the things written about himself in all the scriptures” (Luke 24:27). The content was Jesus: that “the Christ would suffer and would rise from the dead,” and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins would be “proclaimed in his name to all nations” (24:46-47).
    • It happened in a single afternoon. That same evening, at the table, “their eyes were opened and they recognized him” (24:31).
    • The comparison is used to justify withholding, over many months, who runs the class and where it leads. Emmaus was one walk, and its content and conclusion were Jesus himself.

11. 11. Missing class is not missing God’s work

    To encourage attendance, the teacher asks “how can you be cooked and prepared if you are not even in the cooking pot?”

    • This ties missing class to missing God’s work in your life.
    • Scripture says God’s work in his people doesn’t depend on being in one particular pot: “the one who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:6).