Shincheonji lesson 34: figurative spring and river

Where SCJ’s reading conflicts with the Bible

This lesson defines the spring as “Pastor and Temple” and the river as “Heart of a disciple or evangelist.” A pastor “should be one that receives the water from the clouds above and flows it to the people below.” It says the spring of the water of life in Revelation 21:6 is “a pastor and temple,” and “a place,” and asks, “Have we found a place like this yet?” It also uses Lot to tell students to “depart without hesitation or attachment” and to “be ready to move when the call comes, to gather our families and go.” SCJ’s The Explanation of Parables (p. 49) says the spring at the second coming “is the shepherd who received the word from God and Jesus, and the temple where the shepherd is,” and believers “must find” it to go to heaven. Scripture names the fountain of life, and it isn’t a pastor or a place.

1. 1. “Nothing was wrong with you. It just wasn’t time yet.”

   The lesson uses Daniel 12:8-9 to tell students that past difficulty understanding the Bible was because “it wasn’t time,” and that when the words are explained, “This is the evidence that the end times that were promised have now come.”

   • This is circular: the course’s explanation is offered as proof that the course’s explanation is the long-awaited opening.
   • Daniel was told to seal his words, but John was told not to seal Revelation (Revelation 22:10). (See Lessons 13 and 27.)
   • God’s word gives “insight to the untrained” (Psalm 119:130). Struggling with parts of Scripture is normal; even Peter found some of Paul’s writing “hard to understand” (2 Peter 3:16). It doesn’t mean understanding was locked until this course.

2. 2. Lot and Noah: Jesus warns against chasing reports

   The lesson uses Noah and Lot to say students should be ready to “depart without hesitation or attachment, like Lot,” and “be ready to move when the call comes, to gather our families and go.”

   Read Luke 17, where Jesus talks about both Noah and Lot:

   • First, he warns: “Then people will say to you, ‘Look, there he is!’ or ‘Look, here he is!’ Do not go out or chase after them. For just like the lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other, so will the Son of Man be in his day” (17:23-24).
   • Then he compares his coming to the days of Noah and Lot (17:26-30). The point is suddenness: people were eating, drinking, buying and building until judgment came.
   • “On that day” (17:31), the day the Son of Man is visibly revealed, don’t turn back. “Remember Lot’s wife!” (17:32).

   Jesus’ own teaching rules out a “call” to relocate to a place where he is said to be working. In Matthew too: “as for that day and hour no one knows it” (24:36).

3. 3. Hebrews 12:1: The “cloud” is people of faith

   The lesson says clouds in the Bible represent “the invisible spiritual world.”

   • Hebrews 12:1 says “we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses.” The “witnesses” are the people of faith just listed in Hebrews 11, who “were commended for their faith” (11:39). “Cloud” is a common image for a great crowd.
   • It isn’t a code for the spiritual world.

4. 4. God is the fountain of life

   The lesson and SCJ’s book say the spring is a pastor and temple.

   • God says: “They have rejected me, the fountain of life-giving water, and they have dug cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that cannot even hold water” (Jeremiah 2:13).
   • “For with you is the fountain of life” (Psalm 36:9).
   • The lesson admits Zechariah’s fountain for cleansing (13:1) was Jesus, and SCJ’s book says Jesus was the spring at the first coming. But Jesus doesn’t change (Hebrews 13:8). There’s no reason the spring would become a different person at the second coming.

5. 5. John 4:14: The spring is placed in every believer

   The lesson’s own memory verse says:

   “the water that I will give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up to eternal life” (John 4:14)

   • Jesus gives the water, and the spring is inside every person who drinks from him.
   • The other memory verse, John 7:38, says rivers of living water flow from within the one who believes. John explains: “he said this about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were going to receive” (7:39).

   The spring isn’t a pastor somewhere to be found. Jesus puts it inside every believer by his Spirit. (See Lesson 33.)

6. 6. Ezekiel 47: The temple is fulfilled in Christ and his people

   The lesson uses Ezekiel 47’s river flowing from the temple to say the pastor in the temple is the source on earth.

   • Revelation picks up Ezekiel’s vision: “the river of the water of life … pouring out from the throne of God and of the Lamb” (22:1).
   • The New Testament says where the temple is now. Jesus spoke of “the temple of his body” (John 2:19-21). Paul tells believers, “you are God’s temple and … God’s Spirit lives in you” (1 Corinthians 3:16).
   • The river flows from God and the Lamb, and the temple is Christ and his people, not a building where one pastor stands.

7. 7. Revelation 7:17: The Lamb is the shepherd who leads

   The lesson says the Lamb leads people to springs of living water “when Revelation is fulfilled,” and then calls the spring a pastor and temple.

   • Read the verse: “the Lamb in the middle of the throne will shepherd them and lead them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes” (7:17).
   • The shepherd is the Lamb. The scene is the great multitude before God’s throne after the great tribulation (7:9-15).

8. 8. Revelation 21:6: God gives the water, in the new creation

   The lesson says Revelation 21:6’s spring is “a pastor and temple,” and “a place.”

   • The speaker is God: “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the one who is thirsty I will give water” at no cost “from the spring of the water of life” (21:6).
   • The setting is the new heaven and new earth, after “the former things have ceased to exist” and God says, “I am making all things new!” (21:1-5).
   • God gives it at no cost. It isn’t a present-day location to be found.

9. 9. “A place” to find

   The lesson asks, “Have we found a place like this yet?”

   • Jesus told the Samaritan woman: “a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem … the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth” (John 4:21-23).
   • Salvation and true worship aren’t tied to a location. (See Lesson 33.)

10. 10. 2 Peter 2:17: Peter’s marks of false teachers

    The lesson uses 2 Peter 2:17’s “waterless springs” to warn against false teachers, and says a beautiful building or large congregation aren’t signs of God’s work. That’s fair. But Peter gives his own marks in the same chapter:

    • They “will infiltrate your midst with destructive heresies, even to the point of denying the Master who bought them” (2:1).
    • “in their greed they will exploit you with deceptive words” (2:3).
    • They make big promises to the people they draw in, yet “they themselves are enslaved to immorality” (2:19).

    Peter’s test is what a teacher does with Jesus’ redemption, and whether they exploit people through deception. Being able to explain “from Genesis to Revelation” isn’t Peter’s test. Apply his: does a teaching move the spring of life from Jesus to another person, and does it recruit through undisclosed means?

11. 11. “The Bible is our standard”

    The lesson rightly tells students to test teaching with Job 34:3-4 and Acts 17:11, “Because the Bible is our standard.” Applying that standard to this lesson:

    • God calls himself the fountain of life (Jeremiah 2:13).
    • Jesus says the spring is placed inside each believer (John 4:14).
    • The Lamb is the shepherd who leads to the springs (Revelation 7:17).
    • God gives the water of life at no cost in the new creation (Revelation 21:6).
    • Jesus says don’t chase reports of where he is (Luke 17:23).