Bait and switch

Chris Smith logged in to the first session of an online Bible study on the parables, filled with excitement. He was hungry for more in-depth exploration of the Scriptures than his church offered, and his girlfriend said she’d heard good things about the study.

The first few months went great. The group met over Zoom a few times a week. Despite the virtual setting, enthusiasm permeated their discussions. The group leaders emphasized the importance of prophecy and fulfillment. “How did the Jewish people miss Jesus’ first coming?” they asked. “How can we be sure not to miss the second?”

That first class ended in October 2018, but the leaders invited everyone to join a follow-up in-person class meeting in Seattle, near Smith’s home. He was thrilled—until he and his girlfriend pulled up to the meeting site, an unmarked building he thought seemed kind of … sketchy. He asked her if she was sure about going in.

“And she said, ‘Oh, I don’t know. You know what? Let’s just give it a chance,’” Smith remembers. He thought it over then said, “OK, sure. What’s the worst that can happen?”

Six years later, he calls those his “famous last words.”

He isn’t alone. Shincheonji, the shadowy South Korean cult that lured Smith, boasts that it graduates 100,000 new adherents from its seminary every year. Now, as the cult loses followers in its home country, it’s setting its sights on Christians.

LEE MAN-HEE, a charismatic Korean farmer involved in several different religious sects as a young man, founded Shincheonji in 1984. The group goes by several other names, including Shincheonji Church of Jesus Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony and New Heaven & New Earth Church. It is widely recognized as a cult by South Korean Christians, but relatively unknown elsewhere.

Shincheonji became especially unpopular in South Korea in 2020 after authorities deemed it responsible for thousands of COVID cases and charged Lee with breaking virus control laws.

In the last several years, the group has focused on growth outside Korea, recruiting Christians to attend sham “Bible studies” through churches, personal connections, social media, and even—as Smith would discover—dating apps.

Shincheonji is small, but it’s growing. It operates, typically under other names, in over 29 countries around the world. The Church of England; the Manipur Baptist Convention in India; churches in Auckland and Wellington, New Zealand; and the Singaporean government have all raised the alarm in recent years, calling the group a dangerous and deceptive cult that consumes people’s lives.

People like Chris Smith. About six months into the in-person study, he and his girlfriend broke up, although they both stayed part of the group. Six months after that, in October 2019, the group leaders finally revealed their affiliation with Shincheonji—and that half the study members, including Smith’s former girlfriend, already secretly belonged to the group.

It turned out she’d targeted him through a dating app and connected him to that first online study for more than personal reasons: He was part of her recruiting commitment. But by then, Chris thought he understood why she’d lied to him: She just wanted to save him. He officially signed up as a member of Shincheonji.

Shincheonji’s long initiation process means it’s not as effective at recruiting members as some other groups, according to Steve Matthews, who has studied cults for about 40 years. Clocking in at an entire year, Smith’s initiation took even longer than most. But Shincheonji excels at creating a high-control environment that makes it difficult for members to leave. The group scores highly on the BITE Model of Authoritarian Control, a tool developed by psychotherapist and cult expert Steven Hassan and used by most counseling associations.

Shincheonji members are taught that they must constantly recruit new believers in order to maintain their salvation, and they’re encouraged to use “wisdom of hiding” to deceive, befriend, and even date new recruits. Like Smith’s former girlfriend, they typically pretend to be first-time members when bringing a new recruit to the Bible study, and regularly report to the study leader on their recruit’s questions, goals, and personal details. Sometimes study leaders use these details to deliver a “prophetic word” to the new recruit.

Once he became a full member, Smith quickly began recruiting for Shincheonji, spending much of his spare time on Zoom studies or reaching out to Christians on social media. He posted Bible verses and nature pictures on an Instagram account and encouraged followers to send in prayer requests and share their spiritual goals.

A closed branch of the Shincheonji cult in Seoul, South Korea Aflo Co. Ltd./Alamy

IT’S HARD to verify exactly how many members Shincheonji has. The group last released an official member count in 2019, putting the number at 239,353 (with 207,504 in South Korea and 31,849 overseas). Since then, Shincheonji press releases claim more than 100,000 new adherents have graduated each year from its seminary, the Zion Christian Mission Center.

Cult watchers view those numbers as highly suspect.

Pastor Ezra Kim runs the American branch of the Bible Vaccine Center, a ministry that combats pseudo-Christian cults. Kim said Shincheonji inflates its member count and is losing followers in South Korea, even as it grows overseas. The group did not respond to requests for an official interview. The person who responded to my email told me her answers to my questions could not be attributed to the group and were only her opinions.

As part of a study published in February in the Korean ­outlet Modern Religion Monthly, Kim contacted ex-Shincheonji members and informants around the world. According to his research, the majority of registered Shincheonji members outside South Korea are in China, Mongolia, South Africa, and the United States. As of December 2023, they totaled about 61,000.

That’s not a lot compared with some cult groups and pseudo-Christian sects. Jehovah’s Witnesses, for example, have over 8 million members. But Kim’s research nonetheless illuminates a disturbing trend: Shincheonji has recruited roughly 30,000 people in four years.

Matthews, who holds a master’s in apologetics from Trinity International University, said Shincheonji is far more dangerous than better-known groups like the Jehovah’s Witnesses because of its high-control, deceptive tactics—and its focus on recruiting Christians.

“Shincheonji does it a whole different way,” he said, by masquerading as a nondenominational church with orthodox Christian beliefs.

That’s how they lured Smith. (Out of concern for his safety, WORLD agreed not to use his real name to protect his identity.) Bit by bit, the leaders of the in-person Bible study began to reveal their true beliefs. They started saying that Christian denominations were full of “mixed teaching” and had lost the truth. They reinterpreted the parables and Revelation, teaching that Lee was bringing about Jesus’ kingdom on earth. Smith believed them.

SHINCHEONJI teachings share similarities with other Eastern cults started around the same time, like the Unification Church (whose members are known as “Moonies”), Providence/Jesus Morning Star, and World Mission Society Church of God. These groups lean heavily on Revelation and teach that their leaders are bringing about God’s plan for the end times. Most also claim their leader is the second coming of Jesus. These groups dole out their core teachings slowly, mixing them with uncontroversial Biblical principles.

However, Shincheonji denies both the Trinity and Christ’s deity. The group teaches that just as Jesus fulfilled and explained Old Testament prophecies during His time on earth, Lee Man-hee is the New John, indwelt by the spirit of Jesus, who bears witness to the fulfillment of Jesus’ prophecies about the end times from Matthew and Revelation. Shincheonji believes that the new heaven and earth described in Revelation refer to a new kingdom of God established on earth that replaces the old, corrupt one that includes both Christians and unbelievers.

Shincheonji is organized into 12 tribes, named after the 12 apostles, headquartered in South Korea and divided by geographical areas around the world. Only official members, who join after a six- to nine-month initial “Bible study,” are considered saved.

Shincheonji operates through an extraordinarily high number of front groups, most of which hide their affiliation and present themselves as nondenominational Christian organizations. These include Parachristo, a registered charity in the U.K., Rakau o te Ora and Pathways in New Zealand, the Zion Christian Mission Center, Zion Christian Seminary, International Coalition of Christian Pastors, International Youth Fellowship, Mannam Volunteer Association, and Word and Life Theology School. Several of these groups offer free theological degrees as well as Bible studies, making them especially appealing to pastors in low-resource countries.

Matthews said Shincheonji front groups often hold huge Christian-sounding events to deceive and draw in members. In March 2023, the California Zion Church, a Los Angeles branch of Shincheonji, rented out an Orange County high school for a worship night. Under the name “One Heart Worship,” the group offered free entry to attendees, collecting their contact information for future recruitment efforts.

“This is a group that will pull out all the stops to hold these expensive events that look really Christian,” Matthews said. “No other cult historically has done this.”

Shincheonji often targets Christians with vulnerabilities: young people, the elderly, new Christians, or people with disabilities and illnesses. That’s how they drew in Jennifer Lange.

Lange lives in the Seattle area with her husband and two kids. She’s mostly bedridden due to complications from COVID-19. In January, two friends invited her to join a Zoom Bible study run by the Chicago Church, a Shincheonji front group.

Lange was troubled by the group’s secretiveness and odd teachings, but she wanted them to be true—because her leaders promised healing. They slowly convinced her the group was the only way to salvation. Sometimes they twisted parables—for example, saying that the parable of the wheat and tares referred to the true Church and that the tares thrown into the fire were Christians from other churches. Other times, they manipulated study members with frightening videos, like footage of the 2014 Sewol ferry disaster, during which 304 people drowned.

“They actually showed the live footage of the kids drowning and hearing screams and stuff and [they were] saying, ‘This is what’s going to happen to you if you don’t follow the right path,’” Lange said. “I felt so tormented from the teaching, thinking my loved ones were going to go to hell.”

After four months in the study, Lange’s husband discovered that the study materials came from Shincheonji. The Langes researched Shincheonji teaching and prayed for clarity, then decided the group was a cult. They left in April, giving up Lange’s hopes for healing and the friends she’d met with twice a day.

“It really broke me,” she said. “I felt so foolish and stupid.”

Lee Man-hee, leader of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus, speaks at the group’s worship facility in Gapyeong in 2020. Pool/AFP via Getty Images

BY DECEMBER 2020, Smith had been in Shincheonji for just over two years. Exhaustion defined his days. Even during his workday, the group’s leaders expected him to respond to his teachers’ messages and new recruiting directives. After work, until around midnight, he attended Zoom meetings and spent time recruiting. He spent seven days a week in his room, losing weight and sleeping only four hours a night.

His housemates started asking questions. “You’re spending a lot of time with this group. You’re getting sick a lot. Why are you so secretive? Are you OK?”

By this time, Smith had a new girlfriend, another Shincheonji member. But his leaders wouldn’t let him see her in person, and they said he had six months to either marry her or break up.

The leaders said that the internet was a dangerous place full of lies about the faithful. Googling Shincheonji was against the rules. But as he sat at his computer one winter night, the weight of the rules, the secrecy, and the punishing schedule became too much to bear.

Smith opened a browser window and typed “Shincheonji” into the search bar.

He was shocked to discover so many similarities between the group and other cults. He’d been convinced that only Lee Man-hee had the true interpretation of God’s Word. The more he researched, the more troubled he became.

He began sharing what he’d learned with his girlfriend, who also had started to question Shincheonji’s controlling influence. He recalled one particular conversation with her in March 2021, when the “figurative scales” fell from his eyes and he finally put into words what he’d been feeling: “There’s more to life than just this group.”

Smith kept recruiting and attending meetings for a few more months, but he no longer believed in what he was doing. In July 2021, he finally left Shincheonji. His girlfriend left, too, though their relationship ended soon afterward.

Smith wasn’t angry with God for allowing him to be led astray, but he didn’t know whom to trust. “The first year, I just told myself, OK, I need a break from religion,” he said. He spent that year visiting a psychologist, reconnecting with friends and family, going to the gym, rebuilding his finances, and trying to regain an identity outside the cult that had consumed his life. It took him another year to sift through his beliefs, especially about the deity of Christ, and rejoin a Christian church.

He eventually learned that recruiters from Eastern Lightning, another cult, once infiltrated a church his current pastor had planted in China. “So when I told him my story, he’s like, ‘Oh, I know what you went through,’” Smith said. Knowing his pastor understood the manipulative tactics he’d experienced helped him reintegrate.

Smith now focuses on raising awareness about Shincheonji. He’s spoken to the Cultish podcast, Great Light Studios, and others about his experience, and he’s helped several Shincheonji members leave the group. But he also pushes for deeper theology classes at his church. He says Christians need to fill the void, the hunger for more in-depth teaching, that Shincheonji claims to address.

But knowledge alone won’t keep Christians out of cults. Smith stressed the need for Christians to ask questions out of humility. “When I was recruiting in [Shincheonji], the people who would always say, ‘Oh, this won’t happen to me. I know the Bible too well, the Holy Spirit will guide me,’ I found were the easiest to manipulate.”

Timeline: Lee Man-hee’s life

1931: Lee Man-hee is born to poor Korean farmers. His grandfather provides a Christian influence but Lee does not attend church.

1950-1953: Lee serves in the South Korean army.

1957-1967: Lee joins the Olive Tree pseudo-Christian sect led by former Presbyterian minister Park Tae-son, who claims to be Christ. At its height, the sect has about 2 million Korean members, but it collapses amid embezzlement scandals.

1967: Lee leaves Olive Tree and joins another ­pseudo-Christian religious movement, the Tabernacle Temple in Gwacheon. It grows to about 5,000 members, but begins to shrink after its leader is accused of fraud. Lee leaves the group sometime in the early 1970s.

1977-1980: Lee briefly follows Man Bong Baek, a former Tabernacle Temple member who starts his own movement.

1984: Lee founds Shincheonji Church of Jesus with several former leaders of Baek’s group and opens the first Shincheonji temple in Anyang, Gyeonggi province, South Korea.

1986: Shincheonji branches spread across South Korea. The group has over 100 members.

1990-1993: Shincheoniji establishes the Zion Christian Mission Center in Seoul and begins missionary activity abroad.

2002: First cases of deprogramming South Korean Shincheonji members reported.

2020: Shincheonji meetings are linked to South Korea’s first major outbreak of COVID-19. The government charges Lee with obstruction of COVID-19 ordinances.

2022: South Korea’s Supreme Court acquits Lee of obstruction charges but upholds a lower court’s decision to convict him of embezzling $4.7 million in Shincheonji funds.