May 19, 2020 Show with Jonathan Scofield on “My Brush with a Korean Cult: A Close Call With Disaster”

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday. On this 19th day of May, 2020, and at the urging of a friend of mine,

Pastor Lou Vega of Covenant Church in Houston, Texas, I have a first -time guest today that I will introduce momentarily, but before I do that,

I just want to give you the sad news that it's a because the wonderful brother in Christ who

I've had on this program, a world -renowned apologist, Ravi Zacharias, went home to be with the

Lord at 74 years of age due to a battle with cancer, and it's a mixed day emotionally because obviously it's sad to have somebody who has impacted the lives of as many people as Ravi Zacharias depart this

Earth. We also know with certainty that he is in eternity with Christ, so I just wanted to let you folks know, if you didn't know already, and please keep the

Zacharias family in your prayers. I've also interviewed, on the old

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio program, two of his daughters, and so obviously the

Zacharias family must be in deep grief and mourning, but also mixed with the joy of knowing where Ravi is, and just repeat that I'd ask that you pray for the

Zacharias family at this time. Well, today, as I mentioned just briefly, my guest comes by the high recommendations of Pastor Lou Vega of Covenant Church in Houston, Texas.

His name is Jonathan Schofield. He's a professional musician and member of Covenant Church, and today he's going to be addressing his brush with a

Korean cult, a close call with disaster, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Jonathan Schofield.

Hey, I'm honored to be on your show. Well, first of all, before we get into your story, tell us about Covenant Church in Houston, Texas.

Well, I started attending Covenant Church about three years ago, and it has been a wonderful church to be a part of.

I love seeing so many different people from around the world worshiping in unity, and the preaching of Pastor Lou and our assistant pastor

Dan Clay, and the exhortations from our session have been a great blessing in my life. Well, praise

God, and I know that this is a congregation in the PCA, Presbyterian Church in America, and just asking you, or telling you,

I should say, if you'd like to find out anything more about Covenant Church, especially after the show is over, go to covenantpca .org,

covenantpca .org. Well, Jonathan, before we get further into your story about when you first came to encounter this

Korean cult, tell us about your upbringing in your own home. What kind of religious atmosphere, if any, were you raised in?

I was blessed to be raised in a Christian household. My father was an elder in the

PCA when I was born, and I grew up in Birmingham, Alabama.

Beautiful city, I've been there. Yes, yes it is. I was fortunate to hear the

Bible from birth, and I remember witnessing,

I guess for my first time when I was about six years old, to a cousin of mine at a family reunion, and when

I was about eight or nine, I was going through communicants class, and I remember that being a very important time in my life when

I had to think about my testimony and publicly professing my faith in Christ.

That was a major moment for me, and I also have spent many years in the

OPC as well as the PCA, so I've been surrounded by a great group of mentors, pastors, elders, folks from Greenville Theological Seminary have all made a major impact on my life.

Yes, and I have interviewed a number of folks at the Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, including the pastor,

I mean the president, Joey Piper, has been on this program several times and has written a really wonderful endorsement for the show.

So, tell us about how and where you came to encounter this

Korean cult, and tell us about the cult itself. Yes, I encountered this group in the summer of 2018.

At that time, I had recently moved to Houston for graduate school at the

University of Houston, and I was in between my first and second year of my master's degree in music, so I was having lunch on campus after a long practice session, and I met a young lady who came up to me and said that she was wanting to interview me with a questionnaire for a sociology survey.

So, I didn't see any reason why not to. I began filling out her survey.

It had a lot of simple questions, talking about employment, age, religion, any especially painful circumstances that could have happened in your life, you could talk about that.

And when I got done with the survey, the girl said, oh,

I see you're a Christian. I'm a Christian too. And she explained that the survey had a

Christian element to it. It wasn't just sociology, but it was looking at stories of people's conversion.

Now, at the time, I did not know the name of this group. The name of the group that I will be talking about is called

Shichonji, Church of Jesus, the Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony.

Shichonji means New Heavens and New Earth in Korean. I hope the rest of the title flows better in Korean than it does in English, because that's an incredibly long name.

But the interesting thing at the time was, and it's one of their trademarks, is that they will not tell you their name, who they are, who their leader is.

It took me months to figure this out. And I'll kind of get to some of the things

I discovered along the way. But anyway, I was intrigued by what this girl was telling me.

She talked about being a Buddhist in her upbringing and becoming a

Christian. She had attended an interfaith conference. She came to faith after hearing some

Christians speak and share their testimony. She'd grown up in a, well, not grown up, but she'd attended from that point, a

Presbyterian church. So immediately I saw that we had a lot of things in common. So I was wanting to get to know her better and exchange numbers and express interest in meeting her mentor, who was helping her with this project.

And along the way, I met this mentor. He was a middle -aged

Caucasian American male. And he was a scientist by trade, at least that's what he told me.

And when I knew him, he grew up in a Wesleyan background.

And he talked to me about how he had struggled in college, reconciling what the

Bible says about the world and creation with what the scientists were saying about the same topics.

And he explained that he had to learn the power of God's word, you know, the power that created the universe is the same power that saves.

And so he wanted to continue meeting with me and my newfound friend and going over kind of a survey of the

Bible. And I didn't see any harm in that. You know, I try to be an ecumenical guy when

I can. And so I agreed to do that for a time, even though it was eight in the morning.

And so I did that for a bit of time. And after that,

I was introduced to another man who was from Korea. The girl was also a

Korean national. This second man was a pastor, as he was explained to me.

He was doing mission work in the United States, is what I was told. And he would meet with me in the same way that the other mentor met.

We would just go through different teachings of the Bible. At this point, none of the teachings were all that unusual.

They were mostly commonly taught things. There was a bent of pre -millennial, whenever they encountered prophecies about, you know, the second coming, they tended to have that perspective.

But besides that, everything was pretty straightforward. They went through surveys of biblical history, the covenants, you know, the covenant on Mount Sinai, the kingdom parables, things like that, that were pretty straightforward.

And so I did not find anything unusual. It was mostly pretty orthodox at that point.

Well, how about other things that are pillars of the faith, like the Trinity, the virgin birth of Christ, sinlessness of Christ, the atoning death of Christ, his burial and resurrection bodily, and those kinds of things?

Those things were not discussed as in detail, because the main focus of this group was prophecy and fulfillment.

So we spent a lot of time talking about prophecies and parables. At the time,

I had no reason to think that they believed anything unusual about those topics that you mentioned.

So I never questioned any of that. I assumed that they would be in agreement with myself.

Okay, so tell us about how things progressed when you went from being very comfortable, it seems, to a point where obviously there were alarm bells going off in your head that something was not quite right.

The first things for me that were a little troubling were the setup of the studies.

When you go to their location, which was near the University of Houston, it's set up like a classroom.

There's a whiteboard at one end of the room, and there are rows of tables and chairs along the other way, and some pictures of kingdom parables, like the parable of the sower on the wall in Korean, kind of like a

Sunday school classroom. But there were a few things. When we would have our studies, it would often feel more like a worship service, and they were very aggressive in making sure everybody had to say amen enthusiastically whenever truth was taught.

Well, truth is they saw it, you mean. Well, even just a biblical truth.

It would be just a simple Bible verse thing. Right. But a lot of it was their interpretation, too.

I expressed some discomfort at, well, if I don't believe something,

I'm not going to say amen just to make you happy. And they were resistant to me questioning anything.

The other aspect would be they would do some strange things like clapping at the end of the lesson and making people get up and recite what they had learned in the class before.

Because it felt so much like a worship service and less like a discussion, I felt a little uncomfortable having a large, they had female teachers often teaching the classes, and so I just said, you know,

I don't feel comfortable with that, you know, since this seems so much like a lecture, that this kind of goes against my convictions on what's proper.

And is this all being conducted in English? Yes, it was either in English by the speaker or being translated by an interpreter on the spot.

Okay. Yeah, so they were very resistant to the slightest deviation from what they taught.

One thing that they were teaching that troubled me was that they said that John the

Baptist lost his salvation at the end. Wow. They would cite the passage in Isaiah, and it talks about who is blind but my servant and deaf.

I paraphrase, but they would say that when John the

Baptist rebuked Herod for what he had done, that he was stepping out of line, he had lost his faith.

Really? Yeah, and that he was not saved. And I said, well, the Bible doesn't clearly say that, and the focus is not on John the

Baptist's salvation. I said, I don't know where you can make that point, but it was essential for them to make me believe that.

And there was a lot of pressure, you know, from the girl that I met at this time.

We had started dating. She seemed really nice and was very passionate about the Word, so I was attracted to her, and there was pressure from her.

There was pressure from the entire group, and I was kind of moved into a smaller group with what

I know now as more seasoned converts in this group. And what was the percentage of Asian to non -Asian in the group?

In the large class, which is where I started, it was maybe 20 to 30 people, and many of these were just American college students coming from different church backgrounds, and there were maybe three or four

Korean people in that group. And once I got moved to the smaller group,

I was the only American and native English speaker in that group.

Everyone else was Korean. So continue on about the things that were troubling you, the views of John the

Baptist losing his salvation and so on. Yes. Another thing that would cause some discussion, on my part at least, was when they were hesitant to acknowledge

God's love for his covenant people in the Old Testament prophecies.

In any passage where God was speaking in a very husbandly or fatherly way about his people, they would try to say that this cannot be

God talking about his covenant people because they had sinned. It must therefore be him talking about the

Father's love for the Son in a Trinitarian perspective.

And so that was an issue that I had. I explained, well, you know, that's the message of the

Gospel, that God loves his people despite their sinfulness.

He loved us while we were still sinners, but that was a hard point. So did they believe in sinless perfectionism or something?

They did not teach that, but I think in their mindset, as I know what they believe now, they do believe that it is possible to be perfect in a sense of you follow the leader and you do the right things and that is what is required of you.

And, you know, these were questions that I had and would talk about, but, you know, we would talk for hours until we all got tired and then we would kind of agree to disagree.

But it became more of a recurring thing the longer

I was there, these kind of issues. And if I ever questioned something, they would ask me a question, like, what does the number 666 mean in the book of Revelation?

If I didn't have a definitive answer for them or if I said, well, this is something that hasn't been revealed yet, they would tell me, well, if you don't know that, who are you to question what we're teaching?

You know, be humble and learn some more. So that was the way that they kind of kept me going.

I had mono at the time and didn't know it, so I was exhausted and they would keep me for hours and hours and hours.

We'd meet two times a week, you know, four hours of instruction each week. Wow. And it was exhausting.

They really wore me down. Now, did they know of your background in the

Presbyterian Church in America? And I was just curious if they ever brought up Reformed theology in a negative light in your presence.

Not directly. Many of them were former Presbyterians from Korea. Yeah, that's a big denomination in Korea.

Yes, yes it is. So they eventually, and this is the thing that ultimately caused me to split with them, they eventually tried to interpret the prophecy that Jesus speaks of in Matthew 24 when he cites the abomination of desolation passage in the book of Daniel.

Eventually they tried to get me to think that this was

Satan in the modern day church and not in the way that we would think of it.

We would say, yes, of course, you know, Satan tempts pastors, he tempts people in churches, he tries to lead us astray.

But for them, every New Testament church has been taken over by Satan and you have to leave your church and follow them.

That was the ultimate breaking point. Now where have we heard that before? Exactly, exactly.

Now did they say that as a matter of salvation? Yes, they believed that fleeing to the mountains was leaving your church and going with their group and worshipping in their way and actually the girl that introduced me to the group at first, she said, oh,

I'm going to such and such church in Houston. And it was a church I'd heard of, you know, kind of broadly evangelical.

And eventually I said, well, are you still going to that church? And she said, no, I'm looking for a different church.

And it turned out she wasn't going to church at all. She was simply going to this group and that was church for her.

So there was a progression of about five months. And the strange thing was that each teacher, when they would write on their whiteboard, they would draw a lot of times like stick figures as reference points when they were trying to explain something multi -step or more complex.

And those stick figures all looked the same. No matter who drew them, it was like they all had the same handwriting.

And, you know, I found that a little odd, but, you know, I was kind of a naive guy from Alabama.

I'd never run into anything like this before that I knew of. And so I didn't know what

I should have been afraid of at the time. Now you mentioned earlier that, at least at some point during these sessions, that it felt like a worship service.

What other elements were present in these meetings other than teaching and questioning the audience or the congregation?

Were there hymns or any kind of singing? And were the ordinances practiced and that kind of thing?

They would have sometimes praise music, like the

Hillsong kind of stuff, playing during their break times. There would often be times of prayer where there would be about five minutes or so where they encouraged everyone to pray about what they were about to learn or what was being taught.

But definitely there was an order of worship, if you will, to every meeting that was consistent.

And do you know if they ever did have the Lord's Supper or anything like that or baptized people?

I never got far enough into their group to know that.

But if I had stayed with them and believed everything they taught me,

I would have eventually probably gone on a trip to South Korea, to their headquarters, to be further trained.

And I think this is what happened to the man that I was initially introduced to.

His wife was one of the teachers. His wife was Korean. And she apparently converted him to this group.

If I had stayed, I would have learned eventually about Lee Man -hee, which some people have heard about in the news, the

New York Times, Wall Street Journal, BBC, during the COVID -19 crisis.

His group in Korea, he's the head of this group, and one of the congregations was a hotspot for COVID -19, which brought them under a lot of scrutiny.

They do a lot of secret things. They're a very secretive group.

So I don't think anyone knows but the very highest -level members what goes on.

For some reason, I don't recall hearing anything about the leader in South Korea or anything connected to COVID -19.

What was or what were the circumstances that made— was it the government that was suspicious of them, or who was suspicious of them?

Yes, the South Korean government was suspicious of them. Religious organizations and churches were already, of course, suspicious of them from a spiritual standpoint.

But there was a large outbreak that centered around a church in the city of Daegu.

And when they started testing people, they found that a high percentage of the people who contracted

COVID -19 in that city were members of that church. And that church had not followed the recommended restrictions of social distancing and sanitation.

So they were basically being suspected of being a primary source of the spread of COVID -19.

That is correct. Okay, we're going to a break right now. If anybody wants to join us on the air with a question of your own, for Jonathan Schofield regarding this brush he had with a

Korean cult, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Please, as always, give us your first name, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

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Don't go away. We'll be right back with Jonathan Schofield and more of his story on the

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That's ptlbiblerebinding .com Welcome back, this is

Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with a little less than 90 minutes to go is

Jonathan Schofield. He comes by the highest recommendations of his pastor

Lou Vega, a friend of mine who I've interviewed. Lou is the pastor of Covenant Church in Houston, Texas and we are discussing our guest

Jonathan Schofield's brush with a Korean cult A Close Call with Disaster.

If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own our email address is

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com

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Returning to where we left off before the break what was the as the old saying goes the straw that broke the camel's back when you finally had to part company with this group and how did you do that as far as communication with the leaders or if you just left without saying anything, etc.

The the breakup kind of happened in two stages the first stage

I was talking with the girl who introduced me to the cult one evening and I was telling her that I wasn't really feeling like I wanted to go to the

Bible studies anymore I said I'm a believer I treat you all as my brothers and sisters but you all don't treat me the same way you treat me as if I'm an unbeliever because you are trying to have make me have this conversion moment

I don't know what I'm supposed to be discovering what am I supposed to be believing because the strategy was always they set up the situation and they want you to make the conclusion yourself that way you think that the

Holy Spirit lets you to think that thing such as leaving your church and she was of course very upset was crying and all of that she

I think must have kind of broken her protocol because she said if you leave

I really worry for you she said Jesus is on earth right now but you can't see him and you know

I felt like I just got an electric shock I was like what? Jesus is on earth right now and I said where?

you know where can I find him? and she said you keep needing to learn you know because there's still a lot of things that you don't understand you need to keep studying the scripture and pray maybe

God will open your eyes was she referring to the omnipresence of Christ even when there are two or more gathered in his name he is there among them so I mean there are ways which one can say

Jesus is present here on earth how did she mean it? yes well that's what

I thought she meant and at first I was very confused

I was kind of frantic and just really crying out to God at that moment

I mean orally and I um I I thought after a while after we left she said you know

I basically just broke up with her broke up with the group all at once and she said

I think you're one of the ones that's really seeking Jesus I'll pray that you'll find him and I went home and you know was thinking about it all night and I thought well you know

I've grown up in a Christian household all my life I have often had the attitude that you know because I knew the catechisms because I knew the

Bible verses and so many things that I haven't been seeking the

Lord because I feel like you know I've already got that thing checked off you know I'm already saved and stuff like that and I was convicted you know that I wasn't actively pursuing

God I wasn't actively trying to to learn more and humbling myself and after a few days

I contacted her and and I said you know

I think I understand now what you mean and I started explaining about some of the things

I've been thinking about and she was very happy and kind of surprised and so I met up with her and some of the others of the group and was talking to them and they were very happy and they were saying oh you've come to understand you're starting to have your eyes open now just when

I would talk about this experience and and so we started meeting again and we kind of went back from the beginning a favorite passage of theirs was

Jeremiah 2 and the 13th verse when it talks about how the people have forsaken

God and shunned for themselves cisterns that can hold no water and they explained that as having a mindset where you can't contain

God's words, God's giving you His word and it's just pouring all out of you so we went back from the very beginning and at this point

Pastor Lou one of my elders at Jeremy Thomas at the church had realized that I was

I wasn't doing well or that I was troubled, I was still going to their church and so I met with my elder

Jeremy Thomas and he talked to me about how he went to the 1st

Corinthians 1 and talked about the wisdom of God being foolishness to men and how sometimes it seems like the ordinary worship, when we look at it from the outward perspective it seems very plain but spiritually we're meeting in the presence of God and I started to realize that all the things that they were telling me about strategies being sneaky convincing people all this kind of covert language that it was not true and so I called the girl and told her you guys are not really living for Christ you're trying to save your own skin you want to be part of that 144 ,000 but you're doing it for yourself you're not doing it for Christ and she got really angry and said well basically you just left your own salvation behind and I hung up and I've never talked to them since so where would you say you were personally spiritually at this point in your life having been really it seems prime game if you will for the praying cult members where were you that you were susceptible other than the fact that we know we have to be careful about pretty

Korean girls inviting us to church yeah yeah but where were you that you found yourself seemingly lacking in something that you had to find you had to discover something new elsewhere other than where you were being fed spiritually yeah that's a good question so before I moved out to Houston the church that I had been a member of in the

OPC for many years I think something like 17 years it was not doing well and it closed its doors and that really impacted my family it impacted me a lot

I was living in a different town in Alabama working and I started wanting to meet new believers because I was really sad to see it felt like a part of my life just died away and I started going to different Bible study groups around where I was working and meeting new people when

I came out here I started attending Covenant and that was really wonderful I had before this all happened

I had been in a relationship that ended very badly and so I was feeling lonely

I wanted somebody to talk to and to fellowship with on a regular basis because I lived a bit of a ways from the church and so I think

I was confused I was lonely and I was honestly just you know

I was hungry I wanted to have a feeling of stability again Do you believe that you were regenerate at the time?

That's a hard question I think I was but I think I was also in a very low point in my spiritual life where you know

I was not trusting in God the way I should have I was having to think past you know that the kingdom of heaven is not just the church

I grew up in it's bigger and there are so many more things to learn about God I was at a point where I needed something to happen to wake me up so when this happened

I thought maybe I was saved for the first time but the Lord knows that answer

He knows my heart better than I do Well we have to go to our midway break right now

I hope that you all demonstrate patience with us because this is the longer than normal break that we have in the middle of the show because Grace Life Radio 90 .1

FM in Lake City Florida requires of us a longer break in the middle of the show because they have to localize this program to Lake City Florida with their own public service announcements and other things that they air while we air our globally heard commercials so please use this time wisely, write down as much of the information as you can provided by the advertisers that we have so that you can more frequently and successfully patronize them keeping in mind that without these advertisers we could not exist the finances that come through our advertisers are absolutely crucial for the existence of Iron Trip and Zion Radio so write down that information and also write down questions for our guest

Jonathan Schofield at chrisarnson at gmail .com chrisarnson at gmail .com

is your first name, your city and state and your country of residence if you live outside the USA only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal or private matter don't go away, we'll be right back with Jonathan Schofield and more of his story after these messages

As host of Iron Trip and Zion Radio I frequently get requests from listeners for church recommendations a church

I've been strongly recommending as far back as the 1980's is Grace Covenant Baptist Church in Flemington, New Jersey pastored by Alan Dunn Grace Covenant Baptist Church believes it's

God's prerogative to determine how he shall be worshipped and how he shall be represented in the world they believe churches need to turn to the

Bible to discover what to include in worship and how to worship God in spirit and truth

Grace Covenant Baptist Church endeavors to maintain a God -centered focus, reading, preaching and hearing the word of God singing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, baptism and communion are the scriptural elements of their corporate worship, performed with faith, joy and sobriety discover more about Grace Covenant Baptist Church in Flemington, New Jersey at gcbcnj .squarespace

.com that's gcbcnj .squarespace .com

or call them at 908 -996 -7654 that's 908 -996 -7654 tell

Pastor Dunn that you heard about Grace Covenant Baptist Church on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Every day at thousands of community centers, high schools, middle schools, juvenile institutions coffee shops and local hangouts

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James White of Alpha Omega Ministries is in the Dividing Line webcast here Although God has brought me all over the globe for many years to teach, preach, and debate at numerous venues some of my very fondest memories are from those precious times of fellowship with Pastor Rich Jensen and the

Brethren at Hope Reformed Baptist Church now located at their new, beautiful facilities in Coram, Long Island, New York.

I've had the privilege of opening God's Word from their pulpit on many occasions, have led youth retreats for them, and have always been thrilled to see their members filling many seats at my

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Holy Scriptures, and to be surrounded by truly loving and caring brothers and sisters in Christ.

I also want to congratulate Hope Reformed Baptist Church of Coram for their recent appointment with Pastor Rich Jensen's co -elder,

Pastor Christopher McDowell. For more information on Hope Reformed Baptist Church go to hopereformedli .net

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Tell the folks at Hope Reformed Baptist Church of Coram, Long Island that you heard about them from James White on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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Well, before we return to our guest, Jonathan Schofield, we have a couple of important announcements to make.

First of all, folks, don't forget about our new sponsor,

Banu Gadi, who owns three pharmacies in New York. He owns

Lee's Pharmacy in Long Beach, Long Island, New York, or Lee's Drugs, I'm sorry, in Floral Park, New York.

That's where Lee's Drugs is. Long Beach Chemists is in Long Beach, Long Island, New York, and Prescription Center of Long Island in Hempstead, New York.

Banu Gadi has been making breakthroughs with the coronavirus with a very simple regimen that includes, at least initially, massive doses of vitamin

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And this is a very inexpensive and easily accessible product. Absolutely amazing that you never hear anybody talking about a vitamin

D3 regimen anywhere on television or anywhere else, for that matter, that I'm aware of.

You could watch Fox News all day and see dozens and hear dozens of health experts come on.

None of them are talking about this. The only time vitamin D is even mentioned in passing is in regard to sunlight.

But as far as a vitamin regimen actually having remarkable success, nobody's talking about it.

And that's absolutely amazing. I urge you that if you have the coronavirus, or you fear you do, or somebody that you love as the coronavirus, call

Dr. Gaudi immediately at 516 -354 -2000. 516 -354 -2000.

516 -354 -2000. He has been taking a lot of time out of his busy schedule to speak with people all over the world in regard to the coronavirus.

He has that much of a passion to see people healed of this. So please, call 516 -354 -2000 and ask for Dr.

Banu Gaudi. He's a pharmacist with a doctorate in pharmacy and very, very knowledgeable on the coronavirus, and obviously as I just said, has experienced a lot of positive results, to say the least.

He's actually been used, if God, to save people's lives even when they were on their deathbeds in the hospital.

When they finally got permission from the hospital, one of those rare occasions when the hospital will break protocol, and they were able to, or he was able to get the hospital to administer the massive doses of vitamin

D3. But please call him at 516 -354 -2000 and tell him that you heard about his pharmacies and his knowledge of the coronavirus on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

Also folks, if you love this show and you don't want it to disappear from the airwaves, please go to IronSharpensIronRadio .com

click support, then click, click to donate now. You can donate instantly with a debit or credit card by doing that.

You can also send in a check via snail mail to the address that appears on your screen when you click support at IronSharpensIronRadio .com

and you could also advertise with us if you'd like, because we could certainly use your advertising dollars.

The, just send us an email that says advertising the subject line and send that to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com Please remember never to siphon money away from your regular giving to your own local church in order to give to us.

Don't ever do that, especially during this time of the coronavirus pandemic when a lot of churches have been hit hard, very hard financially.

So please don't siphon money away from your own church in order to give to us, especially during these times.

And never put your family in financial jeopardy by giving to IronSharpensIronRadio.

Those two things are commands of Scripture providing for your church and your family. Providing for this show is not a command of God.

But if you love the show and you are blessed financially above and beyond your ability to obey those two commands, then please,

I urge you to help us financially by going to IronSharpensIronRadio .com click support, then click click to donate now.

You may have a lot of extra money lying around or collecting interest because you're not currently going to concerts, going out fine dining, you're not going to the movies, or to see theatrical performances on stage, you are not going to Bible conferences, and you're not going to your favorite sporting events or doing things, many things that you used to be accustomed to doing, which cost a lot of money.

Please, if you are saving a lot of money by the absence of those things in your life, please share some of that money with us if indeed you love the show and don't want us to disappear.

Go to IronSharpensIronRadio .com click support, then click click to donate now. Also folks, if you are not a member of a local

Bible -believing church and you're not even prayerfully looking for one, you are living in disobedience to God.

I know that there are all kinds of reasons why people aren't a member of a local church or not attending a church that have very sad stories behind them, people who have been deeply hurt at churches, who knows, maybe even physically harmed or molested, or all kinds of reasons why people would be fearful or apprehensive about ever joining a church again, perhaps even visiting one.

But no matter what the cause is, no reason is good enough to disobey

God. I just want to let you know that I'm not being glib or viewing your circumstance in a trite manner, but you've got to really know that you have to obey

God by being under the authority of local elders in a church. So if you need help finding a church,

I have lists of biblically faithful congregations all over the world, and I've already helped quite a number of people find churches all over the world where people in my audience have joined them or visited them on vacation or referred them to others who are in need of churches in those areas.

So, if you need help finding a church, such as Covenant Church in Houston, Texas, if you live near there or are going to be vacationing there or have family, friends, and loved ones near there, send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com

chrisarnson at gmail .com and put I need a church in the subject line. That's also the email address where you can send in a question for Jonathan Schofield about his experience with this cult.

If you would like to join us, send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com chrisarnson at gmail .com

and put I need a church in the subject line. And, we have in fact, your pastor has submitted a question.

Lou Vega, pastor of the church I just mentioned, Covenant Church in Houston, Texas.

And his question is, please ask Mr. Schofield how his upbringing in a Christian home and participation in a

Christian church helped him avoid the calamity of apostasy. Excellent question, because even though you were not certain, or you still are not certain if you were truly regenerated at the time, you did learn things that remained within your mind.

You even sensed that things were off, that things were not quite orthodox in some of the teachings and practices, but if you could continue.

Yes, I think the benefit that I had of growing up in a

Christian home and attending gospel preaching churches is you're exposed to the

Word. You read through the whole Bible, not just the parts that sound nice.

You read through the whole of Scripture. You get to understand how

Scripture interprets itself, and it was really tragic because I think a lot of the other people that I saw that were brought into this group attended churches where they were not being fed, and that's what brought them in.

They had a very shallow understanding of Scripture. They didn't know the Kingdom parables.

They didn't know the Ten Commandments. They were kind of perishing for lack of knowledge, as Jesus said.

And so I think that is one benefit, just having those resources and also having people to pray for you, people to counsel you.

I mean, I owe a huge credit to Pastor Lou and the elder

I mentioned, Jeremy Thomas. They did what they were supposed to do and helped intervene in the situation when

I was confused and didn't know what was going on. Those are a couple of benefits,

I think, and the primary things that I'd say as you said in your endorsement, if you're not a member of a

Gospel -preaching church, you're in danger because there's no neutral in the world.

Well, thank you, Pastor Vega, and by the way, I would love to arrange another interview with you in the near future, if you're free.

So let's talk sometime soon, because I'd love to have you back on the program. We have

B .B. in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and B .B.

asks, Did you feel at any point while attending this cult that you might be willing to abandon the doctrines of Sovereign Grace or anything else that remained in your mind having had the benefit of an upbringing in Reformed churches?

I came to a point towards the end when the girl was telling me about having seen

Jesus and everything. I was at a point where I knew that something was up, and I had a decision to make.

I knew if I were to stay with them, that I would end up leaving my church, and I knew if I continued my church,

I would have to break ties with them because we were kind of at an impasse. So I never felt that I would give up my faith in Christ or my belief in the

Word or anything. I just knew that I had been taking some things for granted, and I was thinking kind of like Abraham where I had to question, is

God trying to tell me from these people that I need to do something, that I need to go somewhere?

I didn't know what He was trying to tell me, but I knew that I was going to have to make a very major life decision very soon, and so it was a frightening time.

Well, thank you, B .B. We have Christian in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, and Christian says,

Do you have any speculation about how specifically your life may have been harmed if you remained with this group?

Yes, if I had remained with the group, like I mentioned,

I would have had to leave my church, and I do not know exactly the secret practices of this group, but like any group that is trying to deceive people and is forsaking the

Scriptures and the Gospel and trying to turn people away, there's no telling. I mean, this is

Satan's work, and so yes, I have no idea. I don't want to know in a way what would have happened, because I'm just glad that it didn't.

We have Ronald also in Suffolk County, in eastern

Suffolk County, Long Island, New York. Ronald says, Did you ever do any further research after leaving the group to find out more about what they believed?

Have you ever discovered whether or not they did believe in some of the essentials of the faith, like salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, the

Trinity, and other pillars of the faith? Yes.

After I hung up on the phone with that girl and completely broke ties with those people, that's actually when

I first started doing some more research. At first I had just looked up the scientist guy who was the girl's mentor and saw that he had a website, and I had asked her before,

Do you guys have a website? And she said, Oh yeah, we have some stuff, and she never got around to showing me after I realized that this was an apostate group.

I just started doing some research and I saw the information all over the internet about Shichun Ji, and I saw a picture and some videos of their leader teaching his disciples, and I was appalled because the figures that he was drawing on his whiteboard in the photo looked exactly like the ones that were being drawn in Houston.

I started reading about them and realized that he had been part of an unsuccessful cult, well, ultimately unsuccessful, as they all are, in the mid - 20th century.

Then he formed his own group after that, and set himself to be the only interpreter of Scripture, and like many things in the group, they don't say their worst teachings explicitly.

They want you to arrive at those conclusions on your own, so he doesn't often say in public,

I am the second coming of Christ, but his followers treat him as such.

Let's see here, we have John in Bangor, Maine, and John in Bangor, Maine has to say, or has to ask,

I should say, what is your primary advice to people to make them more aware of people representing different so -called

Christian groups as to whether or not they are counterfeit? Yeah, that's a good question.

Obviously, I didn't know that I should have been looking out for anything. When I joined the group,

I was very naive. I kind of grew up in a closed group, and so I had no idea.

So first of all, I would say, do research, just see what's out there. Ask your pastor, ask your elders, whatever, what's out there, so you're aware of some things to look out for.

You need to know the word, like I mentioned already, and be on the lookout for people who are very dogmatic, very closed about passages of Scripture that are not as clear.

The clear ones, of course, yeah, we should all be, you know, stick our foot in the ground.

But when somebody says, well, I know how to interpret the whole of Scripture, there are no parts of the

Bible that I don't understand, and it starts to take a gnostic flavor like that, watch out for those people.

You know, it's hard, because for every person, there's every cult that matches them.

It doesn't even have to be religious, it could be materialism, it could be anything, so we have to rely on the

Holy Spirit to protect us, because otherwise we'd be done for. We have

Bobby in Hartsdale, New York, who wants to know, have you learned anything about the numeric spread of this group?

How many countries they're in, etc.? This group has been very prolific, and that's one of the scary things about them.

They have thousands of members, as of recently. They've spread into pretty much every major country that has freedom to worship.

They target people who are already Christians. They don't, they like to get those not worked from scratch, if you will.

Even the Church of England, at one point, I believe, issued a warning about this group in the last five or six years, which is of course really astonishing, knowing where a lot of those people, how liberal they've become.

But they've taken over pretty much anywhere where you could go and find a lot of people that would understand

English, you'll find these groups. And I have a question of my own.

When you were attending these meetings or services, did they ever make any appeal or references to well -known

Christian figures of history who are actually truly Christian, whether they were Reformed or not?

For instance, did they ever mention John Wesley or Jonathan Edwards or anyone of renown to try to glean any truth from them or to perhaps falsely identify with this figure as somebody who allegedly really represents what they believe or anything like that?

They never did anything like that. Actually, one of their sticking points was that as long as you were with them, we were just going to study the

Scriptures. And eventually I understood why they were trying to bring people out of the churches.

So how can you speak favorably of a figure in a particular denomination and then tell people to leave?

So they had a very kind of just bare -bones approach.

The only materials you ever studied in the group were the Bible itself.

Now I know that in fact I can even reflect on my own personal journey before especially before I was saved.

And thankfully I was saved in a Reformed Baptist church. But I can remember during my period of searching there was something very appealing about groups that would say we don't go by the teachings of men.

We don't have any man -made creeds or confessions.

We don't attribute anything that we believe to any mere mortal human.

Everything that we believe is directly from the Bible. We only use the Bible, etc.

There's something appealing about that because you're saying to yourself at this time of searching that you see how all these other churches or many of them that you're aware of have gone so far astray like the

Roman Catholic church and mainline Protestantism and cults. But there is quite a bit of sinful pride and arrogance in that view because what you are saying is they may never say this in these words or admit to this but what they are in actuality saying is that I am the most or we are the most brilliant Bible scholars and exegetes that have ever lived because we are able to draw the truth from Scripture that nobody else before us had the ability to do.

No matter how many centuries of Christendom have existed before us, until us nobody has really gotten the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

So I think that's something even from your own testimony that should alert people to that fact of a danger in somebody that on the surface is saying something that may be very appealing because even we who are

Protestants we love the watchword of the Reformation, sola scriptura, but they, these false groups twist that and mutate it and turn it into something that it was never intended to be.

That's correct, yes. Well we have to go to our final break right now, if you would like to join us before we run out of time with a question of your own our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com chrisarnson at gmail dot com and as always please give us your first name at least, your city and state and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA and only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter don't go away, we'll be right back after these messages.

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Pastor Bill Sousa wishing you all the richest blessings of our Sovereign Lord God Savior and King Jesus Christ today and always

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From Chris Arnzen on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. We are now back with the final segment of our interview with Jonathan Schofield, a professional musician and member of Covenant Church in Houston, Texas.

And we are discussing his brush with the Korean cult, a close call with disaster.

And we have an email from a very faithful listener, the

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio audience, Linda from Hilltop Lakes, Texas. And she says, this is, as always, a very interesting interview.

Did the Korean cult ever try to spy on visits with the interested party's family or tell the person that they needed to break free from the family?

Thank you, and God richly bless Iron Sharpens Iron. Yes, that's a very good question.

In my case, my family still lives in Birmingham, so there was a bit of a distance between us.

But it does happen, whether, and it's not that they tell you, okay, you should distance from your family or your church.

They just make you so busy and spend so much time with you that they end up isolating you just from the interaction with those people.

And it happens a lot in Korea, too, where it's an even bigger deal because the family unit is so much more important to them than,

I guess, in general, we might say in the United States. That seems to be one of the hallmarks of the cults when they do things like that.

In fact, here's another question that relates to one of those hallmarks. We have

RJ in Lake Plains, New York, who wants to know, did the cult seek to follow you after you left them and harass you in any way, either through phone calls, emails, letters, visits unannounced, etc.?

Thankfully, this didn't happen. I went to the campus police department and made a report.

I didn't see any crimes committed, but I wanted them to know what was going on, since this group is not affiliated with the university.

Of course, there's nothing they could do, and they found it very amusing. I got one text from that girl a couple of weeks later that I wasn't quite sure what it meant.

She said something to the effect of, you know, it's going to be cold tonight.

Hope you stay warm. I have no idea what she meant by that. It was kind of creepy, but I never got anything else from that point on.

Let's see. We have Christopher in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania.

And Christopher wants to know, sorry if I missed this part, if you already said it, but I was wondering if you were in contact with your own elders at this time when the cult was trying to seduce you into their group, and did you have any back and forth with your own elders, reporting back to them descriptions of who they were and what they were doing?

When things got to the point where I was, you know, being approached with the idea of you might need to leave your church,

I started talking to my elders more at that point. They knew that I was dating this girl.

They hadn't met her before. She actually visited my church at one point.

So they knew stuff was going on. I had been talking to them, giving them kind of updates on my relationship.

So yes, I had been in contact with them, and thankfully that turned out for the best.

Great. Just out of curiosity, there are some cults that utilize something that's been nicknamed missionary dating.

They'll actually send attractive girls out into the midst of the college campus or wherever it may be, and the girl will strike up a conversation and perhaps even flirt a little bit, and that is a lure for the unexpected victim to follow her into the cult.

And I'm assuming that possibly male members of cults do this with girls outside of their group as well.

Do you have any knowledge as to whether or not this Korean girl who first approached you might have been being used in that way?

I don't want you to slander her if this is something that you're not aware of, but I was just curious.

I really don't know. It could have been her own emotions. It could have been the direction of the cult.

It could have been kind of both at the same time. I really don't know. Well, I want you to have about five minutes now, maybe a little less because we're running out of time, maybe four minutes, just to summarize what you want most etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today regarding this close call that you had.

Yes. I think when we had talked at the beginning of this interview about my conversion story,

I think it's really important to have a life where we can say, well,

I continually seek the Lord. You know, each day, it's not that you repent and say, oh,

I became a Christian for the first time each day, but continually seeking Him, studying

His Word, praying, fellowshipping with the saints, whether they're those around you, those who've already died and left their writings, because we all have to grow, and we're all in the middle of a spiritual battle.

So there is a danger in looking at all the writings that we have, our church buildings, the structure of our worship, and getting too comfortable, like the scribes and Pharisees did, and didn't recognize

Jesus. That was one of the things that I took away from this group, although not to the conclusion that they wanted me to take it.

I had to realize, am I prepared for the Lord's return? Am I prepared to see

Him? Am I living for Him? Or am I just comfortable and think, okay, you know, once saved, always saved.

I gave my life to Christ. I don't have to worry about it anymore. God used that as a tremendous wake -up call, so I hope that we can all find energy from the

Holy Spirit in our spiritual lives and share the gospel, always examine ourselves to see if we're the

Lord, because the Lord used this evil situation for good in my life, and I know

He can do the same for many others. You know, one of the things that I've noticed over the years since the mid -1980s when

I got saved is that there really are no cults that I'm aware of that believe in the historic creeds specifically of the

Reformed faith. When I say creeds, I'm including in that confessions like the

Westminster Confession and the London Baptist Confession, the three forms of unity.

The cults typically seem to have a strong Arminian bent to them, although they would never or rarely identify as Arminian.

I think it's obviously a good idea when being approached by a religious group identifying itself as Christian to see how they square with those confessions.

Now, obviously, there are horrible churches that claim to adhere to those confessions, and there are churches where the leaders behave like dictators or cult leaders, but in the long run, though,

I believe the vast majority of churches that are confessional, they, at the very least, tend not to be aberrant when it comes to theology, doctrine, and practice.

Would you agree with that? Yes, absolutely. Alright, well, I want to make sure that our listeners have all the information they need to know about Covenant Church in Houston, Texas, which is a member of the

PCA, Presbyterian Church in America. The website is covenantpca .org,

and you can also call them at area code 281 -870 -0349, 281 -870 -0349, and I hope that if you live in the

Houston area or are visiting there, that you make sure that you pay a visit to Covenant Church, especially if you don't have a church home of your own if you live in Houston.

Well, I want to thank you for being such an insightful guest today, Jonathan, and I also want to remind our listeners that our guest tomorrow is an

Orthodox Presbyterian brother named Dick Guido, and Dick is going to be speaking about issues involving

Christianity in politics. We hope that you join us for what should be a fascinating discussion.

And then on Thursday, we have Rosaria Butterfield returning to the program.

Rosaria was a tenured professor at Syracuse University, and she is, or should

I say was, a self -identified left -wing Marxist lesbian, and the

Lord delivered her from all of that, and she is now very happily married to a

Presbyterian pastor, and spreading the gospel and warning about the dangerous and damning evils of homosexuality.

So I hope that you tune in on Thursday when we speak about her book,

The Gospel Comes with a House Key. And thank all of you who wrote in questions today, and I hope you all always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater