News Analysis
by Lynne M. Jackson
    Under the mantel of restoring the family, the nation and the world, the founder of the Unification Church, Rev. Sun Myung Moon, came to St. Louis March 28th to share his message and his doctrine. In the early days, his followers became known as "Moonies." His self-proclaimed messiahship required allegiance to him and another gospel, which made his movement clearly a cult by biblical definitions, showing him to be a false prophet.
    At the March 28th gathering, entitled "We Will Stand," his message prelude dwelt for nearly an hour on the fall of man being caused by Adam and Eve's sexual sin and gave very graphic justifications as to why human "love organs are the most precious things in the entire universe." Lineage is more important than life and love according to Moon. Moon's self-appointed purpose is to fulfill the mission that Jesus "failed" at by being the "True Parents" and uniting the world in love. He stated that his message was "not developed on my own, it is from God and Jesus." According to Moon, couples without children were not families and were told they were "crazy" and went on to state that "God wants families and without them you cannot get into the Kingdom." The mixture of truth with a lie was apparent and this combination of diametrically opposed statements went on all night.
    Unfortunately a good number of representatives from various churches, including Baptist, Catholic and Jewish pastors who sponsored the event, apparently chose to set aside basic Christian doctrine for the sake of unity. Fortunately, even though the approximate 700 in attendance were goaded for applause at times, the crowd barely clapped with "support" at the unusual doctrines espoused. Many however did cheer the five pastors and two attendees who won custom made gold watches in the raffle toward the end.
    Denver Seminary professor Gordon Lewis succinctly summarizes cults this way: A cult, then, is any religious movement which claims the backing of Christ or the Bible, but distorts the central message of Christianity by 1.) An additional revelation, and 2.) By displacing a fundamental tenet of the faith with a secondary matter. This is exactly what the "We Will Stand" Tour brought to St. Louis.
    In Matthew 7:15, Christ Himself warns us "Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves." We need to reach out to the followers of Sun Myung Moon, and Moon himself for that matter, as well as those who support his cult, and give them the True Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Lynne M. Jackson is the president and founder of the Prophecy and Apologetics Research and Resource Center in St. Louis, MO. For more information call (314) 837-4883.