May God make America a kingdom of priests and a holy nation on all 561 American campuses and how ever many campuses there are in Canada and all campuses around the world may fall like Jericho to become a kingdom of priests and a holy nation for all 1:1 bible students to taste the delicious food of the Holy Spirit for making America a kingdom of priests and a holy nation! Amen!

I will call you Denzel, from now on;).
Where is your article about “A Fellowship of Differents,” btw?

Did you finish the book?
I’m waiting for your article.

Btw, now I think the name “Honest Rhee” should have given us a hint – while it is realistic that UBF gives names of aspirable virtues to its members, a name like “Hard Working Rhee” would be much more plausible. Honesty is not really considered a virtue in the world of UBF.

The parts about homosexuality and Islam are shallow. How can someone think so degradingly about fellow human beings. And in the one word, how is repentance hard work? What type of repentance/salvation is being talked about here? One earned by works or one given by grace alont?

Christianity is not about sin management. That is not what Christ taught. Christ taught a relationship with Him. If you read this Honest Rhee, could you explain how this testimony shows “positive things about UBF” and what your understanding of the gospel is?

> This is BULL**** . Sounds pathetic! Sounds depressing! Sounds resentful! Sounds disgusting! Sounds flat just like everything I heard over 11 years of being in UBF! No heartbeat! Flatline! How many ‘sheep’ were hurt because of you!!? You UBF people always preach selflessness but that statement itself shows so much selfishness! So many ‘ran away’ because of the spiritual bullying that was going on. News Flash – you are not God! I heard that pathetic ‘my sheep left me’ , ‘my sheep ran away’ , ‘my sheep this’ , ‘my sheep that’…It ain’t sheep problem! It’s your problem ‘Honest’Rhee! At least live up to your name! Be honest for a change! Listen to your ‘sheep’ first before listening to anything or anybody else.

I have thought of this game though, where quotes are presented as “from a ubf lecture or North Korean propaganda?”

I want to point out a correction though. The article mentions “starting with Genesis 17…”

Genesis 17 is about circumcision, so this must be a typo :) Probably the author means Genesis 19, the story of Sodom.

Genesis 19 is a common passage thrown at gay people. Those who say Sodom was destroyed because of homosexuals are Biblicaly illiterate and have fallen prey to wild stories made up about Genesis 19. See Richard B. Hayes book “The Moral Vision of the NT”. Hayes is non-affirming, but on his thoughts about Genesis 19, I very much agree with him.

What was the sin of Sodom? Well we just need to read Ezekiel 16:48-52. Surely sexual sin was involved, but that was not the primary sin of Sodom. And what was that sexual sin in Genesis 19? It was gang rape. So yes God is not happy with gang rape, but I see no evidence God is so angry with gender and sexual minorities. And we cannot use Genesis 19 to condemn our gay or transgender or lesbian friends and family.

Furthermore, as Hayes points out, Ezekiel says that Israel’s sins are TWO TIMES as bad as whatever sins Samaria or Sodom and Gomorrah committed.

But as for never revealing beliefs, I agree 100%. I touched on this in my first comment. When questioned about a practice, there is never a direct explanation but always a work-around. “Sheep” can only accept such things after months of this gradual process and countless proof-texts. It is all very convincing when you hear it revealed this way by a missionary or a shepherd, but if it were spelled out plainly for what it is it would be (and is) shocking to the majority of Christendom.

I don’t believe the author of this article was mocking God. I think he was motivated by fear of God. I believe he wrote this to point out some very serious problems with RW’s message.

To Mr. Rhee, whatever your motivations are, I hope you didn’t do this lightly. It is a serious sin if you did make this up before the Lord. PLEASE DO NOT CALL HIS NAME LIGHTLY.

I do however, have some real prayer topics lists and some private documents from some Korean ubfers… their #1 prayer topic? To unite North and South Korea. So perhaps there is some political purpose underneath all the holy paint?

In any case we have a REAL article from gc in the queue. That should generate some real discussion.

I happened to glance at yesterday’s Daily Bread. Someone has been taking the standard, predictable DB teachings and dressing them up with copious amounts of American evangelical clichés and mixed metaphors It’s kind of funny, in an odd sort of way. If I didn’t know better, I might have thought this was a parody.

####

GOD IS BUILDING A TEAM

Exodus 4:18- 31
Key verse: Exodus 4:29-30

September 7, 2015

First, a decision of faith to obey the Lord (18-23). God gave commands and Moses simply obeyed, setting off as God directed. Moses never debated with God or insisted on understanding everything first. He simply obeyed. It is basic that anyone answering the call of God must have an attitude of trust in, and obedience to God as they live by faith.

Second, God is forming his larger team (24-31).

God’s work is never done by one person. It requires a team. Here we see a spouse, a brother and community elders. Behind every great man is an even greater woman. God helped Moses by inspiring Zipporah to circumcise their son. When Moses was too weak to do the right thing, his wife stood in the gap. God brought two brothers together. Aaron saw God’s hand and committed himself to the mission. Siblings may be part of the team. Vision casting among the elders is essential. It is important to get all the community elders on board with God’s plan. The team joined in worship.

Prayer: Lord, help me work with other members of the team you have formed so that you may be glorified.

One word: God is building a team so get on board!

Koreans typically cannot pronounce both “r” and “l” properly. Their language does not distinguish between these sounds. They seem to do better with “l”, but not sure.

So some will invite you to Biber study or help with their Engrish. So I’m guessing that depending on what the immigration people heard, they became either “Rhee” or “Lee”. (more info)

Before posting an article, I confirm some things, such as the person has a real (or real-sounding) email address, is willing to make a ubfriends account and replies to my email.

This “honest” person did all of that. If they are joking around, then then that means they spent quite a bit of time coming up with this clever article, made a fake Gmail account, made a fake ubfriends account and replied to my email that they would answer questions posed to the article.

I guess I should have known a Korean missionary would never have been so friendly and would never use such good English.

Yes, I believe so. The author’s pseudonym is a clever way of expressing dismay at how awful RW’s message was. “Honestly, Pastor Ron…”

Poe’s law is a real phenomenon. It’s why people are regularly duped into thinking that stories from The Onion are real news.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/christandpopculture/2013/10/why-we-confuse-the-onion-for-the-news/

* That paragraph about Caitlyn Jenner and radical Muslims has some very sophisticated satire. It takes RW’s words at face value and tries to follow them to their logical conclusions, which are ridiculous. RW never supposes that his words are going to be analyzed logically. Missionaries don’t do that.

* How many missionaries are familiar with N.T. Wright?

Anyway it seems we are all becoming victims of Poe’s law here.

By the way, why do some Koreans use the spelling “Rhee” and some use “Lee” in English? In Korean it’s the exact same name, isn’t it?

Any one of these paragraphs could plausibly have come from a UBF missionary’s testimony. But the overall structure doesn’t seem right. It’s not boring enough. It doesn’t step through the passage verse by verse. And it mentions PRW by name too many times.

Okay, Honest. Are you going to engage in a dialogue or take the path of just about every other UBF member who has jumped on this website? You have dropped an article here and will most likely come back at least once to see the consequence. If ubfriends is not so positive then do engage and try to make it more appealing. Btw, I would hope that you are using sarcasm, because you are anything but humble. You are full of UBF clichés and I thank God that I did not have to sit through a meeting just to listen to such repetitive nonsensical meandering. Sorry, what passage were you hearing that Sunday? I could not quite get the point or the meaning because Jesus was obscured by your romanticised picture of UBF and repentance.

So come on now Mr/Ms. Rhee. Are you seriously expecting us to believe this? Is this a big joke?

No it was not. Honest honestly believes this article will improve the quality of ubfriends. Not even I could make this up.

While I am not a fan of pretending to know what Jesus would say or do, Mr. Rhee, I am quite certain Jesus would NEVER say what you claim to such a woman. I am quite certain Jesus would be having a big party with all the gay and transgender people kicked out of Christian homes.

And I am quite certain Jesus would sound more like this. You see, what pissed off Jesus was not the prostitutes, for he ate and drank with the likes of them. What pissed off Jesus was people who claim to see but are blind. Jesus would sound more like this:

Woe to you, teachers of the Bible and Shepherds you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.

Woe to you, teachers of the Bible and Shepherds you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are.

Woe to you, blind guides! You say, ‘If anyone shares their feelings, it means nothing; but anyone who shares their testimony is bound by that oath.’

Woe to you, teachers of the Bible and Shepherds you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your weeekly salary. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—- justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.

Woe to you, teachers of the Bible and Shepherds, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Shepherd! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.

Woe to you, teachers of the Bible and Shepherds, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.

Woe to you, teachers of the Bible and Shepherds you hypocrites! You worship on the tomb of Lee and decorate the graves of the righteous.

You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell? Therefore I am sending you ubfriends like Joe and Ben and John A. and Brian’s books. Some of them you will kill and crucify; others you will flog in your Bible houses and pursue from town to town.

Negligence is one of the most dangerous attributes for a leader to have.

Example: One of the last days I went to a UBF Sunday “worship” service… the so-called pastor quoted John 8:32 “Then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.”

After service, I approached this so-called pastor and said, “what about the truth about your sons? who were sexually molested? what about the truth about all the children who were molested… will the truth set them free?”

To which his response was a typical UBF cult answer, “Oh no! we can not mention those things – those things will not solidify the body but rather will separate the church”

I responded, “so I guess the truth won’t set you free” and I walked away.

You wonder why your bible students left you and hurt you so much? look at the plank in your own eye and stop worrying about how everyone else is sooooo sinful and possessed by demons by not writing ridiculous UBF testimonies.
Try being honest with yourself your family and friends and really seek Jesus – not “Samuel-Lee-Jesus” but the real Jesus who died for you and me.

I am sorry if my words offend you or anyone else – but wow! read what you wrote man! open your eyes!

PRW should start telling the UBF leaders about their sin. But of course he is too afraid to do that. He prefers to talk about the speck in the sheep’s eye, paying no attention to the plank in the eye of his own church and the leaders who brainwashed him. So pathetic.

So when does UBF start to call a sin like ordering abortion a sin? When will it start to repent for this and so many other sins? Sins commited not as normal sinners, but as people who claim to study the Bible and claim to have authority from God? Aren’t such sins a thousand times worse than sins commited by non-Christians who do not know about God and do not claim to be God’s servants and ministers?

What Honest shared is supposed to be the good things of UBF? It’s heart-breaking that this is real. It’s also angering. Honest’s conclusions reflect many of the recent discussions here. The way demons and evil spirits work among UBF people makes you wonder if the Holy Spirit is taking sabbaticals from believers or was even dwelling in and with them in the first place. I find the conclusions here to be so ridiculous and out there, and yet not surprising at all from a UBF member.

Yes, that’s true. UBF can make a new history when it accepts God’s word with repentance. For instance, repentance for ordering abortions, as Samuel Lee did. Mr. Rhee, when do you expect this will happen?

“One of the marks of a certain type of bad man is that he cannot give up a thing himself without wanting every one else to give it up. That is not the Christian way. An individual Christian may see fit to give up all sorts of things for special reasons–marriage, or meat, or beer, or the cinema; but the moment he starts saying the things are bad in themselves, or looking down his nose at other people who do use them, he has taken the wrong turning.”

― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Why don’t you focus on yourself instead of trying to make everyone else like you — Korean. We are not interested in the gospel by Samuel “cult leader” Lee — instead we are interested in the true Gospel of Jesus which gives us eternal life through His Holy Spirit.

I am sorry if I sound too emotional, it is just that – this is the same kind of false gospel jibberish that was spewed upon those victims (which included a 6 year old girl) who were sexually abused in NYUBF. UBF tries to make up its own gospel according to Korean culture, confucianism and so much more… it’s truly sickening and I am sick and tired of these liars spreading their hatred and abuse in the name of a Holy and righteous God.

That said, I also cannot deny the aspects of UBF that, if not harmful, have been at least a roadblock to my journey. I believe there are ways in which the ministry is unbiblical (what church is exempt from this problem?). One way in particular that stuck out to me from your testimony was the idea that “sheep” who are called to serve elsewhere are seen as committing a great evil and damaging the ministry; they are running away, not following God’s voice. I believe that true accountability and discipleship must be exercised based on freedom and a full knowledge of the commitment involved, with the understanding that such an arrangement may not be lifelong. In UBF, discipleship is gradually introduced in a very secretive way to “sheep” who have no idea what is happening questionable UBF practices like “spiritual order”, “marriage by faith” and “supporting the house of God” are fed to them in place of a proper application and understanding of the Word.

This comment is neither meant to be a personal attack on you nor a bashing of UBF. The organization does have positive aspects, and I am very grateful for the time God has given me as a member. It is still important to recognize the issues and encourage those who are struggling with God’s direction. I especially appreciate this quote from PRW’s message:

“As we begin this new fall semester, let’s learn how we can start something new in our spiritual lives and in our community. – See more at: http://www.ubfriends.org/2015/09/07/prepare-the-way-for-the-lord/#sthash.S7jvZvsF.dpuf”

By the grace of God, I hope that we will all seek fresh God’s guidance and His truth in the Word. May God bless you in your walk, and I hope the Bible studies go well!