The 'Reverend' Sun Myung Moon, self-proclaimed 'Messiah' of the controversial cult known commonly as 'The Moonies' (official title: 'The Unification Church'), died in a hospital owned by his organisation in Gapyeong County, northeast of Seoul in South Korea, two weeks after being hospitalised with pneumonia, aged 92.  His ten surviving sons and daughters were by his bedside.

Moon was born in North Korea in 1920 to parents who were Presbyterians and he claimed to have seen a vision of Jesus in 1936 on Easter morning.  In this vision, Jesus purportedly instructed the 16 year old Moon to either 'restore God's perfect kingdom' or told him he was the one chosen to be 'the completer of man's salvation by being the Second Coming of Christ.'  Not unlike other cult founders, e.g. Joseph Smith of the Mormons, the exact instruction(s) Moon supposedly received from Jesus vary depending on who he spoke to and when, for there are clear discrepancies in 'the message'.  Like Smith's 'First Vision' account, Moon's first vision occurs in various guises and was supposedly followed by communications with 'Moses, Buddha - and others' (only the most liberal and clueless Christian would not baulk at the idea that Buddha might have some place in a revelation from the God of the Bible)!  Yet some witnesses to his early years claim he was accused of spying and served time in prison in North Korea in the 1940s under the communist government.

In 1946, Moon established his first church, the Broad Sea Church (even this name is a clear warning to genuine Christians!), studied with Paik Moon Kim (another self-proclaimed messiah!) and eventually decided to borrow some of Kim's teachings as well as the Messianic element which is also cited in the Chung Kam Nok, a 15-16th century cult text which purports that 'the messiah will come from Korea.'  Regardless, Moon founded his own religious movement in Seoul in 1954 using extreme eisegesis (a false method of reading into a text the meaning desired to prop up a 'belief system') of Bible verses and smatterings of Buddhism, Confucianism, with these Korean elements.

As leader, Moon took on various titles, being sometimes referred to as 'Lord of the Second Advent' by his followers as an indication of the role he claimed Jesus called him to fulfil, i.e. he was to complete successfully Jesus' mission which had been a failure having been cut short by the Calvary crucifixion!  These ideas were later explained in a doctrinal book published by Moon's 'Unification Church' in an article titled 'Outline of The Principle:  Level 4' which stated:

'Death on the cross was not the mission that God had originally intended for Jesus, his Son ...Understanding the question of salvation in this light, we can see that Jesus' crucifixion was a secondary course of salvation and provided only spiritual salvation ...There is no one who has been cleansed of original sin.  It is for this reason that the Messiah must appear again on earth, to liquidate our sins completely and establish the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, fulfilling God's Purpose for the Creation.'  (pp. 81, 83)

Moon's inability to grasp the foolishness of such a claim is exposed by the light of the Biblical doctrine of the 'Tri-unitarian' God and His clear Word that declares:

1 Corinthians 14:33: ' ... God is not a God of confusion, but of peace ...'

Numbers 23:19:  God is not a man, that He should lie; neither the son of man, that He should repent (change His mind!): hath He said, and shall He not do it? or hath He spoken, and shall He not make it good?

The church became the Unification Church (in 1954) and Moon moved his international headquarters to the USA in 1959 and thus was perfectly situated to take advantage of the spiritual vacuum that occurred in the 60's when 'Free Love' and Eastern Religions swept America and, it has been alleged, a new cult sprang up every week in California!  He also left his North Korean wife and married Hak Ja Han Moon in 1960.  In 1965 Moon met infamous 'spirit medium' Arthur Ford and, at the resultant seance, received guidance from 'Fletcher', Ford's 'spirit guide', concerning his destiny as a world spiritual leader.  Bo Hi Pak (a leader in the Unification Church), who was present, claimed to have asked:  'Could you ask him [the 'spirit guide'] in connection with the New Age, more specifically, the mission of Our Leader [Moon] here today?'  'Fletcher' is alleged to have answered, 'He is one of those who will be the human instrument through whom the World Teacher will be able to speak ... The Jesus of Galilee will not return - it is not necessary.  The Christ who manifested through him is the Eternal he will manifest again ... But the important thing to remember is that when God wants to make a revelation he has to choose a human instrument ... Sun Myung Moon is the one I have been talking about.  I have been speaking for a group of people here.  This group seems to surround him.  And the power that flows through him, the intelligence, is not just one - it is a great group of people.  And they seem all to draw their inspiration and their knowledge from One Source and then they seem to pour it symbolically into a pool and - in some strange symbolical way - that pool becomes Sun Myung Moon.'

Pak also claimed to have asked:  'You are speaking of New Revelation; that means you are speaking of ...  the Divine Principle brought by Sun Myung Moon?'  And the answer from 'Fletcher' is said to be:  'That's part of it, yes, but even Sun Myung Moon has not exhausted the possibilities of the Divine Mind.  He is - and as long as he lives will continue to be - a channel for revelation.'  Moons' doctrines and behaviour are easily recognised by orthodox, Biblical, Christians to be occultic and never less than extremely heretical and therefore to be rejected and exposed as widely as he promulgated those works.

As a result of Moon's methods of 'love bombing' young people (mainly) who were separated by circumstances from their protecting families (often as students away from home for the first time), his recruitment methods, which included sleep-deprivation, were correctly identified as brainwashing. Ex-devotees claimed they were lied to - although the practice was simply labelled 'heavenly deception' by the brain-washed members! - as well as tortured and beaten.  Moon showed his great 'Messiah-like' attributes by labelling homosexuals 'dirty, dung-eating dogs' (something Jesus never did even though he clearly would not approve of the homosexual lifestyle: re. His description of God's law for human relationships involves only one man with one woman - read Matthew 19:4-12 - in which the adultery of Moon is clearly condemned).  Moon also blamed the Jews for the Holocaust because they had betrayed the Lord Jesus Christ and handed him over to the Romans and thus earned their fate!  All of these are signs of an anti-Christ figure.

The brain-washed disciples were sent out on the streets, or to train-stations or airports, to sell flowers and were such an effective source of income that, in 1972, the Unification Church purchased 'an $85,000 estate near Tarrytown, New York, as a centre for training and purchased a $620,000 estate as a residence for the Reverend Moon, who had acquired a permanent resident visa!  He called his 'interpretation' of Scripture 'Divine Principle' and subsequently released a monthly newspaper - 'The Unification News' - and published a monthly magazine called 'Insight'.  Thus Moon's Unification Church became one of the wealthiest cults in America and managed to link to a variety of associated organizations, e.g. The American Freedom Coalition, Collegiate Association for the Research of Principles (CARP), CAUSA USA, American Leadership Conferences, American Constitution Committee, National Committee Against Religions Bigotry and Racism, Conservative Action Foundation, National Council for Church and Social Action, The Washington Times Corporation, World Media Association, U.S. Property Development Corporation, Atlanta Video, Happy World Inc., and many other groups in an attempt to clean-up their image (Washington Post, 15 October 1989).

Mass wedding ceremonies, which Moon began in the early 1960s, were another source of major criticism, for he paired up almost complete strangers from different parts of the world in ceremonies, including one at Madison Square Garden in New York (the first held outside Korea) declaring:

'International and inter-cultural marriages are the quickest way to bring about an ideal world of peace.'

In Oakland, California, Moon demonstrated his total lack of any Christ-like character when he told the women in attendance: 'If you don't give birth, you are disqualified as a woman' ('Rev. Moon Stirs Up Fans,' Oakland Tribune, March 13, 2001) and, in Oklahoma City that same year, he proclaimed: 'I have been to the spirit world. I have met God.'  The only 'god' Moon may have met is the one who he has been a pawn of for so many years:  Satan - the 'god of this world' (2 Corinthians 4:4)

Moon's mass marriage ceremonies have been announced in publications like the Wall Street Journal, simply because of their size:

'More that 25,000 couples from 120 countries will be joined in holy matrimony tomorrow by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Unification Church.  This wedding will beat the previous record, also held by the Rev. Moon, set in 1988 when 6,516 couples from 83 countries got married in a church-owned barley-cola bottling plant near Seoul.' (24 August 1992, p. A-1)

Couples must serve the church for 3 years before being eligible for the rite of marriage and partners are often picked by Moon and approved by him.  Core workers must work as missionaries for the first 3 years of marriage, separated from their mates. A more insidious clue to the true nature of these 'marriages' is revealed by witnesses to Moon's early 'ministry' in Korea where he was apparently jailed for 'adultery and promiscuity.'  The 'Reverend' Won Il Chei, a Presbyterian pastor in Seoul, Korea, made this claim:

'If we believe those who have gone into this group and come out, they say that one has to receive Sun Myung Moon's blood to receive salvation.  That blood is ordinarily received by three periods of sexual intercourse.'  (Sun Myung Moon and the Unification Church, p. 11)  This would be consistent with parallel cult leader's false doctrines of salvation through sex, e.g. Joseph Smith, the Mormon false prophet, who secretly introduced polygamy into his 'church' so he and chosen leaders could enjoy as many women as they chose - and David Koresh who formed the Waco, Texas, Branch Davidian cult (a spin-off from the Seventh-Day Adventist cult) and employed similarly ugly deception of the worst kind.  In one of the severest ironies, one of Moon's 'doctrines' is that mankind fell from grace because Eve had sex with Satan!  Even when these vile leaders are exposed by written testimonies from numerous witnesses the indoctrinated will continue to support their delusions and claim 'slander' and 'libel' rather than give up the (mainly!) men they have based their 'spiritual' hopes and lives upon!

Moons' claim that man's ultimate destiny was to be married and have a perfect family, but that this could not be accomplished because Jesus failed to bring about full salvation, is a typical cult leader's attempt to insert his destiny into God's plan of salvation.  This was supposedly when 'the marriage of the lamb prophesied in the 19th chapter of Revelation took place' and is claimed to have been when 'the Lord of the Second Advent and His Bride became the True Parents of mankind' - i.e. in 1960 when the 'Reverend Moon married his wife Hak-Ja Han' ('Father [Moon!] announced the previous evening to the international world-level festival participants that he and Mother are the 'Savior, the Lord of the Second Advent, the Messiah'' - Today's World, September 1992, pp. 20-21).  Thus we have the supposed explanation for the multiple marriage ceremonies that 'the messiah Moon' led to establish the perfect family - a task that Jesus failed to fulfil.  That the multiple 'perfect families' Moon created have failed to produce 'a perfect society that will spread to the entire world' is obvious - to the entire world! (B.  Bjornstad, The Moon Is Not The Son, pp. 62-63)

After surviving a helicopter crash near Seoul in 2008, he recovered to preside over a ceremony for 45,000 people who were either marrying for the first time or renewing their vows.  These mass weddings may well prove to be the only enduring image of his organisation in the eyes of the world which will probably remain ignorant of Moon's real motives.

His pronouncements on world peace reflected badly when his own life revealed a greed for power (which he attempted to obtain by sucking up to any political ally or buying them off) and money supplied by his minions.  Thus he amassed a fortune, some invested in South Korea, e.g. a ski resort, numerous football teams, schools and hospitals,  and many other businesses which are said to be run as effectively as large 'normal' conglomerates, such as Samsung and Hyundai.

Moon apparently spent some part of his early years in prison in North Korea, being an avowed anti-communist, but later repaired his links with the Kim dynasty in the North and sought to be a 'player' in North-South links, setting up a 'peace' institute and operating one of the few big hotels in the North, the Potonggang, in the capital, Pyongyang.  He operated in a similar manner in the USA, backing disgraced US president Richard Nixon after the Watergate scandal, and cultivating links with conservative US leaders, e.g. former presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush snr.

Many decades ago, mimicking the popes, Moon 'prophesied' that he would take over the world - which would be a good trick from where he is now!  Like many other fake messiahs and charismanic loonies, he also pronounced himself 'humanity's saviour' - even claiming he had 'saved' the spirits of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, helping them to become 'reborn as new persons'!  These utterly un-Biblical pronouncements were made at a self-promoting 'coronation ceremony' attended by Sun Myung Moon's front organizations (Family Federation for World Peace, Women's Federation for World Peace, Summit Council for World Peace, etc.) to promote 'morals and family values.'  Who joined the self-professed 'Messiah' in working for these 'religiously correct' goals (between 7/31/96-8/2/96) at the convention in Washington, DC.?  The highly paid speakers (reportedly paid $80-150,000 each) included former presidents Ford and Bush (Senior), Robert Schuller, Ralph Reed, Gary Bauer (president of Family Research Council - 'the lobbying/research arm of Focus on the Family' - focussing on what, we may ask, when they are dull enough to help advertise a cult that has damaged and destroyed so many young lives?!) and Beverly LaHaye (perhaps best known for The Act of Marriage, a book she co-authored in 1976 with her husband, Tim LaHaye, and for founding and presiding over Concerned Women for America (CWA) in 1979 in San Diego, California; in 1992, Jerry Falwell's Liberty University gave her an honorary Doctorate of Humanities).  Entertainment at Moon's event was by former chart-topping singer Pat Boone (and his family) who have long been infamous for gullibility on an extra-ordinary level.  While evangelical speakers were careful not to offend their high-paying host with the true gospel, Moon and his wife, Hak Ja Han, boldly proclaimed their false gospel!  What a denial of Christ for these stooges to even be on the same platform as their host who  declared that he is perfecting the work 'left uncompleted by Jesus'!  Some of the attendees subsequently tried to distance themselves from the event.

The late Jerry Falwell's participated as a speaker at a conference in Montevideo, Uruguay, sponsored by Moon's Inter-Religious Federation for World Peace and Washington Times Foundation, and titled, 'Christian Ecumenism in the Americas: Toward One Christian Family Under God.'  According to Moon's Unification News, February 1996, speakers in addition to Moon and Falwell included William Cenkner (Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at Catholic University of America), Dr. Nilson de Amaral Fanini (President of the Baptist World Alliance), and Michael Cromartie (Senior Fellow in Protestant Studies and Director of the Evangelical Studies Project at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.).  In his speech, Falwell said, 'It is my observation and personal conviction that conferences and seminars like this one can be very beneficial for building bridges of communication.' Did the Lord Jesus Christ ever command us to 'Go into all the world and build bridges of communication.'  Christians are commanded to 'preach the gospel' and any 'fellowshipping with unbeleivers' is to be avoided!  This is just one of many examples of so-called Christian evangelicals who have increasingly engaged in 'dialogue' with Catholics and other cultists.  Many other examples could be given of similar compromise on the part of today's 'evangelical leaders'.

Jerry Falwell was pictured posing in a warm hug with Moon after speaking at the conference in Montevideo, Uruguay and called this monster an 'unsung hero [to] the cause of freedom' who was 'to be commended' for his 'determination, courage, and endurance in support of his beliefs'.  How could Falwell be ignorant of the facts about a cult leader who opposed freedom and whose mind control tactics enslaved his followers?  A creature who Falwell commended for supporting what beliefs?  That Jesus failed in His mission, that Moon is the true Messiah, and that Jesus Christ has purportedly said:

'[T]he King of Glory ... our precious Lord Sun Myung Moon and his beloved bride Hak Ja Han  ... reign as king and queen of the entire universe...[and] I, Jesus of Nazareth, known as the Christ, bow in humility before them....'.

And Falwell hugged and commended this 'son of Belial' (1 Sam.  2:12; Judges 19:22; 20:13) - a follower of Satan?!

Another evangelical with a big reputation and a similar inept ability to stay faithful to the Word of God or 'discern the spirits' (1 Corinthians 12:9) is Pat Robertson whose 'Christian Coalition' includes among its members Mormons, Moonies, Roman Catholics, Jews - and anyone else with conservative politics and morals.

Moon's schemes unravelled in various ways for, in 1978, a US congressional committee found evidence of his ties to Korean intelligence agencies and concluded that the Unification Church 'systematically violated US tax, immigration, banking, currency and Foreign Agents Registration Act laws'.  As a result (May 1982) Moon was convicted of failing to report nearly $112,000 in earned interest in a Chase Manhattan bank account and the receipt of $50,000 of corporate stock and consequently served 13 months in federal prison in the USA.  Following this he began to hand over day-to-day control of his religious and business empire to his children - perhaps to avoid a possible repeat of this set-back. Financial interests have obviously played a not inconsiderable part in the psyche of the Moon family for one of his sons reportedly sued his own mother in 2011 for €17.5 million over money sent to her missionary group!  Tragedy has not eluded the Moon's in other ways, for another son died by suicide in 1999 while two other sons reportedly died at an early age - one in a train crash and another in a traffic accident.

The doctrines of the Moonies assert that 'God has both masculine and feminine qualities based on the universal fact of polarity' and claims there are similarities between the Unification Church theology of God the Father and the deity concept of I Ching, Confucianism, Taoism and even the Hindu worship of a Mother Goddess!

Another certain sign of an anti-Christ cult is found in the Unification Church's denial of the full deity of Jesus in their claim that:  ' ... Jesus, being one body with God, may be called a second God (image of God), but he can by no means be God Himself'  ('Divine Principle', p. 211).  They claim that Jesus' real purpose in coming to earth was to establish God's kingdom  by marrying a perfect woman and having perfect children but, due to a mistake, Jesus was crucified before this could be accomplished and thus he is only able to provide 'partial salvation'.  This is yet another certain pointer to an anti-Christian cult - adding to the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ at Calvary and claiming that 'Full salvation' would be brought by 'the next Adam' or 'the Lord of the Second Advent'.  Moon also blasphemously claimed that Jesus was born of an immoral relationship between Mary and the father of John the Baptist and, of course, had absolutely no evidence on which to base such a claim - not that factual evidence was ever necessary where cult leaders are concerned.

Unification theology claims that 'the Holy Spirit is not a separate entity, a being different from God the Father [but] ... The Holy Spirit simply refers to God's redemptive activity ... [and the Holy Spirit] ... appears feminine, masculine and impersonal ... Like God Himself, the Spirit is invisible and incorporeal - a bright light or a field of magnetic energy' (Unification Theology, pp. 201-202).  Again, their false ideas of the nature of the Holy Spirit is utterly at odds with the Bible and reveals their Satanic origin.

Although 'the Divine Principle' revealed in the book of the same name remains the major theological work of the Unification Church, in typical cult-leader manner it is not the complete truth and allows for 'other revelations' (i.e. changes of the leader's mind - which are often cover-ups, flip-flops, and even outright contradictions, as necessary!):

'The Divine Principle revealed in this book is only part of the new truth...as time goes on, deeper parts of the truth will be continually revealed'  (p. 16).

These claims are the elementary ploys of cult leaders which fool the naive and gullible who don't recognise the obvious contradiction of a leader who claims he is bringing 'new truth' yet, when he changes it, is clearly admitting that 'the new truth' was insufficient and needed additional 'polishing' or 'adjustment'.  Examples can be supplied to any who doubt this statement and they apply to every cult, whether it be based in The Vatican (Roman Catholicism), Salt Lake City (The Mormons), or Brooklyn, New York (The Watchtower Bible & Tract Society of Jehovah's Witnesses).  By contrast, Biblical Christianity follows a clear pattern of forgiveness of sin by the shedding of blood - a 'scarlet thread' of blood through animal sacrifices that occurs throughout Scripture and reveals a line of blood atonement which began in the Garden of Eden (Gen. 3:21), was exemplified in the Passover (Ex. 12:1-28), and was finally fulfilled in Christ's sacrifice on the cross (Heb. 9:22; 1 Pet. 1:19, 20).

By contrast to the ludicrous delusional declarations from Moon we find that the Bible declares every doctrine of orthodox Christianity powerfully and irrefutably:

•    The Trinity is an entirely Biblical doctrine: there is One God (Isaiah 44:6-8, Isaiah 45:22, 1 Cor. 8:4) - the Father is God (Phil. 2:11, 2 Peter 1:17), the Son is God (John 1:1, John 10:32, Rev. 1:8), and the Holy Spirit is God and personal (John 16:13-14, Acts 5:3-4, Acts 13:2);
•    Jesus did not fail in His mission and the crucifixion was not a mistake and was revealed in the Old Testament long before He was born (Ps. 69:21; Ps. 41:9; Ps. 31:5, 11; Ps. 35:11; Isa. 53:7-12; Ps. 22:1-16; Ps. 109:25; Ps. 22:7-18; Ps. 69:21; Ps. 34:20; John 17:4, John 18:37, John 19:30, Hebrews 12:2);
•    Salvation is to be found only in Jesus, not in 'another messiah' or 'Lord of the Second Advent' (Matthew 7:15, Mark 13:22, Acts 4:12, 1 John 5:11-12).

The testimony of those who escaped this dangerous cult - and many needed 'rescuing' because they were unable to summon the necessary will to release themselves from this 'loving' group - required considerable 'deprogramming' after spending even a few weeks in the church.  The clearly devious recruitment tactics and the reports of followers being duped out of their led to massive publicity from the escapees which rightly caused the organisation to be described as 'sinister' and 'evil' and followers were lampooned as 'Moonies'.  The publicity was obviously damaging to Moon and the cult tried to silence The Daily Mail by suing for libel over an article in 1978 which exposed the methods by which the 'Moonies' attracted young recruits and kept them separated from their families but, in 1981, a milestone legal victory against the cult established that the Mail was right to condemn it as 'the church that breaks up families'.  Thus Moon became the subject of a longstanding exclusion order that prevented him coming to the UK to promote his religion but, in 2005, Home Secretary Charles Clarke allowed him entry for 24 hours to address followers at a private event.

Despite intense lobbying the 'Council of Churches of the City of New York' denied membership to Moon's Unification Church citing the sect's theology and their methods of placing pressure on young converts to leave their families and making it the first time the council rejected an application (presumably other leading cults who would never desire to be part of such a council have never applied before?).  Despite this adverse exposure and partial restriction on Moon himself the organisation has claimed to have as many as three million adherents at its peak but the truth, as far as it can be gleaned from ex-members who have more of an inside track on the situation, is that there may be no more than 'tens of thousands left'.  Media reports suggest as many as 150,000 disciples may travel to view the body of Moon as it 'lies in state' - the empty shell of a sadly deceived false Messiah who now faces an eternity of judgement:

Hebrews 9:27 - '... inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment'.