OlivetWatch: A new website

A friend of mine pointed me at a new website called OlivetWatch.com, which has an interesting video on it. In that video, four different ex-members of David Jang's organization go on camera discussing their experiences with David Jang. Their faces and voices are obscured, which is regrettable but understandable: as I've said elsewhere, the one thing Jang doesn't seem to have skimped on is skeezy but expensive lawyers. (I've been on the receiving end of those nasty legal letters from Jang's folks, and I can affirm that the best investment I ever made was the $25 I spent on a "personal injury coverage" endorsement to my homeowners' policy.)

At any rate, check out the video on the OlivetWatch home page. It's worth watching, and I look forward to seeing what else ends up there.  

A statement from Japan about David Jang

I gather that there have been some developments lately in Japan with regard to David Jang. Several former members have come forward, and released a statement detailing their experiences with his organization.



It appeared in Japanese a few weeks ago, but the Kirishin website has now posted a translation into English.

The urgent statement by former believers of Jang Jae-hyung (Pastor David) and religious corporation “Ai no Hikari”, “Olivet Assembly” and other related groups. 

We are former members of the “Community” who consists of believers David Jang whose real name is Jang Jae-hyung. We received a one-on-one Bible lecture (70 lectures) from a Korean missionary in the vicinity of our university and local station. This Bible lecture was based on a very general doctrine of Christianity, but in the final lecture, the history lesson, we learned the lessons titled “The Genealogy of Christ,” “Time and Date,” and “New Israel.” 

The last history lecture was focused on the core doctrine that “there is already a Second Coming Christ after Jesus”. We were “guided” by missionaries to believe that this Christ was Pastor David. We were warned not to tell anyone this truth. These churches were called Tokyo Sophia Church, Tokyo Ephesus Church, Hongo Presbyterian Church (Hongo Shinjuku Ward, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, Yamabukicho, Shinjuku Ward, Chiyoda Ward, Ueno, Ikebukuro, Waseda, etc.) belonging to “Nihon Kirisutokyo Choro Kyokai”(Japan Christian Presbyterian Church). We were cleverly guided by the lecture to realize that Pastor David, the supreme power of the Church, was a Christ. We devoted our life to the greatest task of building God’s Kingdom (the Kingdom of God on earth). 

We had to hide everything in order to keep the Community not look like a heresy until the last day. We learned that if Pastor David was known as Christ, he would be arrested and persecuted and his history ceased. They said the Gospel of the New Testament was incomplete because “Jesus said in parables,” but the Gospel of David was called the “Eternal Gospel” preached by one who had mission of Christ. We were under the direction of David and the missionary, and we had to work at the relevant organizations and corporations, and have never been repaid. Through this statement, we would like to clarify the human rights violations and damages actually received. 

Since 2003, Pastor David named his church community “Nihon Kirisutokyo Choro Kyokai”(Japan Christian Presbyterian Church). Before that, the General Assembly (headquarters) was located in Koganei City, Tokyo. Since 2002, the Community had wandered some rented building and changed its name from Tokyo Sophia Church to Tokyo Ephesus Church, and to Hongo Presbyterian Church. The believers were suffering from poverty, and the missionary lived on the loan and savings of new believers.
We raised money and paid a rent for church-related organizations across the country. Despite knowing the believers’ poverty, Pastor David said, “You have no faith, gather more believers.” He ordered us to contract for the building that were more good-placed and high-class. We had no ability to pay monthly rents of hundreds of thousands of yen, delinquencies and outstanding payments were common in many places. When we could not pay to the owners, they demanded eviction, but immediately we contract another high-class building to continue the church and the business. We were scared of urge from creditors for repayment of large loans. On the other hand, we were so tired mentally and physically to engage in building “the Kingdom of God.” So we somehow decided to “escape” and “resign” from the Community. Actually, there are many members who left this Community. Some people cannot testify because of their painful experiences, which are too deeply hurt by David or missionaries and cannot be told to others. Some people are afraid of retaliation and cannot cooperate. 

The believers of the church, which is now called the “Ai no Hikari” (Light of Love) denomination, is composed of same missionaries and Japanese believers of that time. It’s nothing more than a change of name. Some of our members were responsible for the ministry (Christian worklabor) of “Christian Today”. “Go to the big church,” David instructed to us. This is because they cannot disclose the existence of their own churches, so if they are asked which church they belong to, it is necessary to prepare a church to answer temporarily. This was for not to be denied interview.  They were instructed to go to Yodobashi Church (Wesleyan Holiness Church). 

We would like to appeal to you about human rights violations and damages, focusing on the following contents. 

The orders of the pastor David and the superior missionaries were absolute and we had to obey. We contracted a large amount of loans as a student. Mental pain was caused by domination. 

The suffering caused by forced marriage (a way of looking like a Unification Church, Moonies’ arranged marriage) unpaid work at Christian Today, Inc., Verecom, Inc., Breathecast, Jubilee Mission, and ACM (now AM). There was no written contract, no explanation about guarantees and insurance. (Pastor David decided who works at which organization. The believers could not choose by themselves.) 

We paid the tuition fee of Olivet University, founded by Pastor David, but we could take few lectures. 

Each one of the believers are very pure people. Most of them are evangelized in their school days and do not know the world outside of the Community. They do not intend to hurt others. However, for the absolute obedience to David’s orders, no one can resist. They execute as he says. Even lying and wrongdoing are justified by the word of “obedience”. 

One thing to note is that the appearance of the Community is a ordinary church based on the faith of Jesus Christ, but it also hides the presence of another Christ “David” (Jang Jae-hyung). We appeal to prevent secondary damage to youth so that they are not subject to similar damage, and we still strongly expect and demand the withdrawal of our colleagues still remaining in the Community and their rehabilitation into the society in the future.

I'm quoting it in full here, because statements like this have a tendency to go missing: Jang's got good lawyers, and he's not afraid to use 'em.

For folks observing from the outside, there's nothing really new here. It's the same story I've been hearing for the last six or seven years: folks were "evangelized" as teenagers or very young adults, and were taught that Jang was a second Christ. Convinced of this, they submitted unquestioningly to Jang, worked for little or no pay, moved where he told them to move, married whom he told them to marry, and ran up huge debts at Jang's direction but in their own names. And the whole while, they tried to present to the outside world a facade of success and prosperity.

The saddest part of this story is precisely that there's nothing new here. This is the same story I've heard dozens of times, from all over the world.

Nor does it take much imagination to see the parallels between what happened with these Japanese converts and the websites and organizations they started back in the early 2000's, and what has happened with Johnathan Davis and Etienne Uzac and IBTimes and Newsweek much more recently.

Jang is gonna Jang. It's just what Jang does.

Lessons learned looking for deer

Lesson 1: Cover your face

Over the summer, our family was out camping, and we noticed a small herd of deer wandering through the campground. Our three kids figured they'd practice some stalking (they were pretty bored), so they put on their camo shirts and pants, and snuck off towards the three does and the forked-horn buck that were grazing about 100 yards from our campsite. The results were predictable - the deer were tame enough to let them get within about 20 yards, but too smart to let them get closer.

But afterwards, our eldest decided that he wanted to practice stalking me. The game was that I would pretend to just be staring off into space, occasionally looking around, and if anything he was doing was obvious, if I saw him making a clear movement or if something about his presence jumped out at me, he had to start over.

And I actually learned something while being stalked by an 11-year-old that I hadn't expected: his face and hands really showed up. He tried sneaking in on his belly, and from 20 yards I couldn't distinguish his camo clothes at all. But his pale face and bare hands were almost luminescent compared to the dark foliage around him, and were by far the most noticeable part of his body.

That was when I bought all three of us ghilly hats and camo gloves.







The hats look pretty ridiculous, and they fog up your glasses, but they hide your face well, break up your form, and maybe just as important, they keep out the mosquitos. (They're almost worth it just for that last.)

Lesson 2: Stop moving

When you spot a deer, the very, very first thing you want to do is simple: stop moving. Period. Freeze. Don't move a muscle, until you figure out what's going on and have made a plan.

Surprisingly, this can be harder said than done. My first instinct is apparently to shrink back behind the nearest cover. But that movement into hiding attracts a deer's attention, and has cost me several opportunities. In contrast, when I've just stayed still, even when the deer totally had me, it generally didn't spook.

When I was hunting down in southern Oregon this last September, Chris Zornes and I were approaching a watering hole where we were hoping to setup for the evening. We were early enough that we weren't expecting to find any deer there, but about a hundred yards out, we spotted five or six deer milling around the hole. They were all does and fawns, so far as we could tell, but we still didn't want to spook them off. We stayed at a distance until they appeared to leave, then moved closer.

About 40 yards out from the hole, downwind, I was moving from one clump of brush to another, when two does and a fawn suddenly walked out from some brush near the hole, and I was caught totally in the open, moving. This time, at least, I managed to freeze, and went motionless. The lead doe caught something, and stared at me, but didn't spook. When she looked away for a moment, I moved slowly to put a small tree between us. It wouldn't hide me complely, but at least it would break up my form. The three deer stayed there for several minutes before the lead doe finally got suspicious and cut a circle around behind us, to get downwind. She was about 10-15 yards away when she finally got a whiff of our scent, and then she (and the rest of the herd) bolted.

The next day, I didn't exercise as much control, and ended up blowing a stalk. I'd jumped a doe and a small buck, but the buck stopped about 80 yards away on a hillside, and after a few minutes, I watched him settle down under a tree. He had an excellent view of the country around him, but after some thought, I was able to work out a path that would keep me mostly downwind and mostly screened to within 30 yards, which is about my range for an ethical shot. So I got down on my belly, and started crawling. I'd closed to 50 yards, checking periodically to make sure he hadn't moved, when I had to cross an open area. There was some brush blocking his view of that opening, so I started slowly crawling forward. Several feet out, I glanced his direction, and realized that he'd stood up and moved a few yards. From this new vantage point, his view wasn't blocked at all, and he was staring right at me. Without thinking, I scooted back behind the nearest bush - maybe the dumbest thing I could have done. He looked at me for five seconds, and then disappeared up the hill. I don't know if freezing would have kept him from getting spooked, but pulling back certainly put the icing on the cake.

Lesson 3: Look for the other deer

When you spot a deer, before you do anything, look for the other deer around it. Usually deer aren't traveling by themselves, so when you see one, there are probably more. It's surprisingly easy to get so focused on the one you're looking at that you miss the others standing a few feet away.

This happened to me the only time (so far) that I've actually taken a shot at a deer. It was in a spike-or-better unit down in Oregon, and on our fourth day of hunting, Chris and I saw a small but legal deer standing a short ways off the road. We stopped his truck, and the deer didn't move. I felt a little awkward about shooting a spike - he didn't have spots, but he wasn't much more than a largish fawn. But it would have been my first deer, and I wasn't about to turn it down. So I got out of the truck, eased out my bow, and ranged him. 20 yards. This was going to be easy.

Then he started to move away. I wasn't sure how far, but he stopped after a few yards, and I guessed he was maybe at 25. I didn't want to take the time to re-range, so I put his shoulder blades between my 20 and 30 yard pins, and let fly. I couldn't quite tell where the arrow went, but he jumped and kicked, and ran about 10 yards before stopping and looking back.

I immediately grabbed for another arrow, to see if I could get a follow-up shot. Right as I nocked it, I finally noticed that he was being followed by another doe, and a much larger fork. They had been standing there in plain sight this whole time, and Chris and I had both totally missed them. Not being sure whether my first arrow had gone home, I didn't want to take a shot at the fork, so I ignored him, and tried to maneuver for a second shot on the spike. But while I was trying to get into position, they decided to move - quickly this time - and were gone.

We eventually found my arrow, and it was completely clean - no blood on it at all. Our best guess is that he was closer than I'd believed, and that I shot over his back: it must have touched him just enough to give him the willies and make him jump. But if I'd kept my eyes open, I would have seen the fork, and given their direction of travel, probably would have had time to range him correctly.

Lesson 4: Screen your form

When you're looking through the forest for deer, by far the easiest thing to see is movement. After that, it's something distinctive, usually their ears, sometimes their tail. But if the deer is motionless, in the shadows, and they're screened by some brush, they're surprisingly hard to see.

The only benefit is that this can also work in our favor. Animal brains recognize movement, and they recognize form, so when you move slowly (it has to be very slowly), and break up your form, you can make it much harder for them to realize there's a human standing there. When stalking a deer, if you keep something between you and your quarry - a rock, a tree trunk, a small bush - even if you're partially visible, you have a much better chance that the deer will look right past you.

To drive this point home, I recommend that you try sneaking up on someone in the woods sometime. (Not your wife. Not if yours is anything like mine and you don't enjoy sleeping on the couch.)

Down in Oregon, Chris and I had split up to do some still hunting - he was going to take one ridge, and I was going to take the other. An hour or so later, I saw that he'd crossed over onto my ridge, and was walking up towards me, maybe two hundred yards away. He sat down to glass, and I decided to see how close I could get before he spotted me. I knew it couldn't be very close, because I had to cross a whole bunch of open area, but I figured I'd give it a shot.

I approached him from the side, walking slowly, in the open sunlight. There was a small tree about 15 feet to his right, and I put that between us. As I walked he glanced a time or two in my direction, and I thought for sure he'd spot me, but he gave no sign of recognition, so I kept moving slowly, putting my feet down as quietly as I could. After 10 minutes or so, I was standing just 15 feet from him, behind the tree, and I had all the reward I could hope for when I stepped from behind the tree and watched him jump half out of his skin.



Absent a buddy who's not paying attention, try sometime to see how close you can sit to a well-traveled trail, without the hikers seeing you. I've had folks out scouting pass 10 yards from where I was sitting, lightly screened, without noticing I was there. (I've also been the guy feeling the surge of adrenaline when I realize there's another hunter sitting only a short distance away.)

Lesson 5: Watch your silhouette

I was still hunting one sunny morning when I spotted a deer's silhouette moving on the far side of some brush about 40 yards away, followed shortly by two more. I was out in the open, but in the shade, and I figured that the same brush screening them would screen me, so I slowly moved towards the only opening where they could come out. Several minutes passed, and they never appeared - and I never did see them again.

Only afterwards, when I was thinking about it, did I realize that even though (a) there was brush between me and the deer, and (b) I was in the shade, right behind me was a bright, golden, sunny field. Even through the brush, my moving and shaded silhouette would have stood out like a drag queen at church.

Lesson 6: Noise disappears faster than scent

Yeah, yeah, if you've read this far, you know this, right? So did I. But it's one thing to know it in theory, and another to actually watch deer react to your smell, while you're watching them.

Chris and I had decided to setup at a watering hole in southern Oregon - the same watering hole I mentioned above. We parked his truck about a quarter mile away, and walked in along the main trail, with the idea that it would be quieter than approaching through the brush on the other side. I expressed some concern that the deer coming in on this trail would hit our scent, but Chris (who has been hunting the area for close to 15 years) said, "Nah, I don't think that they pay too much attention to human scent around here. It's just too common."

We got close to the hole, and split up. Chris camped out on a hillside slightly above the hole, and I followed a deer trail up a small draw, moved about 15 yards out, and setup in some brush, well hidden.

An hour later, I watched a small herd of does come down another trail towards the hole. They were upwind of my position, but about sixty yards away, they hit our back trail, and every one of them immediately stopped. They milled around for about five minutes, looking for the human predators they could obviously smell, before deciding that a drink wasn't worth it, and they bailed.

About 15 minutes later, another herd came down the draw. They passed within 15 yards of me, still upwind, but then the lead doe hit my back trail. She nearly jumped out of her skin. She looked around desperately, trying to spot me, and then bailed. Oddly enough, the other three deer didn't immediately follow her. They milled around for a few minutes, afraid to go further, but reluctant to leave. One of the fawns actually put its nose down on the path I had taken, and began to follow it right up to where I was sitting. About then, the lead doe started wheezing loudly, from about a hundred yards back up the draw. It was a sound I had never heard a deer make before, and I can only imagine that she was warning them, insisting that they follow her and get out. They were obviously thirsty, because they didn't want to leave the hole without a drink, but eventually they took her warning, and disappeared. None of them ever spotted me, but there was no doubt they knew I was there.

We didn't see any bucks that night, but the lesson was clear: we should have cared more about whether a deer would smell us on the main trail, and less about whether they would have heard us in the brush. The noise would have been long gone by the time we were situated; but the scent lasted.

A grand unified theory of hunting

I mentioned in my last post that animals are much better at knowing where we are than we are at knowing where they are. But we can also extend that thought slightly, as it presents the primary dilemma associated with hunting.

(1) If you want to see animals, you need to move.
(2) If you move, animals will see you.

All the different hunting techniques are just attempts to overcome this paradox.

Another way of looking at this is to say that hunting is an attempt to maximize your daily "encounter zone" (the daily acreage where you can detect a deer) while minimizing your "warning zone" (the daily acreage where a deer can detect you). Deer are better than you are at this, so your warning zone is normally bigger than your encounter zone. The real bugger, though is that most of what you can do to increase your encounter zone is going to increase your warning zone; and nearly every technique that decreases your warning zone is also going to decrease your encounter zone.

The idea that you have to be moving to see deer is basically just math, though it's empirically verifiable as well. If you pick some random spot out in the woods, and sit there, you're not going to see many animals. You're much more likely to see a deer if you engage in some counter-intuitive behaviors, like driving your truck slowly along logging roads, or even better, riding your mountain bike.

The reason is that deer don't move much during the day, and when they do, it's slowly. During daylight hours, a blacktail might only walk a quarter mile. (It'll move further at night, but that doesn't help a hunter.) If you can see that deer from 50 yards, the territory from which it's visible that day will amount to about 10 acres (440 yards * 100 yards = 44,000 square yards = 9.1 acres). In other words, there's only a 10 acre "encounter zone" with a randomly positioned stationary hunter, and your chances of your location intersecting with the deer's encounter zone is relatively small.

But if you're out mountain biking, and you cover 10 miles with the same 50 yards of visibility, you'll have put 330 acres of territory within your purview, so you've got a much larger encounter zone. Mathematically, there's simply a better chance that a deer will be in those 330 acres than that a stationary hunter's location will fall within the 10 acres from which a traveling deer can be seen. But because you're moving, and because deer are better at these things than we are, any deer will be able to tell you're passing by from probably 100 yards away - so your warning zone will probably extend to over 600 acres.



This is also why so many hunters are primarily road hunters. You really do see more animals that way. Over the last two seasons, I've  laid eyes on 150 or so deer. Probably 100 of those were from a moving vehicle of some sort (auto, truck or bike), and maybe 40 were from when I was walking or still hunting. I've only seen maybe a dozen deer when I was setup somewhere, silent and quiet - despite having spent much of my time in the woods completely motionless.

Me, motionless

The problem is that when you're moving, the deer also see you. This goes back to how animals (including the two-legged variety) interpret their visual field. Long ago, evolution figured out that things which move are more relevant to our survival than things which don't, so our brains are hard-wired to pay attention to movement. When you're moving, you scatter more scent around; and you make more noise. So yeah, you see the deer, but all you see of them is black tails and white butts, disappearing into the brush.

So what do you do? Well, like I said, every hunting technique is just an attempt to get around the "10 acre problem". But each of them in turn introduces its own set of complications.

Still hunting - walking very slowly and quietly - is an attempt to minimize your warning zone by keeping signs of your presence below the deer's "excitement threshold", while still covering enough territory to increase your encounter zone to something reasonable. This is probably my favorite sort of hunting, because you're doing something that requires skill and concentration, and your view is constantly changing.

Still hunting in southern Oregon

The downside is that a deer's excitement threshold is quite low. It's hard - harder than you would think - to keep a deer from seeing you if you're not absolutely motionless. Sound, scent and sight are all against you. I can only think of a few times, while still-hunting, that I was able to spot deer before they knew I was there, and it's no accident that they were all were in relatively arid southern Oregon. The forest we were hunting was open enough that I could see further than the deer could hear, and when the wind was right, I sometimes got lucky enough to notice the deer first. (Most of the time, of course, by the time I noticed them, they were either staring straight at me, or were disappearing through the tree trunks.) I've never managed to accomplish this in the much denser and louder undergrowth of western Washington. If you want to be quiet anywhere west of the Cascades, you have to be on a road or well-traveled trail - which is usually open enough that the deer are going to spot your unscreened movements well before you take any account of their screened, still, grey bodies. Or you end up traveling so slowly that you don't really open up your encounter zone very much. There's probably some sweet spot, but I haven't found it yet.

Stand hunting - positioning yourself in a tree stand or a ground blind and staying put - is an attempt to put yourself within the right 10 acres. You make your encounter zone huge during the scouting season, letting you make an educated guess as to where the deer are likely to be come hunting season. Your encounter zone while actually hunting is tiny, but assuming you remain still, quiet and motionless, your warning zone should be even tinier. (It will extend just a few yards upwind, and a quarter mile or so downwind.)

Setting up a tree stand

The main downside to this approach, if you're hunting western Washington blacktail, is that they're hippy deer. They go where they want, when they want, with no pattern I've been able to discern. I've been told you can set your clock with whitetails - if you see them nibbling a particular patch of alfalfa at 7:00 am today, you've got a pretty good chance of find them there at 7:00 am tomorrow. No self-respecting blacktail would ever let themselves get tied down to a schedule like that. They go anywhere and everywhere. It's not uncommon for a well-marked trail to get used maybe a couple times a week. That's a lot of time to be sitting in a tree stand.

The books will tell you, by the way, that blacktail do have certain patterns: that there are differences between feeding areas, daytime bedding areas, and night-time bedding areas; between trails used for traveling to feeding areas, those used traveling away from feeding areas, or those used for escape. These books say that with careful study, you can figure out which is which, and predict where blacktail are going to be.

Unfortunately, blacktail haven't read those books.

Spot-and-stalk hunting - trying to spot animals from a distance and then sneak up on them - is an attempt to increase your encounter zone via binoculars and careful positioning. Once you've spotted an animal and know where it is, you can focus your movements, and remain careful enough during your stalk to (help) ensure that the animal stays outside your warning zone.

The main downside to this approach is, "Have you ever been in western Washington?" This is what it looks like:




Or this:



Or this:



Yeah, good luck spotting and stalking with that.

To do reasonable "spot and stalk", I think you need to be in a place where you can see at least 10-20% of the land around you at 400 yards.

This is maybe a little thick for spot-and-stalk, but it's at least plausible

Most deer will still be hidden, but you've got a fighting chance. In most wild places in western Washington, you're gonna be lucky if you can see that much of the land around you at 50 yards. Some places, it's gonna be 5. There are locations where maybe you can try it - big, recent clearcuts - but you're restricted to glassing the edges of the cuts, which is pretty limiting. I've never seen a western Washington blacktail in a clearcut open enough to glass from a distance.

Road hunting basically says, "Screw it, I'm gonna make both my encounter and my warning zones so huge that if I get lucky, a deer might get confused and let me have a shot." I have a feeling that when deer hear a truck or a mountain bike coming down a logging road, or even a noisy hiker on a trail, they often conclude, "Nothing making that much noise can possibly be dangerous." Or maybe it takes them 10 seconds to make up their mind - but by that time, you're traveling fast enough that you've moved within the encounter zone.

A deer I saw while walking, which spooked as soon as I stopped to take its picture

The biggest downside to moving quickly is that the deer are always going to know you're there, and you're only sometimes going to know that they are. Deer hide really well - more on that in a future post - and in a western Washington forest, they're almost invisible until they move. If you're moving quickly, you're unlikely to see a screened, motionless deer. (Hell, they can be hard enough to see when you know they're there, and you've been staring at the spot for five minutes.) When the deer finally does move, it'll be heading quickly towards brush or other landscape features that it knows will screen its movements, and it's unlikely you'll get a shot off in time.

I should note that if you're in a vehicle and see some deer beside the road, if you keep going and don't slow down, the deer will often let you pass without moving. But if you stop, or try to get out and off the road, the deer will be gone in seconds. The only exception to this that I've seen is if the deer is a yearling without its mother. Then it'll sometimes remain still. The one actual shot I've taken at a deer - and blew - was of this sort.

Oddly enough, if you're moving slowly, but with just enough movement or sound that the deer can tell you're coming, they're more likely to spook than if you're moving quickly and noisily. I once watched my kids trying to stalk some deer at a campground. So long as the deer knew where they were, my kids could get fairly close: the deer didn't really care about all the noise and commotion. But when my kids tried to circle back some distance and approach from behind, the deer quickly locked in on the sounds of unknown origin, and bolted. Deer really don't like anything that gives the impression of trying to sneak up on them.

So what do you?

I don't know yet. Nothing I've tried has worked. Yet. But I've learned a lot about the details, and I'll have some comments on what precisely I've picked up in future posts.

Why hunt?

One of the things I don't think I realized when I started hunting was just how much better animals are at hiding than humans are at finding them.

When I started hunting last year, some church friends gave me permission to hunt on 40 acres of their property. Their parcel is in a fairly rural area, and was recently logged. It's on a slope that backs up against a steep hill and provides access to thousands of acres of public land. It's a gorgeous hillside, with a perfect mix of deep timber, recent clear cuts, deciduous trees and evergreens, and lots of blackberries.



I've since spent most of my time in the woods focused on scouting and hunting that area - hundreds of hours, in all seasons, in all weather patterns, and using every technique I can think of.

The reason why is that there are animals there. There are bear and cougar and bobcat and coyotes.






It's full of deer beds, deer browse, and trees that the bucks have been knocking the snot out of.





There are enormous tracks and deep trails and huge piles of scat.





I've got three trail cameras out there, and I've been able to identify at least six different bucks, from tiny spikes up to really nice five points. Given typical buck:doe ratios, if there's that many identifiable bucks, it means that there are probably 30 or more deer somewhere on that hillside.

It's a rich, rich area.

And in all that time, I've seen exactly four deer.

Four deer. That's all. And all does.

Only once would it have been legal for me to take a shot, and they were gone before I could think. I never once drew back my bow with an animal in my sights.

The only way I can square what I'm seeing - the sign and the trail camera pics - and what I'm not seeing - actual animals - is that blacktail are really, really smart. I've come to the conclusion that if you’re in the woods, it’s generally a safe assumption that every animal for a quarter mile around knows exactly where you are.

Hunting is like playing hide and seek in a 27 million square foot house, with hiding places everywhere, trying to find someone who runs faster than Usain Bolt, hides better than John Rambo, smells better than a bloodhound, and moves as quietly as the grass grows. And who knows that his life depends on you never seeing him.

It's frustrating as hell.

And yet it's been an amazing experience. I’ve been a hiker and backpacker all my life, and have spent a lot of time outdoors, but I’ve never paid attention to the forest the way that I do now. Have you ever seen a billboard from a long distance off, and you can’t quite figure out what the picture is of? It’s just a blob of colors. But then you get closer, and suddenly it resolves itself into a recognizable image, and now you can’t not see it.

It’s that way for me with hunting. The woods were all one kind of big blob for me before. Now, I see signs of animals everywhere. I see where they’ve been walking. I see where they’ve been eating. I see where they’ve been sleeping, hiding, fighting and courting. I’m seeing the forest in three dimensions finally. I’m inside the woods in a way that I never was when I was just walking through them. If you’re a gardener, you know how different it feels to eat food you’ve grown yourself instead of just bought at the grocery store. It’s something like that: it turns out that the natural world has a texture and history, a structure and substance, that I had never understood.

When you’re sitting in a stand, the whole world feels different. You’re silent and still. You hear everything: the guy starting up his chainsaw two miles away, woodpeckers across the draw, a Douglas squirrel yelling at who knows what, crows arguing, leaves falling. You see birds flitting through the bushes, squirrels in every tree, chipmunks skittering across your boot. You know exactly where your scent is blowing, you notice every gust of wind, and grimace when it changes direction. But you’re not asleep, or even tired, because every moment you’re living in hope, you’re scanning the treeline, looking through the brush, listening with everything you can, waiting for that one moment - the one that in your heart of hearts you know you’re going to blow - when the deer you’ve been waiting for shows his head.

Some thoughts on blacktail hunting (from a total noob)

About three years ago, I bought my kids a couple of toy bows - some of those $30 jobs that you can find at any sporting goods store, which pull maybe 15-20 pounds, and shoot about as straight as Liberace. We couldn't hit anything with them, but it was fun plinking around. As a kid myself, I had borrowed the tiny wooden longbow my own Dad had as a kid, and loved it, but I think it came with maybe 1-2 arrows, and I quickly lost those. So this was my first chance to actually experience anything like archery.

After a year or two, I was still enjoying it enough that I wondered what it would be like to shoot a real bow - something dangerous enough to actually warrant the anxiety Galena had been lavishing on the toy bows. I knew that real archers actually sometimes hit what they were aiming at, and I was happy to blame my repeated failures in that regard on my equipment.

So after some research, and on a weekend when Galena wasn't paying too much attention, I found myself walking out of our local bow store with a new Hoyt PowerMax and all the fixings.



Not surprisingly, I found myself actually able to hit stuff. Not at all well, mind you - I was shooting something like 8" groupings at 20 yards - but way better than anything I'd been able to do with the kids' bows. And I loved the thunk that the arrows made sinking into a target at high speed. It was cool.

I didn't know enough to know that I shouldn't be impressed at this grouping

After a month or so of that, I started wanting to shoot at more than just targets in the backyard. Which got me thinking about hunting.

I was pushing fifty, and hadn't hunted since a family friend took me a couple times in high school. But I remembered the feeling of excitement and power that came from walking through the woods with a weapon in my hand. And I figured that if I was going to try for a mid-life crisis, this was about as innocent a pastime as Galena could ask for.

The first problem is that I really had no idea where to start. I was a complete newbie - I couldn't tell you the difference between a blacktail, a whitetail and a mulie, and had no idea which ones lived anywhere near me. None of my friends hunted, and none of the hunters in my extended family lived close enough. Just reading the Washington state hunting regulations was an exercise in frustration. But I started watching Youtube videos, reading hunting websites, and hanging out on hunting forums, and that got me hooked.

In one sense, those resources were invaluable. I had no idea, for instance, that if you shoot an animal with a bow, you're not supposed to jump up and run after it. I'd always thought that an animal shot with an arrow would act roughly the way a human in a movie does, and fall down with a dramatic thump. It wouldn't have crossed my mind to think that they would nearly always simply run away, like they'd never been hit. And I was a bit surprised at how seriously the hunters on the videos treated the wind. I had some vague theoretical notion that animals had a better sense of smell than humans, but I had never thought to pay attention to which way the wind was blowing.

In another sense, though, the resources weren't all that helpful, for several reasons. First, the vast majority of deer hunting resources are targeted towards whitetail hunters. I haven't yet had a chance to go after a whitetail, but after two seasons of hunting Columbian blacktails, I can tell you that they ain't nothing like their eastern cousins. I'll get into the details in later posts, but suffice to say that techniques which work well on whitetails are nearly irrelevant to the sort of hunting available in western Washington. Second, and this is just what you'd expect, the videos are nearly always about successful hunts. At best they'll mention the months of scouting and the fruitless weeks spent in a treestand, or even throw them into a montage, but that's not what they show. And that gives you a very different feel for what hunting feels like when you're actually doing it, especially in an area where deer don't travel in herds, spend nearly all their time in thick undergrowth, and are unlikely to ever be seen in significant numbers.

So I've been thinking that I'd like to throw up a few blog posts about my experiences as a total newcomer to the sport. It should be obvious that these are not going to be the authoritative pronouncements of an experienced hunter. (I've been hunting for one and a half seasons, haven't harvested anything bigger than a rabbit, and have taken a single shot at a deer - a spike - and missed clean. I'm in no position to be giving advice to anyone.) It's mostly a way for me to collect my own thoughts, and maybe help other newbie hunters who were in the same spot I was. And if you happen to be reading this, and can spot something I'm doing wrong or have totally missed - please, chime in!

The value and the limits of unit testing

Swyfft’s website (https://swyfft.com) is now live – for a certain definition of “live”, in this case, meaning the coastal counties of Alabama. Alabama is where we hope to get some good initial sales metrics, before we expand out to more states.

When I joined Swyfft back in April, depending on how you looked at it, the website was maybe 90% done, and maybe only about 10% done. I’m sure you’ve heard the old developers’ saying, “The first 90% of a project takes 90% of the time. The last 10% takes the other 90%.” And that was certainly true here.

In addition to adding more features, one of the biggest things we’ve been working on since April is automating our testing process. My strong preference, whenever it’s feasible, is to rely heavily on pure unit tests, with all dependencies mocked out. It’s easier to isolate the code under test when you do it that way, it’s easier to get the tests running on your build server, and the tests themselves run a lot faster.

Unfortunately, that approach has limited utility at Swyfft. The main reason is that our system relies heavily on over a million rows of meta-data, spread over 20 or 30 tables. Many of our most critical tests can be summarized as, “Does this code interact correctly with this metadata?” And by definition, that’s the sort of thing you can’t do with pure unit tests.

Consequently, I’ve split up our automated tests into roughly three categories:

1. Unit tests. These don’t talk to the real database, and any dependencies are strictly mocked out (we use Moq for this).
   
2. Integration tests. The entry point for these tests can be anywhere from the API controller in the website, down to the lowest-level repository, but the key is that they actually talk to the real database – though other dependencies (such as Authorize.net, our payment processor, or IMS, our agency management system) are generally still mocked out.
   
3. Acceptance tests. The line between these and integration tests is a little fuzzy sometimes, as we still use the same testing framework for both (we recently switched from MSTest to xUnit). But basically, the idea is that we don’t mock anything out, and each test exercises the system from front-to-back, usually in defined flows. We use Selenium to drive a web browser for tests that involve the website.

This works. Mostly.

Don’t get me wrong – our testing infrastructure is critical to Swyfft, and we couldn’t have gotten where we are without it. The thousand or so tests that we run on each build are an invaluable safety net. But there are plenty of things we’re going to need to improve. A few of them:

1. Selenium is susceptible to random failures. About half of our test runs will trigger at least one unrepeatable Selenium test failure. We’ve tried different browser drivers through Selenium, and Chrome is maybe the least problematic, but every one I’ve tested seems to have similar problems, just to different degrees. Those random failures significantly decrease the value of having a build automation server: just because Jenkins rejects the build doesn’t mean anything if you know that there’s a 50% chance the build was rejected because of something that isn’t really a problem in your code.
   
2. The whole thing is really slow. I prefer my test automation suite to run in under 60 seconds. Anymore than that, and running the tests become something you do when you think you’re done coding, rather than something you do repeatedly as you’re ginning up a new feature or performing a quick refactor. And unfortunately, our tests take about 15 minutes to run on a fast machine. You can work around the slowness, and we do, but it really interferes with getting realtime feedback.
   
3. Keeping the DB in sync on our build automation server is a PITA. We could regenerate the DB for each run, but it takes about 15 minutes or so just to load the metadata, and the test runs are long enough already.
   
4. We’ve done almost nothing about JavaScript unit testing. The site is simple enough so far that we can get by with UI-level automation testing, but as the site gets more and more complex, that’s not going to be sufficient. We could probably get rid of half of our problematic Selenium tests if we were able to verify the JavaScript (or rather, TypeScript) code at one or two levels lower down the stack.

I’d be interested in hearing how other folks have solved these problems. Please let me know!

Swyfft is off and running

For a little over a year, Swyfft, the company I joined last April, has been working to revolutionize homeowners' insurance. And we've got some seriously cool stuff going. Most of it I can't talk about - it's full of algorithms and analytics and patented this-and-that. But the result is straightforward enough: you go to our website, put in an address, and two or three seconds later, get a quote. I think we're the first insurance company to pull this off, and it's very cool.

Of course, a fast quote wouldn't be terribly helpful if it didn't also save people money. And we've got tricks up our sleeve there, too. Naturally, we can't save everyone money: claims are what they are. But Sean Maher, our very smart, nay, brilliant CEO (I'm not above bootlicking), has worked some magic there as well. And we think we can assess the sorts of risks a property is likely to face as well as or better than insurance companies who've had billions of dollars and decades trying.

Our systems, the piece that I'm most intimately involved with, have been more-or-less ready since late last summer. But the business side has taken quite a bit longer: negotiating the contracts, maneuvering through the regulations and licensing agencies, that sort of thing. But we're up and running now, and the response we've seen so far is promising and exciting.

Everyone has to start somewhere, and our initial market is small: coastal Alabama. But that's just the start. As we get initial metrics, and start to increase traction, we aim to be all over the Gulf Coast, and eventually, nationwide.

I love Swyfft, I love what I get to do every morning, and I can't wait to knock the socks off our industry.

Brief thoughts on Newman’s “Development of Doctrine”

On p. 47 of Newman’s An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, Newman writes:

I have been arguing, in respect to the revealed doctrine, given to us from above in Christianity, first, that in consequence of its intellectual character, and as passing through the minds of so many generations of men, and as applied by them to so many purposes, and as investigated so curiously as to its capabilities, implicaitons, and bearings, it could not but grow or develop, as time went on, into a large theological system.

He’s correct on this point, I believe. Anything that impacts human beings is going to invoke human curiosity, and anything that claims to be as significant as Christianity will necessarily be the focus of a great deal of intellectual endeavor. I can’t imagine being human without some desire for consistency and coherency in what we believe, and I can’t imagine a human civilization without people who are focused on figuring out how each part of our social and intellectual worlds connects up to the other parts. If something big happens to humans – boom, humans are gonna start thinking about it. And arguing. And those arguments are going to get more sophisticated and subtle as time goes on, as flaws in earlier formulations become apparent, as various and sundry attempts are made to resolve the inevitable difficulties.
But Newman goes on to write:

…next, that if development must be, then, whereas Revelation is a heavenly gift, He who gave it virtually has not given it, unless He has also secured it from perversion and corruption, in all such development as comes upon it by the necessity of its nature, or, in other words, that that intellectual action through successive generations, which is the organ of development, must, so far forth as it can claim to have been put in t charge of the Revelation, be in its determinations infallible.

He’s wrong on this point, I think. He would be correct of the intellectual content of Christianity were its chief or most important characteristic. But if Christianity is the remnant and the witness to God having done something, and what God has done is more important than what we think or understand about what God did, then I can’t see any reason why God would find it necessary to preserve it from all perverson and corruption. As I understand Christianity, I can see how it would be important to shield it from a certain amount of perversion and corruption: what God is doing involves, among other things, making sure people learn about what God has already done. And there is an intellectual component to this. But it’s certainly not the only and probably not the most important component. Jesus said that all men would know that we were His disciples by our love for each other – and not, let us be clear, by the correctness of our theology. If that’s the case, I could see God being willing to put up with quite a lot of theological misunderstanding and wrongheadedness, for the sake of His people learning to be the sort of people He wants.

A New Hope

Over the last several years, David Jang’s community has offered a variety of explanations for the concerns that have been raised about the community’s teachings. These explanations have generally involved increasingly creative ad hominem attacks – just suing folks was getting boring, I guess – and have tended to move from, “Nobody ever taught that Jang was a second Christ and anyone who says so is a liar,” towards, “Well, it sort of happened, but it was only a few folks out on the fringes.” As more and more documents have accumulated, however, even that latter claim has become increasingly implausible. As I wrote elsewhere:

The evidence I’ve laid out in my last three posts indicates more-or-less conclusively that the belief was present from the lowest to the highest members of the group, was spread across at least four continents [ed: now six], and continued for many years. Several people have told me that every member of their particular local branches believed Jang to be the Christ, and this in an organization which emphasized communication and control… Quite a number of folks have told me that they had sent David Jang letters or emails in which they laid out their belief in him as the Christ. All this taken together makes it hard to believe that this teaching was was happening entirely without Jang’s connivance.

Given this background, a debate taking place in the comments section of another recent post has been enlightening, as it introduced a new swirl of explanations, at least one of which I had not previously heard. In this debate, an anonymous member of Jang’s community with the handle of “Guestememo” was challenging, well, pretty much anything I’d ever written or done, ranging from my tenure at Zango (he thought it reflected poorly on my ethics), to my church attendance (he suspected it was spotty). He appeared to know a great deal about Jang’s background, including details of his involvement in the Unification Church, along with the names and identities of obscure Korean associates I’d never heard of. I’ve also heard from several ex-members that this sort of public defense never happens without Jang’s authorization, so my assumption is that Guestememo was in all likelihood writing with Jang’s approval, perhaps even with Jang’s active participation.

When I asked him to comment on the quite substantial evidence showing that the problematic teachings had been common throughout the community, he responded with this post:

Ken, it is productive that you asked. I think we are going toward the end of this long debate.

It’s very important to understand these 2 points:

In Jesus’ teaching in John 21, he says, “Feed my lambs,” which talks about Peter taking the role of Jesus Christ in shepherding His (Jesus’) sheep. It’s not about Christology (not that Peter himself is becoming a savior) - but rather about roles. The Christ refers to the Savior who saves us from the sin. But the Christ you are referencing in the messages is similarly talking about a role or a place - it's not about salvation (soteriology) or Christology. This is interpreted using a typological approach in hermeneutics. Another example of this is in Ephesians 5, where it is written that husband and wife are to be like Christ and the church. The husband is in the role of Christ for the family - serving and sacrificing. This does not mean that the husband saves the wife from sin. For us, salvation is complete through Jesus Christ and no other Christ is needed. Therefore, this is not about Christology or soteriology at all - but rather, it is about a ROLE one holds.

These particular lectures are very contextual. When we answer to those who have questions on eschatology, there are 2 ways to interpret the Bible: in a literal way or a spiritual way. For those who do not take things literally, eschatology can be very confusing. These lectures were designed in order to protect these types of confused people - especially in the Asian context where there are many gods and cults. Frankly, protecting these people is a very big challenge in many regions and many people have lost their Christian faith, having it replaced with cult beliefs. Conclusively, these contextual messages were only used in these special contexts.

Broadly speaking, these lectures were very limited and were given in a special situation. Even so, these could cause confusion if people do not understand them properly so teaching these messages was discouraged and these were never accepted at the church as a whole, and were certainly never part of any official doctrine adopted by the church.

About things like “time, times, and half a time”, there’s no one who actually believes in dispensationalism in the church; you can check among the accusers and will see that no one actually believes in it. Why were these messages only taught around the perimeter? In these fierce situations, among cult groups and extreme liberal groups attacking many people with their own dispensationalism, a few missionaries had to actually create their own dispensationalism to counter theirs. These views were never part of any core doctrine. That’s the context in which this happened. We don’t hold a dispensational view. This was not official doctrine and was not accepted from the denomination, but only given to face the challenges from cults and to prevent people from falling into them. So I hope you do not misunderstand these lectures.
Some lecturers believed these were the best hermeneutical methods available against cults and extreme liberals. These were never used to say that he is the savior - the messages were taught very differently from that perspective.

This was all already cleared more than 10 years ago. Moreover, this all took place in parachurch small groups before the church was actually formed. It’s not something that people accepted as a whole from my understanding.

The basic church doctrine is very healthy and orthodox.

I don’t care whether you believe this or not, but you can just check and see.
As far as I know, Borah was actually a very good Bible teacher. And she was a great testifier of the Gospel who said Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation in her confession. (http://www.christianpost.com/n... — "I could never teach a Bible study with this intent because I have never believed nor confessed that David Jang is the 'Second Coming Christ.'"

Lin responded to Edmond, saying, "Like many other evangelicals, I affirm the Second Advent is the literal and personal return of Jesus Christ," she said. Lin also cited a verse in the Book of Acts stating, "This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.")
I want to conclude this with this verse that came to my heart:

Romans 14:1-22 So whatever you believe about these things keep between yourself and God. Blessed is the one who does not condemn himself by what he approves.

I feel like our debate is just like this passage.

So that’s interesting.

The first thing worth noting is that everything Guestememo says presumes that the various documents and testimonies that have come to light over the last several years are genuine, and not the forgeries or lies that Jang’s community had originally claimed they were. To be sure, there wasn’t much question about this, but I suppose that admitting as much counts as progress.

The second thing is that Guestememo is doing a lot of hand-waving here, tossing around theological jargon like a first-year seminarian. But even after I’ve read the post repeatedly, I can’t quite figure out how introducing concepts like “typology”, “eschatology”, “dispensationalism” and so forth advances his argument, or really even makes any sense. I saw some of Jang’s academic transcripts recently, in which he shows himself to be a solid “B” student; I’d probably give this effort a C+.

Beyond that, Guestememo makes several points, which I think can be fairly summarized as follows:

1. When folks in these lessons referred to Jang as “Christ”, they were referring to Jang’s role, not to his identity.
2. These teachings were necessary to help folks who might otherwise be attracted to cults.
3. It only happened on the outskirts, in very specific situations.
4. All this happened more than 10 years ago.
5. Now that this has been explained, the debate can end and we can all be friends.

I’ll try to respond to these points individually.

It Was About Jang’s Role

I suppose I could get behind the idea that the official lessons which describe Jang as Christ were referring only to his role rather than to his identity. This probably was the way that folks like Borah conceived of him: at least, there’s no hint in the written or audio lessons that they thought of Jang in Chalcedonian terms, as God incarnate. Some chats and documents refer to him as “King”. One member told me recently that “everyone considered him to be superhuman,” and that sounds pretty typical. On the other hand, some went quite a bit further. One document clearly speaks of Jang in soteriological terms, making repeated reference to the “sacrifice” of “Christ David”. Another calls him “Lord”, the earliest Christian confession. Other former members have said that they would pray in Jang’s name, or even thought of him as God.

However, even putting those stronger claims aside, I don’t know that it really helps Guestememo’s case to draw this distinction between role and identity. If you’re a Christian, and you’re teaching that somebody besides Jesus of Nazareth is playing the role of “the Christ”, something has gone badly wrong. Period. You can try to draw all the distinctions you want and trot out whatever technical theological language you think might impress or confuse folks, but if your community can produce or even tolerate that teaching for more than two seconds, it’s clearly gone off the rails. And if you don’t think that’s so - well, that’s pretty telling too.

It Was Combating Heresy

The idea that these lessons were necessary to combat heresy is just nuts, straight up. I’d be more polite if I could, but I can’t quite bring myself around: this isn’t the sort of explanation that calls for politeness. If you read through the numerous documents that have been made public, there’s no hint that this was their purpose. Nor does the claim make sense on its face, since it boils down to saying that they needed to teach heresy to fight heretics. Despite the fact that they keep offering it, this is perhaps their least persuasive in a long line of implausible explanations.

It Was on the Fringes

I’ve said before that it’s hard to say just what percentage of Jang’s community believed that he was a second Christ. It was certainly less than universal - when someone hadn’t made the confession, folks would whisper, “He doesn’t know about Pastor David”. But neither was it just a few missionaries on the outskirts. It probably did make a difference where you were: one former US member estimated that perhaps only a third of the community believed it, while Chinese members have insisted to me that everyone in their local community had made the confession. Even one of the folks who supposedly “didn’t know about Pastor David” told me that he had, in fact, been taught this - he just didn’t buy it. I’ve talked to a lot of former members over the years, and I can’t recall anyone who joined before 2006 who hadn’t at least encountered this teaching. What is beyond any serious dispute is that it was taught on every continent (except Antarctica), for many years, and by folks from the lowest to the highest levels of the organization.

It’s Ancient History

I believe I was the first of Jang’s critics to acknowledge that he had called a halt to the teaching of the history lessons in 2006, nine years ago. (So it wasn’t really “more than 10 years ago”, but I won’t squabble over the details.) That said, I’ve had two people tell me that at least some current members have acknowledged that they still believe Jang to be the Christ. I suspect that this is an increasingly marginal position in the community at large, but it doesn’t yet seem to be extinct. And I have no idea what Jang’s inner circle continues to think.

The bigger problem is the community’s ongoing ethical failings, which are quite certainly not ancient history, and which go well beyond their continued denials and dissimulation about the second Christ teaching. Ben Dooley has documented repeated violations of US labor and immigration law. Lots of people have told me that members were encouraged to lie to family, in the hopes of getting money out of them. The group has continued to lie, well beyond the point where it has any point, about the nature of the community’s interrelationships. (Does anybody really doubt anymore that Jang controls the Christian Post, or that the IBTimes leadership takes orders from him?) Former members who speak out continue to be bullied and threatened. Most eye-opening, OSHA issued a $2.35MM fine to Olivet last April for repeatedly and willfully exposing its students and other workers to lead and asbestos. I could go on. This is not a community that Christians should trust.

Let’s Be Friends

As for whether we can all be friends now - well, there was a point in time when I hoped that Jang’s community would choose the path of honesty and repentance. I was confident that if they did, they would be greeted with reconciliation and rewarded with fellowship. I’m probably one of Jang’s most dogged critics, but I would have welcomed them with open arms had they decided to come clean and engage the world honestly. I still would. But I see little sign that this is afoot.

I appreciate the attention that Jang and his inner circle are paying to my criticisms, but in the end, it’s not my judgment that they need to worry about.

A statement from the Spencers

As I mentioned in my last post, Aida and Bill Spencer, two Gordon-Conwell theology professors, recently published an article on their Scriptural Truths blog that resulted in some controversy. This article, written by Martin Zhang, one of Bill’s students, was a thoughtful and irenic but ultimately critical analysis of the various concerns that have been raised about David Jang and his community. Since their blog was hosted by the Christian Post, one of the media outlets controlled by David Jang, it was not at all surprising that not just this post but their entire blog was immediately removed.

I reached out to the Spencers to get more information, and this was their response, which I publish here with their permission.

Dear Ken:

Thank you so much for saving our blog and keeping it on line. Below is a letter that we sent to Ted Olsen that gives you some background information.

The post that you read was an experiment. It was brought to our attention that Christian Post is affiliated with David Jang. We were told that Jang’s group was recruiting orthodox evangelical Christians to give indirect endorsement, in other words, we were legitimizing the movement by our presence on the Christian Post, even though we knew nothing about the group. Several of our students in Korean and Chinese churches mentioned concern about David Jang and cited Christianity Today’s article. Martin Zhang, one of our students, who has now returned to China, wrote a paper on David Jang’s movement for Bill’s class, Contemporary Theology and Theologians. Bill and I guided him through several revisions until we found a version that was kind and fair. We put it on our blog at 5 p.m. last Friday to see how Christian Post would respond:

Would they allow the article?

Would they respond and clarify?

Or, would they strike out the article or the entire blog?

For example, they could have said: “This rumor has been plaguing us for years. We are glad to be able to respond to this once and for all. Neither David Jang nor anyone in our movement is claiming that Pastor David is the Second Coming Christ. Such a statement would be blasphemous. David Jang, his teachers, and his movement simply see him as a faithful servant of Jesus.” This is the opportunity we provided them.

Instead, as you know, in two hours this specific blog and all our blogs have been eliminated. “Manage your blog” no longer comes up when we go on the site. Only David Jang’s face, the picture on this particular blog entry, remains under “Church and Ministry.” They were very thorough.

In an email to us, the blog editor, Stephanie Howell (10:15 p.m. Friday), told us we had violated “The Christian Post terms and conditions.” Under blogs.christianpost.com/faq.html it says:

“Any bloggers seeking to level criticism against a particular pastor, leader and/or ministry cannot be posted on the blog section.” Also, CP Blog “will not tolerate material deemed to criticize pastors’, leaders’, churches’ and ministries’ characters rather than a methodology or system of principals, rules or methods for regulating a given discipline. Materials criticizing the methodologies of pastors, leaders, churches and ministries must cite evidence from an official record and/or source.”

However, over the years, we had already published several blogs about heterodox movements with no difficulty at all, such as: “Is the Holy Spirit Really Walking Around in Human Form Today in Africa?” on Olumba Olumba Obu and his Brotherhood of the Cross and Star (11/10/12) and “Shinchunji Heresy Challenges Church in South Korea and Elsewhere” on Man Hee Lee (by a Korean student, Doo Min Cho).

The benefit of the Christian Post is that they provide promotion of individual blogs. That is why when we had each individually been invited to write a blog on the Post, we had decided to do one together, which we have been doing for the last three years, since Feb., 2012.  I (Aida) am Professor of New Testament and Bill is Professor of Theology at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (Aida at Hamilton, Bill at Boston campuses). We have numerous Asian students who we encouraged to publish on such topics as “What Should Chinese Christians Do in the Midst of Current Persecution?” (also by Martin Zhang) on our Christian Post blog and critiques of Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church and Man Hee Lee’s Shinchonji in Africanus Journal which we edit (www.gordonconwell.edu/resources/Africanus-Journal.cfm).

By doing this experiment, we knew we might be risking losing our platform through this massive machine. The cost of losing our blog, which we really love doing, was less important than testing for the truth. We wanted to make sure we were not being used to promote heterodoxy. We were trying to keep another Sun Myung Moon from rising up inside Christianity. A simple denial by the group might have helped put the issue to rest.

By the way, Martin did do original translations of pieces in Chinese. He did extensive work. He has also written a bio on Jang which we did not publish with the Post entry for reasons of length, but Christianity Today might want to do it (see attachment). We have subscribed for decades to Christianity Today.

Sincerely yours,

Aída and Bill

The Spencers also forwarded me an email thread in which Stephanie Powell from the Christian Post offered them this explanation:

Hi there,

I hope you had a Merry Christmas. This evening, your blog "The Mystery of David Jang (Jang Jae-Hyung)", written by Martin Zhang was brought to our attention. Because of the controversial content we unpublished your article. It violates The Christian Post terms and conditions (please view this link to read our terms and conditions http://blogs.christianpost.com/faq.html)

If you don't mind, may I ask who is Martin Zhang and how are you connected to him?

We appreciate you contributing to The Christian Post Blog section us for all these years and hope to have you continue.

After a response from the Spencers that largely repeated what they said above, she responded with this polite but fiirm email:

Thank you for your email. We understand confusion can of course occur when you do not know another organization well enough, and we believe that by conducting some obscure "test" you have come to a further misunderstanding and false conclusion. We will be sad to close down your blog but will of course do so considering there is clear mistrust - which is sad as we are two organizations built in the love and grace of Jesus. And for the record, no one in our COMPANY has ever said or claimed that David Jang is a so-called "Second Coming Christ". Only Jesus is Christ, as clearly indicated by our statement of faith. We hope that in the future you can get to know us more, see the evidence of our fruit (the content on our website) and judge us on that rather than the misinterpretation of an obscure "test", and God-willing, later we can work together as brothers in Jesus for His Kingdom.

I’ve reached out to the Christian Post for additional comment, and will include their response if I hear back.

An Ironic Wrinkle in the David Jang Saga

So this was interesting. Earlier today, Ted Olsen forwarded this link to me:

http://blogs.christianpost.com/scriptural-truths/the-mystery-of-david-jang-jang-jae-hyung-24495/

It was a link to an article – published on a Christian Post blog, no less – examining the claims about and accusations against David Jang, and coming to some reasonably skeptical conclusions.

I immediately started to read the post on my cell phone, but in the five minutes it took me to get to a computer, the link started turning up a blank page, and indeed, it looks like the entire Scriptural Truths blog got deleted. Luckily, I was able to save the page from my cell phone to a PDF, and it’s now available here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-XDVS0sdeUEcl81Z0xnR3JjbHM/view?usp=sharing

I was previously aware of most of the material (indeed, it seems to quote from some of the documents I’ve previously made public), though I believe that some of the translations into English were new. It also appears that the author had access to independent sources within David Jang’s community, though what his own ties to the group may have been are not clear.

Given how sensitive Jang’s community is to criticism, I’m hardly surprised that it got taken down; I’m more surprised that it got published at all, and I’m sure there’s a fascinating story there. Before this, I had no idea who Aida and William Spencer were (a quick Google search reveals that they’re theology professors at Gordon Conwell), nor do I know who “Martin Zhang” is. If anybody has more information along those lines, please reach out to me!

The full text of the original blog post follows.

-------------------------------------

The Mystery of David Jang (Jang Jae-Hyung)

By Aida and William Spencer

December 26, 2014 | 4:46 pm

Guest blog by Martin Zhang

Why A Mystery?

David (Jae-Hyung) Jang is an influential yet controversial figure especially in Eastern Christianity. On the one hand, he is the founder and international president of Olivet University (OU), a professor of theology at Olivet Theological College and Seminary (OTCS), the 88th president of Denomination General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Korea, founder of Christian Today, Christian Daily Korea, Christianity Daily, founding team member and former senior advisor of the Christian Post, North American Council Member of the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA), president of the Holy Bible Society (HBS) and president of the World Olivet Assembly (WOA).[1] He is a very distinguished and industrious religious leader.

On the other hand, sources show that David Jang was a follower of Sun-Myung Moon for 31 years, and was a major leader of the Unification Church (UC) until 1998, in which year he resigned as professor of Sun Moon University. Moreover, former members of his present group, the Young Disciples of Christ or the Davidian Community, have testified that they were given lectures and eventually led to confess David Jang is the “Second Coming Christ.”

No evidence shows that David Jang himself has claimed publicly to be the “Second Coming Christ,” and he himself has also denied that he has claimed to be the “Second Coming Christ.”[2] However, witnesses from Korea, Japan, China, Singapore and America are unanimously pointing to one thing: Some followers of David Jang induce people to confess that David Jang is the Second Coming Christ.

What’s the Possible Fact behind the Controversy?

What, then, is the fact lying behind the controversy? There are at least three possibilities: 1) All those former members are either telling the truth or lying; 2) David Jang is either telling the truth or skillfully lying (he did not explicitly claim publicly, but privately accepts his followers’ teaching); and 3) both the former members and David Jang are telling the truth and neither is lying (only some of David Jang’s followers are teaching heretical doctrines which are neither created by nor known to him).

Possibility One

First, let us examine the testimonies of the former members. These witnesses claim that they are usually approached by members of the Davidian Community (under the name “Young Disciples of Jesus” [YD]) who are called “guides” (author’s translation). They are invited to a free Bible study and taught forty lessons which are called “forty Taos.” Attendees usually receive at least one lesson per day. After finishing these lessons, attendees report they are asked questions that lead them to the conclusion that David Jang is the Second Coming Christ.

Brother EN, who joined YD in 2001, recalls, after the “Forty Taos” they had a celebration party for him. At the party, their leader, a Korean sister, asked him: “What differences do you feel in this place?” EN answered: “Genuine love. Very warm.” She replied, “Only those who have faith can understand the difference. At that time, by his faith, Peter recognized Jesus was the Christ, what do you think?” EN answered, “Jesus is with us.” She asked again, “Only those who have faith can see, do we have love?” EN answered, “Yes.” She then asked, “The one who has greater love is Msni (David Jang). If Christ has come, he must be very special. All these ‘Forty Taos’ you have listened to were written by him, which is the highest revelation. So, what do you think?” He finally understood what she expected him to answer, and said, “Msni is the Christ.” Then everyone applauded, and praised aloud, “Thank the Lord, thank the Lord.”[3]

Esther (Ma Li) and another girl were asked the same question after they had listened to the “Eschatology,” “Time and Date,” and “New Israel” lectures. Zhang Naiwen, Esther’s teacher, asked them: “Who is Rev. David?” Being completely convinced, Esther answered without hesitation, “The Second Coming Christ!”

Then, based on Matthew 7:6, she and other members were told not to tell anyone else. She reports both of them were told that they were reborn. They signed the member card and were declared members.[4] Former leaders of the Davidian Community from Korea and Singapore shared similar experiences. [5] Those who joined them were soon required to work for affiliated companies and to give money to the Community. EN finally left the Community, but was identified as the one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back, therefore not fit for the kingdom of God.[6]

Since those former members are from different countries yet are telling very similar if not the same stories, we may conclude that although it is possible that all of them are lying, it is unlikely. This writer would need more evidence to be convinced that all of those witnesses are lying.

Possibility Two

Now let us consider the second possibility. Is David Jang telling the truth or is he a skillful liar? Sources show that David Jang was a follower of Sun-Myung Moon for 31 years, and he was a core member of the Unification Church. He was charged with promoting Unification Theology. It was said that he first denied his long time experience in the Unification Church, then reinterpreted his years in the Unification Church (e.g., he was not teaching Unification Theology, but saving people from the Unification Church), and finally wrote a letter of repentance.[7] This writer cannot help but wonder what really happened to David Jang.

Was he actually a follower of Sun-Myung Moon? Sources show that David Jang was married among 1,800 couples in a mass wedding presided over by Moon in February 1975. One of the qualifications for participating in Moon’s mass wedding was to believe Sun-Myung Moon was the Second Coming Christ.[8] Did Mr. Jang believe that Sun-Myung Moon was the Second Coming Christ? If so, when did he change his mind? How did that change happen? David Jang definitely has a great testimony to tell. God may use his testimony to lead more Unification Church members back to God.

On the other hand, some participants in the “Forty Taos” series have reported that, based on Matthew 7:6, members were taught not to share the teaching with those who are biased, lest they may not believe what they say and turn back to accuse them.[9] These claim that David Jang was following the strategy in this teaching when he denied that he claimed to be the Second Coming Christ, perhaps following the example of Sun Myung Moon, who for a long time did not reveal himself to be the “Lord of the Second Advent.”

However, even if David Jang’s experience in the Unification Church is true, and even if he used to accept people believing him as the Second Coming Christ, if he has genuinely repented, all evangelical Christians would be more than willing to embrace him as a brother in Christ. We were all someone else before we accepted Jesus Christ as our Savior and Lord, just as the Apostle Paul says, “where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (Rom 5:20). However, all of us would really want David Jang to share his spiritual journey openly before all could embrace him as our brother with complete confidence and without any concern.

Possibility Three

How about the third possibility? Is it possible that David Jang was a genuine orthodox Christian from thebeginning or has genuinely repented from the Unification Church, but his followers somehow came up with the teaching that David Jang is the Second Coming Christ which was unknown to him? Before discussing the possibility, let us first take a look at the teachings reported of David Jang’s followers.

What Are These Controversial Teachings?

According to a sermon preached by one of David Jang’s followers Pastor Paul, God restores the fallen world through three periods of time. He cites Mark 4:28, “first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head.” These three images represent the Old Testament era, the New Testament era, and the era of (another) New Covenant respectively. The Old Testament era was an era of law; the New Testament era was an era of Gospel, and now we are entering a New Era, which is another Gospel era, oriented by the Second Coming Christ’s teaching, which is the eternal Gospel.[10] In the New Testament era, Jesus separates the era of “the stalk” and the era of “the head.” Jesus taught in parables. The one who separates the ear of “the head” and the era of “bearing fruit” will be this Second Coming Christ who preaches the Eternal Gospel crystal clearly.

David Jang’s sermon “Time and Date” divides the history of the world by millenniums. Genesis covers the first two thousand years. The last figure in Genesis is Joseph, who is the image of Jesus. Joseph was sold by Judah, but he finally forgave Judah. The rest of the Old Testament also covers two thousand years. Jesus Christ separates the Old Testament and the New Testament. Jesus was also sold by a Judah (Judas), but he also forgave him. Therefore, David Jang concludes, there is a great change every two thousand years. Now we are at another point of the two thousand year period. God chose Israel in the Old Testament era. He chose Christians in the New Testament era. God is going to choose a New Israel for the coming new era. These are the 144,000 people in Revelation 7.[11] They are not the only people who are saved, but they set a model for the Kingdom of God. We can become one of the 144,000. In Revelation 1:7, we read, “He is coming with the clouds”: “‘The clouds’ mean witnesses, not real clouds.” Being caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in 2 Thessalonians means experiencing an inner change in our lives. The sermon argues that the kingdom of heaven is not in heaven, but on earth.[12]

How can one become one of the 144,000? Another sermon teaches, if one signs the member card of this movement, that one will be counted.[13] Who, then, can sign the member card? Testimonies of former YD members report that, although they might be directed in different ways, all finally were convinced and confessed that David Jang was the Second Coming Christ. And then they were told that that day was their “re-born day.” Then they would sign the member card.

The testimonies of the former believers seem to accord with the sermons. What is the problem with these teachings?

What’s Wrong with Their Teachings?

According to the testimonies of former followers of David Jang, those who confessed David Jang to be the Second Coming Christ were called re-born.[14] It appears that the problem of the Davidian groups is in their soteriology (doctrine of salvation). However, this is probably not the main issue. As explained in the sermon “Eschatology,” adherents do not claim that only those who follow them or believe in David Jang are saved. Those who sign the member card are among the 144,000 who are “the first fruit.” Technically, “reborn” is not an accurate word, since it might suggest they do not rely on the cross for their salvation. This is not these former adherents’ complaint.

The major problems appear to be with the movement’s Christology[15] and Eschatology.[16] In the sermon “Time and Date,” Jesus is said to have used mainly parables to preach the gospel, thereby contrasting him with the Second Coming Christ who will proclaim the Eternal Gospel plainly. Human history has been divided into 2 millenniums (creation to Joseph) + 2 millenniums (Joseph to Jesus) + 2 millenniums (Jesus to the Second Coming Jesus). Therefore, their arguments seem to be that there is no question of the date of the Second Coming. It has to be the second millennia A.D. “The era of the fruit is right in front of us,” Pastor Borah Lin assures us.[17]

If the Second Coming Jesus has already come, then the logical question would be: Who is he? In “Time and Date,” Pastor Borah does not appear to ask, “when will Jesus come,” but “who brings the Eternal Gospel?” The assumption is that the Second Coming Jesus is not Jesus of Nazareth but another. Since the Second Coming Jesus is already on earth, the Rapture that Paul describes in 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17 cannot be a literal rapture. One possibility would be that it is an internal change, as described in “Time and Date” and “Eschatology.”[18]

Once one accepts such teachings, if asked, “Who do you think Pastor David Jang is?” one is reported to be guided by questions to the conclusion that he is the Second Coming Jesus, because all the sermons studied are said to be have been written by him. Therefore, he is the one who explains this “Eternal Gospel” in such a plain way.

Such a teaching, of course, would contradict both the Bible and the Creeds of the early church. First, concerning the date of the Second Coming, Jesus Christ said, “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (Mark 13:32).[19] Therefore, any person or group declaring to know the date must be mistaken. Second, Jesus told his disciples, “If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also” (John 14:3). Moreover, right after Jesus’ ascension, the angels said to the disciples, “This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11). It is very clear that the same Jesus will come back. The Nicene Creed also confesses that “He (Jesus Christ) shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead.”[20] Anyone or any group who declares that the Second Coming Jesus is not the same Jesus must be heretical. The Nicene Creed confesses that Jesus Christ is “God of God…very God of very God.”[21] The Chalcedonian Creed also confesses that Jesus Christ is “consubstantial with the Father according to the Godhead.”[22] If we accept a conflicting teaching that the time of the Second Coming of Christ can be known, and the “Second Coming Christ” is not the same person as Jesus of Nazareth, we would have to admit at the same time that what is reported in the New Testament that Jesus and the angels told the disciples was not true. This would diminish Jesus to either an intentional liar or a mistaken person who honestly said something that was not true. In either case, Jesus could be anyone, but not fully God, since he was not perfect. But the Scriptures tell us he was the “unblemished” sacrifice for our sin (Heb 9:14). Last but not least, although the Davidian Community teachers are not reported to have specifically taught that salvation belongs only to them, by identifying those who have left their movement as not fit for the kingdom of God, they are implying such a theology, which apparently contradicts the biblical teaching that, through believing Jesus Christ, we are saved (John 3:16; Rom 4:24).

Back to the Third Possibility

Former believers testified that they were told that the “Forty Taos” and other sermons were written by David Jang, which was key in leading them to conclude that David Jang is the Second Coming Christ.[23] While they report that Davidian teachers did not directly teach that, witnesses testify, they were asked “two plus two equals?” questions to let these listeners themselves come up with the answer “four,” but “no one said ‘four’ directly.”[24] Did David Jang really write these sermons to declare himself the Second Coming Christ or are those teachers mistaken in their interpretation of his instructions?

If David Jang wrote these sermons with such an intention, it would be impossible for us to accept his teaching as orthodox. Therefore, it would be best once more for David Jang to explain what he really believes and intends to convey in his sermons, in his teaching, and in the interpretations of his instructors and their followers. If David Jang did not write any of the sermons, and he neither believes the above, then his followers may be promoting heretical teaching in his name. This is a very serious problem, because his followers would be making up sermons to lead people to confess that David Jang is the Second Coming Christ, and be claiming that the sermons were written by him with this intention.

Ben Dookey in his article in Mother Jones claims that David Jang knew his followers were spreading the message.[25] If this charge is not true and Rev. Jang is really opposed to such a monstrous interpretation, our plea is that he clearly forbid anyone in his movement to make such a blasphemous claim and even expel those who continue to do so.

Conclusion

We certainly do not want to see an innocent person wrongly charged. At the same time, we cannot call anyone who is heretical in his or her teaching our dear brother or sister in Christ. That is why we wrote this article, with a hope that David Jang would help us clear up the mystery by answering the questions raised in this article by sympathetic but puzzled and inquiring Christian people.

[1] David Jang, “Biography of David Jang,” accessed Sept. 22, 2014, http://www.davidjang.org/biography/profile.

[2] Michelle A. Vu, “Sources in ‘Second Coming Christ Controversy’ Face Scrutiny,” Christian Post, Aug. 19, 2012, http://www.christianpost.com/news/olivet-university-sources-in-second-coming-christ-controversyface-scrutiny-80176/pageall.html. Accessed Sept. 22, 2014.

[3] EN, “The Testimony of EN,” in Clear the Fog & Reveal the Truth, by K.Y. Cheung Teng (Hong Kong: Concern Group on Newly Emerged Religions, 2008), http://www.cgner.org/Books/TS001/TS001.pdf.

[4] Ma Li, “The Inerasable Memory,” in Clear the Fog & Reveal the Truth, by K.Y. Cheung Teng (Hong Kong: Concern Group on Newly Emerged Religions, 2008), http://www.cgner.org/Books/TS001/TS001.pdf.

[5] Davidian Watcher, “Important: Full Text of the Testimony of A Former Pastor of the Davidian Community,” Collections on the “Davidian Community,” Sept. 22, 2008, http://dqac.blogspot.com/2008/09/blog-post.html. Accessed Sep. 22, 2014. Ted Olsen and Ken Smith, “The Second Coming Christ Controversy: More Leaders Speak Out,” ChristianityToday.com, Sept. 12, 2012, http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2012/september-web-only/david-jang-second-coming-christ-singapore.html. Accessed Sept. 22, 2014.

[6] EN, “The Testimony of EN.”

[7] Davidian Watcher, “Discussion on Rev. Jang Jae-Hyung’s Ministry in the Unification Church (I),” Collections on the “Davidian Community,” Dec. 1, 2007, http://dqac.blogspot.com/2007/12/blog-post.html; Davidian Watcher, “Discussion on Rev. Jang Jae-Hyung’s Ministry in the Unification Church (II),” Collections on the “Davidian Community,” December 1, 2007, http://dqac.blogspot.com/2007/12/blog-post_01.html; Davidian Watcher, “Discussion on Rev. Jang Jae-Hyung’s Ministry in the Unification Church (III),” Collections on the “Davidian Community,” Dec. 1, 2007, http://dqac.blogspot.com/2007/12/blogpost_9742.html.

[8] K.Y. Cheung Teng, An Analytical Study on the Continuous Controversies Stirred Up by David Jang, trans. Kitty Lau and Elaine Yip, Sept. 9, 2012, http://wiki.cgner.org/index.php?title=An_Analytical_Study_on_the_Continuous_Controversies_Stirred_Up_by_David_Jang. Accessed Sept. 22, 2014.

[9] H. T., “I Will Never Forget Them,” Research on Young Disciples of Jesus, May 31, 2008, http://ydwatcher.blogspot.com/2008/05/ht.html. Accessed Oct. 7, 2014.

[10] Paul Zhao, “Time and Date,” accessed Sept. 22, 2014, http://wiki.cgner.org/index.php?title=DJC01031. Pastor Borah preached the same sermon on July 20, 2002. See https://drive.google.com/drive/#folders/0B-XDVS0sdeUENUU2WWpzUG15Mnc/0BXDVS0sdeUEZXRCa1JHeFNJdU0. Accessed Sept. 23, 2014. We are not sure if they are the same person or not.

[11] Provided by Former YD Member, “New Israel,” accessed Sept. 22, 2014, http://wiki.cgner.org/index.php?title=DJC01031. For similar sermons on “New Israel” preached by followers of David Jang in English and German, see Preachers of the Davidian Community, “New Israel,” 2002-2006, https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-XDVS0sdeUENEtGaWo2eXUxZHc&usp=sharing. Accessed Sept. 22, 2014.

[12] Provided by Former YD Member, “Eschatology,” accessed Sept. 22, 2014, http://wiki.cgner.org/index.php?title=DJC01005_B.

[13] Provided by Former YD Member, “Four Spiritual ‘Taos,’” accessed Sept. 22, 2014, http://wiki.cgner.org/index.php?title=DJC01006_B.

[14] Ma Li, “The Inerasable Memory.”

[15] “Christology” is doctrine concerned with revelation of God in Jesus Christ.

[16] “Eschatology” is doctrine of the last things or the final events of humanity.[17] Pastor Borah, “Time and Date,” July 20, 2002, https://drive.google.com/drive/#folders/0BXDVS0sdeUENUU2WWpzUG15Mnc/0B-XDVS0sdeUEZXRCa1JHeFNJdU0. Accessed Sept. 23, 2014.

[18] Provided by Former YD Member, “Eschatology.”

[19] See also Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books, 2007), 1194.

[20] “Nicene Creed,” accessed Sept. 23, 2014, https://www.ccel.org/creeds/nicene.creed.html.

[21] Ibid.

[22] “Chalcedonian Creed,” accessed Sept. 23, 2014, https://www.ccel.org/creeds/chalcedoniancreed.html.

[23] K.Y. Cheung Teng, Clear the Fog & Reveal the Truth (Hong Kong: Concern Group on Newly Emerged Religions, 2008), 16, 118, http://www.cgner.org/Books/TS001/TS001.pdf.

[24] Ben Dooley, “Who’s Behind Newsweek?,” Mother Jones, March 2014, http://www.motherjones.com/media/2014/03/newsweek-ibt-olivet-david-jang. Accessed Sept. 23, 2014.

[25] Ken Smith, “David Jang Summary,” Confessions of a Would-Be Theologian, Jan. 6, 2014, http://blog.wouldbetheologian.com/2014/01/david-jang-summary.html. Accessed Sept. 23, 2014.