Enter the ark

So, I'm reading the New York Times at lunch, and I turn the page, and there it is. Page A15 - the whole page - a sermon called "Enter the Ark" by Pastor Ock Soo Park.

It was ... amazing.

I don't generally do this sort of thing, but I can't help myself. So, here goes...

There were three major parts to this sermon. They were threaded throughout, but I'll look at them in chunks: Tommy, the Ark, and God's plan for you!

"Tommy" is a man who attended a conference in Los Angeles (the pastor is having one of these in New York's Madison Square Garden Nov 16-19 - free of charge! Whoo-hoo!) - Tommy was a mess. He walked with a cane, had been doing drugs for 40 years (he's now 52), "had many diseases", lived homeless and a beggar, then married a Korean woman who loved him but he still spent all her money on drugs. The pastor preached at him and told him to "throw away that cane of yours" and then headed off for Atlanta and Dallas to hold conferences there. When he came back to LA who do you think he saw?

Have you been reading ahead?

Yes, it was Tommy,

wearing jeans and a white jacket. He looked brand-new and young.

"Tommy, jeans look really good on you. You should wear jeans from now on. You look really good, and you look very young."

Well, Tommy had thrown away his cane. He was now playing "basketball with some students" and planned to buy a treadmill. The pastor tells us he

saw Tommy entering Jesus [no, dirty mind! It's a metaphor - "entering Jesus = entering the Ark" - I'll get to it in a minute] and becoming free from sin which had always suppressed him. I saw him being freed from diabetes, the palsy, and many other diseases.

Now, of course we don't know anything more about Tommy. The man might not even exist - but I'll give the pastor the benefit of the doubt. The pastor adds that he's

seen how the lives of murderers, death row inmates, Russian mafia members, and drug addicts changed through meeting Jesus.

I'll give him that, too - easily. No one doubts that many people have turned themselves around thinking that Jesus has saved them. As for Tommy - lots of people are helped by placebos, too. But has he actually been cured of diabetes and "many other diseases"? Has any medical person actually checked him out - before and after? Or is Pastor Park promising things he can't deliver?

On to point 2 - the Ark.

God told Noah in Genesis chapter 7, verse 1, Come thou and all thy house into the Ark. It was because the judgment was coming, and the only way to survive the judgment was the ark. Even if one cannot swim and is exhausted, he can have rest and freedom if he enters the ark. However, anyone outside of the ark can only be destroyed no matter how good or honest he is. Genesis tells us about that very well.

Note that: no matter how good or honest he is. We'll come back to that in point 3.

Entering the Ark keeps you safe from the disaster God has brewed up for the rest of the world - and entering Jesus is like that.

If the animals that entered the ark were outside the ark, they would have died in the flood. But once they were in the ark, it was not a problem, not matter how much it rained. It was because the ark blocked out the entire flood, judgment, and curse. In the same way, if you enter Jesus, in your place, He takes the curse, destruction, and misery you should be receiving.

Again, that "should be receiving" bit will be dealt with in the next point. Right now, I'm talking about his ark metaphor. He goes on to tell us a cute little story about being on the ark:

The funny thing about life on the ark was that, if there were a lion, for example, right next to a group of zebras—

[group? there would only have been two...stop interrupting the story!]

The funny thing about life on the ark was that, if there were a lion, for example, right next to a group of zebras, the zebras would hear the lion and become frightened, thinking, "Oh, no! There's a lion next to us!" They would be able to hear the lion, but the lion would be unable to eat them because rooms were made. The zebras would be so free.

"Lion, are you there?"

"What? How dare that zebra talk to me like that!"

"Hey, Lion! You should learn manners from now on. Why do you always try to catch and eat me? [ummm, because god made him a carnivore? Just sayin' ... sorry; back to the story] You should change."

The zebras were always nervous when they ate grass out in the prairies. When lions would come, they would have to run away. But they were so free inside of the ark. They did not need to be nervous; they were at peace. If we, too, enter Christ, we will have such freedom as well.

So, while they were on the ark, the zebras got cocky - being "so free" - and trash-talked the lions - who were, I suppose, not quite "so free". But that's okay, because as soon as the flood waters went down and the ark landed on Mt Ararat, the animals were turned loose... and the lions started chowing down on loud-mouthed zebras. Again.

So what is the moral here? Jesus is eventually going to land somewhere and dump us all out? Before you answer, let's look at point 3 of the sermon.

When the pastor preached at Tommy, this is what he said.

"Disgusting, ugly caterpillars are what become butterflies. This is the providence of God. God made humans filthy and dirty rather than good and honest so that He may save them, making them holy and glorious. Tommy, God has had you live a filthy, sinful life like that of a caterpillar for you to be able to eventually live like a butterfly."

What?

I mean, apart from the serious hate for caterpillars, this doctrine says that "God made humans filthy and dirty rather than good and honest". He goes on

Our lives before meeting Jesus were lives that need to be destroyed. But just as a disgusting caterpillar becomes a pretty butterfly that flies in the sky, we change when we meet Jesus. God made us that way.

Read that again - "God made us that way."

Remember that line about no matter how good or honest he is? Here's how the pastor explains that:

people think that they will be cursed and destroyed if they do something evil, and think that they will be saved and blessed if they do something good. According to these thoughts, every person pursues goodness. But precisely put, true goodness is not helping others or providing relief for others. Jesus, Himself, is good. True wickedness is not murdering, committing adultery, or stealing, but the life outside of Jesus, itself, is evil. Therefore we should not try to do good to receive salvation, but must enter into Jesus.

Yes. You read that right. Here's some more:

If we are outside the ark, no matter how much good we do, we can only be destroyed, but we can receive salvation if we are inside the ark, no matter what evil we may have done.

I won't push the metaphor too much - god did, after all, severely limit the passenger load on the ark - but it's still disquieting. The pastor goes on even more disquietingly:

Salvation depends on whether you are inside or outside the ark. It does not depend on whether you are good or evil.

Read that last bit again: Salvation depends on whether you are inside or outside the ark. It does not depend on whether you are good or evil

So: God makes humans "filthy and dirty rather than good and honest"; "we should not try to do good to receive salvation" because salvation "does not depend on whether you are good or evil".

Salvation does not depend on whether you are good or evil. Not just "salvation through grace not works", but "salvation through grace despite works."

Couple that with that truly repugnant theology of "God made humans filthy and dirty rather than good or honest so that He might save them" and you have a god I wouldn't want to be saved by. Consider the logical ramifications of the pastor's position: no one who has not had Jesus preached at them can be saved, even if they are the saintliest person ever born. They're going to hell. And the evilest son of a bitch who ever lived is saved by believing he's saved, no matter how evil he is (and evil people generally don't believe they're evil; they're full of justifications).

Becoming one with Jesus is uniting with the Word of God regardless of your own thoughts. ... The Word of God says we do not have sin.

But anyone "outside the ark" will be destroyed. And god's okay with that - because it's the way he "made us" to be. Damned and doomed. This is clearly the same god who repeatedly hardened Pharoah's heart so that he could show off to people. As Exodus 10 says

Then the LORD said to Moses, "Go to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the heart of his servants, that I may perform these signs of Mine among them,and that you may tell in the hearing of your son, and of your grandson, how I made a mockery of the Egyptians and how I performed My signs among them, that you may know that I am the LORD." Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said to him, "Thus says the LORD, the God of the Hebrews, 'How long will you refuse to humble yourself before Me?'"

Talk about mockery: harden the guy's heart, and then get your man to ask him how long he'll stay hardened. What a god.


The pastor has a book, of course. For only $13.95 you can have The Secret of Forgiveness and Being Born Again - "Forgiveness, which is the greatest gift of God, is now revealed." Just remember what God's actually forgiving...

And he's got a website, of course. I'm not giving him a link, but the url is http://www.gnntimes.com for previous sermons, and http://www.ospark.pe.kr for the pastor's very own home page.