The Workplace Drama Narrative

The story becomes straightforward workplace drama:

A dedicated employee and congregation member (Lee Man-hee) discovers corruption in his organization’s leadership (Mr. Yoo and the seven-member management team). In 1970, a newspaper article exposed damaging information about Mr. Yoo, one of the organization’s leaders, serious enough to threaten not just the organization’s reputation, but potentially its legal standing and public legitimacy. 

When he tries to expose the problems through letters warning the leadership to retract their decisions, the management attempts to silence him through intimidation, violence, and even attempts to kill him. Lee Man-hee fled in 1971 after receiving assassination threats from within the organization itself. Unable to reform the organization from within, he eventually leaves and starts a competing organization based on what he claims were the original values before corruption set in.

(Note: Some narratives were depicted in Shincheonji’s “Reality of the Fulfillment of Revelation” movie shown in advanced-level Bible study classes, like Lee Man-hee reading a magazine, an article about Mr. Yoo facing an assassination attempt and getting beaten up.)

From a secular perspective, this raises important questions:

• Why would an ordinary member/employee face assassination threats from his own organization?
• What was Lee Man-hee’s role in the article’s publication or dissemination – was he a source, a whistleblower, or simply a vocal critic?
• Was he involved in internal disputes that escalated to physical danger?
• The fact that assassination threats came from within the organization – not from external enemies – suggests serious internal dysfunction and the breakdown of legitimate authority structures.

An intriguing irony emerges here: Lee Man-hee himself was reading negative materials about Mr. Yoo and the Tabernacle Temple—essentially ‘drinking poison’ by his own later standards. 

Today, Shincheonji members who sign the pledge are strictly forbidden from researching negative information about the organization on the internet, yet this is precisely what Lee Man-hee did when investigating the Tabernacle Temple. 

This contradiction may explain why Mr. Yoo states in the Revelation movie that Lee ‘knows too much’ and needed to be silenced—Lee Man-hee now prohibits the very investigative behavior he himself practiced. 

What he once did to discern truth, he now condemns as poison for his own followers.

The Counter-Intelligence Operation

High control groups don’t survive by ignoring criticism—they survive by studying it, adapting to it, and weaponizing it against their critics. 

Like detectives who monitor criminal networks to stay one step ahead, these organizations run their own counter-intelligence operations. Former Shincheonji members have reported the existence of what they call a “poison team”—designated members, including some current students, whose job is to monitor online criticism, read ex-member testimonies, and track discussions on platforms like the Shincheonji subreddit. 

These surveillance teams function like undercover investigators, systematically gathering intelligence about what critics are saying, what arguments are being made, and what vulnerabilities are being exposed. This information is then reported back to leadership so the organization can prepare internal responses, develop counter-arguments, and inoculate current members against these criticisms before they ever encounter them.

The Evidence Asymmetry

This practice reveals a striking contradiction: the organization forbids ordinary members from researching criticism online, labeling it as “poison” that will contaminate their faith, yet leadership actively consumes this same “poison” to stay strategically informed. 

The double standard is clear—leaders can handle the information that would supposedly destroy faith, but regular members cannot. This isn’t about protecting members from falsehood; it’s about maintaining information asymmetry that keeps leadership in control. 

Like a criminal defense team that examines all the prosecution’s evidence while preventing their client from seeing it, or intelligence agencies that monitor enemy communications while restricting their own citizens’ access to outside information, high control groups create a strategic advantage by knowing what their critics say while ensuring their members remain ignorant of those same arguments.

The Inoculation Strategy

In organizational strategy, this is called “competitive intelligence”—the systematic gathering and analysis of information about competitors to maintain strategic advantage. In psychology, it’s related to “inoculation theory”—the practice of exposing people to weakened versions of opposing arguments so they develop resistance to stronger versions later. 

Like forensic experts who study crime patterns to predict future behavior, Shincheonji’s poison team serves both functions: they gather intelligence about critics’ arguments and then create pre-packaged responses that inoculate members against those criticisms. When members eventually encounter these arguments, they’ve already been taught how to dismiss them, making the actual evidence less persuasive than the pre-installed defense mechanism.

Flipping the Script: The Deflection Tactic

This strategy enables what critics call “flipping the script”—taking the accusations made against Shincheonji and redirecting them back at mainstream Christianity. When critics accuse Shincheonji of being “Babylon” (a biblical symbol of spiritual corruption and false religion), Shincheonji responds by claiming that traditional Christianity is the real Babylon. 

When critics point out cultish behavior, Shincheonji accuses traditional churches of cult-like adherence to tradition. When critics highlight manipulation tactics, Shincheonji claims that mainstream Christianity manipulates people through fear of hell and blind faith. This rhetorical strategy mirrors a classic courtroom defense tactic: creating a “war of doctrine” where both sides accuse each other of the same spiritual crimes, making it difficult for observers to determine who is actually telling the truth.

Creating Confusion Instead of Clarity

The effectiveness of this approach lies in its ability to create moral equivalence and confusion. If everyone is accusing everyone else of being Babylon, how can anyone determine who is right? 

If both sides claim the other is manipulative, how can seekers discern truth from deception? This is precisely the goal—not to win the argument through evidence, but to create enough confusion that people fall back on subjective experience, emotional connection, and group loyalty rather than objective verification. Like a defendant who responds to criminal charges by accusing the prosecutors of the same crimes, the strategy doesn’t require proving innocence—it only requires creating enough doubt and confusion to prevent clear judgment.

The Self-Sealing System

The Bible warns against this exact tactic: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness” (Isaiah 5:20). When organizations systematically study criticism not to correct their errors but to develop more sophisticated defenses against truth, they demonstrate the self-sealing nature of deceptive systems. Truth welcomes examination and correction; deception studies criticism only to become better at avoiding accountability. The existence of a “poison team” reveals that leadership knows exactly what the criticisms are—they’ve read the testimonies, examined the arguments, and understood the concerns. Their response isn’t to address these issues honestly, but to develop strategic defenses that keep members from ever seriously considering whether the criticisms might be valid.

Pre-Packaged Defenses: The Scripted Response

This adaptive defense mechanism explains why high control groups are so difficult to challenge and why members often seem prepared with responses to every objection. They’re not independently reasoning through criticisms—they’re deploying pre-packaged defenses developed by leadership who studied those exact criticisms. Like soldiers trained to respond to specific enemy tactics, members have been inoculated against arguments they’ve never actually examined for themselves. The blind are leading the blind, but the leaders have studied the terrain while keeping their followers’ eyes covered, creating the illusion of sight while maintaining actual blindness.

Our detective faces an unusual challenge in this investigation: the organization under scrutiny is monitoring the investigation itself. Like a criminal who plants informants in the police department, Shincheonji assigns teams to track what critics say, what ex-members testify, and what evidence emerges—not to address concerns honestly, but to develop defenses before members encounter the evidence. When the detective interviews current members, they’re not speaking with independent witnesses evaluating facts, but with individuals pre-programmed with responses to questions they’ve never personally investigated. This reveals a fundamental principle: truth welcomes examination; deception studies criticism only to avoid accountability.

The transformation process looks like a typical corporate merger:

An outside consulting firm (SEC/CSTC led by Mr. Tak) identifies a struggling organization (Tabernacle Temple) and orchestrates a systematic takeover. They install their own management (Mr. Oh), implement new policies and procedures (Presbyterian doctrine), rebrand the organization (Central Isaac Presbyterian Church), and require all employees to pledge loyalty to the new corporate culture.

The Whistleblower Response

The resistance appears as standard whistleblower behavior:

Lee Man-hee’s protests outside the building, his letters warning the management about the changes, and his attempts to rally internal opposition all follow predictable patterns of organizational dissent. His physical beatings, violence, and legal persecution represent the unfortunate but common consequences faced by those who challenge powerful institutional interests.

The Entrepreneurial Outcome

The final outcome resembles typical entrepreneurial response:

Unable to reform the original organization, Lee Man-hee launches a competitor (Shincheonji) that promises to preserve the original mission and values that were abandoned during the corporate takeover.

From this investigative perspective, there’s nothing supernatural or prophetic about these events. They follow well-documented patterns of organizational behavior, power struggles, and institutional change. Business schools teach case studies remarkably similar to this narrative. The framework reveals human motivations, strategic decisions, and predictable consequences – all explainable without reference to divine intervention or prophetic fulfillment.

This interpretation makes the story relatable and understandable to anyone who has experienced workplace politics, organizational change, or institutional corruption. It requires no special theological knowledge or spiritual insight – just familiarity with how human organizations operate under pressure.

But this is only one way to interpret the evidence.

The same facts, viewed through a different lens, tell a radically different story – one where these events aren’t merely organizational dysfunction, but the fulfillment of ancient prophecies and the unfolding of cosmic spiritual warfare. In that narrative, the newspaper scandal becomes prophetic revelation, the violence becomes spiritual persecution, the transformation becomes prophesied betrayal, and Lee Man-hee becomes not just a disaffected employee, but the chosen witness of Revelation.

That’s the lens we’ll explore in the next chapter – and you’ll see how dramatically the same facts can be reinterpreted when viewed through a theological framework that sees divine purpose in every detail.