Taiwan UFO Religion
Expects Apocalypse
Ufo Cult Suicide Threat
Date: Fri, 26 Dec 1997
From: Steve Wingate
Subject: IUFO: (Fwd) Despite Uniforms
and 'Spaceships,' UFO Cult Denies Suicidal Tendencies
( The Heaven's Gate was used to
discredit and discourage UFO researchers. Let us hope that Dr. Jocyln West
does not start counceling these people as well... :-( --SW )
Despite Uniforms and 'Spaceships,'
UFO Cult Denies Suicidal Tendencies
AP 24-DEC-97
SAN DIMAS, Calif. (AP) They wear
monotone clothing and believe a spaceship is on its way to take them to
the afterlife. That, say followers of God's Salvation Church, is the end
of the similarities between them and the suicidal Heaven's Gate cult.
More than 140 members of the Taiwan-based
church have left their homes here for Garland, Texas, where they believe
God will arrive in a spaceship on March 31.
A white-clad family of four
emerged from the church Tuesday, saying they were headed for Texas to join
their fellow congregants, who departed by bus last week.
Although its practices seem similar
to the Heaven's Gate cult, right down to the uniforms and sneakers worn
by followers, God's Salvation members said they have no plans to kill themselves.
"We don't die," Pi Feng Chiang,
mother of the family, said in halting English. "We believe God. God like
life."
Thirty-nine members of Heaven's
Gate killed themselves in Rancho Santa Fe last March by drinking a concoction
of booze and pills.
God's Salvation followers believe
they will board a spaceship to meet God; Heaven's Gate cultists believed
they would be taken to the "Level Beyond Human" on a spaceship trailing
the Hale-Bopp Comet.
God's Salvation members wear all
white clothing and sneakers; Heaven's Gate cultists wore all-black uniforms
and Nike sneakers when they died.
"To commit suicide is to kill God,"
a lone straggler at the church said Tuesday, shaking his head behind a
chain link fence. "It's killing your soul that was delegated to you from
God."
The man, dressed in blue jeans and
a sweater, would not give his name.
Taiwanese media reports last week
said the group's leader, Hon-Ming Chen, was encouraging newcomers to kill
themselves so their bodies could be picked up by flying saucers.
Chen told reporters Tuesday that
he had no such plans. "There isn't any danger," he said. Chen, a father
of two in his 40s, did claim to be the father of Jesus Christ and that
God will assume his body at 10 a.m. on March 31.
Yu-Chung Lo, deputy director general
of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Houston, has met with Chen
and his followers and agrees there's nothing to fear.
"I believe they would never commit
suicide because as so far as I understand they are very gentle, friendly
and most of them are highly educated," Lo said.
Chen set up his organization in
San Dimas then moved it to Garland early this summer because the name sounds
like and means "God's Land."
Los Angeles County sheriff's detectives,
who investigated a Taiwanese woman's claim that her teen-age daughter was
kidnapped by the cult, said they did not believe God's Salvation followers
would kill themselves.
The girl had been staying with her
uncle, a member of the cult, but her mother wanted her back after the girl's
father died last week of cancer, Deputy Joe Lomonaco said. She was reunited
with her mother in Taiwan on Monday.
"It wasn't a kidnapping," Lomonaco
said. "At the most it would have been child concealment. ... There was
no crime."
Posted by: "Steve Wingate"
[END]
Subject: RE: Taiwan UFO cult suicide
watch (WWW)
Date: Fri, 26 Dec 1997
From: "Apartment Webmaster"
To: WStrieber@aol.com, greglong@proaxis.com
CC: watcher@mt.net
For updated info on the Taiwan-based
UFO cult now in Texas waiting for God to appear on March 31 and possible
mass suicide, see my web site: http://members.tripod.com/~tokyoboardwalker/UFO.html
Cheers,
Terry B. Walker
PS - By the way, anyone dealing
with Whitley Streiber should know that his book COMMUNION: A TRUE STORY
was a work of fiction. I know this for a fact, having friends in the NYC
publishing industry who told me this at the time of publication. Whitley,
if you are reading this, you should come clean on this. You are a hoaxer,
even though you are probably in denial, given your "experiences." Explain
yourself, dear scribe! TBW
from the website:
Taiwan UFO cult suicide watch!
This page has been created to give
readers around the world a better understanding of the Christian / Buddhist
/Crazy UFO cult based in Taiwan (now Garland, Texas) led by a man named
Chen, whose followers have paid up to $60,000 and more to join the cult
and live in about 2o homes in Garland, where they plan to commit suicide
in March of 1998.
This page will document the complete
absurdity of the cult and its leader, and some of the silly press coverage
it has been getting. Check the Reuters and AP databases for background
material. NOTE: Please send any news or questions or coments about the
UFO cult to apt_6f@hotmail.com. The creator of this page is living in Taiwan
and monitoring the press here.
On December 25, an editorial in
the China Post, an English-langauge daily, was titled "THE UFO CULT SAYS
A LOT ABOUT TAIWAN." Actually, the editorial said a lot about Taiwan because
it was one of the stupidest editorial ever written in the annals of humankind!
I'll give you a quote and you can see what I mean.
QUOTE: "It is too early to tell whether
Chen's prediction that God (sic) will show up at the end of March is correct.
We won't know, in fact, until that very moment. Maybe his prophecy will
turn out to be true...Let's wait and see."
Now this editorial was not written
in a cult newspapers; it was written in a regular family newspaper serving
the expat community in Taiwan. Can you imagine the editorial writer saying
"maybe this prophecy will turn out to be true?" You might think that the
writer really thinks there's a real chance God will show up inTexas next
March!
What this shows about Taiwan is
that the China Post is a very poor-quality newspaper, staffed by imbeciles
in the editorial department. First of all, as everyone know, there is NO
God. This is a conceit of Christian theology, which took up the conceit
from Jewish theology. So if there is no God, how can this thing that does
not exist return? How can a major Taiwan newspaper editorialize that it
doesn't know if the prediction will come true? Does its elevator go all
the way to the top? Apparently not. And this, sad to say, is very much
the story of taiwan, a country where people's elevators do not go al the
way to the top. Why? They have been inundated with Western ideas and concepts,
and they are like lost children.
Some have converted to Christianity
but really don't know what Christianity is. They follow a religion somehow
foisted upon them, a missionary, a relative, a friend, and they follow
without really knowing the pernicious history of Christianity. Can you
imagine any newspaper in the USA or UK writing an editorial like this about
a UFO cult that has been accused of preparing to stage a mass suicide in
March 1998? And do you know why this imposter Chen chose Garland Texas
to bring his "flock" of dummies to? Because he thinks it sounds like "God
Land." Really. Reuters has this in its story.
The reason I am doing this Internet
page is because we have already seen the tragedies of the Aum cult in Japan
and the Heaven's Gate in California. Now another crazy cult is upon us
and the media is looking into it. Good. We must be vigilante. At the same
time, we must remember that Mormons are a cult, all of Christianity is
a cult, all of Judaism is a cult, all of Islam is a cult, all supernatural
religions are cults. Is that clear to everyone? If not, do your homework.
Don't flame me, because I have filters
to filter out stupid flames and I won't read them. This web site is for
intelligent people who look forward to a world without supernatural religions
running the show. Sorry folks, but this is the truth. You gotta face it
some time or other.
Anyway, just wanted to share with
you that amazing editorial in the China Post, dated 12/15/97. I hope to
publicize its contents worldwide so others around the world can see how
SOME people, even college-educated editorial writers, think about this
UFO cult business. It really makes you wonder!
Now please don't get me wrong: I
love Taiwan and the Taiwanese people! It's a great place! Wonderful people,
great food, nice climate, warm hearts all around! But the people here are
very gullible about Western concepts of UFOs and messiahs and Godhood,
because these ideas are not imbedded in the old Chinese culture they inherited.
Now they are at a crossroads in their own history, and this UFO cult is
a good reflection of just what is going on in Taiwan, spiritually and intellectually.
More coming soon. Stay tuned.
Cults and Organzied Religions
As this story continues to twist and
turn its way across the world's newspapers (and on CNN and online), one
thing one should remember is that these cults are brought to us thanks
to the wacky myths of organized religions, both East and West. I mean,
is there that much difference in believing in a UFO coming to pick you
up to the next level and a virgin birth or a man walking on water or, for
that matter, some imaginary heaven and hell populated by devils and angels?
No, mainstream religions and kooky cults share a common thread: the belief
in supernatural unprovable ideas. So while we laugh at the Taiwan UFO cults
and the Heaven's Gaters dressed in black Nike sneakers (with their bags
packed), why don't we also laugh at the completely absurd supernatural
beliefs of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism or Buddhism? Because
these ancient cults have been more or less accepted into the mainstream
and have become huge, well-financed organized religions.
While Chen Hon Ming of the Taiwan UFO
cult says God will appear in his body on March 31 at 10 am (haha!), the
Billy Grahams and Benny Hinns and Mother Teresas of the world preach that
Jesus was born via immaculate conception, could walk on water and perform
completely impossible miracles. What's the difference? The difference is
that President Bill Clinton of the USA says in his Xmas message to the
public that Jesus is "the one true light of all humankind" and can get
away with it because he's part of the mainstream, when everyone knows Jesus
was not the one true light of humankind, but just another false prophet
in a long line of Hebrew false prophets.
The only difference is that
while the Hebrews were smart enought to know the Jesus was an imposter
and certainly not any messiah, the early Christians took the bait and turned
a small cult of lunatics into a huge worldwide religion that puts a Pope
in Rome and priests and pastors in every knook and cranny of the USA and
Europe. Not that the Jews were any more correct in following their supernatural
myths; Judaism is as much a cult at is Christianity and Buddhism. Islam
too. But we can live with these cults, we have to, they are part and parcel
of mainstream America. They incorporate the myths we live by. By comes
a kooky UFO cult, and we all know it's absurd. Why do we know it's so absurd?
Well, because common sense tells us so. But why doesn't common sense also
tell us mainstream religion is full of supernatural impossibilties too?
Because we are dumb, and we are getting dumber, that's why. Anyway, this
page is not about atheism or being an agnostic or stopping mainstream religions.
They have their place, too.
This page is about the Taiwan UFO
cult and what's gonna be, come March 31. The leaders are true wackos, one
is a sociology professor in Taipei and another is Western-style medical
doctor from central Taiwan and their followers are middleclass Taiwanese
with empty hearts and minds looking for fulfillment (and meaning) by hooking
up with these imaginary UFOs that are gonna beam them up to heaven, the
next level as they say in Heaven's Gatespeak. Are you worried about them?
Ted Turner,
the CNN wise guy, will probably say, as he did of the HGs, that "now there
are a few less nuts around. Who needs 'em!" Will these 150-200 adults and
some 30 children and teenagers commit mass suicide in Godland, Texas this
coming March?
Are you concerned? Are you worried?
If you have any opinions or comments, please email us at apt_6f@hotmail.com
(REMEMBER: Please, no flames or obnoxious religious prosletizing because
all such flames will be automatically filtered out to the garbage box and
sent into cyberspace oblivion. We are interested only in reasoned arguments
and rational thought. The rest of you can go jump in a lake, or better
yet, why don't you join the cultists in Godland?)
[END RANT]
Watcher does not necessarily
endorse the opinions expressed on this page. We re-post conspiracy musings,
gleaned from various internet, BB, and usenet sources, for entertainment
and educational purposes...but not for profit.
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