“Have you Heard of God the Mother?”

“Have you heard of God the Mother?”

This was asked to a UC San Diego first year during Winter Quarter 2023 when she was stopped by two women by Faustina Solís Lecture Hall. (The Triton will be referring to the student’s name as Jane Doe for protection of privacy.)

“They were getting rejected a lot,” Jane Doe shared. Out of pity, Doe allowed them to share their message with her. One of them was a Korean exchange student named Hailey. The two women introduced her to “God the Mother,” which she found convincing.

Doe shared this discovery with her housemates later on, but they disapproved of this idea.

“They were shocked and said there was no such thing as God the Mother,” Doe said.

Doe’s housemates, who identified as Christians, told her that “God the Mother” wasn’t true. They showed her a Reddit article of a previous World Mission Society Church of God (WMSCOG) member’s experience that Doe explained as a “cult experience.”

“The article described the exact same experience I went through,” Doe said.

Much like Doe’s experience, there have been sightings on San Diego State University’s (SDSU) campus of students being stopped by two women with a brochure asking for their time and if they’re familiar with “God the Mother.” These women are a part of WMSCOG.

WMSCOG is a religious group founded by Ahnsahnghong, a South Korean Christian minister. The WMSCOG church believes that Jesus came back a second time as Ahnsahnghong.

According to the WMSCOG website, they believe in “Elohim God — God the Father and God the Mother — and share God’s love all over the world through various acts of volunteerism.” Elohim, according to the church, is a word in Hebrew and Aramaic that is the plural form of El and Eloah, which are the masculine and feminine singular forms of “God.” However, outside of WMSCOG, Elohim in the Bible is often understood to be in reference to one God.

The WMSCOG East Coast website notes, “The word [Elohim] appears in the Bible more than 2,500 times, indicating that God is not just one but more than one.”

The most commonly used Bible verse among this group is Genesis 1:26, which states, “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’”

WMSCOG believes that emphasizing the “us” in this verse refers to the most commonly known God the Father but also a possible God the Mother. The belief is similar to a traditional family, where there is a father, mother, and children; thus, the “heavenly family” also reflects this as well.

The Triton interviewed 37-year-old Anthony Forte, an ex-WMSCOG member who first got involved with the church when he was 25. At the time, he was living in Queens, New York, when he was stopped on the street by a man and a woman. Like Doe, he was asked if he had ever heard of God the Mother.

“I thought it was interesting to have a conversation with them about it,” Forte said. He then agreed to join them for a Bible study at their local church.

Forte’s first bible study was spent learning the prophecies of the Bible. As he became heavily involved in WMSCOG, he soon learned of their “doomsday” prophecies.

“They believe that everyone on Earth tried to murder God in heaven. And that’s why we’re here on Earth. Because God the Mother loves us, she’s giving us a second chance to prove that the sin was from Satan and not from ourselves,” Forte said.

On top of this, Forte shared that the church believes that “97% of the population will go to hell.” There is also the Seal of God, which is the belief that only 144,000 people will only be able to go to heaven. “The more work you do determines if you are the 144,000,” Forte said.

Additionally, the church members believe that as of today, God the Mother is alive in South Korea. Her name is Zahng Gil-Jah and she is also called “New Jerusalem.” However, there is no mention on Zahng’s website of Zahng having any affiliation with WMSCOG. On her personal website, Zahng is described as, “… a humanitarian activist who has constantly worked for sustainable world peace and mutual respect among all people.” Additionally, “she is also a spiritual leader who has taught communities around the world … how to help and take care of one another.”

Moreover, Forte remarked that the South Korean Christian minister Ahn Sahng-hong never wrote about “God the Mother” in any of his books. “He wrote a book two times saying there’s no such thing as God the Mother,” Forte said.

However, through Forte’s experience, Zahng was an important figure to the church.

“We viewed her as God, so everything she said, we had to obey and listen to,” Forte said.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, WMSCOG churches would hold trips to Korea for people to meet Zahng.

“People would go there to cry and see her. They really believed they had tried to kill her in heaven,” Forte said.

Ex-deaconess of WMSCOG, 39-year-old Toni Bain, was one of those members who visited Zahng in South Korea and explained that her experience was “very strange.”

On the ten-day trip to visit Zahng, Bain shared a similar statement to Forte’s, saying that members were very emotional and really believed her to be God. However, Bain saw that throughout the trip, Zahng barely spoke to her followers and didn’t really know their names.

“The whole time we were there, we just did Bible study. Except one day, we went to the aquarium,” Bain said.

Bain further explains her experiences in WMSCOG on her podcast, “Playing in Traffic.”

Forte says the church once taught that Zahng Gil-Jah will not die until the very last day of Earth. But now that Zahng has started to age, the church’s sentiment has changed.

“Now that she’s starting to get a little bit old, [the church] is trying to back away and gaslight that teaching because it’s only a matter of time before she’s not around anymore,” Forte said.

Zahng is also closely associated with the International WeLoveU Foundation, which was first launched in Korea in the 1990s and was later launched internationally in 2001. The foundation says that they carry out global charity activities according to their website. According to WeLoveU Foundation’s website, their statement is: “It is not too much to say that mother is a byword for respect. Just as a mother cherishes each and every one of her family members and doesn’t spare her love and sacrifice for their life and harmony, the WeLoveU performs humanitarian services with the heart of a mother, regarding the world as one family.”

Forte explains that the WeLoveU Foundation works as a guise to help as a nonprofit organization. “This way, [WMSCOG] created a nonprofit organization as a way to get their foot in the door to different people,” he said. Forte also added that ultimately WeLoveU is a way for members to get a chance to preach.

Many WMSCOG recruiters are ambitious in “bearing fruit,” or getting more members involved in the church. Bain and Forte both shared how they would pretend to be college-age students in order to recruit students into the group. In Bain’s experience, ”We would set-up a spot in the [college] library and pretend we were a Bible club.”

Within Doe’s experience, Hailey would consistently message her about when Bible study at “The Hub” — one of the churches in San Diego — would take place and also about attending TRUTH club events. It should be noted that The Triton could not confirm a link between TRUTH club and WMSCOG. The Triton reached out to TRUTH club but received no response.

“It was clear she didn’t want to know me. She just wanted to convince me into getting into the club,” Doe said.

Doe was also put in a vulnerable spot when Hailey would message her saying that “she’d [Hailey would] be sad if she [Doe] didn’t respond.” Doe explained that the emotional pressure from Hailey could have pushed her into joining the WMSCOG.

“It’s my first year. I’m in a new country. I have no idea what to do. Don’t have money or many friends outside of my housemates. My classes weren’t going as well either,” Doe said.

Doe mentioned that as an international student at UCSD, she was in an emotionally vulnerable place where she was seeking community during this tumultuous time in her life. She since believes that giving her phone number to Hailey was a mistake.

Forte warned of the international volunteer group ASEZ, which stands for Save the Earth from A to Z, that he describes as “deceptive.” ASEZ describes themselves as “a group of university student volunteers from the Church of God, who act to solve practical problems around the world.” Much like the WeLoveU Foundation, ASEZ also prides itself on having a “mother’s love” for the world. However, Forte says ASEZ is also a “guise” to members to “bear fruit.”

22-year-old George, who was born into WMSCOG, was an active recruiter on his campus, California State University, Fullerton. George is a pseudonym for the source, who does not feel comfortable sharing his identity because of family members still associated with WMSCOG.

“We would just go up to them and say, ‘Hi! We’re ASEZ! We’re a volunteer group. We’re just asking college students if they want to volunteer,’” George said.

George also stated that once they received a student’s contact information, they would reveal that ASEZ is actually a part of WMSCOG.

There have been sightings of WMSCOG members across many college campuses in San Diego. Students at the University of San Diego (USD) expressed concern about sex trafficking claims linked to WMSCOG, as seen in a 2018 article published by the USD Vista, the university’s student newspaper. The Daily Aztec, SDSU’s independent student newspaper, also published an article in 2018 about sex trafficking allegations associated with the religious group “God the Mother.” However, both newspapers disprove these allegations.

When The Triton brought up these allegations to Forte, his response was, “Nothing like that happens. There’s no sex trafficking in the regard like the movie ‘Taken.’”

Bain agreed with Forte but added that there are “deeper levels of trafficking.” Bain said that within WMSCOG, there are arranged marriages that take place within the group.

“There’s a lot of women in those groups that are in relationships they don’t really want to be in,” Bain said.

Within these arranged relationships, often Korean individuals are paired with American individuals.

“They [WMSCOG members] believe South Korea is the heavenly country…. They have their workers come from Korea to America to come teach us. So, a lot of marriages are to Koreans,” Bain said.

While Bain’s marriage to her husband was not arranged, Forte was placed in an arranged marriage.

Forte’s ex-spouse was a Korean woman that the pastor of his church suggested he marry. “He said that it would open me up to receive more blessings in heaven,” Forte said.

Currently, there are four WMSCOG churches located in San Diego County — one in Escondido, one in Santee, one in the City of San Diego, and the fourth in Chula Vista. In order to enter the church, a person must either be invited or already a member.

At UCSD, the TRUTH Club has also been rumored to be associated with WMSCOG. According to the TRUTH Club’s description on the website of Center for Student Involvement’s current student organizations, the club is a “Zion Bible Study Club that offers members the opportunity to distinguish between what the bible teaches and the traditions of men.” The Triton reached out to the TRUTH Club to see if they were associated with WMSCOG but received no response.

When The Triton asked if UCSD students should be concerned about this group, Doe’s response was “Definitely! Especially because the practices aren’t true to the Bible.”

Forte also agreed with this sentiment, saying, “This group will take over your whole life.” He further warned that a lot of families and marriages have been broken up because of WMSCOG.

Bain said that universities should be worried as students will be forced to leave their education. “[The church] doesn’t want students to go to school; they want them to go to church.”

George added, “I [have] seen a lot of students from my school even. They join the church and they get so involved they think about dropping their classes … they focus on their preaching because it feels so urgent.”

Cydney Macon is an Assistant News Editor for The Triton.

Correction: This article was republished at 2:00 p.m. on September 27, 2023 to anonymize a source. This article was updated at 12:40 p.m. on August 2, 2023 to fix inaccuracies based on updated information from the sources.