Part One
SCJ makes the claim that Jesus is currently in Spirit, but when he was resurrected, his body was physical.
A Christian would claim that Jesus’s resurrected body is in a glorified state where it can exist both in the presence of the Father and have physical traits.
How does SCJ get to this conclusion? Let us take a look.
When reading Acts 1:9-11, there is no indication that Jesus ever turns to Spirit, so, in order for the narrative of Jesus returning in Spirit to succeed, they redefine cloud by saying it is the “symbol of the invisible spiritual world.”
They justify this definition of the word cloud by looking at how whenever God the Father interacted with his creation, and cite how God interacted with Moses in a cloud on Mount Sinai in Exodus 24:15-18.
As for injecting the definition of cloud into Acts 1:9-11, Shincheonji claims that God speaks to his prophets in parables, or in this case metaphorical language (Hosea 12:10), and since the Angel in Acts 1:9-11 speaks about the future, it is then fair to redefine of the meaning of the word cloud in Acts 1:9-11.
A few issues with this argument:
The first issue is that not every prophecy, or prediction about the future, is written or spoken in a parable, as there are times where Jesus himself speaks plainly about the future.
Some examples include:
- Jesus predicting his own death (Matthew 20:17-19)
- Jesus predicting that his friends will abandon him when he is crucified (John 16:32, Matthew 26:31
- Peter betraying Christ 3 times (Mark 14:29-31)
And even if one can ignore the obvious literary fallacy that Shincheonji commits when reading into the text of Acts 1:9-11, there are other Korean groups that practice a similar methodology of reading into the text and changing the original meaning, like the World Mission Society Church of God. Instead of redefining the cloud as a symbol of the Spiritual realm, the World Mission Society Church of God redefines the cloud as “flesh”, and uses Jude 1:12 (making an emphasis on the cloud of witnesses being people) and Hebrews 12:1 (people are like clouds without rain) to justify their interpretation.
In terms of basic literature, and even randomly redefining terms to suit a certain narrative, the idea that Christ returns in Spirit does not hold any credibility in the context of Acts Chapter 1.