Chapter 1 The Life of the Founder

 Religious Group with John-the-Baptist Missions in the 1930s

 The March First Movement having failed to accomplish its purpose, the forceful influence of the Japanese continued to escalate. The religious inclination of the Korean people shifted from an external one to an internal one, from the physical reality to the inner spiritual realm. This trend was particularly conspicuous among members of the Christian faith, which had developed considerably during the foregoing years.

Representative figures within this trend included Rev. Yong-do Lee, who stoked the fires of spiritual revival throughout Korea and Manchuria while asserting his unity of heart with the "Suffering Jesus Christ," Reverend Nam-ju Paek, from Wonsan in South Hamkyung Province, who was in the forefront of proclaiming the age of the "Way of New Life," and Mrs. Sung-do Kim, from the Holy Lord Church in Cheolsan, North Pyongan Province, who maintained that the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden was the misuse of sexual love.

However, opposition came not only from the colonialist Japanese, but also from the mainstream Korean Christian leaders who tried through sectarian condemnation to eradicate these buds of spontaneously generating religious belief.

Thus, Reverend Yong-do Lee who passed away at the age of thirty-three, Reverend Nam-ju Paek who was instrumental in the establishment of the "Church of Jesus," and Mrs. Sung-do Kim of the Holy Lord Church, were stigmatized as heretics and ultimately "stoned" by the mainstream churches.