The World Mission Society Church of God (WMSCOG) with Anthony Forte: A decade inside the Korean doomsday cult WMSCOG, an arranged marriage, and the exit that followed
Cults, Culture & Coercion with Dr. Steve HassanShow Notes
Anthony Forte spent more than ten years inside the World Mission Society Church of God, rising from a new recruit stopped on a Queens, NY, sidewalk to a leader who trained others to recruit the way he had been recruited. He joined at 25, during a stretch of his life when he felt behind everyone around him. He stayed through an arranged marriage. He left only after the research he did during the pandemic exposed cracks in a doctrine he had built a decade of his life on. The World Mission Society Church of God, known to researchers in this field as WMSCOG, teaches that Ahn Sahng-hong, a Korean man who died in 1985, was the second coming of Christ, and Zahng Gil-jah is “God the Mother,” a living deity based in South Korea. Members are told they must accept both figures, keep the Sabbath and Passover, tithe, and recruit new members to earn a place in heaven. Anthony rose through recruiting and teaching, eventually overseeing a team of members, before he found his way out. A year into membership, leaders promoted Anthony to team leader and turned the conversation toward marriage. His pastor pushed him toward a Korean member who would need a visa sponsor, framing marriage as a path to greater blessings. The wedding took place in October 2012; the same year the group had told members would mark the end of the world. “I only have two more months on Earth anyway,” Anthony remembered thinking. “Might as well do this big action and please God, so I have a better chance to get into heaven.” He and his wife communicated mostly by text for quite some time, since she spoke little English. “It was very difficult,” he told me, “to marry a stranger.” This is a very insightful interview and of great interest to folks who themselves with involved with a Bible group that claimed to have the “Truth.”
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