Why did a million Christians attend the Manmin cult leader Lee Jae-Rock Chennai healing crusade in 2002?

If Lee Jae-Rock is a false teacher and/or or heretic, why did over one million people in Chennai show up at his healing crusade? There are several reasons.

Indians love big meetings

Indians are known for enjoying big gatherings. Big gatherings are common there as the nation now has over a billion people. Political rallies and Hindu festivals can easily attract hundreds of thousands if not millions. In many cities there are periodic traffic jams due to big meetings going on. If one is looking to arrange a very large meeting, India would be the place to go!

Healers are popular

India is a nation that has many people who do not have adequate medical assistance. There are not enough doctors for this huge nation. Many Indians cannot afford even basic medical care. At the same time Indians are very spiritually minded and open to the supernatural and miraculous. because of this combination, healing crusades are very popular.

Foreign preachers can draw crowds

Christian teachers come to India as well as preachers, but it is the healing evangelists who typically really gather in the crowds! The vast majority of Indians who attend any crusade have probably never heard of the main speaker until the crusade was promoted. They attend since the crusade offers healing.

Foreigners are well liked and respected In most parts of India and especially Chennai, foreigners are well liked and respected. In places like medical centers and insurance offices in Chennai I was sometimes obviously given better than average service due to being a foreigner. Being a foreigner opened many doors to speak in churches in Chennai. A few times I met Indian pastors who upon meeting me invited me to come preach in their church when they knew hardly anything about me at all! Foreigners will often attract bigger crowds due to this.

A huge budget

Lee Jae-Rock Crusade had a huge budget The Lee Jae Rock Crusade did cost a large amount of money by Indian standards, and by all appearances the Manmin Church paid for it all. There were plenty of funds to place posters, billboards and media advertisements all over the city. Color printed promotional handouts & brochures were handed out to hundreds of thousands of church members all over Chennai, as well as thousands of bibles and Manmin bags for crusade volunteers.

Mini crusades were sponsored where churches could preach the gospel and then invite their audiences to attend the big crusade. There were budgeted funds for transport to the crusade, and the temporary stage/platform was very high budget and the biggest in people's memory. How much money was spent on all of this, where the money went, precisely how much and how it was all disbursed is not known.

The Manmin church did not provide a public accounting and it was rumored they dealt mainly in cash. I did hear that the Chennai church association which invited Lee Jae-Rock disassociated themselves legally in some way from the Lee Jae-Rock/Manmin Church (though still partnered with them in the ministry aspect) when they saw that the funds were not being handled and accounted for in the proper manner (This is what I heard though I cannot confirm this.)

The highest leaders were convinced and the others followed with little question

Indians, like many non-western cultures, have a very high respect leaders. They have a high trust in their leaders and elders and as a group will follow their lead. All Lee-Jae Rock had to do was to convince the top church leaders of Chennai to support the crusade. They in turn convinced the pastors of large and medium sized churches in their pastor's meetings and then the nearby village pastors and small pastors followed the big pastors. The members of the churches of course then followed the lead of their pastors! Therefore all Lee Jae-Rock had to do was to convince a handful of the most prominent pastor-leaders in the city to fully support the crusade. Once he did this, the others followed suit. Things often work this way in non-western nations where there is more respect for leaders and decisions are made more as groups.

Pastor Kumar of ACA church at the time (now pastor of Heavenly City Church) and Pastor Roberts (now deceased, who was at the time president of Good Samaritan Fellowship)  Respected pastors in the city of Chennai. They were part the main group of senior pastors who, after a trip to Korea, convinced the other pastors to support the crusade. Unfortunately these pastors did not do enough independent research on Lee Jae-Rock. Also when criticisms of Lee Jae-Rock arose, they deemed them not important (since not all false teachings pertained to central doctrine) or chose to believe the explanations given to them by the Manmin staff (that Lee Jae-Rock was falsely quoted by jealous people from Paul Yonngi-Cho's church). Owen Roberts remained positive about the crusade and said it was the best one he had ever participated in.

One must ask, if Lee Jae-Rock is a heretic and false teacher, how could the highly respected senior pastors of the city be convinced to support his crusade? I have interacted with some of the key supporters of the crusade and can verify firsthand that they are all mature respected godly men who are trying to reach the city of Madras for Christ. So how could these godly men end up leading all the churches into this? There are understandable reasons why these leaders did not believe any of the serious allegations against Lee Jae-Rock and why they were convinced that they were doing the right thing in supporting the crusade.

1) Like in any cult, Lee Jae-Rock and the Manmin church appear very orthodox Christian on the outside. And most of Lee Jae-Rock's teachings are Biblical and perfectly acceptable. It's only with further investigation that one can discover the strange UFO Edenian teachings and heretical statements Lee Jae-Rock has made in the past. The pastors just did not see the errors lying deep underneath.

2) A large reason the pastors likely did not see the cult aspects of Lee Jae-Rock and the Manmin church is culture & language. It is easier to deceive and put on a successful false picture when you are dealing with people who are not from your culture or language. Both Korea and Tamil Nadu (the state Chennai is in) are strongly monocultural. South Korea is very KOREAN and Tamil Nadu is very TAMIL. Both cultures are unique with their own languages and customs.

Mix the two and one would take a very long time to see clearly into the other. Some of the members of the English speaking churches in Madras did find references to Manmin being a cult and found the UFO/Edenian Lee Jae-Rock teachings on the internet, and hence raised concern, but virtually none if any of the Tamil churches made it that far.

3) Another large reason the pastors would not be able to see the Lee Jae-Rock deceptions is that there is virtually no information available about the Lee Jae-Rock heresies outside of Korea! A full Google search revealed that there is not one single website in the English language outside of this one which gives any detailed information on Lee Jae-Rock deceptions. There are a few short negative references but nothing else. Also only a few of the Tamil pastors in Madras use the Internet, and then usually only for email and not for research. There are books in Korea such as "The Heresies of Lee Jae-Rock" but no such books in English. Most informed Korean Christians know that Lee Jae-Rock is a false teacher and will say that the Manmin church is a cult. But outside Korea Lee Jae-Rock is only known by what he claims to be.

4) The Manmin church had explanations for the accusations against Lee Jae-Rock. A Korean church in Madras, which came out of Paul Yonggi-Cho's church, did circulate documented heresies by Lee Jae-Rock. However pastors reported that Lee Jae-Rock's assistant said that he had never said those things, and that they were just made up by certain people in Paul Yonggi Cho's church since they were jealous that the Manmin church was growing and experiencing more healing!

As for the UFO/Edenian teachings, it was explained that those teachings were posted on the "Manmin Research" website, not the official Manmin church website, and that Lee Jae-Rock had nothing to do with that research site, and that it the site was in English, which Lee Jae-Rock does not speak. Yet they did not deny Lee Jae-Rock gave those teachings that are on the site! Also it should be noted that Manmin Research, Manmin TV, and the Manmin church have their sites tightly interlinked showing an obvious connection and endorsement of each other. In any case, the pastors accepted these reasonably sounding explanations from the Manmin church.

5) There was some concern by some of the pastors about the UFO/Edenian teachings. However the philosophy that prevailed was that a) The UFO/Edenian teachings did not involve central main aspects of doctrine. They were just interesting teachings Lee Jae-Rock has on the side so are of little importance. It should be noted that Lee Jae-Rock in those teachings seems to state the aspects of the Edenians and UFOs and dragons, etc., as fact, not just possibilities or theories. Since many of these strange teachings cannot be ascertained from scripture, it appears that Lee Jae-Rock received them from revelation of some sort (he has a full notebook for example, of notes from his visits to heaven, soon to be published.) If these revelations are not true, where did they come from? His "revelations" completely contradict what many evangelicals have found in research, that UFOs and alien contacts are linked to the occult, drugs and mysticism.

Also many pastors and leaders believe that if Lee Jae-Rock has had such a powerful healing ministry, then surely God must be with him! Many of them are more impressed by power than anything else.

6) Some of the loudest vocal opposition to the crusade was motivated politically. According to one of the main supporters of the crusade, another certain pastor was at one point told he would be the chairman of the crusade. But while he was overseas the plan changed and he was not given the leadership. This pastor was so angry about this that he loudly opposed the crusade and was glad to pass on the heretical statements of Lee Jae-Rock when they came across his path. Therefore the other pastors dismissed the information he passed on as they could see his motivation. He brought a bad name to the Lee Jae-Rock opposition. (I have not spoken with this opposing pastor however and it likely could be he would have a different version of this, and his version may have some aspects of truth we do not know. But it can at least be said that there was if nothing else the perception that his motivation was more political and this caused many of the anti Lee-Jae Rock arguments to be ignored.)

The Chennai senior pastors who led the crusade are Godly men. The churches and organizations that were involved are good ones. Yet with this combination of circumstances and clever masquerading by the Manmin church, A million people were gathered together to hear a cult leader preach the gospel. His messages at the crusade were fine an doctrinally correct, but now the Manmin church cult has more worldwide publicity and has an open door from the Chennai churches to plant the Manmin church in Madras and then beyond.