Opening
The World Mission Society Church of God (WMSCOG) teaches that Zahng Gil-jah (born 1943, currently the leader of the WMSCOG) is "God the Mother" / "Heavenly Mother" — a separate divine person foreshadowed, they argue, in Genesis 1:26-27, Galatians 4:26, Revelation 21:9-10, Revelation 22:17, and Romans 5:14. Salvation, in current WMSCOG teaching, is not given to those who fail to know and accept Heavenly Mother.
This article is the doctrinal companion to "Ahn Sahng-hong as Christ's Second Coming: The Claim Tested." The two articles together constitute LumenVeritatis's full WMSCOG response. That article tests the Christ-claim; this article tests the Mother-God-claim. Read together they cover the central doctrinal pair that defines WMSCOG identity.
The case is presented in its strongest form, in WMSCOG's own published voice, with direct quotation from current WMSCOG doctrinal materials. Then it is tested against Christ's own teaching, against the unanimous patristic-apostolic-magisterial reading of the same biblical passages, and — critically — against Ahn Sahng-hong's own 1978 booklet refuting an identical divine-mother claim from a different disciple. The internal-record argument is decisive: Ahn himself rejected the doctrine the present church now teaches. LumenVeritatis reports; it does not teach.
1. The WMSCOG case in their own words
The WMSCOG case for Zahng Gil-jah as God the Mother rests on four interlocking biblical pillars and one natural-theology backing.
1.1 Genesis 1:26-27 — "Elohim is plural; let us make man male and female"
The foundational pillar is a Hebrew-grammar argument from Genesis 1:26-27 Gen 1:26-27. The official WMSCOG "Heavenly Mother" doctrinal page reads:
"Gen. 1:26-27: 'Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness…" So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.' The above verse states that God has two images — a male image and a female image. Until now, we have only known and called upon the male image of God: 'Father.' Then how should we call upon the female image of God? Logically, we should refer to God's female image as 'Mother.'" WMSCOG:HeavenlyMother §2
The argument continues with the Hebrew lexical claim:
"The word 'us' is a plural term. 'Elohim,' the Hebrew word used in place of 'God' in Genesis 1:26, directly translates to 'Gods,' the plural form of the word 'God.' Therefore, the references to 'us' in the book of Genesis refer to God the Father and God the Mother." WMSCOG:HeavenlyMother §2
WMSCOG explicitly anticipates and rejects the Trinitarian reading:
"Some say that the word 'us' in this verse indicates God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. If this argument is correct, there should be three types of people in the world… However, on this earth there are only two types of people: men and women. Therefore, the 'Gods' mentioned in Genesis 1:26 are the male image of God and the female image of God — God the Father and God the Mother." WMSCOG:HeavenlyMother §2
The argument has bite: it asks why, if "let us…" is internal-Trinity speech, the image-bearing result is the binary male-and-female pair rather than the Trinitarian triad of Father-Son-Spirit. A WMSCOG member taught this reading sees a self-evident logical move from Genesis 1:26-27 to a male-and-female God.
1.2 Galatians 4:26 — "the Jerusalem above is our mother"
Pillar two is Paul's apparent positive identification of a Heavenly Mother in Galatians 4:26 Gal 4:26:
"Apostle John recorded that the Lamb, that is, Heavenly Father, has His wife, 'the city of heavenly Jerusalem.' Apostle Paul called the heavenly Jerusalem, who is the bride of the Lamb, our Mother. Gal 4:26: 'But the Jerusalem that is above is free, and she is our mother.'" WMSCOG:GodMotherFAQ §2
The exegetical move: Paul says "our mother" (μήτηρ ἡμῶν) referring to "the Jerusalem above." A person, WMSCOG argues, not a building; a mother, not a metaphor.
1.3 Revelation 21:9-10 + 22:17 — the Spirit and the Bride
Pillar three identifies the Bride of Revelation as the Heavenly Mother. Revelation 21:9-10 says the angel showed John "the bride, the wife of the Lamb" and showed him "the holy city of Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God." Revelation 22:17 reads "the Spirit and the bride say, Come" Rev 22:17:
"Rev 22:17: 'The Spirit and the bride say, "Come!"' Here we can see that God has appeared as the Spirit and the Bride in due time to give us the water of life. The Lamb and His Wife are God the Father and God the Mother, who have appeared in due time. Our Father and Mother have appeared to give Their children life in the last days." WMSCOG:ElohimGods §4
The interlocking exegesis: Revelation 21 (the Bride is the New Jerusalem) + Galatians 4:26 (the Jerusalem above is our mother) + Revelation 22:17 (the Spirit and the bride invite us) = the Bride who calls us to come receive the water of life is the divine Mother.
1.4 Romans 5:14 + Genesis 3:20 — the last-Adam-and-last-Eve typology
Pillar four is a typological argument from Adam-Eve to Christ-Mother. Citing Romans 5:14 ("Adam, who was a pattern of the one to come"), 1 Corinthians 15:45 ("the last Adam, a life-giving spirit"), and Genesis 3:20 ("Eve, the mother of all the living") Rom 5:14:
"After the appearance of Adam, Eve who was a part of Adam's body appeared. As part of Adam, Eve was originally inside him. After Adam fell asleep, Eve came out. Adam represented the one to come, Christ who was to come a second time. Then, whom did Eve, who emerged from within Adam's body, represent? … The meaning of the name Eve is 'life'… This is a prophecy that the 'Life' that was in the Second Coming Christ, who is the last Adam, will come out as the last Eve." WMSCOG:GodFatherGodMother §3
The chronological fit, in WMSCOG's reading: Ahn (= "last Adam") died in February 1985. Zahng (= "last Eve") was elevated as Mother thereafter, "emerging from his side" once his earthly mission completed.
1.5 The natural-theology backing
WMSCOG layers a natural-theology argument on top of the scriptural exegesis:
"In order to compose a family, there must be a father, and the children who call him father, and a mother who gives birth to them. Above all, the expression God the Father itself proves that there exists God the Mother." WMSCOG:GodMotherFAQ §3
"All living things have one thing in common according to God's providence in creation… God let all living things inherit life from their fathers and mothers when He created them. Through this providence, God made us realize that there are not only God the Father but also God the Mother, who both created all things." WMSCOG:GodFatherGodMother §1
The argument from creation: every living thing has both a father and a mother for its physical life; therefore the divine Author of life must reveal Himself as both Father and Mother for its eternal life.
1.6 The closing soteriological claim
The four pillars converge on a single doctrinal payload:
"The people who truly know and believe in God are those who believe in God the Mother as well as God the Father and accept Them into their hearts. No matter how zealous a man may be in his faith, unless he knows God the Mother, his faith is in vain and it can't lead to salvation." WMSCOG:GodFatherGodMother §5
"God the Mother dwells only in Zion, the city of God's appointed feasts, established by God the Father. In Zion, Mother gives Her children the water of life, eternal life, and salvation." WMSCOG:GodFatherGodMother §6
The structure: Heavenly Mother is necessary for salvation; Heavenly Mother dwells only in WMSCOG; therefore WMSCOG is necessary for salvation. The doctrine is not an abstract theological claim about divine gender but a salvation-or-damnation claim about the WMSCOG's sole-true-church status.
2. The decisive internal-record argument: Ahn Sahng-hong himself rejected the doctrine
The single most damaging fact for the WMSCOG Mother-God doctrine comes not from Catholic theology but from WMSCOG's own founder. In 1978, while still alive, Ahn Sahng-hong wrote a booklet refuting an identical divine-mother claim made by his disciple Um Soo-in. The CESNUR / World Religions and Spirituality Project encyclopedia entry on the WMSCOG, written by Massimo Introvigne (Director of CESNUR — a sympathetic-to-NRMs academic source) and Holly Folk, records as a fixed historical fact Introvigne-Folk WRSP 2017:
"1978: Ahn rejected the claims by his disciple Um Soo-in that she was the Bride and the Divine Mother." Introvigne-Folk WRSP 2017
The 1978 anti-Um-Soo-in booklet survives. Its arguments are the precise arguments that, applied consistently, refute the post-1985 WMSCOG Zahng-as-Mother doctrine. Ahn wrote on the very Galatians-and-Revelation-Bride passages WMSCOG now uses to support Zahng:
"Next, let's examine the Biblical passages on the issue of the bride. It is written that 'the Spirit and the bride say' (Rev. 22:17). It is true that the bride here is the same bride found in Revelation 21:9-10. Since it is written, 'Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb,' the wife of the Lamb is the saints." Ahn:RevelationBride §3
"There is a material New City of Jerusalem… The New Jerusalem which is written of in Revelation 21:1-4, the tabernacle of God, abides with human beings. However, this tabernacle is a spiritual building, not a person." Ahn:RevelationBride §4
The booklet contained a chapter titled "A Curse is Received by Making an Offering to the Queen of Heaven," citing Jeremiah 7:18 against any female-divine cult. Ahn called Um's claim "scandalous" and called her "a false prophet" Ahn:RevelationBride §5:
"Um Sooin has then become the mother of Christ as well as the bride (wife) of Christ… How extremely scandalous is this? With this type of misguided delusion, she has become a false prophet and has attempted to gain power." Ahn:RevelationBride §5
The structural inversion is unmistakable. Ahn's 1978 reading of Galatians 4 + Revelation 21 + Revelation 22 = "the bride is the saints, the New Jerusalem is a spiritual building not a person, claims that a contemporary woman is the Mother are scandalous." The post-1985 WMSCOG reading of the same passages = "the bride is a divine person, the New Jerusalem is Mother God, and the contemporary woman Zahng Gil-jah is that person." The arguments are reversed; the conclusions are reversed; the texts are the same. By applying the founder's own published exegesis, the present church refutes itself.
The 1985 schism is the historical confirmation. When Ahn died in February 1985, his followers split Introvigne-Folk WRSP 2017:
"1985: The followers of Ahn divided between a majority that recognized Zahng Gil-jah as God the Mother, and the leadership of Kim Joo-cheol as General Pastor, and a minority that followed Ahn's widow and three children." Introvigne-Folk WRSP 2017
The minority faction (NCPCOG) — including Ahn's own family — rejected the Zahng-as-Mother claim and remain Ahn-only to this day. The Mother-God doctrine the present WMSCOG teaches was rejected by the man it claims as Christ.
3. The Genesis 1:26-27 reading examined
The Hebrew-grammar argument from Genesis 1:26-27 is structurally clever but misreads the text on three counts.
(a) "Elohim" is a plural-of-majesty, not a numerical plural — and the surrounding verbs are singular. The standard Hebrew grammar (Gesenius §124g; Joüon-Muraoka §136d; Waltke-O'Connor §7.4.3) classifies "Elohim" as a plural of majesty (pluralis majestatis) — a Hebrew idiom in which a numerically singular subject takes a grammatically plural form to express dignity, fulness, or intensity. The diagnostic test for the majestic-plural reading is the verbs that govern it. In Genesis 1:1, "Elohim created" — the verb bara is singular. In Genesis 1:27, "Elohim created man in his own image" — the possessive pronoun "his" is singular. Hebrew grammars universally take this as the decisive marker: a true numerical plural would govern plural verbs. Elohim governs singulars. The plural form is honorific, not numerical.
(b) The "let us" of Genesis 1:26 is the plural of self-deliberation or the Trinitarian "us" — and the binary male-female creation argument fails its own logic. WMSCOG argues that if "let us" referred to Father-Son-Spirit, the resulting humans would have come in three sexes. But this reverses the relation between divine "us" and creaturely "image." The image-bearing is not a one-to-one mapping of divine sub-persons to creaturely sub-categories. The text says God created man "in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them" — the image is the singular image of God, instantiated in male-and-female together as one humanity. Genesis 5:1-2 makes this explicit: "In the day when God created man, he made him to the likeness of God. He created them male and female; and blessed them: and called their name Adam" Gen 5:1-2. The plural "them" is given a singular name "Adam." The image is single; its instantiation is in two complementary creatures. There is no inference from "two creatures" to "two divine persons of corresponding sex."
(c) The Catholic Church teaches that God transcends sex. CCC §239 and §370 are explicit §239 §370:
"In no way is God in man's image. He is neither man nor woman. God is pure spirit in which there is no place for the difference between the sexes." §370
"By calling God 'Father', the language of faith indicates two main things: that God is the first origin of everything and transcendent authority; and that he is at the same time goodness and loving care for all his children. God's parental tenderness can also be expressed by the image of motherhood, which emphasizes God's immanence, the intimacy between Creator and creature. The language of faith thus draws on the human experience of parents, who are in a way the first representatives of God for man. But this experience also tells us that human parents are fallible and can disfigure the face of fatherhood and motherhood. We ought therefore to recall that God transcends the human distinction between the sexes. He is neither man nor woman: he is God." §239
Maternal language about God in Scripture — Isaiah 49:15 ("Can a woman forget her infant…?"), Isaiah 66:13 ("As one whom his mother caresseth, so will I comfort you") — does not posit a divine female person. It expresses an attribute of the one God who transcends sex, applied analogically. The Catholic tradition has held this reading from the patristic period; WMSCOG's literalisation of metaphor is a hermeneutical move the unanimous tradition does not license.
4. Galatians 4:26 examined — Paul's actual argument
The WMSCOG reading of Galatians 4:26 isolates the verse from its immediate context, which is Paul's allegorical argument from Sarah and Hagar. Galatians 4:21-31 treats Hagar / Sinai / present Jerusalem as one allegorical pole and Sarah / promise / Jerusalem-above as the other. Paul writes Gal 4:24-26:
"Which things are said by an allegory. For these are the two testaments. The one from mount Sina, engendering unto bondage; which is Agar… But that Jerusalem, which is above, is free: which is our mother." Gal 4:24-26
Paul names what he is doing: ἀλληγορούμενα, "spoken in allegory." The "Jerusalem above" is the spiritual mother of believers in the same allegorical sense in which Hagar is the mother of those under the Mosaic Law. Hagar is not a divine person; she is a historical woman from Genesis serving as an allegorical figure. By exact parallel, the Jerusalem-above is not a divine person; it is the people-of-promise pole of Paul's allegorical pair, the Church considered eschatologically.
The Catholic Church reads Galatians 4:26 in the unanimous patristic-magisterial tradition as a reference to Mater Ecclesia, the Church-as-Mother. Vatican II's Lumen Gentium §6 and §64 say it directly LG §6 LG §64. CCC §757 reads §757:
"The Church, further, which is called 'that Jerusalem which is above' and 'our mother,' is described as the spotless spouse of the spotless Lamb." §757
Two thousand years of Christian exegesis — Augustine, Chrysostom, Jerome, Aquinas, Trent, Vatican I, Vatican II — read Galatians 4:26 the same way. The WMSCOG reading, that "the Jerusalem above is our mother" identifies a divine female person who is now a Korean woman in Bundang, breaks with the entire interpretive tradition. The break is not a refinement; it is a substitution.
5. Revelation 21:9-10 + 22:17 — the Bride is the Church, not a divine consort
Revelation 21:9 says the angel offered to show John "the bride, the wife of the Lamb," and Revelation 21:10 immediately identifies her: "the holy city of Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God." Revelation 21:14 then explicitly identifies the city: it has "twelve foundations, and in them, the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb" Rev 21:14. The Bride is the apostolic Church, the eschatological assembly of the redeemed, not a divine consort.
The apostolic exegesis is unanimous. Ephesians 5:31-32 explicitly identifies the Christ-Bride relationship as Christ-and-the-Church, citing Genesis 2:24 ("the two shall become one flesh") and naming the meaning Eph 5:31-32:
"For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall be two in one flesh. This is a great sacrament; but I speak in Christ and in the church." Eph 5:31-32
Revelation 19:7-8 makes the bridal identification even more explicit: "the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath prepared herself. And it is granted to her that she should clothe herself with fine linen, glittering and white. For the fine linen are the justifications of saints." Rev 19:7-8 The Bride's clothing is identified as the saints' justifications. The Bride is the company of the redeemed — Hebrews 12:22-23's "heavenly Jerusalem… the Church of the firstborn, who are written in the heavens" Heb 12:22-23 — not a person standing beside Christ as a co-divine spouse.
And critically: this is what Ahn Sahng-hong taught in 1978. "The wife of the Lamb is the saints" (§2 above). The reading WMSCOG now repudiates is the reading their founder explicitly taught while alive.
6. The last-Adam-and-last-Eve typology examined
The WMSCOG argument from Romans 5:14 + Genesis 3:20 + 1 Corinthians 15:45 is a typological inference from the Adam-Eve pair to a Christ-Mother pair. The argument fails on three counts.
(a) Romans 5:14's "pattern of the one to come" is unambiguously of Christ, not of a Christ-Mother pair. The full passage runs from Romans 5:12 to 5:21, and Paul makes the type-antitype mapping explicit: "as by the offence of one [Adam], unto all men to condemnation; so also by the justice of one [Christ], unto all men to justification of life. For as by the disobedience of one man, many were made sinners; so also by the obedience of one, many shall be made just" Rom 5:18-19. The pattern is Adam-as-type-of-Christ, one-and-one. There is no Eve-as-type-of-Mother in Romans 5; that mapping is supplied by WMSCOG, not by Paul.
(b) The apostolic Eve-typology, where it appears, is Eve-as-type-of-the-Church, not Eve-as-type-of-a-divine-Mother. The patristic tradition (Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Augustine) develops the "second Eve" typology in two directions: Eve-as-type-of-Mary (the New Eve who reverses the disobedience of the old) and Eve-as-type-of-Ecclesia (the Bride drawn from the side of the sleeping Adam-Christ). Both readings are creature-ward, not divinity-ward. Eve was a creature; her antitypes (Mary, the Church) are creatures. The apostolic typology never crosses the Creator-creature distinction.
(c) The chronological-fit argument is post-hoc. WMSCOG reads the typology as predicting "Mother emerges after the last Adam falls asleep [dies]" and fits this to Zahng's elevation after Ahn's 1985 death. But the same logic could have fit any post-1985 elevation of any female WMSCOG figure — and would have been declared the prophesied fulfilment regardless of who was chosen. The typology produces no falsifiable prediction in advance; it is a retrospective fit to whichever person the doctrinal authority elevated. Compare the test in §2 above: Ahn's 1978 booklet shows that the typology can equally be made to fit Um Soo-in if you want it to — and Ahn refused to make it fit. The typological argument is not evidence; it is doctrine searching for retroactive scriptural cover.
7. The natural-theology backing examined
The argument from "every living thing has a father and a mother for its life, therefore the divine Author of life must be Father-and-Mother" is a category error. The Catholic doctrine of analogy (CCC §40-43; Aquinas, ST I.13.5) holds that creaturely categories apply to God only analogically — not univocally. Creatures reproduce sexually because they are finite, embodied, and propagate via material continuity. God is infinite, simple, and creates ex nihilo. Reasoning from the necessity of biological motherhood for creaturely life to the necessity of divine motherhood for divine life misapplies the category. By the same logic one would have to argue that since creatures have parents who are themselves created, God must have parents who are themselves divine — generating the infinite regress the Greek philosophers identified two and a half millennia ago and the Catholic tradition has answered by the doctrine of the divine simplicity (CCC §202; ST I.3) §202.
The argument also proves too much. If "Father proves Mother" because every family has both, then the same reasoning proves "every divine Person must have a divine Sibling" (creatures usually have siblings), "every divine Person must age" (creatures age), and "every divine Person must die" (creatures die). The natural-theology argument, applied consistently, dissolves the Creator-creature distinction. Catholic natural theology accepts the analogy as analogy and does not extend it past what the analogy can bear.
8. Catholic doctrinal frame
The Catholic Church teaches:
- The one God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — three Persons, one substance — confessed at Nicaea (325) and Constantinople I (381) Nicaea-I 325 Constantinople-I 381.
- God transcends the distinction between the sexes §239 §370.
- The Bride of Christ is the Church (Mater Ecclesia) per the unanimous patristic-apostolic-magisterial reading §757 §796 LG §6.
- Public revelation closed with the death of the last Apostle §66 DV §4. No private revelation can supplement the apostolic deposit by introducing a fourth divine Person.
- The Church warns explicitly about the pseudo-messianic deception of the last days §675.
A doctrine that introduces a fourth divine Person — a "God the Mother" — into the apostolic deposit through a 20th-century Korean charismatic movement, that requires the founder of that movement to be reversed (Ahn rejected the doctrine in 1978; the post-1985 WMSCOG teaches it), and that ties the salvific name itself to a contemporary woman, is, by the Catholic standard at every relevant locus, outside the deposit of faith.
9. Objections answered — five counter-moves a trained WMSCOG member will make
Objection 1: "You appeal to 'tradition' but the apostles didn't have your tradition. Show us 'God the Mother' is denied by Scripture itself, not by Catholic tradition." Reply: Genesis 5:1-2 ("He created them male and female; and called their name Adam"), Ephesians 5:31-32 ("This is a great sacrament; but I speak in Christ and in the church"), and Revelation 19:7-8 ("the fine linen are the justifications of saints" — i.e., the Bride's clothing IS the saints) are scriptural denials. The Catholic tradition reads Scripture; it does not replace Scripture.
Objection 2: "Even Catholics call Mary 'Mother of God' (Theotokos). Why is your Mary acceptable but our Mother God a heresy?" Reply: Mary is called Theotokos (God-bearer) precisely because she is a creature who bore the divine Person of the Son in her womb at the Incarnation. Theotokos defines Mary's relation to the divine Son; it does not divinise Mary herself. The dogma was defined at Ephesus (431) explicitly to safeguard the Son's divinity, not to introduce a fourth Person Ephesus 431. Mary is a creature; Zahng Gil-jah is presented as a divine Person. The doctrines are categorically different.
Objection 3: "Genesis 1:26 says 'us.' If you reject Mother God, what does 'us' mean? Your Trinity reading produces three sub-images, but the text gives two." Reply: the "us" is the Trinitarian self-deliberation among the divine Persons, but the image is singular (Genesis 1:27: "in his own image" — possessive pronoun singular). The image-bearing is one humanity in two complementary creatures, and the text confirms this explicitly in Genesis 5:1-2 by giving the male-female pair the singular name "Adam." The argument from "two sexes therefore two divine Persons" misreads the relation between divine "us" and creaturely "image" — the image is single, instantiated relationally.
Objection 4: "Galatians 4:26 says 'our mother.' Plain reading. The Catholic 'allegory' move is rationalisation." Reply: Paul himself says he is speaking allegorically (Gal 4:24, ἀλληγορούμενα). The allegorical reading is not Catholic spin; it is Paul's own self-description of his argument. The plain reading of Galatians 4 — Paul's plain reading — is the Hagar-Sarah allegorical pair where Hagar represents bondage-under-Mosaic-Law and Sarah represents freedom-under-the-promise. Hagar is not a divine person; by exact parallel, Sarah-Jerusalem is not either.
Objection 5: "Even Ahn called Heavenly Mother — see his later writings." Reply: Ahn's 1978 booklet refuting Um Soo-in is the documentary record. The minority NCPCOG faction (which includes Ahn's widow and three children) maintains that the post-1985 WMSCOG selectively reinterpreted Ahn's later work to support Zahng. The 1985 schism itself is the historical evidence. Ahn's own family rejected the doctrine. The burden of proof for "Ahn taught Mother God" rests on the present WMSCOG, and the documentary evidence runs in the opposite direction.
10. Pastoral note
WMSCOG members include many sincere people seeking God. The Mother-God doctrine has emotional and devotional centrality for many of them — the maternal attachment is real, the sense of being known and loved by a divine Mother is real. The Catholic critique offered here is offered in charity. A WMSCOG member who begins to doubt the Mother-God doctrine faces social pressure and (often) the loss of community. The pastoral approach must be patient and respectful. The Catholic answer is not "your devotion was misdirected entirely" but "the maternal attribute of God you experienced is real — God transcends sex but is genuinely a Father whose tenderness expresses itself in maternal language (CCC §239), and the Church herself is your true Mother (CCC §757). The devotion is not lost; it is reordered." The Catholic Church recognises that those who come to her from non-Catholic communities have walked a long road.
Closing
The WMSCOG case for Zahng Gil-jah as God the Mother is internally argued, scripturally cited, and pastorally sincere. It fails for three reasons. First, the Genesis 1:26-27 + Galatians 4:26 + Revelation 22:17 + Romans 5:14 readings break with the unanimous apostolic-patristic-magisterial tradition by literalising metaphor and crossing the Creator-creature distinction. Second, the natural-theology argument from "Father implies Mother" misapplies analogy and proves too much. Third, and decisively, Ahn Sahng-hong himself, in 1978, refuted an identical divine-mother claim using arguments that, applied consistently, refute the present WMSCOG doctrine. The man WMSCOG calls Christ rejected the doctrine the WMSCOG now teaches.
The Catholic Church teaches what Scripture and the apostolic tradition teach: the one God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; God transcends sex; the Bride of Christ is the Church; public revelation closed with the death of the last Apostle. The maternal language of Scripture about God expresses an attribute of the one transcendent God, not a fourth divine Person. The Church herself is your true Mother — and she has been, from the Apostles, for two thousand years.
— The Editors, LumenVeritatis