David Yonggi Cho

David Yonggi Cho is a Korean Christian minister. He is Senior Pastor of the Yoido Full Gospel Church (Assemblies of God), which is the world's largest known congregation, with a membership of 780,000 in 2003.

Early life

He was born on February 14, 1936, in Ulju-gun, which is now part of Ulsan metropolitan city [1]. The son of Cho Doo-chun (조두천) and Kim Bok-sun (김복순), Cho was the eldest of five brothers and four sisters. He graduated from middle school with honours, but his hopes of a university education appeared thwarted when his father's sock and glove business went bankrupt. Accordingly, he enrolled in a cheap technical high school to learn a trade. At the same time, he began frequenting an American army base near his school, and learned English from soldiers whom he befriended. A keen student, he mastered English quickly, and became an interpreter for the commander of the army base, and also for the principal of his school.

Raised initially as a Buddhist, Cho converted to Christianity at the age of 17, after being comforted by his sister's Christian friend while suffering from tuberculosis. He subsequently had a series of spiritual experiences, including what Pentecostals call the Baptism of the Holy Spirit - during which the believer experiences glossolalia - when he saw Jesus in a vision. Believing that God had called him to the ministry, Cho began working as an interpreter for the American evangelist Ken Tize. In 1956, he received a scholarship to study theology at Full Gospel Bible College in Seoul. While there, he met Choi Ja-Shil (최자실), who became his mother-in-law and a close ministerial associate. He graduated in March 1958.

The Daejo Church

In May 1958, Cho held his first worship service in the home of his friend, Choi Ja-shil. Only Choi and her three children attended the service, but the church grew rapidly and soon reached fifty members. Cho and church members began a vigorous campaign of knocking on doors and inviting people to come to church, and within three years, it had grown to four hundred members. In 1961, the church purchased its first plot of land, at Seodaemun.

The church's expansion program suffered a setback in January 1961, when Cho was conscripted by the South Korean army. He asked John Hurston, an American missionary, to pastor the church in his absence. Cho's service in the army was short-lived, however. He required surgery for a serious intestinal illness, and on the grounds of ill health, he was discharged from the army after just seven months of service.

The Seodaemun Church

Following his military discharge, Cho immersed himself in his pastoral work once more, despite continuing ill health. A 1500-seat auditorium was constructed on the plot of land at Seodamun. It opened in November 1961. The church soon outgrew its premises: by 1964 it numbered three thousand. Soon afterwards, Cho had married Kim Sung-hye (김성혜), the daughter of Choi Ja-shil, on 1 March 1965. In the meantime, Cho had been continuing to overwork, and suffered a collapse in 1965. Realizing that the work of leading a large congregation was too much for one person, Cho divided the city of Seoul into twenty zones, or "cells," as he called them, and began training leaders for each cell, who would hold services for worship and Bible study in their homes during the week. Cell leaders were encouraged to invite non-Christian neighbours to attend, to learn about Christianity. Each cell leader was required to train an assistant, and when cell membership reached a certain number, the assistant leader would form a new cell, taking about half of the old cell with him or her.

The success of this concept of cell multiplication surprised even optimistic church members. By 1968, the church numbered eight thousand members; in addition to weekly cell meetings, the church was holding three Sunday services. Even three services proved insufficient to accommodate all members of the church, however, and Cho decided to purchase a larger property on Yoido Island, in the Han River, which flows through Seoul. At that time, Yoido Island was little more than a sand dune, but Cho saw its potential. With the island due to be developed by the Deputy Mayor of Seoul, and with many government offices and companies planning to relocate there, Cho saw the island as an ideal central location for a church.

The Yoido Church

Economic problems delayed the construction of a church on Yoido Island, but in 1973, the new ten thousand-seat auditorium was completed. Its first worship service was held on 23 September 1973. In the same year, Prayer Mountain, a sanctuary where individuals can lock themselves away in small cubicles for prayer and fasting, was established. Expanded in 1982 to accommodate ten thousand people, Prayer Mountain is now visited by more than a million people each year, including some ten thousand foreign pilgrims. The church continued to grow exponentially; its membership reached 400,000 in 1984, and 700,000 in 1992. In the 1990s, Cho decided that rather than expanding further, the church should establish satellite churches in other parts of the city. Goals for the decade of 2000-2010 include the establishment of some five thousand satellite churches and five hundred prayer houses, similar to Prayer Mountain.

Wider ministry

In November 1976, Cho founded Church Growth International, an organization dedicated to teaching the principles of evangelism and church growth to pastors all over the world. In January 1986, he led the way in establishing the Elim Welfare Town, a facility for the elderly, the young, the homeless, and the unemployed. The latter would be given training and a choice of four occupations. In March of the same year, he founded Hansei University. He was Chairman of the World Assemblies of God Fellowship from 1992 to 2000, and has served as Chairman of the Korean Christian Leaders Association since November 1998. He has also served as Chairman of the Good People charity organization since February 1999.

In addition to his native Korean, Cho is fluent in English, Japanese, and Mandarin. He has written numerous books, including The Fourth Dimension (two volumes); The Holy Spirit, My Senior Partner; Praying With Jesus; and Prayer, Key to Revival. He has three adult sons.

Distinctive teachings

Material wealth, good health and salvation for the soul

As well as the usual salvation for the soul, David Cho promises that salvation brings material wealth and good health. He calls these The threefold blessing:

Material wealth

"We must rethink our misguided thoughts considering material wealth as being equated with sin. We must drive out our subconsciously rooted thoughts of poverty, condemnation and despair. God acts in concordance with our conscience; If our thoughts are filled with poverty and despair, God cannot bless us with material blessing." - Yoido full gospel church website (link below)

Good health

"The physical curse of illness and death which were handed down through generations after the first sin of Adam were cleansed whole with no trace. Now, we must base our lives on the redemption of Christ, and claim our right to health and divine healing. Also, Christians receive the seed of eternal life (I Corinthinas 15:42-45)." - Yoido full gospel church website (link below)

Salvation for the soul

"When a man accepts Christ as his Saviour and his spirit comes alive, that reborn spirit becomes the master of the soul, having command over it, and uses the body as a place of residence. A person who experiences a rebirth of the spirit also experiences a rebirth of the conscience, a longing for the Word of God, a hope for the spiritual realm, and begins to communicate with God through prayer and worship and praises the Lord, and comes to feel the existence of God through every fiber of his body." - Yoido full gospel church website (link below)

Belief in the fourth dimension

"Then God spoke to my heart, "Son, as the second dimension includes and controls the first dimension, and the third dimension includes and controls the second dimension, so the fourth dimension includes and controls the third dimension, producing a creation of order and beauty. The spirit is the fourth dimension. Every human being is a spiritual being as well as a physical being. They have the fourth dimension as well as the third dimension in their hearts." So men, by exploring their spiritual sphere of the fourth dimension through the development of concentrated visions and dreams in their imaginations, can brood over and incubate the third dimension, influencing and changing it. This is what the Holy Spirit taught me" (Cho, The Fourth Dimension 1979:p40).

Use the power of God to improve your business

"You can tap that power for your tuition, your clothes, your books, your health, your business, everything! When you go out to preach the gospel you are not preaching a vague objective, a theory, philosophy, or human religion. You are actually teaching people how to tap endless resources!" (Cho, The Forth Dimension 1979:186).

Theological controversies

Like many well-known Christian leaders, Cho has fueled a considerable amount of theological controversy. Michael Horton, John MacArthur, Paulo Romeiro and Dave Hunt are among a number of prominent Christian leaders who have expressed great concern over Cho's teachings, which they allege are rooted in "Buddhist and Occult teachings", and that, as a result, he is guilty of heresy. Others, who are opposed to the Brownsville Revival in Pensacola, Florida, look with disfavor on Cho's avowed support for that movement. The Rick A. Ross Institute, a non-profit organisation dedicated to giving public information about religious groups it considers to be strange or cultish, has claimed that the church promotes a mixture of Korean Shamanism, Christianity and Cho's own ideas.

Many of Cho's detractors are of the non-Charismatic persuasion, but they are by no means his only critics: at one time, his own Korean Assemblies of God denomination suspended his ordination while they investigated his theology. They found his teaching to be fully compatible with official Assemblies of God doctrine, but that has not entirely ended the controversy.

Cho claims that some of opponents' arguments are supported by false accusations. In one of his books, he referred to an article in the Korean press alleging that he had, in a sermon, condoned ancestor worship - a charge he strongly denied. The journalist responsible later publicly apologised. Some damage had been done, however, and these accusations were partly what triggered his denomination's investigation of his teaching. Cho's books actually take a very strong stand against Buddhism and Shamanism, but some say that even so, he is still subtly influenced by ideas inspired by the very ideologies he opposes.

Mostly, Cho ignores his critics and seldom responds to them publicly, preferring, he says, to pray for them and to get on with his own life and ministry. His response to the ancestor worship accusation was an exception.

Published criticisms

Cho's teaching "is nothing short of occultism..." and "a departure from historic Christian theology..." (p.353 Christianity in Crisis by Hank Hanegraaff, ISBN 0890819769)

Michael Horton, comments on Robert Schuller's forward to Yonggi Cho's book, Fourth Dimension, arguing that it is a blend of "psychology, magic and religion" (p.327 Power Religion: The Selling Out of the Evangelical Church? by J. I. Packer, R. C. Sproul, Alister E. McGrath, Charles W. Colson (Editor), Michael Scott Horton (Editor), ISBN 0802467733)

Cho's ideas are "rooted in Buddhist and occult teachings" (p.149 Charismatic Chaos by Dr. John F. MacArthur, ISBN 0310575729)