But what if the biggest Sabbath-keeping “Church of God” of all was “hiding” in plain sight, east of there? One claiming to be bigger than WCG ever was, with no connection to Herbert Armstrong at all?

That group is the World Mission Society Church of God, based in South Korea. Founded iu 1964, it claims nearly four million members around the world, including groups meeting in the U.S.

I officially was introduced to what we'll call “WATV” (from its internet domain name) through a local TV newscast. Church members in my area of the U.S. went out to clean litter in a neighborhood near their building on a Sunday morning.

Having spent decades in journalism, I knew this was a “made-for-TV-news” item. Sunday morning is a slow time for news, and this group had a ready-made story for a reporter – while also providing some self-promotion.

But why would WATV do that on a Sunday morning? A deeper check led me to a group that keeps the seventh-day Sabbath, marks Passover each spring with foot-washing, has nice original worship music – but also has some teachings that might sound bizarre to people from other COG's.

One of the most puzzling teachings is the claim that there's “God the Mother,” alongside the heavenly Father.

“By believing in only God the Father, no one can be saved,” one article in its extensive online library claims.

That's a bold, almost scary statement. But is it a true statement? Using this topic as a springboard, I decided to see what WATV really is about.

Similar, But Different

Do a search on the WATV website for “Armstrong” in 2025 and you'll find only one reference – to Neil Armstrong, the first human to walk on the moon. Nothing about Herbert or Garner Ted Armstrong. .

So this denomination doesn't claim any connection to WCG. Several secular sources trace its roots to the Seventh-Day Adventist Church.

In fact, WATV's online “Introduction” says it was founded “by the Second Coming Christ Ahnsahnghong, in the Republic of Korea...”

Yes, you read that correctly. This group claims a man named Ahnsahnghong was the second coming of Jesus! The WATV biography site about him says he “restored the truths of salvation,” including the New Covenant.

It's not our purpose here to refute such thinking. (If anyone would like us to pursue that, we can.) But WATV contends Ahnsahnghong was the end-time Elijah (sound familiar, U.S. COG members?) – yet he was not the final Savior. That's “God the Mother,” which is yet to come.

One big thing we would note here is that Ahnsahnghong is dead. Wikipedia indicates he passed away in February 1985, 11 months before Herbert Armstrong's death. So if he was the second coming of Christ, He doesn't seem to be reigning “for ever and ever,” as Revelation 11:15 promises.

The “Mother” Matter

So what about “God the Mother”? WATV explains the concept in its “Church of God Knowledge Encyclopedia,” which is set up in the style of Wikipedia.

“God the Mother is the female image of God,” it begins. “Most people think that only one God, the Father, exists.”

There's good reason to think that. The concept first appears in the Bible in Psalm 89:26: “He will call out to me, 'You are my Father, my God, the Rock, my Savior” (NIV unless noted).

Jesus taught believers to pray to “our Father, which art in Heaven” (Matthew 6:9, KJV; “who is” NASB/RSV). He later infuriated a group of Jews by “calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God” (John 5:18).

By comparison, how many times is God described as a “mother”? In the KJV and NKJV, zero.

Yet WATV claims, “The existence of God the Mother is found from the book of Genesis chapter 1.” It correctly notes that “God” in that chapter is the Hebrew word elohim – which is plural, not singular. WCG and its spinoff groups have taught that for decades.

But look carefully at verses 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.”

“Image” in Hebrew is selem – and indeed, it can be translated as singular or plural. “Images” appears in the Old Testament when it comes to false gods, such as Baal (II Kings 11:18), as well as wheels of cherubim (Ezekiel 10:9-10).

But every time that Hebrew word describes the true God, it is singular. Every translation we found for Genesis 1:26-27 agrees on this – reinforcing the statement of Deuteronomy 6:4: “The Lord our God, the Lord is one.”

WATV contends the creation of Eve via Adam (Genesis 2:21-23) proves “God the Mother” must have been alongside the Father in Genesis. But if we let the Bible interpret the Bible instead of human logic and reasoning, we find a different answer.

“God who created all things through Jesus Christ,”explains Ephesians 3:9 (NKJV). The italicized section admittedly is not in many translations, and the WATV wiki does not mention it at all.

But John 1:1-3, 10 adds, “the Word [who] was with God... the Word was God...Through him all things were made... though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him...” (KJV “by Him”)- as in Jesus the Word.

“Through” in Greek is dia, which Strong's Exhaustive Concordance explains as “the channel of an act.” (See also Colossians 1:15-16, Hebrews 1:2.)

Whom Will the Lamb Marry?

Another key verse in WATV's explanation of this concept is Galatians 4:26. “But the Jerusalem that is above is free, and she is our mother.”

The WATV jumps from that to the “New Jerusalem” promised in Revelation 21-9, where an angel says, “Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.” In his vision, the apostle John then sees “the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God” (verse 10)..

Verse 2 notes this Holy City is “prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.” So WATV thus concludes the Lamb of God will marry this city, which it concludes is “God the Mother.”

But then comes misunderstanding. “The Lamb, whom Apostle John saw through a revelation, was Second Coming Jesus, not Jesus who came 2,000 years ago... the Lamb... is God the Father... ” (WATV wiki, “The Wife (Bride) of the Lamb”)

Now hold on here. The Lamb of God founded WATV in 1964? And is also the Father of heaven and Earth? This is a claim far beyond anything Herbert Armstrong and other U.S. COG leaders would dare say.

Yet before this, WATV notes God's people can be “lambs” (John 10:16 actually has “sheep” in most translations). The word also can refer to Jesus Christ. It properly cites John 1:29, where the Jesus of around 30 A.D. was called “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.”

WATV also calls Jesus the Lamb “looking as if it had been slain” (Revelation 5:6). But it then claims a different “Lamb” oversees “the heavenly wedding banquet” - as in Ahnsahnghong.

Yes, “lamb” in Scripture can have numerous meanings. But adding a human from the 20^th century to that (much less calling him “Christ”) only creates confusion.

The Bible warns, “if someone comes to you and preaches a different Jesus other than the Jesus we preached,” that person is a “false apostle” (II Corinthians 11:4, 13). Clearly the first-century apostles could not have known about a 20th-century human “Christ” from South Korea.

Back now to Galatians 4. While the WATV wiki emphasizes verse 26, it nowhere mentions verse 24: “...which things are symbolic (NKJV),” Two Old Testament women mentioned here, Hagar and Sarah, “represent two covenants” (NIV/CSB).

WATV admits the Lamb's wife also can have multiple meanings. “First, it means the church (saints),” its wiki says. Here, it agrees with U.S. COG's and most of mainstream Christianity.

But WATV downplays the analogy of Ephesians: “For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.” (Ephesians 5:23-24)

Yet , “the bride, who appears in the heavenly wedding banquet in Revelation 19, cannot be the church of the saints,” WATV's wiki says.

To which most U.S. COG's would respond: Why not? The “guests” at the wedding banquet have been invited to become the bride of Christ

Note the bridal garment: “Fine linen, bright and clean, was given her to wear. (Fine linen stands for the righteous acts of the saints.)” (Revelation 19:8)

If the bridal “church” wears “acts of the saints,” why would the saints themselves be outside the wedding ceremony?

Yet WATV argues, “the wife (bride) of the Lamb is the Savior who invites the guests... The Lamb's wife (bride) is God the Mother.”

Jesus offered a parable of a wedding banquet in the beginning of Matthew22, which WATV also cites.

“Two thousand years ago... the bride did not appear,” its wiki notes. In this parable, that seems to be true. The bride is never mentioned.

But is that the point of the parable? Jesus's focus appears to be that people invited to the banquet need to be interested enough to properly prepare for it (verses 11-14).

The parallel passage in Luke brings this out more clearly. Several people make excuses to avoid the event (Luke 14:18-20). “Not one of those men who were invited will get a taste of my banquet,” verse 24 adds.

There's another wedding parable which WATV tends to overlook. That's found in Matthew 25:1-13, where 10 virgins wait all evening for a bridegroom to come.

Virgins who are filled with the Holy Spirit (depicted by their lamps) enter the wedding banquet (verse 10). The ones who are away from the entrance searching for a “spiritual refill” are left out (verses 11-12).

Here again, the bride is not mentioned. The parable nowhere indicates that the virgins marry the bridegroom. But the focus again is on being ready for the “banquet,” as in Jesus's coming.

After the Millennium

The ultimate wedding for WATV is identified in Revelation 21.

“Come, I will show you the bride of the Lamb,” verse 9 quotes an angel as saying. That angel then displays “the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God” (verse 10).

In other words, the Bible shows Jesus marrying the New Jerusalem. But WATV then goes farther.

“The Bridegroom at the heavenly wedding banquet is the Lamb, our Father, and the Bride, Heavenly Jerusalem, is our Mother,” the wiki claims.

Without directly saying so, WATV here accepts John 1's explanation of multiple manifestations of God, mentioned above. But that's not exactly how the “Lamb” is depicted across Revelation.

“I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple,” Revelation 21:22 says. The Father and Son here are separate.

“I have received authority from my Father,” Revelation 2:27 quotes Jesus as saying (many Bibles have this verse in red letters). Jesus adds that He “overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne” (3:21)

In addition, WATV adds an element that sounds faintly Roman Catholic – that there's a “Mother” in heaven.

“Those who know this secret and receive Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother can... receive salvation,” the wiki adds.

The Courtship of Heaven's Father

So let's carefully consider this. In WATV's thinking, God the Father and God the Mother must have have been together from eternity past – but have never married! Not until a wedding at the end of the age!

This leads to some absurd reasoning. Why would God marry a city – and wait for seemingly billions of years to finally do it, when it was in heaven all this time? Why would a “Father” and a “Mother” never be married to each other, for that matter?

WATV even claims “God the Mother” is the “last Eve” - a woman it claims must exist, if Jesus was the “last Adam” mentioned in I Corinthians 15:45. But Eve's name is mentioned only twice in the New Testament, neither one in this context.

“Jesus likened the saints' salvation and entering heaven to their participation in a wedding banquet,” WATV claims.

Uh-oh. The Bible speaks of a “new heaven and a new earth” in Revelation 21:1 – but this wording is part of a broader doctrinal problem for this group.

SDA's commonly believe in going to heaven for eternity when Jesus returns. Yet Revelation 5:9-10 says purchased people from around the world become “a kingdom and priests to serve r God, and they will reign on the earth.”

Hebrews 11:8-10 notes Abraham “was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose builder and maker is God.” But it's “coming down out of heaven,” according to Revelation 21:2.

Yet in all of this, there's this unusual language in II Corinthians 5:2-3: “For in this we groan, desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven, if so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked” (KJV).

Clothed with a house?! All major translations we found have this kind of wording. The Greek word oiketerion appears only one other place. That's Jude 6, referring to the place fallen demons left.

Thayer's Greek Lexicon explains this as our bodies becoming “the dwelling place of the spirit”. God's Holy Spirit is put on you, or over you - not a giant city, as the New Jerusalem is described.

Where the Focus Should Be

The Biblical reality is that Jesus is the key to salvation, not “God the Mother!” The first-century apostles knew and taught this.

“It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth... Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved,” Peter said in Acts 4:10-12.

“Jesus... will save his people from their sins,” Matthew 1:21 adds. While Jesus is God, as we noted from John 1, He's not a “Mother” God. He's the bridegroom waiting to marry His Church.

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Conclusions

Our title from this article comes from a 1960 children's book which was connected to a series by Dr. Seuss (but not written by him).

People who worship “God the Father” might logically wonder if there's also a Mother - and if so, where she is. But Hebrews 7 indicates heaven has no such thing.

It speaks of “Melchizedek.. king of Salem... priest of God Most High... 'king of Salem' means 'king of peace'” (verses 1-2). Jesus is described as the “Prince of Peace” in Isaiah 9:6.

This king is “without father or mother, without genealogy...” (verse 3). He's finally revealed as “Jesus... a permanent priesthood” in verse 24.

So the idea of a “heavenly mother” is a non-Biblical concoction of the World Mission Society Church of God. It's one of several areas in which this large group is doctrinally off line, even though it keeps some Biblical customs.

If any U.S.-based COG has made contact with WATV (or vice versa), I am not aware of it. Perhaps some church leader should, as Victor Kubik did with Ukrainians and Joseph Tkach Jr. tried to do with other Sabbath-keeping groups in the late 1990s.

The groups have some common ground – and prayerfully coming to “reason together,” as Isaiah 1:18 says, could help them all to better “come to a knowledge of the truth” ( I Timothy 2:4).

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