Providence Wikipedia Page Reeks of Peter Daley’s Falsehood

A particular person, Peter Daley, claims he is a cult “expert” and has spent the last 15 years opposing the Providence religious group. In actuality, “cult addict” is a better term for him as he named his own website after the founder, Jeong Myeong Seok, and has been obsessively criticizing Providence on the internet for over a decade. In his efforts to ostracize Providence, he continually makes false negative comments about this group and their founder in public.

He is also a strong advocate of the Wikipedia page on “Providence Religious Movement.”

Reader Beware – Peter Daley’s Malicious Libel

It is not surprising from reading the Wikipedia page on Providence, that the general public would conclude that Providence is a cult. Peter Daley also repeatedly calls the founder “a convicted rapist.” Afterall, who has the time to do their own research nowadays, right?

However, I am disappointed and appalled that “professional” journalists would use this page as a reference, without doing their own thorough research.

Don’t get me wrong—I like Wikipedia as a whole and even use it often. I am not here to oppose Wikipedia per se, but simply opposing this one particularly biased page… mostly because it is so far-fetched, one-sided, and inaccurate.

Now, I must address the blatant claims on the “Providence Religious Group” Wikipedia page that even a teenager would question. There are obvious biases that show that this page is far from being reliable. Let’s examine them here.

“Providence Religious Movement” Wikipedia Page – Biased and Total Nonsense

As per Wikipedia policy:

“Biographies of living persons (“BLPs”) must be written conservatively and with regard for the subject’s privacy. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a tabloid: it is not Wikipedia’s job to be sensationalist, or to be the primary vehicle for the spread of titillating claims about people’s lives. The possibility of harm to living subjects must always be considered when exercising editorial judgment. This policy applies to any living person mentioned in a BLP, whether or not that person is the subject of the article, and to material about living persons in other articles and on other pages, including talk pages.”

Conflict of Interest

First of all, when the author of the Wikipedia page holds strong anti-Providence sentiments, it obviously violates Wikipedia’s neutrality policy. It is equivalent to somebody who despises Miley Cyrus or Justin Bieber writing pages about them. Do you think the author would be objective in presenting information about these celebrities?

In the case of “Providence Religious Movement,” the information is predictably skewed to include only the negative outcome of Pastor Jeong Myeong Seok’s trial, negative press, and negative testimonies from “former members.”

There is no mention of the merits of the religious group or founder, testimonies from current members, or how Jeong Myeong Seok had been living his life for 70 years (biographic facts).

Wikipedia states, “All encyclopedic content on Wikipedia must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV), which means representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all of the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic.”

Controversial Topic Lacking Disclaimer

Second of all, even if biased authors are allowed to write pages about people or topics, Wikipedia normally requires a disclaimer such as “this article contains controversial material and should be interpreted with caution.” Instead, despite the controversial nature of the page where many current and past church members still contribute to the discussion, there is no such disclaimer.

Below is an example of what a disclaimer should look like. This is missing from Providence Religious Movement Wikipedia page:

“Some of this article’s listed sources may not be reliable. Please help this article by looking for better, more reliable sources. 

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page.”

Poor Fact Checking

In the Providence Wikipedia article, the author states Jeong Myeong Seok’s birthdate is Feb 16, 1945. If the writer is referring to some sort of lunar calendar or non-standard calculation, he needs to disclose this. Otherwise, it simply demonstrates how little he researches, if he cannot even get a simple fact like the founder’s birthdate right.

Missing Categories

Most standard descriptive pages about religious groups or founders will include a sequence of descriptions such as history, demographics, beliefs, life of the founder, critics and apologetics, and controversies.

Unlike other pages, the Wikipedia page for Providence Religious Movement never mentions anything about the founder’s background, childhood, youth, or evangelical work. When mentioning the “history” of Providence, it jumps right to the 1970s, then sexual allegations, civil lawsuits, and criminal conviction. Jeong Myeong Seok was born in the 1940s. What happened to the first 30 years of his life? How was he living at that time? What type of work was he doing?

The Wikipedia page lists the controversial trial and negative aspects first. It is as if the author were afraid for people to see Pastor Jeong Myeong Seok’s journey with God from a young age and his devout life centered only on the Holy Trinity. It was as if he were afraid to admit that Jeong Myeong Seok had come from a humble background, had prayed and fasted in the mountains for months on end, even through the deathly cold winter, and had selflessly evangelised until his feet wore out. He wanted to paint this group in a negative light from the start.

However, a simple conviction or a no-jury verdict doesn’t determine that this man is truly guilty. All of the references reported on this page used negative press reports and articles written based on false news, and many of these news agencies were legally ordered to apologize after they had confessed to false reporting and defamation of character.

False Claims About Providence Teachings

On the Providence Wikipedia article, it states the following:

“Original sin was caused by Eve’s intercourse with the fallen angel turned Satan, Providence teaches this can be redeemed by having sex with Jung Myung-seok.[15][14] [18] Jung was found to have forced female followers to have sex with him ‘as a religious behavior meant to save their souls’ in the Korean Court of Law.[b][19] Former members have stated or testified that young and attractive women were presented to Jung as ‘sexual gifts’, with whom he coercibly engaged in the sexual act, which was explained to them as a purification rite.[c][20][21]”

Illogical

First of all, these claims are illogical. There are over 200,000 Providence members across the world, many of whom are elderly, male, married with family, and youths.

Does everyone need to have sex with Jeong Myeong Seok to be saved?? If so, why do men, married people, elderly people, and families exist as members? Shouldn’t they have left by now?

Also how has membership grown so much over the past 10 years while he was in jail? Don’t these people have to be saved by having intercourse? Is he suggesting that all 200,000 members are holding their breaths to be saved by having sex with the leader after he comes out??

What level of intelligence is being implied of Providence members? There are numerous videos and written testimonies by professors, business people, doctors, and people of very high education in all fields speaking positively about Providence.

The author asserts that these people are all fools. There are also people of all socioeconomic status, nationalities, races, genders, and upbringing in Providence.

Inconsistent with Sermons

The sermons of Pastor Jeong Myeong Seok are publicly available on numerous Providence websites. If the author actually did some research, he would see for himself whether there are any such messages declaring the need for one to have sex with the leader to be saved.

Since there cannot be discrepancies in the teachings, as that would cause a lot of members to leave, if there were sermons teaching you to love God with all your heart, will and life, to only make God your centre of life, to not worship anything other than God, to not engross in the physical love of the world, then it would be impossible for Providence to also say that you must have sex with the leader for salvation.

In fact, Providence doctrine clearly establishes the need to abstain from sex outside of marriage and teaches people to devote their entire lives to loving God as the top priority. The emphasis is to become the Holy Trinity’s spiritual brides or counterparts of love in Heaven—not to have physical love relations with Pastor Jeong Myeong Seok, as people like Peter Daley have distortedly advertised.

There are true member testimonies of people who have been a part of Providence for decades. Many of these testimonies are from men. They are people who have dedicated their lives to God. The only extreme thing about this religious group is how devout the members are in trying to live while putting God first.

Read Peter Daley’s Crude Remarks when Confronted About Inaccurate Representation of Pastor Jeong Myeong Seok’s Sermons:

“I found some references/quotes taken directly from Jung Myung Seok’s sermons…Based on the teachings in his sermon, “Only God and Jesus is(are) the Lord(s) and can be the Lord(s).” all parts that refer to him as a self-proclaimed messiah need to be removed. This obviously contradicts his own quotes. Macauthor (talk) 13:30, 17 March 2011 (UTC)”

“I’m not sure we should take the unreferenced word of a convicted rapist who was fugitive for 8 years as “gospel” and use it to delete material that was sourced from numerous news articles. 94 PeterDaley72 (talk) 22:31, 5 December 2011 (UTC) PeterDaley72”

In other words, Peter Daley asserts that instead of referring to the original sermons to see what Pastor Jung Myung Seok teaches, we should refer to second-hand information from new articles about the sermons.

Did Peter Daley really graduate from university? It is an accepted rule that original sources always trump secondary sources. This is equivalent to reading the original piece of literature rather than someone’s review of the literature. If this is difficult to understand, an analogy is looking at an artwork yourself or hearing the artist himself explain his artwork, rather than relying on the critics’ review or third person’s misinterpretation of the artwork out of context.

False Claims About Brainwashing

Providence church values predawn prayer, as do many Christian churches and denominations in Korea. What does this prove? That they’re using sleep deprivation for brainwashing?

Jesus and his disciples and many other key Biblical figures also prayed in the predawn. Does that make them bad or a cult? Does that mean Jesus was trying to brainwash his disciples?

Ironically, because Jesus’ teachings and practices were against normal convention at the time, general public and even by God’s very own people  mislabeled Jesus and his disciples as heretics and cult members. It is disappointing that our society hasn’t made much progress since then.

Poor References

Peter Daley uses unreliable and sensationalistic news as references to make his own unverified assertions. He states, “young girls are told to have sex with him to wipe out their sins. They don’t publicize it though.”

So, if it isn’t publicized and Peter Daley has never attended an actual service in Providence even once, how would he know this accurately and definitively?

It is a bold and ridiculous assertion coming from someone who has no proper first-hand experience with the church and its teachings. If you examine his references, you will see they are based on the same few news reports and agencies that later apologized for propagating false news. He has also described getting his “inside scoop” from former church members such as Mr. Kim whose motive of gathering “victims” for the trial and defaming the Providence founder was to extort money from Jeong Myeong Seok (see Mr. Kim’s apology letter to the founder here).

He uses reports from “victims” who admitted to having committed perjury during the trial, and articles written about the case without proper fact checking. In fact, the “victims” of the trial had met up with several news agencies prior to the court proceedings to give their one-sided testimonies, which led to a number of articles being published, even prior to the verdict.

One of these victims later admitted that Mr. Kim recruited and coached her and another member for his extortion plan. Yet, these sensationalised news articles are used as acceptable sources, whereas testimonies from members about what Providence teaches and biographical information about the founder are unacceptable sources.

Peter Daley Responds Poorly About His Biased Sources

To the editors of the Providence (religious movement) article:

• My primary concern is that while this article uses academic sources to analyze the Providence group, the article takes the accusations and reports of critics and cites them as the ACTUAL claimed beliefs of members—when in fact, there are extensive publications by the Providence group that detail members’ beliefs in their own words (which would obviously be very different from what the critics would say).

• My argument is simple: this Providence article should have the same format as other articles on controversial religious groups, and feature a section on member beliefs and also a section on criticism and controversy, so as to remain unbiased. It does not matter how controversial this group is—both members beliefs and critics perspectives should be cited. Pretty straightforward.

GIOSCali (talk) 20:04, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

Peter Daley’s Response:

“GIOSCali. Those member beliefs are just propaganda. PeterDaley72 (talk) 13:24, 4 March 2015 (UTC) PeterDaley72 www.jmscult.com”

Peter Daley essentially states here that the beliefs and testimonies from current members are propaganda. Yet he maintains that the negative testimonies from past members are all valid. Does that sound neutral and unbiased?

Peter Daley Gets Schooled About Reliable Sources by Wikipedia Editors

“DISPUTED: Reliable Sources for Biography of Living Persons

Editors are in disagreement as to what constitutes reliable sources… According to Wikipedia policy concerning BLPs these sources are not credible and have therefore been removed (immediately, as the policy states) from the article. If you would like to reinstate them, please discuss it here beforehand as outlined in Wikipedia policy. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Uptional (talk • contribs) 10:10, 20 February 2008 (UTC)”

Peter Daley’s response:

“Are you serious? The first source is from the Korean Police’s English homepage! The ones following from reliable news sources. The Australian newspaper and various others. You’re really clutching at straws here Uptional. And what exactly do you think is wrong about the information? You don’t seriously think he’s not in jail, do you? Hilarious! ““Peter Daley —Preceding unsigned comment added by CaptPorridge (talk • contribs) 11:00, 20 February 2008 (UTC)”

“Peter, thanks for your input, but I’m not sure what your comment about him being in jail has to do with us editing this article. In any case, I have made edits with your comments in mind. As such, here are the sources that should be left out of the article because they are not considered reliable by Wikipedia policy: [8 references listed].

To any editors that would like to include these sources, please give explanation here before reposting them, as this is the BLP policy.

Thanks, Uptional (talk) 11:09, 20 February 2008 (UTC)”

Peter Daley Opposes the Removal of His Unreliable References on Wikipedia

Peter Daley states:

“3 sources were removed …as being unreliable or not stating what the quote said. As the author of the Keimyung article, I would obviously disagree. And as someone who has researched this group for 5 years and who hosts the major critical sites in English, I think I have established my credentials as someone who knows this cult well...”

Response to Peter’s Daley rant about removal of his unreliable sources:

“Peter Daley

My edits are solely from the perspective of making the article more encyclopedic, in accordance with the policy at WP:BLP…

So… this is an issue of using sources to back up claims made in the article. Some of those sources just don’t hold up to scrutiny. For example, self-published sources should never be used in BLP articles (unless written by the subject of the article to back up what that person has said, obviously). They’re just not reliable enough to hold up to scrutiny. This applies to an apparent reprint of a news article on some random site: we don’t know whether it really is a word-for-word reprint or whether the publisher is passing off a fake and banking on “originally posted in [major news outlet]” to convince people it’s real. But whether fake or real, it’s effectively a non-issue: if a site claims to be republishing a news stories from a major outlet then we can simply go and find the original source and link to that…

Editor Criticizes Peter’s Daley’s Unsupported “Member Testimonies”

“Re testimony from former members: again, where is that testimony published? If it’s in a major news outlet or a serious, peer-reviewed journal then great, put it in there. If it’s from a self-published web site or a little known advocacy group then sorry but that just doesn’t meet the standard of reliability that we need to shield Wikipedia from legal action.”

Editor Criticizes Peter Daley’s Self References and Skewed Viewpoint

“Re the ‘Keimyung’ article that you said you wrote, Peter, I’ll refer to you to WP:NOR. Sorry but we can’t use original research here. You should also take a look at WP:COI, since you’re obviously heavily invested in a particular viewpoint on this subject. This is not to say you can’t make edits here, obviously…you shouldn’t in general be citing yourself to back up something in the article.

Hopefully people can now see where I’m coming from. This has the potential to be a decent article, but it needs a lot more work, especially in the reliability area. — Hux (talk) 21:14, 29 February 2008 (UTC)”

False Claims About Founder’s Trial

The Providence Wikipedia article states:

“Following accusations against him by South Korean police of rape, fraud, and embezzlement, Jung fled the country in 1999 and lived as a fugitive in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China before being arrested by Chinese police in May 2007. In April 2009, the Supreme Court of South Korea sentenced him to 10 years imprisonment.”

This is not true. There is not a single reference of embezzlement charges. This is fake news.

Also, the timing is incorrect. The author writes this intentionally to make Jeong Myeong Seok sound like he was guilty and fleeing. In 1999, Jeong Myeong Seok was already overseas doing missionary work for the church when false news broke out. He was not escaping the scene because he was guilty. Rather, he was already overseas when everything took place against him. That means he was not a fugitive. He was lawfully able to travel overseas.

The statement about his 10-year sentence in 2009 is true. However, Jeong Myeong Seok did not receive a fair trial by jury. With no concrete evidence, the judge rendered the verdict while having to confront extreme opinions about the case from the media and public. The biased media reports no doubt painted an extremely negative picture of Jeong Myeong Seok that heavily affected the verdict. These false reports from major broadcasting companies later apologized for defamation of Jeong Myeong Seok, as per court order.

You can read the discrepancies about this controversial trial here.

Peter Daley’s Character Speaks Volumes

Below is how Peter Daley deals with people who want to contribute their side of the story to his claims. His language is vile and his actions are malicious.

Here is an example of his interaction with members of the Providence Religious Group.

Peter Daley: Distasteful, Immature, and Hateful Speech

Peter Daley depicts female Providence members as “cult girls” and animals. Two members spoke with him one day to address the strong assertions that he had made against Providence.

Peter Daley labels female Providence members as ‘cult girls.’  He portrays one girl as a gorilla on his website after the encounter.

In his video, Peter Daley distastefully directs gunshots at the cult girls. Afterwards, he narrates, “I regretted not bringing my gun” (to school).

He rejected their request to speak to him, and then mocked them in his video. He comments, “I regretted not bringing my gun.” Then he shows blood splattering gunshots of the two girls. Furthermore, he labeled them as “brainwashed lunatics.”

Peter Daley Uses Photoshop and Doctored Videos

See Peter Daley, the phoney cult expert for Peter Daley’s childish attempts to slander Providence with derogatory photos and videos.

Peter Daley’s actions and words speak to his character. Do you trust him as a reliable source of information?

Jeong Myeong Seok Has Lived His Entire Life Devoted to God

A person’s words, actions (not rumored, but true actions), and how he lives his life reveal a lot about him. You can judge for yourself whether Jeong Myeong Seok is guilty or not.

You can read about his poverty-stricken childhood, how he had discovered Jesus, and how he developed his relationship with God. See his faith blossom, his steadfast life of evangelism, and the numerous miracles through the workings of the Holy Son.  Click here for an accurate account of Jeong Myeong Seok’s life and biography.

How Jeong Myeong Seok Lives His Life Behind Bars

We should not judge a person for how many tribulations he faces in life. Rather, what truly defines a person is how he is able to rise to the occasion and overcome life’s adversities using God’s methods at each time. This is how Jeong Myeong Seok has lived his life behind bars, and has been living for the past 60 years.

Regardless of how the world perceived him, he was not afraid as God was always with him.

How Jeong Myeong Seok Glorifies God

Jeong Myeong Seok came from a very humble background, and only through living with God he accomplished so much. You can see that all of his work—whether it is poetry, literature, art, or music—was done out of his love for God and his heart of wanting to glorify God.

Jeong Myeong Seok even built a world renowned natural temple with God (Wolmyeongdong) from a remote, barren piece of land—his hometown. It took 10 years of development and multiple times of rebuilding. However, he was ultimately able to establish this sanctuary, matching God’s design for the use of God’s people.

How Jeong Myeong Seok Loves His Enemies

Again, a person’s character speaks volumes about his righteousness, especially in circumstances where no one else is watching. Jeong Myeong Seok went through two rounds of military service during the Vietnam war without killing a single person.

He wouldn’t even harm his own enemy in the midst of brutal warfare, even with his own life at stake. Could such a disciplined and selfless person really be the serial rapist that some have maliciously said?

Conclusion

The Wikipedia page on Providence Religious Movement is an unreliable source.  Those who strongly dislike Providence contribute heavily to the page, thereby violating Wikipedia’s own neutral point of view policy. These people purposely withhold all positive testimonies and virtues about Providence in the Wikipedia description. They cite biased and unreliable references. Altogether, the article heavily violates the Wikipedia policy for Biographies of Living Persons and lacks the appropriate disclaimers.

Anti-Providence activists like Peter Daley distort the truth and even resort to using Photoshop to support his prejudice. Peter Daley attacks people verbally, promoting hatred. He condemns entire religious groups without fully understanding them, and does not seek to verify his claims. He purposely only presents half of the story and does not research thoroughly. He has flawed logic. His sources are inaccurate, he researches poorly, or simply uses fake news. In Peter Daley’s own words, we would be “brainwashed lunatics” to trust Peter Daley or the Wikipedia page on Providence Religious Movement.