MAGA Gun Church That Worships With AR-15s Has Bought a Giant Mountain Property in Tennessee

[riversedge]

Source: vice



Rod of Iron Ministries has been on a property-buying spree and says it plans to build a training center and spiritual retreat.

by Tess Owen October 12, 2021, 8:48am




The MAGA-loving religious sect that worships with AR-15s has purchased a 130-acre property on a mountain in eastern Tennessee to serve as a “training center” and holy ground for its devoted, gun-toting followers, VICE News has learned.

The latest property acquisition is more evidence that Pastor Hyung Jin “Sean” Moon, a fervent conspiracy theorist and son of an accused cult leader, is determined to expand his reach into the American Heartland.


Moon’s congregation, Rod of Iron Ministries, also known as The World Peace and Unification Sanctuary, is a gun-centric spinoff of the much larger Unification Church, founded by his late father, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, a self-proclaimed messiah and businessman whose followers were famously known as “Moonies.” The younger Moon, who also goes by “The Second King,” split from the main church amid a dramatic falling-out with his mother about who, between the two of them, was the rightful heir to his father’s empire.
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Sean and Justin Moon, plus other senior church officials, were also at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, and posted videos of themselves emerging from clouds of tear gas. Sean has also courted fringe MAGA-world figures; this weekend, the annual Rod of Iron Freedom Fest at the Kahr Arms headquarters in Greeley will include speakers such as former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, ex–NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch, far-right Proud Boy ally Joey Gibson, and GOP congressional candidate Teddy Daniels. .....................................................................

Read more: https://www.vice.com/en/article/4avkdw/rod-of-iron-ministries-purchases-property-in-tennessee

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Maybe they are too wakko to be dangerous??
No, on second thought, I can't laugh them off.

Link to tweet

?s=20

Worshippers at World Peace and Unification Sanctuary hold weapons during their service February 28, 2018 in New Foundland, Pennsylvania. Photo by DON EMMERT/AFP via Getty Images

[Evolve Dammit]

1. yeah, that sounds like something Jesus would do. JHC where do they all come from to get that f'd up?

[Canoe52]

2. Sooo, do these folk also think there is a 2nd amendment in heaven?

[blm]

3. Fvcking Moonies. Moon hated America and wanted it subjugated.

Moon mocked Jesus as a failure and conditioned his subjects to worship him.

When Moon usurped a Christian congregation he had them remove the cross and replace it with a crown.

His son is carrying on the craziest intentions, but, the agenda is seriously treasonous.

[BlueIdaho]

28. I didn't know this was a Moonie production

Until just the other day. Now it all makes some sort of twisted sense.

[sop]

4. They'll probably be given tax exempt status.

When I saw this headline elsewhere today I thought it was from The Onion.

[Demovictory9]

5. Like his father, Pastor Sean Moon ardently embraces conservativism, but his brand is distinctly Trum

Like his father, Pastor Sean Moon ardently embraces conservativism, but his brand is distinctly Trumpian. The festival had a “Safe Space” play area for kids with signs reading “Gun-Free Zone” and “Trigger Warning.” Parents laughed and snapped pictures as their kids strangled pink unicorns and pummeled rag dolls. The emcee of the event was Joey Gibson, the leader of the far-right Patriot Prayer, who is currently facing felony charges for his involvement in a violent street brawl with antifa in Portland, Oregon. There was even a seminar about the “Sissification of American Men.”

https://www.vice.com/en/article/xwep53/we-spent-a-wild-weekend-with-the-gun-worshipping-moonie-church-thats-trying-to-go-maga

[Deep State Witch]

6. Oh, This Won't End Well

Guns and compounds in remote areas. I've heard this song before.

[Gore1FL]

7. We'll know where they are, at least. nt

[3catwoman3]

8. That picture wih the guns, the crowns...

...and the robes is major league creepy. Costumes are for grade-schoolers, not grown ass adults. They looks ridiculous.

[truthisfreedom]

9. But costumes make them look more religiousy.

[ffr]

10. Megachurch of Saturn

Or more correctly, Saturnism.

Why is it the more that people are exposed to lead, the more they worship the things that exposed them to lead? Is there a connection?

[truthisfreedom]

11. more like the church of people dropped on their heads as babies.

[oasis]

12. Clueless loony Moonies will soon create a Jonestown in the good ol' USA.

[SouthernDem4ever]

13. I see the ghost of Jim Jones in there

Don't drink kool-aid if they offer it.

[Qutzupalotl]

14. AKA the Gunification Church

Did someone think of that already?

[sop]

18. Well done.

[dutch777]

15. Mail them Kool Aid packets so they don't have to waste bullets

[paleotn]

16. American Taliban. American ISIS.

[tonekat]

17. They need a tanker load of Jonestown Punch

May as well bring it to its logical conclusion.

[unc70]

19. They will fit in in Grainger County TN

Only 22 thousand population, almost all evangelicals. Over 98% white and over 80% GOP. Perfect!!

[orangecrush]

20. Think they have an FBI file?

[slightlv]

21. I'm not laughing.

This creeps me out to the max. Especially when you mix Bannon's chaos and Nazism into it!

This Rod of Iron Ministry sure as hell looks like the enforcer division of whatever religion they want to put in as the state religion. They're ready for their "civil war"... I'm reminded of that old phrase "What if they gave a war and nobody came?" What if they declared war and we just said, "Go..." we want no part of you? I really do wish we could just send them away to an island someplace where they could play their little war games, give their devotions to their great sky gun, and never have any contact with anyone else ever again. I think the world would be very happy without them; and they'd obviously be happy without the threat of any "outsiders" trying to steal their paradise!

[PSPS]

22. Great. Another Ruby Ridge in the making.

[Paladin]

23. The world is turning into one vast toilet. (nt)

[Vinca]

24. I must have missed the Bible lessons about Jesus and his semi-automatic.

What a bizarro scramble of nuttery: guns, religion and the Moonies.

[dalton99a]

25. "Trump was sent by God to combat 'political satanism' on earth"

Meanwhile, the younger Moon is attempting to build support on the GOP fringes. He’s been a big proponent of the lie that Trump was the real winner of the 2020 election. Moon and other church officials use their regular broadcasts, streamed via Rumble, to sound off about antifa, vaccine mandates, the Biden administration, Critical Race Theory, or gun laws.

These issues, which he labels as examples of “political satanism,” are typically framed as struggles between good and evil. Moon’s rhetoric often contains overtones of “Christian nationalism,” a set of beliefs that have surged in popularity among some mainstream GOP figures in recent years. The core idea is that God destined the United States to be a fundamentally Christian nation, and anything that falls outside of those beliefs is an anathema..

Moon often rails against the results of the 2020 election (he maintains that Trump, whom he believes was sent by God to combat “political satanism” on earth, was “usurped” from power). The church was even recently raffling off a “Commander in Chief AR15,” a gun manufactured by Kahr Arms that has Trump’s name engraved on it.

(Kahr Arms’ parent company is Saileo Inc., which Rev. Moon founded and later signed over to his business-savvy son, Kook-jin Moon, in 1992. Kook-jin then re-registered Saileo in the Cayman Islands with Appleby, a leading offshore law firm. Soon after, he quietly founded Kahr Arms, his gun manufacturing company, under the umbrella of Saileo. Kook-jin and Saileo Inc. were featured in the “Paradise Papers,” a massive investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists into the offshore activities of “some of the world’s most powerful people and companies.” There were no allegations of wrongdoing against Kook-jin and Saileo Inc. related to the Paradise Papers.)

[Hotler]

26. Time to tax the churches, or better yet, tax ammunition. nt

[Javaman]

27. this won't end well.

buying a "compound" usually is a sign of some nut control freak messiah complex by the leader(s)

[marble falls]

29. They've bastardized the meaning of "Iron Rod" ...

The passage refers to the rough path to Heaven and advises "to cleave to the iron rod", a hand rail to keep from failing off the path. These guys have turned it into an iron rod to beat people with.

Every time I consider doing something in the mind of situational ethics, I tell myself to cleave to the iron rod. There's no firearms involve any in it anywhere.

[DashOneBravo]

30. I'd forgotten about the moonies

[Mysterian]

31. Utter insanity

Religious cult insanity.

However, I would not call 130 acres a "giant" property.

[NickB79]

32. Lol, 130 acres is a "giant mountain property" now?

Sorry, farm kid here. 130 acres is a hobby farm where I grew up. I have uncles with 10x this amount of land, and even that's not all that big anymore.

Hell, I'm currently eying 40 acres of land in northern Minnesota just for a place to plant trees and hike on.