Taiwan cult awaits God's spaceship; say they are not suicidal
(12-24-97)According to an Associated Press story, December 24, followers of God's Salvation Church believe a spaceship is on its way to take them to a life after death. They said that expecting the spaceship and their clothing are the only similarities of their cult with the suicidal Heaven's Gate cult. The members said they have no plans to kill themselves when God arrives in a spaceship on March 31.
"We don't die," Pi Feng Chiang, mother of the family, said in halting English. "We believe God. God like life." Thirty-nine members of Heaven's Gate killed themselves at Rancho Santa Fe last March by drinking a concoction of booze and pills, said the Associated Press story.
Reuters reported that Hon-Ming Chen, who led about 150 followers including more than 30 children to Garland, Texas from Taiwan, said God would be reincarnated into his body on March 31 at precisely 10 a.m. local time at his modest house on Ridgedale Drive.
Yu-Chung Lo, deputy director general of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Houston, said there's nothing to fear.
"I believe they would never commit suicide because so far as I understand they are very gentle, friendly and most of them are highly educated," Lo said in the AP story.
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