V. Praying for the Christians in North Korea

 Praying for the Persecuted Church

 

You may not live where persecution takes place, but 260 million Christians do. They live in one of the 50 nations who carry out severe persecution. Numbers don’t have faces, but they do tell a story. Imagine what it means that every week over 150 churches in these nations are burned down. In the larger picture, during the first ten years of this century there were on average 100,000 martyrs per year. Christ’s sufferings continue in the lives of his followers.

 

We know that we should pray for the persecuted Christians, just like we know we should brush our teeth every day. But we don’t see these churches or these martyrs when we look in the mirror. It is easy to forget to pray for them

 

Caring about our suffering brothers and sisters 

 

The more we care for them, the more we will pray for them. That is what Hebrews 13:3 tells us: “Remember the prisoners as if in prison with them—those who are mistreated—since you yourselves are in the body also.” That means to put ourselves in their places and absorb their experiences—their fears, the loneliness, trials, desertion, anxiety. If we had a friend with those conditions, we would realize how they needed prayer. How much more so for those experiencing these with intensity. 

 

This thread shows up throughout Scripture. Rarely is it isolated as in the verse from Hebrews, but the theme is there. We should learn to recognize the references. Here are a few passages, coming in contexts better known for other images:  

John 15:20 in the midst of the True Vine image

Matthew 5:11 at the end of the Beatitudes

Mark 13:12 during the discourse on Christ’s return

Matthew 10:17 when he is giving missionary instructions

John 16:2 while teaching about the Holy Spirit

 

The plight of the persecuted fits in many of the Psalms. Psalm 91, for example, holds well-known images of comfort for Christ’s followers and give sweet assurances. But look at the Psalm with the persecuted in mind and see how the Psalm speaks directly to them. These brothers and sisters fit in many other Psalms.

 

Aids that help us pray for them

 

We need reminders to pray, ways that move our caring to praying. Since they are not in our daily sphere, outside sources can help. Here are four ideas:

Choose a country from the list of the 20 worst offenders. Stay with it. Research the people there, the attitude towards Christians, the evidence of persecution, what is done to defend them, what stories circulate about those imprisoned. Put it down in a notebook and keep it near your Bible.

Read the news with a scrutiny that asks about the church. What are the implications in the news for Christians? Today’s news carried stories from these countries: China, Sudan, Nigeria, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, and India. Each of these has a known history of bringing terror for Christians. This scrutiny requires training our minds to think behind the news to the church.

Sign up for a daily prompt. These always help us, no matter the cause. Jeff King with International Christian Concern sends a daily report on persecution. Sometimes he has a video, sometimes an interview, other times a news item. Reading him can easily move us to a few moments—or more—of prayer.

Read stories of martyrs, survivors, and missionaries. These stir the heart and amaze the mind. Voice of Martyrs offers a source of books and further links for good reading.

 

What to pray

 

That depends, doesn’t it? The circumstances may be for release, or protection, or endurance. My own list for these prayers consists of these:

            The right words to say when arrested or questioned. These words can mean imprisonment, mild or severe punishment, or release. Christ tells us that the Holy Spirit will give words to say. Paul asked for words when he was in prison (Eph. 6:19).

            For power in his or her weakness. The trials and the agonies will stretch the prisoners. Many will renounce and give names and places under torture. In their torment they can find Christ supplying his strength in their times of weakness (2 Cor. 12:9).

            For grace and favor before the courts and guards. Paul requested this in giving comport to Corinthians (2 Cor. 1:7-9).

            Protection—before being discovered and after when imprisoned. God may deliver the believers from being caught. The prisoner can hold a shield of faith to surround him during the torture and in the cells (Eph. 5:15-18)

            Witness by the believer. Christians are in crammed cells, interacting with guards, and sometimes reporting to the church outside. In every instance comes the occasion for the fruit of the Spirit to come into view in the most adverse conditions (Luke 6:27, 28).

            Forgiveness. Unlike our enemies, theirs are violent, evil, hostile, and hateful. They are told to forgive our enemies, with the help and the example of the Lord (Romans 12:20).

 

I am sure these can be improved and would welcome suggestions. I include below a link to a suggested list of prayers for Muslims.  

 

At the end, I ask two questions: what can we offer, and what can we receive from these other children of God?

 

We can offer the effort to move into their lives and understand their condition. If we can see ourselves as if in prison with them, our prayers will have more passionate heart and hope.

 

What we receive is a larger view of God. We can see he cares for these his children, neither slumbering or sleeping, but protecting them and keeping them. We learn of his sorrows over them. They, the apple of his eye, are treated with hatred and violence. He knows this and he sorrows over them. Lastly, we see his rightful justice in bringing recompense on the persecutors. For “those who are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph” (Amos 6:6), it will be a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living, righteous, holy and eternal God. 

 

For the most severe nations and statistics:

https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2020/january/top-christian-persecution-open-doors-2020-world-watch-list.html

 

Research about martyrs and global Christianity:

https://www.gordonconwell.edu/center-for-global-christianity/research/quick-facts/

 

To sign up for the daily report of Jeff King, write:

icc@persecution.org

 

Voice of the Martyrs website for books and other resources:

www.persecution.org

 

Ten prayer points for Muslims:

https://www.opendoorsusa.org/christian-persecution/stories/10-specific-prayers-muslim-background-believers/

 

 

 

 

 

IV. The Persecuted Christians in North Korea

 The Persecution in North Korea

 

The details of the persecution in North Korea are shrouded in secrecy. Enough stories have emerged, however, that allow an overview of the suffering Christians and their perpetrators. Many Christians escape to China and beyond, telling the listening world about the atrocities their brothers and sisters face. This article will give a glance at these details. In addition, I will step back from the specifics and examine what provokes the harsh treatment that the church has known for all times and in all places

 

But first is the question of how people in this nation without the Internet hear the Gospel. The most common means is for parents who are believers and who pass on their faith to their children. With many Christian prisoners, others in their cells can see their faith and hear their witness. One odd but creative way has been using favorable winds to send balloons over the mountains. Inside the balloons are copies of Bibles and tracts. Though this may sound fanciful to our ears, the sister of Kim Jung-un, Kim Yo-Jong, objected to this “evil propaganda” to authorities in South Korea and forced them to have this ministry stopped. 

 

For over four decades the government of North Korea has been intent on eliminating all Christians or to “re-educate” them. Their agents are trained to find them and move them to the detention centers. The length of stay there can be as short as a month but is frequently much longer. For some, they die before their term ends.  Their forms of torture are found in most places of persecution: sleep deprivation, kicking, beating with a stick, feeding polluted food, and starving. These cruel tortures leave many wishing for immediate execution. 

 

The punishments are severe. Christians who wish to pray privately in their crammed cells must do so in corners away from CCTV cameras. If caught, the punishment is morning beatings for 20 days. Believers are tortured until they reveal names of others in their small groups. Theses, then, are rounded up and imprisoned. If a person is caught with a Bible, the penalty can be imprisonment not just for that person but for the entire family. 

 

 

If persecution has always been part of the life of the church, what provokes it? What is it about our faith that ignites such violent reaction? I have no inside knowledge, but I do find one theme unfolded in the Bible. 

 

First, we should eliminate some possible reasons. They may be plausible but in the close analysis are insufficient rationales. One such idea would be efforts to stamp out religion in any form. In North Korea, for example, shamanism is widespread. Wizards and fortune tellers abound. These are also hunted down by the Ministry of State Security. Another possibility is a government’s fear of power with unknown people. What might happen if leaders lose control to people with religious principles? There are other options, but none give motives strong enough to account for the lamentable history of Christian persecution.

 

I find clues for an explanation in the Gospels when Jesus teaches about himself. The eighth chapter of John, for instance, ends with Jesus giving the climax to his self-revelation: “Before Abraham was, I am.” And with that, the Jews picked up stones to stone him. Later in the tenth chapter, Jesus ends a teaching with “The Father is in me and I am in the Father.” At that they tried to seize him. Those are scores of similar encounters when Jesus reveals who he is, with the Jewish leaders rising up in arms against him. 

 

These clues point to a hostility that originated before Christ’s earthly presence. The real conflict opened up with the rebellion by Satan against God. Satan’s rebellion was an all-out warfare with his eternal and spiritual goal of destroying God. He is determined to unseat the Triune God from his sovereign rule throne and trample him beneath Satan’s foot. That goal incites the warfare that he is conducting to this day.

 

At the birth of the Messiah, Satan tried to have him murdered by Herod. At the beginning of the Lord’s public ministry he tried to divert Jesus from the cross by his three-fold temptations. Failing that, he has turned his strategy to the next level—to see the church so diminished by lies, corruption, and division, that her message is deemed irrelevant. The tactic of that strategy is the persecution of the church. If that is successful, then the voice of God’s kingdom, the carrier of the gospel, is faint. If the church is not totally eliminated, then at least the instrument can be defanged by leaders whose  fervor is no more than lukewarm. 

 

That strategy we see in two ways: first, the persecution of the faithful to the point that some renounce their faith; second, the watering down of the faith so that God is unrecognizable and his words are garbled. The first of these takes place where faith is forbidden; the second where pulpits are invaded by the culture.

 

As Paul tells us, we wrestle not with flesh and blood but with principalities and powers. 

 

If we look to the future destinies of the followers and the persecutors, what do we see? For his people God says this through Zephaniah: “The Lord is with you, and he is mighty to save. He will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with loud singing.”

 

For the persecutors Paul writes, “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness.”

 

As with the other articles in this series, I close with two questions: what can we offer the Christians of North Korea, and what can we receive from them?

 

I suggest the best we can offer is prayer. There is no power greater and no aid more desired. This coming Sunday is the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church. The sites below offer formats and guidance for prayer. 

 

What can we receive? Their example of showing that Satan lies and Jesus tells the truth: hope beyond death, forgiveness to one another, sacrificial lifestyle, certainty of prayer, repentance for our sins, his presence in trials and tragedies, thanksgiving in all things, and loving our enemies.         

 

 

New Wineskins.  https://newwineskins.org/prayers-for-the-persecuted-church

 

 

https://www.chinasource.org/resource-library/blog-entries/the-importance-of-praying-for-the-work/

 

https://www.chinasource.org/resource-library/blog-entries/the-importance-of-praying-for-the-work/

 

https://www.idop2021.com

 

III. The Church in North Korea

 The Church in North Korea

 

The photo at the top of the page shows the Judech Tower in the center of Pyongyang, North Korea. Judech is the official philosophy of the Hermit Kingdom that promotes the totalitarian regime of Kim Jung-Il and the near deification of Kim and his family.  

 

This philosophy has laid the foundation for intense persecution of Christians. All wisdom, it teaches, lies in humankind, and no challenge to that is tolerated. Kim Il-Song, the grandfather of the present ruler, had Christians parents but after he consolidated power following WWII, he began a brutal persecution of Christians. That persecution continues.

 

The followers of Jesus Christ in the Hermit Kingdom have always known persecution and torment. I will give the stories of two Christians which will reveal the cost of following Jesus Christ and God’s almighty desire for the North Koreans.

 

Robert Thomas was not the first missionary to land in Korea but was a pioneer wanting the Koreans to know the love of Jesus. In 1866 he sailed inland on an American ship, The General Sherman.  The Koreans where they landed were so hostile that they burned the ship. Most of the crew were slaughtered as they swam to shore. Thomas made it to land, holding his red Korean Bible. Though he used the words for peace and Jesus to his captors, he was immediately beheaded. 

 

The man who killed Thomas, named Park, took the pages of the Bible and used them to wallpaper his house. Later, after reading the pages, he made his commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ. Many others learned of the sacred pages and made the journey to the home to read God’s Word. One of them, his nephew, also read the walls and was converted. Later he was part of the team that updated the translation. 

 

This story brings out two distinctions of the church in the Hermit Kingdom. First is the anointing of the Kim dynasty. The official North Korean history of this event has an ancestor of Kim Il Sung as the hero, thus adding to the worship of Kim as clearly anointed to lead the people.   

 

The other and more radiant piece we see is God using a mustard seed to grow and bring the fruit of his kingdom in years to come and all over the land. Proverbs tells us not to despise the day of small things. From the faith and the death of one missionary, from the pages of the Bible plastered on a wall of a remote home, God has not let the light of the gospel be extinguished.

 

Although the light is still visible today, so is the cost and the persecution of Christ’s followers. We see this in the second story, the life of a woman named Yang. Hers is a story of brutality, prison, and torture. It also is a tale of resilience and courage gained from her found faith in the Lord.

 

Her story begins around the year 1995. That was when the government wanted to expand the army. It diverted most food of the nation to feed the soldiers, resulting in the infamous famine in the late 1990s. In Yang’s village they were reduced to eating sand and bark off trees. The death toll in her village was about ten people every day for many months. 

 

Yang escaped to China to make money for her family. There she worked in a noodle store whose owner was a Christian. It was under her influence that Yang became a follower of Jesus. When she returned to her village, a neighbor told the authorities that Yang was a Christian. That led to her arrest and first imprisonment. Her charge was treason because she refused to acknowledge Kim Il Sung as divine. In prison the tool of preference for her torture was a shovel. When she was released, she said her whole body was blue. 

 

She escaped to China again, only to be kidnapped and kept locked in a room as a sex slave. After fleeing to Mongolia she contracted severe frostbite and dehydration. The authorities there sent her to Seoul for medical care. That is where she met other Christians and began a deeper discipleship.

 

The healing she experienced in Seoul was physical and emotional. Physically, the recovery from the trauma in Mongolia has been slow. She lost the toes on her left foot and lives with pain every day. Emotionally, the recovery has also been slow. Finding forgiveness for the several sources of torture and abuse has not been instantaneous. Knowing the certainty of Christ’s forgiveness of her has aided that process.

 

And the future she seeks? She loves the people of North Korea.  She wants them to know the love of Jesus the Messiah as she has found it. Yang is preparing to return to North Korea as a missionary to the people who persecuted her. 

 

Through Yang come the same two realities as with Robert Thomas. The cost of following Jesus is high, knowing the blows it will bring. Within that same heart, however, is the certainty of the love of Jesus for the people of the Hermit Kingdom. Yang will be an instrument of that heavenly vision.

 

I end these profiles of God’s Other Children with two questions for us: what can we offer, and what can we receive.

 

What we can offer? Prayer. Even if we wanted to send something – letters, money, food, books – they would not get through. But what they need is more than anything material. They need and long for the power of God. Is that enough? Paul set that straight when he reminded the church in Corinth that God showed most power when he, Paul, most knew his weakness. In his affliction and his total dependance on God was when he saw God’s mighty strength.

 

The Christians in North Korea send that request: Pray for us. Pray for courage, for forgiveness, for witness, for their persecutors, for opportunities to tell others of the love of the Savior.

 

What can we receive? the unsurpassed value of eternal gratification. That puts proper perspective on our culture of instant gratification. The Church in North Korea takes torture along with witness, often a death sentence when they keep a Bible. Why? They know the future God has for them. When we live with the same certainty of eternity, we will live better.

 

 

November 7 is the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church.

New Wineskins Missionary Network gives valuable and useful aids to use that day:

https://newwineskins.org/prayers-for-the-persecuted-church

 

This site covers the issues, hopes, and needs of the church in North Korea:

https://www.northkoreanchristians.com

 

For guidance in praying for the church there:

https://worldhelp.net/how-to-pray-the-scriptures-for-christians-in-north-korea/

 

North Korea, by Todd Nettleton, published by Voice of the Martyrs covers their history, stories, and insights. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

II. Meet the Musahar People

 Meet the Musahar People

 

As we roam through strange and forbidding places in the world, our escorts will be angels. We will find them eager companions for two simple reasons. First, angels know God’s saving work but from the outside. They long to see the actual impact that the gospel makes in lives and in cultures. They will show us the proper astonishment for the power of grace. The second  contribution is their close understanding of God’s love for these children. As they carry out his will, they see into his heart and mind about his love for other children. With these companions we benefit from both contributions.

 

Our first stop will be the Musahar people of India and Nepal. They are at the front of the line because the reasons for their neglect is the same for the other children. In them are embodied the recurring traits that obscure the children we will meet.

 

Two million Musahar people live in the northern states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh in India and the Terai of Nepal. Though mostly unknown to the church, God watches over them closely. He finds great pleasure in their great beauty. He is pleased to see their creative talents glow. He knows what makes them delighted and what brings them sorrow. He built into them the natural closeness of their family and village life. Over generations they have shown a determined resilience and hustle in their survival. 

 

That last comment gives a hint about their challenges, challenges that are extreme in the hurt and the destitution they have brought. All this is because these people, the Musahar, are known as the people who catch rats, as the people who eat rats. 

 

We have to understand caste to see how eating rats lowers them in the Hindu world.  Caste determines family and territory, but also work, status, and employment. These facets of life are immovable, fixed forever, generation after generation. 

 

The caste  of the Musahar stems from the single fact that they eat rats. Their resulting social profile would be: isolated, poor, malnourished, illiterate, unsanitary, and unskilled. Those who eat and chase rats deserve nothing but disdain and rejection. Their caste keeps them there. (They are not the lowest caste among the Dalits. That sad honor goes to the people who clean out toilets, and where there are not toilets, cleaning out whatever is used.)

 

The isolation comes from no one wanting to work alongside Musahar. That leaves them with the most menial jobs. What opportunities for advancement can they have when they have no money?  Education is cut off because families cannot afford pens and paper for the children. Even if they could show up in school, the classes are not in a language that the Musahar speak. How can they find skilled labor when they cannot handle the simplest instructions? For their health, their life expectancy is below most other groups in Nepal.  What can they expect when their diet includes rats, they are unable to afford good food, and health care is simply absent?

 

Translating that into a particular Musahar person, he or she would come across as grubby, ill-behaved, weird, smelly, awkward, and just plain repugnant.  

 

The unspoken—but loudly whispered—conclusion by outsiders is that they don’t count, they are unimportant, they are unworthy for any outside efforts to improve their life. People’s vision goes right past them; they remain unseen.

 

This is what makes the Musahar people the prototype for what we will learn of “God’s Other Children.” These are the same reactions to the hungry, the slaves, the abandoned children of the world. They are so low, so deprived, so unable to rise up, they are simply unworthy.

 

Even to some Christian outsiders, the attitude is, “Why would anybody want to try to minister to those people?”  That is not a hypothetical question. A friend of mine expressed her desire for the Musahar people to know the transforming love of Jesus Christ. The response she received from local pastors was that very question. 

 

But we as Christians know differently. We know that our Savior, when walking along a road one day, encountered a man who fit the Musahar description to a T. He was a leper. And we know that Jesus spoke love to him, touched him, and healed him. 

 

We know that the Musahar are considered despised, having no dignity and nothing attractive, no one taking notice of them, ignored as if they were nothing. But we recognize those words as the same words in Isaiah 53 that describe Jesus. Truly, they are worthy. God loved them so much he sent his son to die for them.

 

And that is what angels see.

 

For this profile and the others to some, we close with two responses: what we can offer to them, and what we can receive from them?

 

What can we offer: The Musahar represent the hundreds of ethnic groups that the church of Jesus Christ has looked past and just not seen. What would correct this vision? Research: research that uncovers ethnic groups who have no translation of the Bible, few if any workers, no local leaders. Research becomes their only their voice. Who else speaks for them? Their only voice speaking to the church is research. We can offer the church those resources of penetrating research on those unreached with the gospel.

 

What should we receive? What can draw us as individuals closer to the love of God for people like the Musahar? A deep, true, and thorough examination of our own hearts to see if, who, and how we look past, neglect, and count some or someone unworthy--someone who is dearly loved by our Lord.