For the past 16 years,
North Korea has been ranked the “most oppressive place in the world for
Christians” according to the U.S. State Department. Christians are accused of
being imperialists seeking to overthrow the despotic government and those who
are caught practicing their faith are arrested, horrendously tortured,
imprisoned and sometimes immediately put to death.
Like his father and
grandfather, Kim Jong-Un has continued a pattern of dictatorial paranoia. North
Korean citizens are taught state propaganda from birth until death. The entire
nation and its laws center on the elevation of the leadership of the country to
godhood. There are thousands of statues of national founder Kim Il-Sung around
the country that children must clean and polish; citizens are taught that all
countries worship the ruling Kim. It’s also illegal for any North Korean to
fold a newspaper showing the face of leaders either present or past.
Despite this persecution, Open
Doors reports that Christianity is growing in North Korea. Estimates place
the number of Christians in North Korea around 300,000, most of whom operate in
secret networks of tiny house churches.[1]
One of the creative ways
that missionaries have been trying to get the Gospel into North Korea is by
helium-filled balloons. On the nights when the winds are favorable hundreds of balloons
are sent up and away from multiple points in South Korea, destined a few miles
away and into North Korea. Only these are no ordinary balloons — they are
considered “Bible Balloons,” stuffed with pocket-sized New Testaments or flash
drives featuring sound clips of Gospel sermons, digital files of the Bible and
other Christian texts. These balloons are tracked with the help of GPS
technology, in the hopes that even just one will be picked up.[2]
(Click here to watch a video of how this works.)
Voice of the Martyrs
Korea reports launching approximately
40,000 Bibles per year into North Korea. “North Korea is the one country in the
world in which Bibles fall from the sky,” says Pastor Eric Foley of VOM. They
believe the balloon ministry has been an effective means of reaching people for
Christ in the closed country. “When we started 10 years ago, less than two
percent of North Korean defectors reported ever having seen a Bible while
inside North Korea,” Voice of the Martyrs Korea writes on its website.
“Today, that number is around 10 percent.”[3]
Reading these facts made
me think of Jesus prophetic words in Matt. 24:14, “And this gospel of the
kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all
nations, and then the end will come.” While Christians are using creative ways
to get God’s Word into every corner of the globe, when you think about oppressive
regimes like North Korea it seems impossible that Jesus’ prediction will ever
come true.
However, we know that
during the future Tribulation period God is going to get His word out by several
effective channels. First, He will commission 144,000 Jewish evangelists to crisscross
the globe with the Gospel (Rev. 7:1-17). According to the Bible, God will supernaturally
protect them from persecution during this time so that the Antichrist will not
be able to take their lives.
Then in Revelation 11, we
learn that God will send two witnesses to the earth who will preach and perform
miracles. Even though these witnesses will be killed; they will be raised back
to life and many will believe their testimony as a result.
Finally, in Rev. 14:6-13
we see that God is going to send a trio of angels across the earth who will
give warning to humanity to repent and trust in Christ before its too late. All
these efforts combined will produce the greatest evangelistic harvest the world
has ever seen, and it will take place during the worst possible time in history.
It’s encouraging to know
that the Gospel is not bound by borders or governments. God’s Word will not
return void (Is. 55:11). Whether by balloon, radio waves, social media or conversations
around the water cooler, let’s be on mission for the Gospel everyday everywhere.
-DM
[1]
Christopher Summers, “6 Big Things About North Korea You Should Know,” Open
Doors, 1 October 2008 <https://www.opendoorsusa.org/christian-persecution/stories/6-big-things-about-north-korea-you-should-know/>
[2] Hollie
McKay, “Operation Bible Smuggling: How Christian texts infiltrate North Korea,”
Fox News, 9 October 2017 <https://www.foxnews.com/world/operation-bible-smuggling-how-christian-texts-infiltrate-north-korea>
[3] “FLYING
BIBLE BALLOONS GROUNDED AS A RESULT OF KOREAN PEACE TALKS”, Facts &
Trends, 28 June 2018 <https://factsandtrends.net/2018/06/28/flying-bible-balloons-grounded-as-a-result-of-korean-peace-talks/>
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