GOD CAN RAISE A NATION IN A DAY
Whenever North Korea is mentioned, images of the nation’s powerful military arsenal and news about their never-ending nuclear ballistic missile testing, spring to mind. Defectors relate harrowing accounts of torture, starvation, suffering at labor camps, and random execution of their fellow citizens.
Since 2002, this nation has been at the top of the list of countries where Christians are most severely persecuted. Less than 1.5% are Christians among North Korea’s population of 26 million. Even owning a Bible and being caught usually means public execution. Children are taught to look for the ’black book’ (Bible) at home, which they must report to their teachers if they do.
During the reign of Supreme Leader Kim Il Sung from 1948 to 1994, a cult of personality around the Kim family started to dominate through propaganda. The people are taught to believe that the Kim leader is their ‘God’, which is why faith in Jesus Christ is not accepted and therefore, banned. The people have been brainwashed since early childhood; to regard and revere the Kim family as gods. Some propaganda dogma was copied from the Bible; for example, that humanity originated in North Korea and that when the individual dies, they will go to ‘socialist paradise’. If people become Christians, they soon realize the semblance of the propaganda from the Bible and stop believing in the Kim family as deities. Now, under the current leadership of Kim Jong Un, the people continue to be oppressed. There is absolutely no freedom. The government orchestrates everything.
North Koreans have experienced the move of God in the past. Pyong-yang, the capital city, was an important center of Korean Christianity, experiencing The Revival in 1907, and was termed ‘the Jerusalem of the East’; a model of success for missions and the center of Christian growth. Seeds were planted and Christianity is not dead in North Korea. There is a remnant of believers who refuse to bow down to the gods of this nation. Secret believers make ways to pass on their faith to their loved ones. They memorize scriptures and teach their children to do the same, keeping their faith and passing it on to others. Even under severe persecution, they risk their lives to meet secretly, strengthening one another in faith. Recently, a group of underground believers were executed when the authorities discovered their secret meetings.
Let us contend for this nation; He can raise a nation in a day. Nothing is impossible with God.
“Who has heard such a thing? Who has seen such things? Shall the earth be made to give birth in one day? Or shall a nation be born at once? For as soon as Zion was in labor, she gave birth to her children.”
