While the world looks on with bated breath at the prospect of nuclear war, God continues His saving work in North Korea. Sang-Hwa’s parents were secret Christians in a society where any public expression of faith leads to imprisonment and possibly death. When she stumbled on their closely held secret as a young girl, she almost turned her own parents in to the authorities. “When I was 12, I accidentally found a Bible my parents had hidden in their closet. Should I tell my teacher? Should I visit the local security official?”
“For fifteen days I couldn’t think about anything else. I knew it was my duty to report this illegal book. But it was my family which was involved. I also had questions such as: ‘Who is this God?’” Finally, she summoned the courage to confront her father. “He was very surprised and sat next to me and asked, ‘Do you see those old trees?’ I nodded. ‘Who made those?’ I said I didn’t know and he explained the story of creation to me. My mother explained the Gospel and taught me to memorise Bible verses and the Apostolic Creed.” Sang-Hwa learned her father met people in a secret location, as part of the underground church.
But Sang-Hwa and her parents were unaware government officials had infiltrated the underground meetings. When one of those agents was dying, her father visited him on his deathbed. The man confessed his duplicitous intentions: “I know everything about you, your family and your faith. I was a spy and ordered to watch you,” he told her startled father. Amazingly, the government agent never turned them in. As he observed the believers praying and singing, his heart softened toward them. “You are a good man. I never told anyone you were a Christian,” he told Sang-Hwa’s father. “Tell me how I can become a Christian too.” With his feet dangling at the edge of a Christ-less eternity, in the final moments of his life, this man repented and entered the Kingdom of God. “My father was able to lead him there,” Sang-Hwa says.
Source: Open Doors; Joel News International
Bible Study: Luke 23:39-43
JANUARY PRAISE God for the witness of Sang-Hwa’s parents that caused the regime’s informer to realise that God was with them and ultimately led to his death bed conversion.
PRAY the witness of Christians in Korea will awaken many to faith in Christ.
