By Exjani Rojas –
From 1950 to ‘53, North Korea’s enemies lay to the South. Now North Korea is being invaded from the North.
It is being invaded by Christian missionaries from China.
“The vision of the underground church in China is responsible for more missionaries being deployed to unreached areas than from all other nations of the world combined,” says Eugene Bach, who works with the Back to Jerusalem movement.
They don’t host huge missionary conferences. They don’t carry cell phones or use email. Their success depends in part on their low-tech, labor-intensive approach: just preach the Gospel and endure hardship with self-sacrifice and bravery.
On average, 10 new missionaries are sent out per month.
It’s extraordinary the extremes they go to in order to get into “closed” countries.
The fruit: In the last couple years, the Chinese House Church is responsible for the conversion of 6,000 North Koreans to Christ, Bach says.
“Back to Jerusalem missionaries do not see North Korea as a closed country,” Bach says. “Rather, it is a ‘creative access’ country.”
One Chinese missionary applied for a work visa in North Korea. Another married a North Korean girl, sight unseen, to get in.
Esther has distributed more Bibles and planted more churches than anyone, Bach says. Born in China to a Korean family, she longed to bring the Gospel to her people. She got a visa through her brother who ran a trading company in North Korea.
She went to villages along the road and shared the Gospel. More than once she got turned over to police, and she was imprisoned with a life sentence. Whenever she prayed, her cellmate alerted guards, who beat Esther. Her cellmate hoped to win favors from the guards but eventually wound up getting saved.
“Even though they beat me, I was not able to stop praying,” Esther says.
Eventually, a family member bribed prison officials to release her. She continues to work, training missionaries to enter Korea.
“More than 50 years ago, the Chinese came to North Korea and helped crush the Korean people with the anvil of Communism,” Bach says. “Now they are returning to help lift that oppressive weight by sharing the Light of the World with the people trapped in darkness.”
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