By Jasu Diaz —
Before she married Billy Graham, Ruth Bell grew up on the mission field. Though her parents served in China, they sent her to the best Christian school for missionary kids, the Pyongyang Foreign School. It was located in what is now North Korea.
One does not erase, one does not overwrite a spiritual heritage so rich as North Korea’s, as the Kim Jong-un regime is finding out. You can’t undo all the engendering of blessings of what was once called the Jerusalem of the East.
In the 1930s, Pyongyang had experienced distinct revival. One in five Koreans were Christian. There were 800 Christian schools for Korean children, teaching a total of 41,000 kids in various grades. Built were churches, orphanages, hospitals, clinics and even Bible schools.
Postcards offer proof. “Christians engaging in street evangelism were so common that even postcards of Pyongyang showed missionaries handing out tracts in the city,” writes Eugene Bach.
The revival broke out in Jangdaehyeon Church in Pyongyang at a prayer meeting for men. The Spirit was heavy on the group, prompting people to spontaneously confess their sins. It was so strong that even Bang Eun-doek, a proud Buddhist, abandoned his police work of arresting Christians and became one.
“I confess!” Bang yelled. “I came here to try to trap sinners and take them to jail, but I stand before you tonight as a sinner. I deserve worse than the jail.”
When the cop who came to arrests Christians winds up becoming a Christian, you know you’re going to have an Apostle Paul type revival.
Today under the iron fist of atheistic communism, the church has gone totally and completely underground. That does not mean that it has disappeared. To the contrary, the more the country suffers, the more people turn to Jesus.
Korean officials play whack-a-mole trying to snuff Christianity, but they can never snuff Christ.
Ruth Bell-Graham visited North Korea in the 1990s. She was asked to speak at the Bongsu Church, which was first built in 1988 with international money. The repressive government allowed its building under international pressure to showcase its tolerance towards religion.
“I pray that each of you will know, as I discovered during my school days her, that God so loved you that he gave his only begotten Son, that if you would believe in him, you will not perish but have everlasting life,” she told officials who probably had never heard the Gospel before.
Sources: Jesus in North Korea by Eugene Bach, others.
