VOMK sent 23,000 Bibles to North Korea in 2020, projects 30% more for 2021

Posted on January 26, 2021 by Pastor Foley

Voice of the Martyrs Korea announced today that it sent a total of 22,847 Bibles to North Korea in 2020, in addition to airing daily Bible recordings on its 5 shortwave and medium wave broadcasts into North Korea.

According to Voice of the Martyrs CEO the Rev. Dr. Eric Foley, the number includes mass distributions and individual hand-to-hand distributions in both print and electronic formats. Foley says the ministry does not provide breakdowns by Bible format or distribution method or location in order to protect the safety and security of recipients and couriers, as well as to keep its methods and technology private.

Foley says that mass distribution numbers were down for the ministry this year compared to previous years, but that individual hand-to-hand distributions had more than doubled. “On the one hand, the efforts of South Korean authorities to halt all balloon launches, including our Bible launches, decreased mass distribution. On the other hand, demand for Bibles from individual North Koreans was higher than in any prior year.” Foley attributes the increased interest in the Bible by North Koreans to fear and uncertainty arising from concerns about the Coronavirus pandemic. “Regardless of culture, thoughts turn to God anytime life is threatened and the future appears bleak,” says Foley. “North Koreans, like people everywhere, turned to the Bible for hope in 2020, and they found it there.”

Foley noted that government balloon launch bans and Coronavirus travel restrictions had less of an impact on the ministry’s Bible distribution efforts than people might think. “Voice of the Martyrs Korea is not a mission agency producing Bibles in South Korea and then trying to figure out some way to sneak them into North Korea,” says Foley. “We are a multinational network of Christians, including North Korean Christians, using a wide variety of technologies and resources to help North Korean Christians share the Bible with other North Koreans wherever North Koreans are found. Underground North Korean Christians say, ‘Give us the tools, and we’ll complete the work.’ Christians around the world all play a part in that supply chain, whether through finances, prayer, technology, sharing ideas, or gradually, patiently moving Bibles step by step into the hands of North Koreans who want them. Every year there are new challenges and new obstacles, but we plan years in advance, anticipating difficulties and working together with Christians in North and South Korea and around the world to develop new technologies and strategies to identify and overcome possible problems. We believe the adversity makes more creative and ultimately more effective. The Lord always finds a way, even in a pandemic.”

Foley says these new methods and technologies, as well as the strengthening and expansion of its own network, are part of the reason why Voice of the Martyrs Korea is projecting a 30% increase in its Bible distribution numbers for 2021. He also points to the addition of a fifth radio broadcast in 2020 as a positive outcome of South Korean government efforts to ban balloon launching. “Through the cooperation of our funding partners, we were able to reallocate some of the funds we would normally have used for Bible balloon launching to add another 30-minute daily radio broadcast, which includes Bible readings.” Foley said the ministry was also able to complete a new dramatized recording of the Bible in 2020 for use on its radio broadcast and other electronic distribution media.

Foley says it is too early to determine how new legislation in South Korea related to balloon launching will impact the ministry’s Bible balloon launch efforts for 2021. “The wind and the weather always prohibit balloon launching in January, even if laws were favorable. Thus, our focus this time of year is completely on the many unique Bible distribution opportunities that are only possible in the winter. When summer comes and the winds blow north, we will do what we do every summer: evaluate the legal situation, make the best decisions we can, and act transparently.” Foley also faces charges under the Inter-Korean Exchange Act and the National Safety Law for the ministry’s past balloon launch activities, but he says he is not concerned. “If I worried about tomorrow, I would never have gotten into North Korean ministry. Today is all God gives to us. My focus is fully on keeping our North Korean Bible supply chain operational today. If tomorrow it is determined that this is a criminal act, then I will joyfully and willingly submit to the consequences.”

Foley points to the 2020 White Paper on Religious Freedom by the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights as proof of the impact that Bible distribution by groups like Voice of the Martyrs Korea is having inside North Korea. “At the time we started Voice of the Martyrs Korea 20 years ago, the Center estimates that essentially zero percent of people inside North Korea had seen a Bible with their own eyes. When the Center did its 2016 report, they reported that that number of those inside North Korea who had seen a Bible had jumped to nearly 8 percent. In the 2020 report, the Center says that number has continued to increase at a rate of 4 percent a year. Our experience is that the more Bibles we distribute to North Koreans, the more North Koreans want to read the Bible.”

Foley says what motivates him most are the notes the ministry receives from individual North Korean Bible recipients. “We received a note today that says in part, ‘Through MP3 we have all come to know that God created the world and that God is a living God and is protecting us. We never knew this until we received the words on the MP3 along with warm gifts. I am not of course able to understand it perfectly, but I will keep listening one time, ten times, and a hundred time to keep his words.’ What sacrifice would be too great to get a Bible in the hands of someone who treasures it that much? I can’t think of any sacrifice I’d rather be a part of.”

More information about Voice of the Martyrs Korea’s North Korea ministry and Bible distribution efforts is available at https://vomkorea.com/en/project/northkorea/.

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God’s promises are never hidden. But their fulfillment is.

Posted on January 12, 2021 by Pastor Foley

Though God confounds human understanding in how he fulfills each of his promises, the promises themselves are plainly recorded in the Bible.

Sometimes Christians claim to receive new promises directly from God through supernatural revelation. Other Christians claim to discover new promises from God through clever interpretations of Scripture. Neither of these fit the biblical pattern of martyrdom.

In biblical martyrdom, the promise of God is never hidden. It does not require special revelation or scholarship to discover. It is not only available to enlightened interpreters. If it were, that would draw attention to the interpreter, taking the honor and glory away from God.

Martyrs are rarely prophetic figures, powerful leaders, or Bible scholars. Instead, most martyrs are very ordinary people who simply trust the promises of God that are plainly and straightforwardly recorded in scripture.

Biblically, it is never the promise of God that is hidden but rather the fulfillment of the promise.

Martin Luther, the Protestant reformer, advocated the plain, or literal, reading of scripture. Through his reading, he concluded that while God’s promises are plainly recorded in scripture for all people, the fulfillment of God’s promises is always “hidden under the opposite.” That is, at the time a promise of God is being fulfilled, it appears that God is absent or has even failed us. Jesus’ death on the cross is the primary example.

Faith is not required to discover God’s promises, but faith is required to trust that God’s promises are being fulfilled, because what we can see, understand, feel, or want seems to show exactly the opposite.

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Faith is trust in all of the promises of God

Posted on December 15, 2020 by Pastor Foley

In the Bible, faith is trust in all of the promises of God. Faith is not biblical when it emphasizes only a “subset” of biblical promises that match our personal interests, circumstances, or understanding. In the time of Jesus, some Jews emphasized God’s promises of national deliverance.[i] Today, evangelists often single out one promise of God—e.g., “Do you have a personal relationship with Jesus?”[ii]—and portray it as the sole test of faith. Others build ministries focused on healing or prosperity. Still others write books that list each of the promises of God under alphabetized headings for easy reference, so readers can locate the specific promises that meet their need at that moment.[iii] In each case, God becomes reduced to a single promise, or to the sum of the promises that we want to see fulfilled.

But all of God’s promises are interwoven, interdependent, and inseparable. No promise of God stands alone. Each promise of God is fulfilled in interaction with all the other promises of God. Each fulfilled promise confounds, not confirms, human expectation.[iv] Each promise broadens, or even completely changes, our understanding of who God is. God’s promises are not like a series of individual snapshots in a photo album. Instead, God’s promises are like threads that are woven together into a vast but single tapestry. As each thread is added, the appearance of the whole tapestry is transformed. The God revealed by the whole tapestry is different than the God revealed by a single thread.  The God of the whole tapestry is the Christian God, the god of the single thread is a human idol. When Satan tempts Jesus in the wilderness, he extracts a single thread of promise from the tapestry: God’s promise of angelic protection in Psalm 91.[v] Jesus shows Satan—and us—that faith is not biblical unless it trusts in the God of the whole tapestry, i.e., “every word that comes from the mouth of God.”[vi]

Faith in a subset of promises ultimately leads to the rejection of the God of all promise, as shown in the rejection of Jesus at the hands of his contemporaries.[vii] Throughout Christian history, as the church has had to deal with various doctrinal disputes, it has always ultimately determined that faith in subsets of God’s promises (rather than on the totality of the promises of God) is heresy. The church has also insisted that all of the promises of God in the Old Testament remain a part of God’s tapestry; the promises of God in the New Testament are woven into the promises of God in the Old Testament. Likewise, the church has insisted that the people of God in the Old Testament are continuous with the people of God in the New Testament: Just as God does not replace one set of promises with another, God does not replace Israel with the church. Instead, there is one people of faith in the world: those who put their trust in all of the promises of God and the God of all promises.[viii]

[i] Acts 1:6 shows that these promises are still the ones predominantly on the minds of Jesus’ closest disciples, even at the moment of his ascension.

[ii] Cf. e.g. Jeremiah 31:34 for one of the ways in which God makes this promise of personal relationship.

[iii] Cf. the many editions and versions of Jack Countryman’s gift book, God’s Promises for Your Every Need.

[iv] The fulfillment of one promise can even seem to prevent the fulfillment of another promise, at least according to human understanding. Consider the promise of God to David that one of his descendants would always sit on the throne, a promise seemingly contradicted by the violent end of the kingly lineage of David at the time of exile. The coming of Christ, born of a virgin, of the lineage of David, shows both promises to be true, though in a way that human understanding could never have predicted.

[v] Cf. Matthew 4:6.

[vi] Cf. Matthew 4:4.

[vii] Cf. John 5:39.

[viii] For Luther’s development of this idea, see J.S. Preus, 1969. One of Martin Luther’s Reformation breakthroughs was to locate the origin of the church with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, gathered together to hear the Word of God.

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