Notes to myself during this ongoing police investigation

Posted on August 25, 2020 by Pastor Foley

This week I am scheduled to appear at the police station for my fourth day of investigation on charges related to our balloon launching work. I have decided not to make any public comment on the investigation while it is underway. But since it has now been one month since I began appearing at the police station for these weekly sessions, I wanted to share with you a little of what the Lord has been teaching me through this time. I hope the following notes may be helpful as you also seek to be a faithful witness to the Lord wherever he sends you this week.

The world and everything in it would cease to exist if God did not give it the gift of life moment by moment. Biblically, each moment of life originates directly from God. He creates each moment ex nihilo (from nothing) and fulfills within each moment his promise to work all things in that moment together for the good of those he loves and calls.

We must first be receivers of God’s good gifts before we can be givers of anything. That is true not only of the good things we give but even the bad things we give, like persecution or disobedience. That is because evil is not a raw material obtainable from some other source. There is one source for all things, God the Father. Everything that he gives is good, and he gives to everyone. Evil is always the wrong use of God’s good gifts.

Even when God’s good gifts are used in ways that seem to threaten or thwart God’s promises, God’s will is always accomplished. In fact, it is the glory of God that he fulfills his promises especially through the actions of the very people and circumstances which seem to endanger his promises the most. This includes our persecutors and enemies, as well as secular authorities. His will is always done because each moment emerges directly from his hands, shaped precisely according to his promises that are guaranteed.

This is why we never need fear any exercise of power against us. Power ultimately does not serve the purpose of the one wielding it. It serves the purpose of its original source and its end. The Lord Jesus is the source and end of all power. Accepting this reality fundamentally changes how we view the authorities and our persecutors and enemies. It removes the fear, anger, despair, defiance, or weakness we might otherwise feel in their presence.

How do we hear God’s word of promise addressing us moment by moment? Can this happen only in the moments we are reading the Bible? Does it come only through direct spiritual revelation in moments of intense prayer?

No. We are to hear his word of promise in each moment as its unfolds into the world. The promises of God are plainly recorded in scripture. But the world is the scroll on which the fulfillment of every promise is “written”. That writing occurs continually, because the promises of God are the structure of reality in which we live and move and have our being. We are to “read” the reality we see as the moment by moment unfolding of the promises written in scripture. We do not receive the future from the hands of persecutors, friends, enemies, scientists, police investigators, or governments. We have only to do with Christ, who gives us the future through the hands of all these people, and a multitude more. But it remains only ever Christ’s future, Christ’s good and personal gift to us, and it unfolds exactly according to his promises.

Biblically, there is no mystery about what will happen in the future. We know what will happen, because it has been made plain to us in the scripture. As to when each of God’s promises will be fulfilled, and how, the scripture does not reveal. These are matters requiring our humility and trust in God. We are given only the plain promises of God, not advance knowledge of the time or the way in which God will fulfill them. We are not called to supplement the plain promises of God with personal supernatural revelation or clever interpretations of scripture in order to fill in details sufficient to persuade ourselves or others to believe. We are called simply to remember that scripture and history show that God hides his promises under the opposite and fulfills them when and how we least expect.

From the moment the world was created, the future has always been defined as “the fulfillment of the promises of God”. The mystery is not what will happen, or how, or when, but who we ourselves will become as God’s promises unfold. As the Talmud puts it, “All is in the hands of heaven except the fear of heaven.” In other words, the future is not the mystery; the future is God’s guaranteed gift. The mystery is how each of us will respond to that gift when it comes to us each moment. The Apostle John says it like this: “Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” It is this revealing of the children of God, not the revealing of the future, that has all of creation waiting in eager expectation.

God’s promises do not show up only when we pay attention to them. God’s promises do not apply only to the people who believe in them. All people we encounter at every moment are God’s servants, accomplishing his purpose, bringing his word to pass. All power in heaven and earth has been given to the Lord Jesus, and he uses it to work all things together for the good of those he loves and calls.

Some of the people we encounter are God’s willing servants. Others are his unwilling or unwitting servants. They insist to us that our future is in their hands, not God’s. With Pilate, these unwitting, unwilling servants of God say to us, “Don’t you realize I have power either to free you or to crucify you?” But with Jesus, we are to respond, “You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above.” We have to do only with the Master, who is shaping us and all of creation moment by moment through the unfolding of his promises according to his providence.

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An NK laborer reminds us of the true value of the Bible

Posted on August 11, 2020 by Pastor Foley

In the midst of our efforts to persuade South Korean authorities that the Chosun (North Korean) Bible we launch by balloon and distribute by hand is not “anti-North Korean propaganda”, we received the following thank-you note from a North Korean laborer. The laborer, after having been sent abroad by the North Korean government, received a Chosun audio Bible from one of our team members. After listening to it, the laborer wrote:

Thank you, Dear Father, who gave us a handful of hope which flowered in our life. Please give us your boldness to shout out and proclaim your love to the world.

It reminded me of another prayer of thanks to the Father:

At that time Jesus said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. (Matthew 11:25)

That prayer reminded me that the value of the Bible is not a conclusion drawn on the basis of human persuasion. It always comes as a gift of divine revelation. And it is the Father’s good pleasure to conceal this gift from the wise and the learned–and sometimes from the authorities–and instead to reveal it to North Korean laborers, to sex-trafficked North Korean women, and to North Korean defectors who are increasingly maligned on both sides of the border.

So the last shall be first, and the first last. (Matthew 20:16)

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A Brief History and 2020 Snapshot of the North Korean Underground Church

Posted on July 21, 2020 by Pastor Foley

Each year, as we prepare our North Korea projects and budgets for the coming year, we write a brief history of North Korean Christianity and a snapshot of present conditions to include with our project proposals. Our present circumstances, in which we stand accused in our own country as criminals alongside our North Korean Christian brothers and sisters, gave us a new perspective from which to write. I encourage you to read and share this with your family, friends, and church as you remember us and your North Korean brothers and sisters in prayer. (I had the privilege and pleasure of co-authoring this with my son, Trevor.)

History

The history of Christianity in Korea cannot be separated from the history of the Bible in Korea. The original Korean Bible translation was quite unique in its creation and distribution. In the late 19th century, John Ross, a Scottish missionary stationed in Manchuria, was able to meet with some Koreans among the peoples there. The Koreans he met had been merchants of little repute from the northern part of Korea. Having lost their livelihood and become financially desperate, they agreed to help Ross translate the New Testament into Korean.

In the process of translating, these men became Christians. As missionaries to their own people, they ultimately participated in the smuggling of 15,000 portions of the New Testament into Korea prior to the arrival of the first Western Protestant missionaries in 1885. When those first missionaries, Henry Appenzeller and Horace Grant Underwood, arrived, it was those Korean Christians who had already believed in Jesus Christ through the reading of the Bible who came of their own accord to receive baptism from the Western missionaries. As a result of their special brand of faith, the Western missionaries nicknamed the Korean Christians “Bible Christians”.

Christianity in Korea has, from the very beginning, been “Bible Christianity.” This history continues today, holding true for present-day Christians in North Korea as well. Their Christian life is an encounter with Christ through the His word. These Christians have never experienced the other things that may seem essential to meeting Christ (church buildings, religious liberty, pastors, discipleship training). They experience Christ clothed only in His word.

As it was in the beginning of the history of Christianity in the region, North Koreans of little repute continue to be the linchpins of evangelism to the North. North Korean defectors are regarded by many in both North and South Korean as traitors. Yet, these defectors who have become Christians comprise a grassroots evangelism movement to their family and friends in North Korean and China, as well as to their North Korean defector neighbors and friends in the South.

Current Situation

North and South Korean governments continue to engage in diplomacy that regards NGOs like Voice of the Martyrs Korea (VOMK) as dangerous to national security. Thus, for the first time, VOMK and other NK-related NGOs are targets for attack from both Koreas. So far, two human rights organizations in South Korea run by North Korean defectors are in the process of losing their NGO status. Subsequently, in July 2020, it was announced that the South Korean Ministry of Unification would start reviewing government-registered NGOs in the North Korea human rights sector, the first review set to target 25 such groups.

At the beginning of July 2020, VOMK was investigated by the Seoul government and police in response to blanket accusations of financial and programmatic mismanagement made by a governor with regard to the four largest balloon launching organizations. The investigation could not find any reason to revoke our NGO status because we are meeting the agreements set forth in our NGO permit. Because we also subject ourselves to scrupulous receipting and annual independent audits, the investigation could find no reason to accuse us on account of financial misconduct. What is clear, however, is that the South Korean government does not intend to allow us or other NK-related NGOs to operate in the manner which we have in the past. The central premise of VOMK’s NK ministry is that we are a platform for North Koreans to disciple and evangelize other North Koreans in partnership with and at the direction of underground Christians. What concerns the SK government about this method is that Koreans in the North and the South are able to relate with one another without the mediation of the government.

Although the current issue of contention is balloon launching, the South Korean government Ministry of Unification had also approached us in May 2018, instructing us not only to cease launching balloons, but also to end our radio broadcasts and other non-governmentally mediated activities. They instead offered that we might be able to participate in future cultural exchanges, distributing Bibles to the North Koreans permitted to participate in such events jointly organized by both governments. The cessation of balloon launching, thus, is the tip of a much deeper iceberg related to the legitimacy of private, non-governmental ministry activities involving North Koreans.

These circumstances have had the benefit of allowing us to explain to the public, the South Korean government and, indirectly, the North Korean government, our heritage and history as a mission, as well as about what it means for us to be partners of North Korean underground Christians rather than missionaries. In some sense, we are being written into the same history that God has been writing since the introduction of the faith into the region, because we have been publicly associated with North Korean underground Christians. People understand this to be our identity and purpose.

We have hope for the future not because we are optimistic about current events and their trajectory. We have hope because hope is a discipline of acknowledging God and His character in every circumstance. We believe that God has looked upon us being faithful with a little, and now He is giving the grand opportunity to suffer with NK believers in the name of Christ.

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