Persecuted yet believing!



*Open Doors UK, works to serve and support persecuted Christians around the world, has reported a call for prayers for North Korea, the last surviving bastion of world Communism and one of the most closed-off countries in the world.

Praying for a breakthrough in North Korea. Only 200–400,000 of North Korea's 20 million people are Christians. *(Open Doors UK)

According to Open Doors statistics, at least 200,000 people are currently interned in concentration camps under harsh living conditions, with an estimated 50,000 to 70,000 of them Christians, according to ‘Brother Peter’.

“Without prayer the North Korean church can’t survive,” said Peter in the Open Doors press statement, who reported widespread suffering within the Communist country; smugglers and defectors are often tortured to death after being caught at the Chinese border.

“Their last days or weeks are terrible.

The North Korean authorities submit them to days of interrogation and severe beatings without giving them food and water. Eventually they die,” he said. “Survivors are sent to the worst political camps.” *Open Door article

Persecution- is persistent mistreatment of an individual or group by another group. The most common forms are religious persecution and ethnic persecution.

The stark definition leaves us cold…persecution is vivid, it’s real….and it exists!


The Apostle Paul knew persecution first hand:

For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.(2 Corinthians 12:10).

At the time he wrote 2 Corinthians (around A.D. 56), Paul already had been beaten by Jewish synagogue authorities five times (11:24; Deuteronomy 25:3) and Roman civic authorities three times (11:25a; Acts 16:22-23).

Moreover, he had been stoned once (11:25; Acts 14:19), shipwrecked thrice (11:25) and left adrift at sea for the better part of a 24-hour period (11:25). Danger, hunger and exposure were no strangers to the apostle, neither was worry for his Churches especially the Corinthians (11:26-33).

From all appearances, Paul did not have to go looking for trouble; it had a way of finding him!

Paul mentions a "Thorn in the flesh." Whatever this "thorn" might have been (a physical malady of some sort?), Paul wanted this tormenting "messenger of Satan" removed (12:7).

In fact, he appealed to the Lord no less than three times for it to be taken away (12:8). Although the apostle's repeated and likely passionate appeals were denied, in the midst of his frustration, confusion and affliction he heard the Lord say, "My grace is sufficient for you, for (my) power is made perfect in weakness" (12:9).

May God give us a heart for our Brothers and Sisters world-wide who suffer for their love for Jesus, and may we live the kind of life, that would bring about suffering....were it not for our living in the United States, where as yet it is not as severe.

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