Missed opportunity for North Korea

A pity that the good initiative to translate the Word of God in Korean and to present an other version to the already existing very good New World Translation is overshadowed by the aim of the publishers to put their own doctrinal views first, instead of letting God’s Word come to the people.

Mansudae Grand Monument; Pyongyang, DPRK (North Korea) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It is fine to note that the Reverend Eric Foley, CEO and Co-Founder, with his wife Dr. Hyun Sook Foley, of Voice of the Martyrs Korea, supports the work of persecuted Christians in North Korea and around the world. Naturally we understand that they love to  spread their discipleship practices worldwide, but that they want to use a publication of God’s Word to push their own cause is a missed change to allow Christian unity and sharing the word of God in Korean with other denominations.  By having their foreword in the translation presenting their denominational point of view as the truth and through their North Korean ministry packs they do not give other denominations the opportunity to fund them and to use their material as well to spread the Good News of the Kingdom of God. This way they are missing facilities and are closing North Koreans off from the free will to choose which denomination they want to join.

We wonder how the gospel in the ministry pack can be presented in the form of a tract (?) and are curious to hear what is presented as the gospel on the MP3 Player. they seem to know that the Christian Church faces its greatest challenge in history and present also a link to a very professionally made website to reach youth, impact lives and to see if the church will rise up to those youngsters and ‘fight for them’. They also offer in their packet an other Gospel-sharing resource, such as The Story of Jesus, a visual depiction of Bible stories which (since June 2011) is used already in 71 nations by 49 languages. But for North Korea all of these are done in the North Korean dialect.

Pastor Foley is Dean of Underground University, a one year program for North Korean defector pastors, missionaries, and ministry leaders with that misleading name of ‘University’. According to his own saying he

has focused on teaching Christians in countries with freedom of religion how to adopt the discipleship practices of the North Korean underground church and persecuted believers worldwide. {About Do the Word}

Pastor and Dr. Foley live in Seoul and are committed to equipping North Korean church leaders for comprehensive underground Christian service.

Kris and Koen Wauters with the band Clouseau performing in December 2009

The pictures we see here from North Korea*, with the reverence North Koreans give to their leaders, bowing down in front of the statues of Kim Il Sung and especially going to such monuments of him at special occasions, like marriage, do us question how they are so devoted to such a leader who does not give them the opportunity to see much other stuff of the world. Though we do agree even music of the Belgian pop group Clouseau can be found in their libraries.

The Foley’s are preparing two new Bibles for publication –one, a North Korean study Bible and the other, a North Korean/English Parallel study Bible.

They seem to have found it a great challenge experiencing each time they publish a North Korean Bible:

How to describe the Bible in a single page, in a way they can understand, in a way that says everything that needs to be said.

But than we do not understand why they wanted to push their trinitarian doctrine into it, instead of just presenting a straight forward introduction to the Word of God on one page.

The phrase

As you will also read in the book, he has accomplished this by being born on earth as a man even while he continued to rule from heaven.

must confuse them terrible when a little-bit later is written correctly

Until his return, his spirit is present with us on earth, willing to live inside all of us who will receive him in order to guide us back to God.

first they say he is God and then they say he will bring them to God, though he would already be in them.

When they would left out their Nicene Creed doctrine and would only kept to the teachings of the Bible it would have been much more clear and less confusing.

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Note

* Remember a.o. the two documentary features by Tom Waes on North and South Korea at the television station VRT on ‘één’

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Additional reading:

A Unique Way To Get The Gospel Into North Korea – North Korean Ministry Packs

What Is The Bible? Here’s How We Explain It In Our New North Korean/English Parallel Version

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