In case there are those who wonder why Christians are so “paranoid” about the secular movement to force Christianity out of the public sphere and into the ghetto, here’s the latest explanation for why they might have just a few concerns about where things are headed in the West:
Hunted down at their workplaces by military police, the 25 Christians were rounded up and detained without any formal judicial procedure. Later that month, the parishioners and their clergy were brought to the road construction site, where spectators had been arranged in neat rows to observe the public execution of the pastor, assistant pastors, and elders. According to a report based on an eyewitness account, the five church leaders “were bound hand and foot and made to lie down in front of a steamroller,” accused of subversion and of being Kiddokyo, or Protestant Christian, spies.
The 20 parishioners were detained near their clergy, and watched, along with the assembled audience, as the five Christian leaders were told they could escape death if they denied their faith and pledged to serve only Kim Jong Il and his father, the first dictator of communist Korea, Kim Il Sung. According to the eyewitness, the clergy remained silent.
For their steadfast belief, the Christians were executed. According to the report, “Some of the fellow parishioners assembled to watch the execution cried, screamed out, or fainted when the skulls made a popping sound as they were crushed beneath the steamroller.”
Another account contained in the report says that on a summer day in North Korea in 1997, a young woman was washing clothes in a tributary of the Tumen River when she dropped a small Bible she had hidden amid the laundry. Spotted by a fellow washerwoman, the girl was reported to North Korean authorities on the suspicion that she was engaging in an exercise of thought or religion condemned by the state. The girl, believed to be in her 20s, and her father, estimated to be around 60, were arrested by local national security police and imprisoned for three months.
One morning, they were taken to a public market area, where, after a brief show trial, the father and daughter were condemned as traitors to the North Korean nation and its communist dictator, Kim Jong Il. The father and daughter were then tied to stakes a few meters from where they had been “tried,” and, before an assembly of schoolchildren, were riddled with bullets by seven policemen who fired three shots each into the pair. According to a report drawn from eyewitness accounts, “The force of the rifle shots, fired from fifteen meters away, caused blood and brain matter to be blown out of their heads.”
According to one defector who was grilled by North Korean border guards, the Kim regime fears that “Juche will be toppled by Christianity,” referring to the state ideology, and exercises brutal control over North Koreans who have been exposed to Chinese or South Korean Christian churches.
Do not forget those brave men and women, and pray that you never face such a test of your faith… or lack of it. I shall await with interest the usual explanation of how the North Koreans are really Christians ala the National Socialists, how Kim Jong Il was actually an altar boy in his youth, and so on….
Before anyone brings it up, I note that the Inquisition, (ironically, one of the most humane institutions of its time), was a long time ago. Christians might as fairly and accurately point to Nero; the point is that atheists and Muslims are killing Christians today.
And Juche will be toppled by Christianity. Evil knows its master. The gates of Hell will not prevail.