Tuesday, July 12, 2011

The Experience of Abraham (Part 4)

Continuing from Part 3...

Well, I'm still alive, so that must mean that all that prayer and fasting must have compelled the Lord to move His hand of mercy upon me. During this time, my dad met a group of believers called the Bereans, who were very devout Christians in studying the Word. My dad admits he got a lot of light through their diligent studying and endeavoring to see the Word. Soon after, he somehow got connected with the head pastor of Sung-Rak Baptist, who asked him to join him there. And that's where my memory begins.

But my story isn't very interesting there yet. All I remember doing is climbing walls to not miss my school bus, solving those korean math worksheets, growing a caterpillar which I ended up killing by feeding the wrong kind of lettuce, cartwheel-kicking (yes, I kicked him as I was doing a cartwheel, I got him on the face too!) a classmate of mine because we got in a fight, being really embarrassed to run shirtless during a soccer practice and somehow believing that Santa Claus did not exist, because on December 25th of 1997 -- the day we left Korea to go to Chile -- it did not snow.

Slow down! How did Chile get into the picture? (And for those who don't know what Chile is, it is a country in South America).

As my dad began to pastor the Baptist church in Korea, he was mainly in charge of taking care of college students. Somehow, through his deep study in the word, he came to realize this matter concerning deification (organic salvation). For those who do not know what organic salvation is, it is the "will be saved in His life" (Rom. 5:10) and "shall be saved" (Rom. 10:13) salvation that the Bible speaks of. This is different from a sinner's initial salvation where he is saved from eternal perdition. This is an organic (meaning, by and through the divine life) salvation that goes on after our initial salvation, where we grow in our spiritual zoe-life. This is how a child of God (Rom. 8:16) becomes a full-grown man (Eph. 4:13) by partaking of the divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4). The reason why I mention Romans 5:10 and 10:13 is that you can see that the verb saved is in the future sense. Paul was speaking to the Romans, who were already believers in Christ. Was he telling them to be saved again? Surely he must have been referring to this matter of organic salvation where a believer is further saved to become mature in Christ. To be concise, God became a man so that man can become God in life, nature but not in the Godhead.

Anyhow, I don't know if those were the same verses that my dad saw, but I just wanted to provide biblical proof regarding this. This was also what the original church figures saw as well (Athenasius and others).

So after seeing this revelation, there was no U-turn for my dad. He began to preach concerning this to the ones he was taking care of. And soon enough, word spread and some of the other pastors heard about this and were infuriated regarding this. (Okay, you may think that I'm biased because this is what my dad saw, but until you can prove that God did not become man so that man may become God in life and nature with the Bible, I will stand faithful regarding this vision I personally saw as well).

There was inner turmoil going around the congregation. As other pastors began to hear regarding this word, they began to label is heresy and my dad was being told to repent of his heretical teachings. Faithful to the Bible, my dad did not. However, this became such a serious problem among the pastors, that something had to be done. Pretty soon afterwards, my dad was asked to come to a meeting of pastors... except it wasn't too much of a meeting. In that "meeting" all the pastors including the head pastor of the congregation sat around in a circle around my dad, questioning him, telling him to dismiss what he taught, calling him a heretic, etc.. The head pastor believed my dad was correct, but being political about the whole situation, he didn't readily stand up for my dad. Opportunely or unopportunely (you decide), some Korean Christians from halfway around the globe had been requesting some one to lead their congregation in a country by the name of Chile. The head pastor took this opportunity to sort of protect my dad, but also take care of this angry mess in Seoul. So basically, my dad was euphemistically excommunicated to be sent away to Chile...

I think I wrote a lot for a day..


Han-Eul ee Hyung

I hate to admit this, but one of the things I hate most is seeing family part. Even in the movies when I know they are fake, I have a hard time not welling up. One thing I hate even more is to realize that I'm one of the characters in that scene.

Tonight was Han-Eul-ee Hyung's last night in the States. After being delayed for a while due to some personal reasons, he was finally able to catch his flight today (he was supposed to leave 2 weeks ago). These past two weeks, I had a great time. Han-Eul-ee Hyung was always very human -- sincere in his thoughts and feelings. My korean name is Han-Sol. I almost feel like we are more than just those who share the same first character of our names -- we were actually brothers.

This was made manifest tonight. Han-Eul-ee Hyung, like any other male guy, and always boasted in his masculinity. And I told myself as it was getting close to 9PM, that I wasn't going to cry. Well, Han-Eul-ee Hyung had just packed everything into the car, and I went upstairs to look for my dad. As I came downstairs, I saw a big giant sobbing like a little girl, hugging my mom who also was very teary-eyed. Upon seeing this, my eyes didn't give out any warnings, but just let go.

Well, what a summer break. It's been awesome. Let's recap what has happened thanks to Han-Eul-ee Hyung these past two weeks:

1) We went hiking. And we did this:


2) Jay-Hyung got saved and baptized. Jay Hyung is another story of its own. For time's sake, let's just say that two weeks ago, he had no belief that a divine being existed. I think Han-Eul-ee Hyung brought in a lot of cherishing and shepherding just by being very human. This has resulted in a series of events that ended up with Jay Hyung becoming a very different person than he used to be. I'm most happy about this.

3) We got to eat a lot of good food. I know he didn't do this on purpose, but Han-Eul-ee Hyung's plans being delayed and delayed got us a lot of really good food, a lot of times.

4) The list can go on and on, but you probably won't care. This blog was mostly for myself actually.

Sunday, July 10, 2011

Sorry for my inactiveness..

Forgive me for being inactive for such a long period of time. I actually just came back home from a week-long Christian conference in Anaheim.

Called, the Semi-Annual Training in Anaheim, this conference is a 6-day long gathering of Christians from all over the world to be perfected in the truth. I will get in more detail later, as I have to go somewhere right now.

And my dad's testimony would soon follow as well..

Sunday, July 3, 2011

The Experience of Abraham (Part 3)

Sorry for the delay. I made sure I made time to write tonight. Here are my excuses if you are interested: (1) I was busy, (2) I was distracted, (3) I was busy.

So, where were we? That's right! My dad has just been blindfolded and taken into a place where they held Communist/Socialist idealists captive. In such camps, they would interrogate, torture, and try such ones who they thought were North Korean spies. And my dad stayed there for a total of 6 months.

Some time during the middle of those 6 months, the political atmosphere in Korea began to change. To be honest, I don't quite fully know all the different "parties" and their political views, but let's just say that this notion of having a government for the people began to be more accepted than it was a few months ago. Thanks to this change, my dad was let out of prison.

--

This, I believe, is where my dad really started making a turn. Having gotten out of jail, he went back to continue pastoring the group of factory workers and helping form labor unions. But soon enough, my dad began to realize something different. He and others were claiming that they were doing God's will in helping others, but is that what God really wants? He began to question himself and his work and if it really was something of God's heart's desire. So he began to read the Bible, and this time, in a whole new light. The seminary he attended had taught him to interpret the word with the point of view of helping the poor. This time around, he began to read it without such distortion. And things were dawning upon him.. light after light. As his diet of the bible changed, so did his preaching. And the people that were under him started to notice that my dad was becoming a person. And soon enough, one-by-one, the congregation started leaving.

--

And somewhere in that blur of time, I come into the scene. From what I hear, I was a really healthy baby. But as I was reaching a year old, I became very sick. I was having some digestion problems and the doctors could not figure out what was wrong with me. If I remember correctly, I wasn't supposed to make it very far. This and a couple of other scenarios really caused my dad to seek after the Lord. Much prayer and fasting went on not only for me, but also for direction in which way to head on.

I'm going to cut it off here and start a fresh entry, because I have to admit, this part of the story was more on the dry, factual, chronological side. I don't want to put good wine in bad wineskins.

Part Four

Saturday, July 2, 2011

The Experience of Abraham (Part 2)

So in my previous post I mentioned that I made a few mistakes on some of the details in Part 1. Okay, I overdramatized a little, but I got the facts straightened out by the source himself.

First of all, he didn't stay in the army for 6 months, though this number does come out later in the story. And they didn't kill the students who were in demonstration as well. Allow me to begin somewhere in the middle.

So the reason why all this movement started was because there were basically no labor rights for the working class. The workers in the factory were paid very little for the long hours they had to work. Students who saw this believed that this was not fair and started movements for labor rights for the working class, which was extremely successful against the government. So what the government plotted to do was to take away these college students who were so hot to spread this topic around and isolate them from everyone else in the world. This was a very suspicious move by the government. Usually you are given a year or so once the government notifies you that you were drafted for the army, but in this case, they gave them very short notices to come. So my dad and the rest of his schoolmates left shortly after they received a letter to join the army. But this group of college students were under some special care. They weren't allowed to mix with the "regular" army people. The physicals given to these students were not even real physicals, they were admitting everyone in this group. Fortunately, however, my dad's uncle who had some connections in the army requested that my dad be re-evaluated because his eyes were not best fit for army conditions. So my dad was reexamined by a regular physical, and sure enough, was exempt from this group. So in a even shorter time than 6 months -- 10 days -- my dad left the army.

After a long period of time, my dad's schoolmates were able to resume school after their quote-quote service in the army. But they came out as totally different people. These politically-radical college students who fought so hard for labor rights had totally changed. The government had brainwashed them during this time of "army service." I can go on regarding this, but let's skip forward a little bit in time:

So my dad had finished his undergraduate degree and moved on to the working world. He still had this desire to fight for labor rights, so he went to work for a factory himself where some of these working ones were employed. He slept, ate and worked with this working class of people while helping them form labor unions to fight for their rights. At this time, he still didn't touch God in a personal way, but thought that surely the God who created the universe created all mankind in an equal way, and surely He did not appreciate the fact that there was this huge gap between the affluent class of people and the working class of people.

This was, basically, the Communist/Socialist move that was going on around Korea at that time. After working for a few years in the factory he decided to become a pastor. Woah.. what's the sudden jump here? Well, working with the working class, he basically did whatever they did. And the working class people would go to Sunday service in a church building that was right next to the factory. These groups were more labor-union oriented rather than the typical service-worship oriented groups -- they were groups raised up by pastors to help the working ones. I guess after seeing the patterns of these pastors had on the working ones, and the greater impact they were creating, my dad had the desire to become a pastor.

And so he went to seminary, where my mom was there as well. And their beautiful love story begins takes off in another avenue here, but let's not stray away from this story road. The seminary that my dad chose to go to is not like the Moody Bible Institute, Fuller Seminary, or the Full-Time Training -- it had a special curriculum where the focus was yet again on helping the working class. Anyhow, after finishing seminary, he went back to start helping the working class, and this is where the plot gets interesting:

My dad and a few other pastors gathered themselves to further this labor rights movement by publishing a newspaper together. The gist of this newspaper was that God created all men equal, and that we should achieve and strive to build God's kingdom where every man is equal. In other words, the Communist/Socialist notion. This publishing created a huge stir in the government which made these group of pastors a target. Actually, the government had sent spies all around to monitor these ones with such an idea and the group that my dad was in was under the radar. It was this publishing of newspapers that really tipped off the match.

This was around when my older sister was born. My mom and sister just got out of the hospital, so my dad dropped them off at my grandmother's place where my mom could recoup after having given birth. He headed back to where we lived back to continue working on the labor rights movement. But as soon as he arrived at door of our house, he saw some men standing right in front. My dad still recalls how they got hold of him and tied him up, threw him in a car and blindfolded him so that he could not see where they were taking him.

They took my dad to a place where they held North Korean captives and other Communist/Socialist idealists. They locked up each one as if they were prisoners and tortured them. I would go into detail about some of the tortures, but I think it's best to not. It's too graphic.. So my dad stayed in jail for 6 months (this is the correct 6 months), trapped behind bars, tortured, and tried in a court.

Let's call it a night here.. I'll write some more tomorrow night.

Part Three

Friday, July 1, 2011

Thoughts

I meant to post Part 2 tonight, but it's getting kind of late. I've been sick so far as well, so haven't really had the energy to look at a computer screen for a long period of time. In addition to that, I have been getting fresh batches of stories from the source himself. I find that I have a few minor mistakes in Part 1, which I will update in the next post. Also, I myself have found some details that I did not know about as well. So stay tuned!

In the meanwhile, this is what I've been doing:


This game is called Janggi, which is very much the korean version of chess. Involves lots of strategy. The reason why I'm posting this is because there is some spiritual significance in this. A brother who just finished school has been staying in my house and thus, playing a lot of janggi with me. In his words, in janggi, the most important thing is position. And in fact, as he demonstrated a few times by demolishing me, the first move can hinge between victory and loss. This is very much like our spiritual experience. Where we stand matters so much.

And I have another picture to show y'all:


This above is a picture of the notorious black widow. (Source: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_spider_has_a_red_hourglass_on_its_stomach)

I found it while cleaning my mailbox at home. Luckily, I chose to rinse the mailbox instead of put my hands in it.