This sermon delves into the history of ancient Israel, highlighting their journey, blessings, straying, and eventual restoration. It emphasizes the need for prayer, intercession, and preparation for the future, focusing on the potential restoration of North Korea and the unity of the Korean nation. The speaker shares personal experiences, insights, and a vision for a transformed Korea that will impact the world through the power of the Holy Spirit.

I want to talk a little bit about ancient Israel first. We'll start there. It's always good to start in the past, start at the beginnings of things. So a little bit about Israel, and then I'm going to read you a passage from Isaiah, which I should find here with my glasses on so I can see it. But before I get into all of that, I just want to say it's a real pleasure. It's an honor to be here. It's a privilege to be here. But it's also a pleasure for my wife and I, because where we live at 1,000 meters elevation, 3,000 feet elevation, there's still snow on the ground among the trees. It's still there. And we haven't got any flowers blooming. We're seeing shoots come out of the ground. We know spring is coming. But this isn't spring here. I feel like we've come smack in the middle of summer from what we're used to. But as we drove from there down here, we saw the azaleas, and then the pacifia, and then the cherry blossoms. And it's just a real privilege to be here and enjoying the campus, Pohang, the weather, and all of God's creation. And now to see all your bright faces in anticipation of whatever the Lord has to share. And I hope it is the Lord who will be sharing and not so much me, although I will be sharing what the Lord has put on our hearts. And so it will be our concern. But mostly, I'm concerned that it be what the Lord wants to share to each of you as individuals. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we thank you for your presence among us. We thank you for the new life that we see around us and reminds us of the new life that you have birthed within us, each of us. We thank you, Lord, that you take us from wherever we are in all the different places and bring us together, not only in one location, in one room, but to bring us together into one body, your body, Lord. That we are part of each other, even though we don't know each other. We don't know each other's names or backgrounds or anything about each other. And yet we are part of each other. Because this is what you did for us on the cross. Shed your blood to wash us and cleanse us and to make us one. And you have given us yourself, your life in us. And not only that, Lord, you have called us to share this love and this life with one another and with others, those who don't know you. Bless this time that we have. And may the words that I speak be the words that you're speaking to the hearts and minds of each person here. In the name of your precious son, our Lord and our Savior, Jesus Christ, amen. There was a long time ago in Israel. Israel is a nation that received God's promises, God's covenants. God had done miraculous things for them. It brought them out of slavery and into a new land. And it had given them a new life and formed them as a nation and as a community. But they strayed away and followed after foreign gods. And they forgot what he had done for them. And as a result, they lost the blessings that he had given them. And they went once again into a far and distant land. And the city that God had called his own and the house that he had caused to be built and that he had blessed and that had shown his glory had been destroyed. And the city was empty. And the temple was a pile of rubble. And people wouldn't even look where Jerusalem had once stood. Because they thought of it as being a cursed, a place of death, a place of curse, of curses that God had cursed his people and sent them into exile. And there are times where God has to do that. And maybe he has to do it in our own lives from time to time to bring us back to a remembrance that he is Lord and he is the only Lord. And that his ways are glorious. But you see, when we choose our ways over his, we lose his glory and we suffer the consequences. And that's what happened to Israel. But God did not forget Israel. God did not forget Jerusalem. God did not forget Zion, the mountain on which the temple was built. He never ceased to love his people. And if we experience these dark times, the poets have called the dark night of the soul, a time of emptiness, a time of destruction, even in the darkest time, remember that God does love us. And he knows what he's doing, even if we don't. Even if we don't know what we're doing or what he is doing, he does. So I want to read you a word that he gave through the prophets about Jerusalem that had been destroyed and accursed. And then I'm going to share with you what God shared with me about this passage and how it applies in a special situation today. It's 12 verses, the 62nd chapter of Isaiah. If you bear with me, I'd like to read the whole chapter to you. It's a beautiful, beautiful passage of promise of restoration and of God's love. Isaiah 62, for Zion's and it's God speaking through the prophets. For Zion's sake, I will not keep silent. And for Jerusalem's sake, I will not keep quiet until her righteousness goes forth like brightness and her salvation like a torch that is burning. And the nations will see your righteousness and all kings, your glory. And you will be called by a new name, which the mouth of the Lord will designate. You will also be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord and a royal diadem in the hand of your God. It will no longer be said to you, forsaken, nor to your land will it any longer be said, desolate. But you will be called, my delight is in her and your land married. For the Lord's delight, for the Lord delights in you. And to him, your land will be married. For as a young man marries a virgin, so your sons will marry you. And as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so your God will rejoice over you. On your walls, O Jerusalem, I have appointed watchmen. All day and all night, they will never keep silent. You who remind the Lord, take no rest for yourselves. And give him no rest until he establishes and makes Jerusalem a praise in the earth. The Lord has sworn by his right hand and by his strong arm, I will never again give your grain as food for your enemies, nor will foreigners drink your new wine for which you have labored. But those who garner it will eat it and praise the Lord. And those who gather it will drink it in the courts of my sanctuary. Go through the gates, clear the way for the people. Build up, build up the highway, remove the stones, lift up a standard over the peoples. Behold, the Lord has proclaimed to the end of the earth, say to the daughter of Zion, lo, your salvation comes. Behold, his reward is with him and his recompense before him. And they will call them the holy people, the redeemed of the Lord. And you will be called, sought out, a city not forsaken. This was God's promise to Israel and to Jerusalem that had become forsaken and accursed. And I believe that God is giving this word again for a city and a land that have become accursed. You see, the city was once called Jerusalem. But many people have forgotten that it ever had that name. It was the Jerusalem of the East. The city is Pyongyang. In 1907, the Holy Spirit poured out in great abundance and brought conviction on the church. And people cried out and confessed their sins to God. They beat the floor of the church in their agony. And the Holy Spirit moved in a mighty and powerful way. Men and women went out from that church and from that city, all throughout the Korean Peninsula and into Manchuria, and even beyond. In the power of the Holy Spirit's preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ and establishing churches. And that was exactly what happened about 2,000 years ago. In the city of Jerusalem in Israel, the Holy Spirit was poured out. And the disciples went forth and began the great movement. It was the Church of Jesus Christ. Because of that movement, because they went from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth, the city of Pyongyang was called the Jerusalem of the East. And the church in Korea was great, and it was famous. But it underwent a massive attack. And in response to that attack, turned inward on itself. At first, the church had great power in society. The church in Korea was leading the independence movement from Japan against Japan. The church was transforming the governing processes of this nation. The church was establishing education, but then under the persecution of the Japanese, these things began, bit by bit, to fall away. And a major turning point for the Korean church came when the Christian schools, and largely because of the influence of parents, gave in to the order to worship the emperor. People went to prison. People were locked up because they refused to give in to this. But then the parent, and they wanted to close the schools. And the parents said, no, you cannot close the school. Education is the most important thing. But education is not the most important thing. Education is extremely important. That's why you're here. That's why I'm here. And that's why I'm a trustee of this university. Because education is extremely important. But it is not the most important. It is not a god. But it has become a god in this land. And because of that, the church turned in on itself, and it lost its power. And eventually, when Japan was overthrown, there were those who had resisted Japan all through this time, and they came in. They weren't Christians, and they took over. And they took the Jerusalem of the East and transformed it into a city that is now known as a place of cursing, a place of starvation, a place of weapons of mass destruction, totalitarianism, human rights, persecution, and so forth. But God has a plan for this place where we are, this land of Korea, as a united land, north and south together. And I believe that this word is to his promise of restoration to the Jerusalem of the East. I didn't used to think this way. I grew up here in South Korea. I came here over 50 years ago, when I was seven years old. My parents came here as missionaries. I loved Korea, it's my home. We were in Seoul for a number of years, and then we moved up into the mountains as we started Jesus Abbey when I was 15. Lived together in community there until I was 20, went back to the States, then eventually got married to this wonderful woman here. Came back for a year, a long time ago. We've been married a long time. We're grandparents. And my heart was always here. My only thoughts about the north were, what would happen if a war broke out again? How would it affect my parents? How would it affect the community of Jesus Abbey? Things like that. But then in 2002, the Lord took my father. My father passed away, had an injury. And after that, God started doing some work in my heart. It changed my heart. Jesus Abbey is a community up in the mountains, Gangwon-do in the city of Taebaek. Jesus Abbey has associated with it a tract of about 120 acres. Ship Oman Pyong, 150,000 Pyong, and that's the Three Seas Ranch. And that's actually where we live. We don't live at Jesus Abbey itself. It's about 20 minutes drive away. We live on the side of a mountain. Jesus Abbey's in a valley. We have much better views. And we raise cattle. We have currently about 65 head of cattle. We are planning to build our herd up to eventually to about 300. We've got a particular reason why we're doing that. But the land where we're doing this does not belong to Jesus Abbey. It belongs to the Korean government. It's the forestry department that owns the land. And we lease it from them under special permission. Quite a few years ago, there was a possibility to take a portion of this land and build a youth training center because of a new law in Korea at the time, about 10, a little over 10 years ago. And at that time, my father wanted to do that. He always had a great concern for young people. He always dreamed of having a youth camp, youth training center. And so they began the process. And they called it the Three Seas Youth Training Center. Now, the reason it was called the Three Seas is because this piece of land is unique. And as far as I can tell, it is unique in all the world. Of course, that's true of every piece of land. That's why in real estate, it's location, location, location. But what's unique, what's special about this land is that it is a point. It has on it a point where the three watersheds of Korea, the East Coast, the West Coast, and the South Coast watersheds meet in one spot. And we can stand in one spot and pour out water. And it'll go into the ground and eventually come out in the Naktong River and flow out through Busan into the South Sea. We turn just a little bit in this direction, and it flows out towards the East Sea. And we go a little bit further over here, and it'll go into the Han River and eventually into the West Sea. I've looked at maps of the whole world, and I don't think there's any other three triple watershed divide point in the whole world like that. So that's why it's called the Three Seas. It's S-E-A-S, not the letter C. In Korean, it's called Samsu-ryeong, Three Waters Peak. After my father passed away, we were at the abbey for the funeral services and everything. A lot of people were there. And I was getting ready to come back to the States, my wife, my family, and I. And an old friend of my parents came to me in the evening. And he had a message that he wanted to share to my mother, but there was so much going on. It was really pokchaphaeyo. Everything was, you know, so he couldn't talk to her. So he said, I know you're going to see your mother in the morning before you leave. So would you please share something that's on my heart? I said, sure, I'll be glad to. He said, I've been meditating on the second chapter of Genesis, which is the description of the Garden of Eden. I said, yes. He says, you know, there are four rivers that flow out of the garden into all the earth, as it's described there. I said, yes, that's right. And then he said, but at three seas, there are only three rivers. And as soon as he said that, I knew what his point was. And I responded, there's supposed to be a fourth river, isn't there? And he said, yes. And then I responded again. I said, that's the river of life flowing north. And he said, yes. And his burden, he actually, he was an old man in his 70s. But he was born in Shin-I-Ju, North Korea. And he'd come south before the Korean War. But his heart was always there. And God had really put this burden in his heart that somehow our three seas project, our three seas center, was to have something to do with North Korea. And so I shared that with my mother. And then the next day, we went back to the States. And I was the administrator of a small Christian school in Connecticut at the time. This was August. And we were getting ready to start school the end of August. So I focused on school. And we were busy. And then after a few, maybe a month after school was going and things had quieted down, I think it was probably late September, beginning of October, I don't remember for sure. But we had a chapel speaker who had been to Ivory Coast, which is in the news again, as a short-term minister. And he was sharing about Ivory Coast. And he was sharing about the, this was many years ago, but probably about 10 years ago now, almost 10 years ago. And what's going on in Ivory Coast now is really a reflection of what's been going on there for a long time. And he was sharing some of these things. And as he shared, all of a sudden, I thought of North Korea. And I had never really thought about North Korea. But as I thought about North Korea, I was overwhelmed with grief. And I was overwhelmed with sorrow for the people of North Korea. And I began to weep. I was standing in the back of the chapel. It's a room about this big, maybe not quite this big. And I was standing in the back. And nobody saw me. Their tears were just streaming down my face. And that happens to me every once in a while. And I know that it's a move of the Holy Spirit, doing something. And after a few minutes had passed, and I got my handkerchief and cleaned up my face, and it was time for us to go on with the rest of school. So we did. We went on to our classes. And I really didn't think a lot more about this. But then a few days, a couple days later, I was driving in the car somewhere listening to the radio. And a woman was singing a song. And all of a sudden, this song started triggering thoughts about North Korea. And I had the same experience all over again. And I had it several times, about the third or fourth time, that all of a sudden, I just started to weep for North Korea out of the blue. I was starting to worry. Am I going through some sort of depression? Am I becoming mentally unbalanced? I really started to worry about that. But then I shared with Liz. And we started to remember. We started to think about that fourth river that our friend had spoken of, and the Three Seas Center. And as we talked with each other, and as we shared, and as we prayed, we felt like the Lord was speaking to us, that the Three Seas Center was to be a place of ministry to North Korea in some way, and that he was calling us to be involved with that. And then as we began to accept that and think that through, one day in prayer, the Lord spoke to me very clearly. There have been maybe six or eight times in my life where I feel like the Lord has spoken to me really clearly, in my mind, almost audible, but in my mind. And most of them have been in relation to this and with North Korea. But I was praying. And all of a sudden, I realized that one day, North Korea will open. It could be in a few days, or a few weeks, months. Or it could be still a couple of decades away. But it will open. And then the next thing I realized, but we are not ready for that day. When North Korea opens, a lot of people grab their Bibles. And they'll rush into North Korea to preach the gospel, to share the love of Christ. And the people of North Korea will have no idea what they're talking about. And a lot of people in South Korea won't understand why, because they will think we have the same language. We're the same nation. Why can't we communicate? And as I was praying, it was like the Lord was showing me things within a matter of seconds. There's been 60 years of separation. There's been generation. There has to be a language, just differences in the language, differences in worldview, and all these things. And I realized that what God was saying was that the church needs to prepare for the opening of North Korea, and that the Three Seas Center is to be a place for preparing for the opening of North Korea. And I shared this later on. I came to Korea, shared this with Jesus Abbey. They agreed. They confirmed that and gave me the responsibility for building the Three Seas Center and taking responsibility for the Three Seas Ranch. And then one day in the States, I didn't. I still was working at the school, and I wasn't quite sure what steps to take. We were waiting, actually, for permission to build a center. And there's a lot of stuff involved in getting that permission, which we eventually did. But that was a long process. But I felt like the Lord, and this wasn't the strong word of the Lord that I spoke of a few minutes ago, but this is mostly the way the Lord works in me. I was praying, and I was thinking, and I was starting to get ideas, and they felt right. And I says, OK, yeah, and that seemed right. And it seemed like what the Lord was saying to me is, just start getting people praying for North Korea, coming together to pray for North Korea. Coming together is a major theme, a major theme that the Lord has given me. So I used to work with the Korean churches in Connecticut. So I started going around to Korean churches, and we would talk about having a prayer meeting for North Korea. Nobody was doing that much at the time. I had a close friend of mine from our church who was involved in this. There were several of us in a prayer meeting planning session. And he said, you know, it'd be really great if we could have a North Korean speak at this prayer meeting. I said, well, yeah, that would be really great, but I don't think anybody's going to be able to come. I don't think we'd pay for anybody's ticket. That's not possible. He said, well, let's pray about it. Let me make a long story short. I was sharing about this with a group of Korean pastors in New Haven, and one of them said to me, he says, well, you know, there's this professor that comes to our church. He's at Yale at the Overseas Missions Study Center, and he's from North Korea. Would you like to meet him? I said, well, sure, I would. So Liz and I met him and his wife. Or maybe it was just me at first. We met him and his wife. He was a professor in North Korea at Pyongyang University of Education for 38 years, a scholar in Russian, Russian language, Russian literature. And he was a tutor to the family of Kim Il-sung for 20 years. He went to Moscow as a teacher, and from there, the South Korean intelligence basically got a hold of him and brought him to South Korea, and he's now in the US. As we shared with each other, it's like both of us were totally flabbergasted, because he had exactly the same burden. As a North Korean who had lived in South Korea, he knew that the church was not ready, and he wanted people to prepare. And I was talking about the need to prepare, and we just clicked. And so he spoke at that prayer meeting. My friend had more faith than I had, and God honored him. But as I was also looking for a word from the Lord, the Lord took me to this chapter of 62 of Isaiah, and I said, this is it. This is a description of North Korea. And in the moral and intellectual and spiritual realm, it is also a description of South Korea. Although we don't think of that. We see prosperity around us, but there's a growing barrenness in this land. And God's plan is for a whole Korea. I almost said united, but it's whole. And he will pour out his love. He will restore. And when he does, the kings of the earth will sit up and take notice. This last verse here, they, and they is everybody else, will call them the holy people, the redeemed of the Lord. And you will be called sought out, a city not forsaken. The world will want to come to Korea. The world will want to come to Pyongyang. And God will do it. And he says, I am going to restore Zion, Jerusalem. I am going to do this, and I will not keep quiet until the whole world sings the glory of this restored land. And in this whole chapter, if you study and think about it, it really describes the situation in North Korea. North Koreans do not eat what they grow. The best of what they grow is taken and sold to their enemies. I spent three and a half months in North Korea distributing food for an American food program, and I really saw a lot of stuff. Most of what I saw was really beautiful and wonderful. But I understood the nature of how the society works. And people, they can do a little bit for themselves, and it's theirs. Most of what they do is not for themselves. And the only reason they're allowed to do anything for themselves is because central planning and socialism and communism is such a total failure. It's the only way the nation has escaped total starvation by allowing people to grow some of their own food. But this really speaks, this passage, in a beautiful way of that. But this verse, 6 and 7, on your walls of Jerusalem, I have appointed watchmen all day and all night. They will never keep silent. You who remind the Lord, take no rest for yourselves. Who is one who reminds the Lord, and in this case, reminds the Lord about a city? These are intercessors. These are people who pray to God for Him to intervene. That's what intercession is. And he says, you who remind the Lord, take no rest for yourselves. That's a word to us. I believe it's a word to the church, to take no rest, to remind God. But then the next verse is the one that just blows me away whenever I think about it. And give him no rest until he establishes Jerusalem and makes it a praise in the earth. See, sometimes when we pray, we don't know when to stop praying. Well, we'll know when we can stop praying. And Pyongyang is established as a praise in the earth. That's not what it is now. Whenever Pyongyang shows up in the news, it's because it's a problem. It's a problem for us, a problem for them, it's a problem for the world. But this is a promise that it'll be a praise in the earth. Verse 1, for Jerusalem's sake, I will not keep quiet until her righteousness goes forth like brightness, and her salvation as a torch that is burning. And the nations will see your righteousness on all kingdoms, your glory, and you will be called by a new name. A lot of times the word righteousness is really better translated justice as well. Sometimes it's used both ways. Righteousness is kind of our personal holiness. Justice is collective holiness. Right laws, right society, that's God's concern. And he will do this. But we are to pray, and to pray, and to pray, not giving God any rest. He says that. He says, don't give me any rest. Don't let me rest. He already said he won't rest. But he says, don't let me rest until I do this. And I think we all have our responsibilities to pray, to intercede. And he's got a plan. And it's a plan that really will impact the whole world. But then it goes down to verse 10. And verse 10 is the one that we've taken very personally. And this is for those that God may be calling in the same way. Go through, go through the gates. Clear the way for the people. Build up, build up the highway. Remove the stones. Lift up a standard over the peoples. This is the process of preparation. If the doors of Jerusalem were open now and people rushed in, there'd be all kinds of potholes they'd fall into, and stones that they would trip over. The road would be a boggy mess. It needs to be built up. It needs to be prepared. There is a vast cultural gap between North and South Korea. This is a cross-cultural mission for South Koreans. But you know what the interesting, one of the interesting things is there's a special place for overseas Koreans, for bi-cultural Koreans, and for non-Koreans, particularly people who've grown up multiculturally. One of the things I realized instinctively, or realized that the Holy Spirit showed me, all of that that the Lord gave me within a period of about 30 seconds later on as I started to study, as I got to know Professor Kim very well, and he taught me, and I read a vast number of books, and talked to North Koreans, and just all this stuff, has been confirmed, and built up, and filled out in my understanding. There are two types of language gap between North and South Korea. One is easy to understand. It is what you might call the vocabulary gap. North Korea has an old Korean vocabulary with a lot of new political terms. And a lot of terms have been given political meanings that people just absorb from infancy on up. South Korean, on the other hand, has all kinds of loan words that have come in from other languages, particularly English, and words that have been created in South Korea. I say they're pure Korean. And one of these is dikka. Who knows what a dikka is? Dikka is short for digital camera. But there's nowhere else in the world where a digital camera is called a dikka. That's a Korean word. And nobody in North Korea knows it, except now that they're getting North to South Korean television programming surreptitiously on DVDs and stuff like that. They're beginning to learn it. But this is a vocabulary difference. Vocabulary difference is easy to overcome. You just know, oh yeah, we use different words. In North Korea, they don't know the word yache. Yache is vegetable. It's actually a Japanese loan word. It's namsae. In North Korea, all vegetables are namsae. They really don't know oksusu. A few people know the word oksusu, but it's kangneungi, wherever you go. Light bulbs, those of you who speak Korean are going to really laugh. Light bulb is pulal, which means a light egg. But in South Korea, it has a very, very different meaning. So there's these kinds of differences. But you can quickly overcome these differences. But there is a much more subtle difference. And Professor Kim was the first one to point this out to me. And then I thought about it, and I verified it with many other North Koreans. North Koreans often find it easier to communicate with North Americans than with South Koreans. Even when the North Koreans are speaking broken Korean, Korean and mostly English, and the North Koreans are speaking very, very broken English, they're able to communicate. And the reason they're able to communicate is because we use language in the same way. We think very straightforwardly. We process quickly. We use language to convey factual information. This is why science is always taught in English. Generally, science taught in Korean, it's problematic. You end up going into using English textbooks and things like that, because Korean, South Korean, as Korean as opposed to South Korea, is not straightforward. It's very roundabout. And it's primarily geared towards conveying relationship information, not factual information. And in South Korea, you do not say exactly what you're thinking to another person straightforward and abruptly. It's extremely rude. And when a North South Korean brother is talking to me, and he's got really something on his heart, and he really wants to say it, I spend the first two or three minutes listening to him just saying, come on, get to the point. What is it you're trying to say? And he's working himself around to say, because he doesn't want to disturb the harmony between us. But he doesn't realize he's disturbing the harmony, because I want him to be blunt. I haven't got time to waste on this relationship stuff. But this is the way North Koreans tend to think. And so when they come to South Korea, they're very, very confused by what South Koreans are saying. And South Koreans are hurt by how rude and abrupt the North Koreans are. And when they're talking to an American or a Canadian, it's a relief. And you see, the way we use language also, I think, affects how we think. And so we think along the same lines. This is why bicultural people of Korean descent with a knowledge of Korean as well as of English have a special place to play in this whole work of rebuilding a nation and unification. So that's just an example. We need to understand these things. If anybody's looking for a good research project, this is it. Why is this difference? Where did it come from? I've got my ideas about it. But we need some good, solid research to understand these things so we know better how to prepare ourselves and other people for them. There's a lot of preparation that needs to be done. But what the Lord also showed us over time is that we really need to look to the future and a long distance, a long-term change. Because even if we have political unification, even if we have North Korea opening, maybe a collapse of the government, I don't know what it might be. It's still this process of unification of the heart, of healing the wounds of the past. It's a work that only the Holy Spirit can do. But it is also a generational work. And because of that, the Lord has continued to guide us in one step or another. We're building a training center under the covering, under the name of the Fourth River Project, the Fourth River, the River of Life flowing north to North Korea. And we've started the River of Life School. And my wife is the principal of the River of Life School. It's a middle school, Korean. And as next year, we'll add first year of high school. And then we started last year with first and second year middle school. This year, we went to third year middle school. We're looking for teachers, by the way. But you need to be able to work in Korean. We want, in this school, to bring together all kinds of different kids, North Korean kids, cross-culture family kids, the families where the father is Korean, the mother is Southeast Asian, Japanese, or Central Asian, something like that. A lot of those in Korea, those kids are struggling. City kids, kids who are real top achievers, kids from the countryside that are struggling. And bring them together so they can learn how to cooperate, how to come together as one in community, to work with us physically, labor, as well as to work intellectually, really a holistic type of education, and to build a generation that is ready to lead this nation into healing, into wholeness. And when that comes, the world will sit up and take notice. Have any of you heard of the Heavenly Man, a Chinese pastor, amazing story? And he talked about the Back to Jerusalem movement, the Chinese church taking the gospel back to Jerusalem. Well, he came and visited us. And he said that the Chinese church is the sphere that will take the gospel back to Jerusalem. But North Korea is to be the tip of the sphere. And when God brings this nation together as one, the world will sit up and take notice. And it will usher in a new age of the church, a new expansion of missions unlike anything we've seen so far, maybe all the way back to Pentecost. I don't know. But this is what the burden of God's put on my heart. We need to prepare now for the opening of North Korea. And we need to prepare as a church. I think God may be calling some of you to be involved in that work of preparation. And the most important step of preparation, I can't close without saying this, is that the biggest hindrance right now is the condition of the body of Christ. I believe that God is waiting on us before he unites Korea. Because if this church in its present state of division and competition and corruption goes into North Korea, will North Koreans see the love of Christ? Or will they see people who are vying for power and decide to go with the person who has the most power or the most money? God wants his body healed, whole, and united. And as the church comes together, it will be able to lead the South Korean society into unity across the bridges of economics and of ideology and of geography, geopolitics, to really make us one. And that will open the way into North Korea. This is the work of preparing the way, removing the stones. And what I'm doing now is lifting up the standard, the banner for people to see and say, yes, we will follow that. I challenge you to pray for North Korea. You are here in Korea. Some of you are Koreans. Some of you, this is your home, and you've known no other home. Some of you, this is your ancestral home, and there's a tug here, but you know other places. Some of you are not like me, have not a single drop of Korean blood in your veins. And yet, God has called you here. And it's not just to learn, not just to study, but it is to do, and it is to pray. So I challenge you to take no rest and give him no rest until he establishes and makes Jerusalem a praise in the Earth. And if you're called to join us in the work of preparing for the opening of North Korea and this new age, this new day, that God is ushering in or plans to usher in and wants us to be available to him to use. And we need to be one in order to do that, that the world may know that we are Christ's disciples and that he was sent from the Father. John 17, we may be one. Let's pray.