Chapter 8 Apollyon
Most of us go through all kinds of ups and downs in life. People of faith are no exception. It is also the reason why many people have religion. Their purpose is to receive the blessings of the world. That's why we often use the term 'faith in blessings and blessings'. However the Lord loves us so much that He allows even Apollyon. Such is the story of a certain senior Deaconess. Even on my pilgrimage with the stork, Apollyon's blade arrow ended up pointing at me.
Leaving his beautiful house, Christian was confronted by a large monster. His name was Apollyon (an Engel of the Abyss, Rev. 9:11), and in his fear, Christian hesitated whether to turn and flee or to face him.
"Do not be afraid, for you have come from the city of destruction, and I have been watching you. I was king and master in the place where you came from, and you were one of my servants. Answer me, why did you leave your king?".
"It is true that I was born in a country ruled by you, but serving you was very hard work, and the wages you paid me could not buy me life, for the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). So after I became a saint, I was looking for ways to change myself, as other discerning people do."
"What king would easily lose his people, and I will never lose you. Come back with me, and I will give you riches so great that the world cannot contain them."
"Don't be ridiculous, don't you always lure people like that!".
"Art thou not already a rebel, and how many times hast thou gone out of his way?".
"Yes, but I know that my God is a God of mercy, and he has forgiven me".
"Yuck - I am an enemy of God, I hate God and I hate his people".
Apollyon (2022)
"Beware, you destroyer! Beware! This is the road of God!".
"Do you not know that the end of those who have travelled this road after your God is disastrous?".
"This is the path I have chosen. No matter what happens now, I will be in the kingdom of heaven long after you and your world are gone and forgotten".
"Well, then, from now on, I will play with you to my heart's content!".
Apollyon seized the opportunity and lunged at Christian, knocking the sword out of Christian's hand in the process. "Now, don't move," Apollyon shouted, and pummelled Christian with it. Christian was nearly killed.
At that moment, God helped him to reach out and pick up the sword. He said, "Do not rejoice over me, my enemy. I may fall, but I will rise" (Micah 7:8) and stabbed the devil with all his might.
The Death of a Senior Deaconess's Daughter
I know that it is not easy for believers to overcome the temptations of the devil. There was a faithful senior deaconess in our church who had a daughter who believed in Jesus and served the Lord diligently as a choir member. But one day, suddenly, her daughter went to be with the Lord in the Sampung Department Store collapse. She was distraught at the thought of losing everything, and she left the church for a while, questioning whether the God she believed in really existed.
As a christian, whenever I go through a major trial like this, I think of the Old Testament book of Job. Job was a God-fearing, honest, blameless man, but trials came to him, too. He lost his livestock and all his possessions, was sorely wounded all over, and even his beloved children were taken from him. "All this time I have trusted you faithfully, why have you allowed this to happen to me?" Job cried. This must have been the senior deaconess's cry. After a long moment of silence, God responds to Job with this.
"Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge?Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me. Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were its footing set, or who laid its cornerstone..., Who shut up the sea behind doors when I it burst forth from the womb, when I made the clouds its garment and wrapped it in thick darkness, when I fixed limits for it and set its doors and bars in place." (Job 38:2-10)
Job 38:2-10 (2022)
I think this verse shows us that all of our possessions and fleshly allowances on this earth are completely under the sovereignty of God. As a Christian, I always think that I could find myself in the same situation as the senior deaconess . It's just that Apollyon, the devil, has temporarily put aside his battle with me, and I, the Christian, will always have to face him. When I get to heaven, there's something I want to ask. "God, why did you take this senior deaconess's daughter?" I meditate on 1 Corinthians 13:12 'For now we see as in a mirror, dimly, but then we shall see clearly'.
The Sermon on the Mount
Jesus climbs a mountain and preaches about how blessed people are. He lists eight blessings, the second of which is, Blessed are you who feel that you have lost what is most precious to you. He did not come as a worldly teacher; He came as God Himself to tell us these words (Message ; Matthew 5:2). Having lost what was most precious to her, she must have lived in the hope of being embraced by the One who was most precious to him.
The Lord tells Christians how to be blessed. In one of his sermons, Message author Eugene Peterson paraphrases the eighth beatitude of the Sermon on the Mount for Christians, saying
"The poor in spirit, this is the person who wants to be filled with God's Spirit, who wants us to let go of our pride."
"The one who mourns, he wants us to share in the suffering of others rather than avoid it."
"The meek one wants us to hone our passions so that we can exercise gentleness."
"The one who hungers and thirsts for righteousness calls us to reject the demands of a consumer society and develop deep personal relationships with God and others."
"The compassionate person does not respond to the wrongs and problems of this world with condemnation and blame, but instead wants us to practice compassionate service ourselves."
"The pure in heart asks us to be people who are centred on God and not get lost in trivial small talk."
"The peacemaker, in whatever position he or she finds himself or herself, is determined to see people, whoever they are, not as rivals to be defeated, but as brothers and sisters to be loved wholly."
"He wants the person who is persecuted for righteousness' sake to reject the complacency that comes with doing whatever the majority of people are doing, and instead walk the narrow path of living out difficult truths that require love and grace."
When Jesus saw the great crowds gathering around him because of his ministry, he went up on a mountain and spoke a sermon entitled "How can I be blessed?". Usually we say we are blessed if we are rich, or we are blessed if we live a long life without sickness. Jesus is not talking about worldly blessings. Jesus is teaching us what it is like to live in a world ruled by God, the Kingdom of God. He is training us not to live as a reflex to sin and guilt, not to live as we are told by those who are more powerful than us, not to live in desperation by taking whatever comes our way, not to live for survival in cynicism and malice, and not to live selfishly by making our ego our master. Jesus is training our thoughts and feelings so that we can live according to the reality inherent in the kingdom of God, so that we can live in faith and love.
Just as the followers of Jesus 2,000 years ago kept their faith by reciting these words every day, I want us to recite and meditate on the Beatitudes on this pilgrimage.
"Blessed are the poor in spirit. For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
"Blessed are those who mourn. For God will comfort them.
"Blessed are the meek. For they shall possess the earth.
"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. For they shall be filled.
"Blessed are the merciful. For God will be merciful to them.
"Blessed are the pure in heart. For they will see God.
"Blessed are the peacemakers. For God will call them his children.
"Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake. For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Christians listening to a sermon and reciting the Beatitudes on the Mount (2023)
The President who couldn't be invited
The difficult project of the stork reintroduction reached its peak seven years after I first introduced storks to Russia. We became the fourth country in the world to succeed in captive breeding of the Oriental Stork(Ciconia boyciana). After that, the number of storks increased. Finally, we have reached a population of 100 storks that will be returned to the wild in our country. This will be almost 50 years after the last stork disappeared from Eumseong, Chungcheongbuk-do in 1971. Our immediate neighbour, Japan, had already released its first stork into the wild, with the crown prince and crown princess attending the reintroduction ceremony. And in the US, it was President Clinton's turn to make a public announcement to Americans about the return of the endangered American bald eagle.
All of my attention was focused on that one question: "Can we get the president to come to the reintroduction ceremony, 44 years after its extinction?" I asked myself. I received a phone call from a professor of ornithology in Korea who informed me that he had been invited to the Blue House to give a lecture on the "birds of Korea." He had always had a personal relationship with the President's secretary, so I knew that opportunities like this didn't come along very often. I asked him to do me a favour: to include in his lecture the imminent return of the stork to the wild in Korea, and to personally deliver the invitation letter I had written to the President. Normally, the president would have sat in the front row and listened to the lecture, but at that time, the president was staying in the presidential palace and had been troubled by the so-called doorstop trio of Chung Yun-hoe (the incident became the basis for the impeachment of a president in modern blue laws). In the end, the professor had no choice but to leave the Blue House after delivering the invitation to the secretary general.
I couldn't believe how things had gone so wrong. I thought and thought and thought, why did the John Bunyan introduce Apollyon at this point? In fact, I was going to ask the President to attend the stork reintroduction ceremony and request that the Stork Foundation be incorporated as a public corporation. If that had happened, I might have become the complacent man I am now. In the end, I was forced to stand before God with my legs limped by Apollyon.
"Because of the greatness of the revelation, He gave me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to strike me down, lest I should become too conceited" (2 Corinthians 12:7). I confess that there is nothing in the world that I can do in my own strength.
Today, I entrust these storks to God, and I will walk this pilgrimage again with regretful steps.
Facing the Storks (2022)
