Tag: North

A Young Missionary’s Monumental Martyrdom

John Allan Chau, American missionary, killed by the Sentinelese tribespeople in the Indian Ocean this week. ICredit: Instagram @johnachau)

On November 15, 2018, John Allan Chau, 26-year old American missionary and avid outdoorsman, began a journey of personal faith and a love for mankind that would lead him halfway around the world.

His goal sounded simple – to share the love of Jesus Christ with people he had never met….but it was made nearly impossible by his need to first go halfway around the world, then figure out a way to meet with people so intentionally reclusive, so difficult to interact with, that they had not had any contact with the outside world in over 5,000 years.

This is a resmarkable testimony of the impact that just one courageous life of faith can have, when they take seriously Jesus’ command to go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature…”.  Any person that abandons themselves completely to God, and do whatever He asks without question or compromise, can impact the world.  Need proof?   Google “John Allen Chau” today,

and you will get 7.11 million search results.

John Allen Chau, American missionary, killed this week by Sentinelese tribespeople on North Sentinel Island, Indian Ocean. (Credit: Instagram @johnachau)

During a 2013 outreach to Cape Town, South Africa, with fellow University soccer team members, John Allen Chau, then 21, was introduced to More Than A Game, an organization uniting refugee kids together through the “universal language” of soccer.  It would be an encounter that would change the trajectory of Chau’s life. 

Chau returned from Cape Town to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he was studying to complete a Health and Exercise Sciences degree at Oral Roberts University, and volunteered with a soccer camp outreach to Burmese refugee kids in that city.  (Tulsa World reported in March 2018 that over 7,000 Zomi people from the Chin State in war-torn Myanmar (formerly Burma) have built a new home in South Tulsa, including over 1,100 school-aged children).

Bobby Parks,  More Than A Game  (morethanagame.co)

After graduating in spring 2014, Chau hosted soccer camps for more than 2,000 young Syrian and Iraqi refugees in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq.  In 2015 and again in 2016, while visiting the Andaman and Nicobar Islands off of India’s western coast, Chau first learned of a small tribe of 50 to 200 people, who lived on the remote North Sentinel Island off the coast of India, and who would attack anyone who approached their island. 

I have never known a more courageous, selfless, compassionate man and friend.  John lived and gave his life to share the love of Jesus with everyone.
– Bobby Parks, More Than A Game

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Tribespeople living on North Sentinel Island, the “Sentinelese”, have been inentionally isolated for over 60,000 years.

The Sentinelese people, believed to be the last pre-Neolithic tribe in the world, are resistant to outsiders and often attack anyone who comes near, and visits to the island are heavily restricted by the Government, both to protect the visitor from such attacks by the islanders – as well as to ensure the inhabitants of this tiny island in  the Bay of Bengal were not overcome by measles, mumps, the flu, or even the common cold – any of which could wipe them out – as they have had no contact with other humans in up to 60,000 years, as the UK newspaper The Mirror has reported.

The logical outcome of this fact, of course, is that these were also one of the only people groups on Earth to never be told about the love of Jesus.  Imagine a culture where every man, woman and/or child would die for thousands of years, and be ushered into a Christless Hell.  Every single one.  The concept had gripped Chau’s mind and heart, to the point that his friends later said that he was all-consumed with this small, highly-reclusive group of tribespeople who lived on this small, highly-remote island.  People he had never met – people he had never actually seen up close with his own eyes – had somehow captured his whole heart.

Portman with Andamanese chiefs. I(Credit: American Ethnologist)

Chau developed a very real burden for them, and he knew that there had been issues after others had attempted to visit there before.  The New York Times reported that back in 1899, a British naval officer, Maurice Vidal Portman, wrote a book about his adventures in “stepping onto a remote, coral-fringed island in the Andaman Sea and encountering one of the world’s most enigmatic hunter-gatherer tribes, an extraordinarily isolated group of “painfully timid” people ate roots and turtles and stored a heap of wild pigs’ skulls.”  He basically kidnapped several islanders and took them back to his house on a bigger island – and watched the adults grow sick and die.  He ended his experiment by returning the kids back to the island, calling it a failture.

The island has an area of about 23 square miles and is surrounded by a natural barricade of coral reefs. It lies east of India in the Bay of Bengal, and is home to between 40 and 500 Sentinelese, although it’s impossible to estimate  exact numbers.
– Bigthink.com

Over the next century, few outsiders ever returned. North Sentinel Island was a bushy, hilly world unto itself, about the size of Manhattan. Just about anyone who dared to visit was greeted by flying arrows. In the 1970s, the director of a National Geographic documentary took one in the leg. The island was completely off-limits until earlier this year, but even then, visits were still heavily restricted.

At around midnight on Npvember 14, 2018, with a friend helping to arrange it for him, Chau rented a fishing boat for around $300 to take him near the infamous, access-restricted North Sentinel Island, located off the western coast of India. Early the next morning, under cover of darkness, Chau quietly rowed out alone in a small kayak away from the larger craft, inching carefully on calm seas toward one of the most mysterious islands in the world, which no man has been allowed to visit for centuries.  He asked the fishermen to move their boat away from shore to avoid detection.

Chau’s stated goal was simple. This was no vacation, nor a social visit.  He had come thousands of miles from his home in Vancouver, Washington, to simply share the love of Jesus Christ with a people who had never heard of Him before. Likely few knew where he even was that day, and he made the last part of his journey alone.  He wasn’t receiving donations to fund this trip, or any logistical help from any NGO or Christian groups.  But regardless, he had made it on his own – and was so thrilled to land on the shore, leave gifts that he had brought for them: fish, some scissors, a soccer ball – and see what happened.

Chau’s riveting journal of his last days, shared with The Washington Post by his mother, shows a treacherous journey by dark in a small fishing boat to the area where the small tribe lived in huts. The men — about 5 feet 5 inches tall with yellow paste on their faces, Chau wrote — reacted angrily as he tried to attempt to speak their language and sing “worship songs” to them, he wrote.


I hollered, ‘My name is John, I love you and Jesus loves you,’
– From John Chau’s journal

One young Sentinelese fired an arow that hit a waterproof Bible he was carrying.  Chau was able to run for his life and escape back to the sea, swimmimg back to the fishermen’s boat and spent the next day recuperating. He posted on Instagram both of his fears of dying, and his determination to once again attempt connection with them.

“You guys might think I’m crazy in all this but I think it’s
worthwhile to declare Jesus to these people.
God, I don’t want to die.”
– John Chau’s last words, written to his parents on November 16

photoOn November 17, 2018, not only did Chau have the bravery and fortitude (or insanity, depending on whom you speak to) to actually try this again, but he once again succeeded on the second attempt to reach that heavily protected shoreline.  He became one of the first people in recent history to actually connect with these tribespeople twice, and to once again attempt a brief conversation with them.

“Why does this beautiful place have to have so much death here?” he wondered hours before his death. “I hope this isn’t one of my last notes but if it is ‘to God be the Glory.’”
– John Chau’s last journal post

Moments later after coming ashore this second day, the horrified fishermen in the escort boat saw the tribesmen drag Chau’s body across the beach, having apparently killed him by arrows.

The story of his death has now made headline with every major news organization in the Western world, after his family posted this powerful message on his Instagram (@johnachau) account late on Wednesday, November 21:

This was to be THE most monumental day of his life – more than could have ever dreamed.  He became aware that the tribesmen walking toward him with bows and arrows on the ready had just – stopped moving.  He was still standing on the same beach, but his anxiety had disappeared.  And he no longer heard the ocean waves lapping the shore, or smelled the salty air.   He also became aware of a fourth Man calmly and deliberately walking down the beach toward Him.  The closer He came to Chau, the more the scenery around him faded away.  There was something so familiar about Him…

Then Chau gasped, and his heart lept into his throat, as the Man smiled, His voice booming…

Oh, JOHN!  Well done,
good and faithful servant!
You came  from halfway
around the world 4 times
and gave everything,
to tell a tribe on a small island – about Me.
I have seen your sacrifice,
and now everyone will see it.
John…the WHOLE WORLD is talking about you.  You have inspired millions to finish My Great Commission!
Now, I’ve come to take you Home!
-Jesus

The Bible makes it very clear:

  • Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints” (Psalm 116:15)
  • Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life.” (Revelation 2:10)
  • Then Jesus said to His disciples: “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it;…
    … but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.” (Matthew 16:24-25)
  • We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.”
    (2 Corinthians 5:8)
  • Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13)
    welcome-home-danny-hahlbohm

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By Shawn Jorgensen,  Founding Editor
Calling Out Community
Posted: November 23, 2018
[God’s Got A Plan For You!] 

12 Things You Might Not Know About North Korea

UPDATE:
North Korea is threatening the United States with a nuclear assault on the island territory of Guam, as it continues to bluster with President Trump and flex its newly developed missile muscles. President Trump has threatened that any military action on any of the U.S. territories or allies will be met with “fire and fury unlike anything has ever been seen before”. Stay tuned.

Check out our videos on this subject:

ORIGINAL POST: March 4, 2016The BBC reported on March 2, 2016, that the United Nations Security Council has unanimously adopted a resolution significantly expanding international sanctions against North Korea. Correspondents say the new measures amount to some of the toughest against North Korea in two decades. The vote is in response to North Korea’s nuclear test last month.

We thought it would be interesting for our readers to learn a few of the more interesting things about North Korea, that we doubt CNN is going to tell you.

1

(Credit: Vice)Marijuana is completely legal in North Korea. That actually explains a lot. In fact, it’s not even considered a drug in the secretive dictatorship. The Huffington Post reported that defectors, visitors and experts have all testified that North Korea either has no law against the sale and consumption of weed, or it has a law that is largely unenforced. NK NEWS receives regular reports from visitors returning from North Korea, who tell of marijuana plants growing freely along the roadsides, from the northern port town of Chongjin, right down to the streets of Pyongyang, where it is smoked freely.

2

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Night Lights of capital city Pyongyang, North Korea. (Credit: Robert Harding World Imagery)Pyongyang, the capital city, has only 100,000 visitors per year, and most of them come from neighbouring China. However, tourism is now sanctioned by leader Kim Jong-un, and they have grand targets to reach out to 1 million people by 2017 and 2 million by 2020. Seems ambitious for a country that treats most travellers like possible terrorists. And the world’s #1 most visited city? Bangkok, Thailand, with 15.98 million visitors, according to the annual listing by Forbes magazine.

3

James Dresnok, America’s last defector. (Credit: BBC Four)Six American soldiers defected to North Korea in 1962 and have lived there ever since. “I was fed up with my childhood, my marriage, my military life, everything. I was a goner. There’s only one place to go,” said James Dresnok, the last US defector alive in North Korea, who recently spoke to the Guardian newspaper. In August 1962, he stepped into the minefield and crossed over to North Korea.

Eventually, there were four of them: Abshier, Jerry Parrish, Charles Robert Jenkins, and Dresnok. The men lived together and participated in several propaganda efforts on behalf of the North Korean government. They appeared on magazine covers and used loudspeakers to try to persuade more American soldiers at the border to defect. However, at first, they did not wish to remain in North Korea indefinitely. In 1966, the four men tried to leave North Korea by seeking asylum at the Soviet embassy in Pyongyang but were immediately turned over to North Korean authorities by the embassy. Afterwards, Dresnok decided to settle in North Korea and assimilate. He married a couple of times and is currently in failing health.

4

(Credit: Original oil painting by artist Richard DeRosset for USS PUEBLO crew member Tom Massie)North Korea is the world’s only nation to currently have a captured U.S. Navy ship. On January 23, 1968, in international waters more than 15 miles from North Korea, the USS Pueblo, an electronic intelligence ship, was surrounded by sub chasers and torpedo boats, with MiG jets overhead. The sailors on the Pueblo were rounded up and put in prison camps. While the North produced propaganda footage showing fair treatment, the reality was much worse. The crew endured starvation and torture for nearly a year. Eventually, the North Korean government decided to release all crew members. The Pueblo is still held by North Korea and remains the second-oldest commissioned ship in the U.S. Navy.

5

a98571_NK4
(Credit: Official Website of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea)North Korea is officially NOT Communist anymore. In 2009, references to Communism were removed from the country’s constitution, and “Juche” became the official state ideology, replacing Marxism–Leninism when the country adopted a new constitution in 1972. Created by Kim Il-sung, it states that the Korean masses are the masters of the country’s development, with an emphasis on political, economic and defensive self-sustainability.

6

2016 North Korea Wall Calendar – “Dispatcher readies a Pyongyang train to depart” (Credit: NK News)It’s not 2016 in North Korea. The year is 105! The Juche Calendar was introduced in 1997 and is based on Kim Il Sung’s date of birth: April 15, 1912. That year was referred as Juche 1 and the system works forward from there, while it maintains the Gregorian Calendar’s traditional months and the number of days in a month.

In many instances of non-Korean usage, the Juche year is given after the corresponding Gregorian year, i.e. 12 June 2007 (Juche 96). However, most official DPR-Korean sources list the Gregorian year second, as in 12 June Juche 96 (2007).

7

NKStadium
(Credit: BusinessInsider.com)North Korea has the World’s Largest Stadium, seating 150,000 people. The leaders of the country aim to prove North Korea’s might through its architecture, most of which is made of bulky concrete. That includes the May Day Stadium, a colossal structure built in 1989 and remodelled in 2014 that seats 150,000 people. It is the largest stadium by capacity in the world. While it hosts some soccer matches and general athletic competitions, May Day’s grandest and most elaborate events are the annual Mass Games (known in Korean as Arirang). They pay tribute to the country’s history, founders, and current leaders through gymnastics and dance performances put on by thousands of participants. On June 13, 2004, the Telegraph reported that, at the end of the 1990s, a plan hatched by a number of Korean army generals was uncovered, and the conspirators arrested, to assassinate Kim Il-Sung. After they were interrogated, the generals were executed in the May Day Stadium. Petrol was poured over them and set alight, burning them alive.

8

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(Credit: IO9.com)In 2012, North Korean archaeologists announced to the world that they “discovered” the resting place of a UNICORN. The Telegraph reported in November 2012, North Korean archaeologists claimed to discover a mythical unicorn lair belonging to King Tongmyong, founder of the ancient Korean kingdom. The announcement was made by the History Institute of the DPRK Academy of Social Sciences, which reported that the lair was found 220 yards from a temple in Pyongyang. “A rectangular rock carved with words ‘Unicorn Lair’ stands in front of the lair. The carved words are believed to date back to the period of Koryo Kingdom (918-1392),” the report said. “The temple served as a relief palace for King Tongmyong, in which there is the lair of his unicorn.”

9

The tallest flagpole in the world in the North Korean town of Kijong-Dong
The tallest flagpole in the world in the North Korean town of Kijong-Dong. (Credit: Korrespondent.net)North Korea built a ghost city on the border with South Korea, to encourage defection. As reported in a 2014 New York Post article, according to the Korean government, the village of Kijongdong, located in the North’s half of the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), contains a 200-family collective farm, serviced by a childcare centre, kindergarten, primary and secondary schools, and a hospital. However, observation from the South suggests that it’s actually a ghost town, created to encourage South Korean defection. Until 2004, massive loudspeakers mounted on several of the buildings continuously delivered DPRK propaganda broadcasts relating the North’s virtues in great detail and urging disgruntled soldiers and farmers to simply walk across the border to be received as brothers. Eventually, as its value in inducing defections proved minimal, the content was switched to condemnatory anti-Western speeches, Communist agitprop operas, and patriotic marching music for up to 20 hours a day.

10

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Ryugyong Hotel (Credit: Commons.Wikimedia.org)For 20 years, the world’s tallest hotel was a 105-story empty pyramid in Pyongyang. With 105 floors, the Ryugyong Hotel was designed to be the world’s tallest hotel at the end of the 80s, but the construction was halted in 1992 as the country entered a period of economic crisis after the fall of the Soviet Union. Japanese newspapers estimated the cost of the hotel at $750 million, which is 2% of North Korea’s GDP. For over a decade, the unfinished building sat vacant, and without windows, fixtures, or fittings, appearing as a massive concrete shell. In the late 1990s, the European Union Chamber of Commerce in Korea inspected the building and concluded that the structure was “irreparable.”

11

Pyongyang_Department_Store_No._1
Pyongyang Department Store No. 1 (Credit: Asktran.com The largest department store in all of North Korea, the awkwardly-named Pyongyang Department Store No. 1, offers a wide variety of items including foodstuffs, electronics, clothing, and furniture. As of 2013, approximately 70% of the items in the store were produced domestically. The store is one of several official tourist stops in the city. Just one small problem though – in a documentary which aired on PBS’ Frontline, Secret State of North Korea, it was reported that the film crew had attended the store, and learned very quickly that NOTHING in it was actually for sale. It was an elaborate smokescreen to billboard the country’s economic strength – but it actually has generally done the exact opposite.

12

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The massive escalator taking Moscow residents 100 metres deep into the Metro. (Credit: TotalRehash.com)The Metro is seriously deep. In fact, Pyongyang’s metro network is reportedly the world’s deepest. Started in 1966 as a way to connect top secret military buildings, and built by North Korea concentration camp prisoners, the Pyongyang Metro is 100 meters underground and it takes a couple of minutes to ride the escalator down to the station. The journey is long enough that some commuters sit on the steps — despite the signs asking passengers not to. The underground network has two official lines and 17 stations. However, there are rumours of several other secret stations used by government and military only. Inspired by the grand Moscow Metro, many of the stations have ornate chandeliers and paintings and murals on the walls.

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By Unbreakable China,
Founding Blog Member
Calling Out Community
Posted March 4, 2016.  Updated August 14, 2017

The Sea of Japan War… Must Be Avoided

On Saturday, April 2, US Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump told a crowd of thousands in Rothschild, Wisconsin that he was optimistic about potential hostilities between North Korea and its neighbors. He said that if conflict between Japan and nuclear-armed North Korea were to break out, “it would be a terrible thing but if they do, they do”.

“Good luck,” he added. “Enjoy yourself, folks.”

Donald Trump in Wisconsin on Saturday.
Donald Trump in Wisconsin on Saturday (Credit: Scott Olson, Houston Chronicle)

Referring to North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, Trump also complained that the US had 28,000 troops on the armistice line between North Korea and South Korea “to stop a maniac”, adding that the United States received no benefit from deploying troops around the world to help other countries who did not reimburse American taxpayers. “We can’t be the policeman of the world,” said Trump.

U.S. Marines participate in a U.S.-South Korea joint landing operation drill (Credit: Reuters)
U.S. Marines participate in a U.S.-South Korea joint landing operation drill (Credit: Reuters)

“What we do get out of it?” he asked. “It’s time that other people stopped looking at us as stupid, stupid people.”

He pledged, if elected, “we are going to get these countries to pay and to pay all the money they owe us for many years … we’ve been carrying these countries”, he said.

US troops are deployed in South Korea to support the United Nations, which enforces an armistice ending the Korean War in 1953.

The two countries are still technically at war, and North Korea often engages in a belligerent activity, which recently has included sinking a South Korean ship and bombarding South Korean territory.  Both events could have led to war, had other countries like the US, Japan and China not stepped in to calm the situation down.

North Korea threatens war with U.S. in propaganda film (Credit: CNN)
North Korea threatens war with U.S. in propaganda film (Credit: CNN)

This week, as President Obama chaired a multi-nation nuclear security summit in Washington, Pyongyang carried out the latest of a number of ballistic missile tests. Last week, North Korea released a propaganda film that showed the US capital under nuclear attack.

According to Trump: “Frankly, the case could be made to let [Japan] protect themselves against North Korea, they’d probably wipe them out pretty quick.

Trump previously suggested in a televised interview with CNN that South Korea and Japan should have their own nuclear weapons, in contradiction of more than half a century of American foreign policy. The Republican frontrunner said of that policy: “Maybe it’s going to have to be time to change.”

The Hyuga (bottom) and Izumo (top) class of helicopter carriers built for the Japanese navy.
The Hyuga (bottom) and Izumo (top) class of helicopter carriers built for the Japanese navy.

Japan shocked the world recently when it added a ‘helicopter landing ship’ to their Navy – which looked exactly like an aircraft carrier.  They have since added several larger versions of the same. While Japan has for decades been constitutionally prohibited from having an army, we reported in 2015 that this was no longer the case.  They have built three aircraft carriers in the last several years and clearly are ramping up militarily again.  China also has several aircraft carriers under construction on a massive rearmament campaign.

Not surprising to my readers, I’m sure, I agree with Trump completely on most points.  Its time that the world not assume that the Western powers are going to bail them out every time some banana republic dictator threatens their neighbors.

A nuclear North Korea must not be allowed by the international community, but I certainly do not agree that the solution would be to add even more nations to the Nuclear Old Boy’s Club.  A agreement is unlikely to be reached with North Korea to disarm its reported nuclear stockpiles (Clinton already tried it once and clearly failed, and Obama ruined any possibility of good deal for us with his idiotic agreement with Iran).  Perhaps we would have to strike at North Korean nuclear facilities, much like Israel did with Iran years ago.

Tensions between China, Japan and the Koreas are for the most part not North America’s problem currently. A war between these four powerful nations could literally destroy the entire Pacific Rim, if not the world.  Here is how they militarily stack up at present:

China

a12-650x421#3 most powerful armed forces
Total Population: 1,367,485,388
Fit for Service: 619,000,000
Reaching Military Age Annually: 19,550,000
Active Frontline Personnel: 2,335,000
Active Reserve Personnel: 2,300,000
Tanks: 9,150
Total Aircraft: 2,942
Navy Ships: 646, including 1 aircraft carrier
Submarines: 68

Japan

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#7 most powerful armed forces
Total Population: 126,919,659
Fit for Service: 44,000,000
Reaching Military Age Annually: 1,215,000
Active Frontline Personnel: 250,000
Active Reserve Personnel: 57,900
Tanks: 678
Total Aircraft: 1,590
Navy Ships: 131, including 3 aircraft carriers
Submarines: 17

South Korea

#12 most powerful armed forces
Total Population: 49,115,196
Fit for Service: 21,035,000
Reaching Military Age Annually: 690,000
Active Frontline Personnel: 625,000
Active Reserve Personnel: 2,900,000
Tanks: 2,381
Total Aircraft: 1,451
Navy Ships: 166, including 1aircraft carriers
Submarines: 15

North Korea

North-Korea_3095073b#25 most powerful armed forces
Total Population: 24,983,205
Fit for Service: 10,100,000
Reaching Military Age Annually: 415,000
Active Frontline Personnel: 700,000
Active Reserve Personnel: 4,500,000
Tanks: 4,200
Total Aircraft: 944
Navy Ships: 967, including 0 aircraft carriers
Submarines: 70

I agree with Trump that its time South Korea, the Philippines, Germany and others start paying for the privilege of US troops stationed in their nations for their protection.  And Mr. Trump, while you are at it, please kick the United Nations out of New York, and pull the United States out of this international joke.  It accomplishes nothing militarily and costs most of us Western powers a fortune to maintain.

The threat of a massive war in Asia looms more clearly every day.  Perhaps, with the possible election of Donald Trump as President later this year, the United States and its allies, including my home Canada, could avoid being dragged into the conflict, at least at the beginning.  That alone should give Americans more encouragement to vote for the billionaire in November.
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By Shawn J., Founding Editor
Calling Out Community
Posted April 2, 2016.  Updated July 26, 2017.

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