SEOUL – “Until All Have Heard.” That’s on the header of the Far East Broadcasting (FEBC) website. FEBC has been working to help reach that goal with the Gospel sine 1945. This year, FEBC is celebrating the 70th anniversary of its first broadcast on June 4, 1948.
Originally based in Shanghai, the company relocated to Manila once Christian missions and missionaries were no longer welcome in mainland China. Today, FEBC broadcasts in 149 different languages and receives more than 850,000 responses from listeners annually.
“Until All Have Heard” is not as easy as it sounds. It never has been. Today, there are several countries where Christians are either prohibited to teach others about Jesus, and others that strictly limit the activities of believers. This is often where the media of radio and television can reach the uttermost parts of the earth where it is otherwise impossible to do in person.
While the world’s attention is on North Korea’s shifting positions ranging from nuclear missiles to potential peace talks between the Kim Jung Un and President Donald Trump, the plight of North Korean citizens is hidden in the shadows of the glorification of the Kim family and its perpetration of atheistic juche philosophy. Juche is the Kim family’s worldview that “man has ultimate control over the world and of his own destiny.”
During a recent visit to the Far East, FEBC President Ed Cannon met with a group of North Korean refugees. One woman told him,
We starve, but it’s not food we want.
We thirst, but not for water.
We are sick and have no medicine,
but we know that only the Gospel can heal our people.
This woman understood the real need in North Korea. FEBC is ready to deliver with the establishment of a radio station in South Korea that is “so powerful it will reach all of North Korea with the Gospel.”
Whether North and South Korea are unified or not, FEBC will keep broadcasting undeterred “Until All Have Heard.”
To learn more about the power of Christian radio and television reaching the unreached, read Keys for Kids Begins Work in Pakistan, 25 Afghans Trust Christ While Watching Satellite TV Broadcast, and TWR Launches Largest AM Transmitter in Western Hemisphere.
Sources:
- WND, Forbidden Gospel Beaming into North Korea
- The Atlantic, North Korea’s Secret Christians
- FEBC, What Is Really Happening in North Korea?
- Wikipedia, Far East Broadcasting Company
- The Stanford Journal of East Asian Affairs, “The political philosophy of Juche,” Lee, Grace. 2003
Image Source:
- By Bjørn Christian Tørrissen (Own work by uploader ) [CC BY-SA 3.0 ], via Wikimedia Commons
