September 23, 2018_Flee from Idol Worship

Coming Soon

God has made our lives so that we always consider them retrospectively. He has made us live them out like the four seasons of the year. He made all the vegetative plants sprout up from the ground, grow and form the fruit. In the end, they are made to rest in peace. More specifically, they have their rest in the winter that comes at the end of the four-season cycle.

Likewise, during our life time, we must know that our physical bodies are – in the truest sense – like potentially good soil. The word is sown in our minds, in our hearts, and in our fleshly bodies. This becomes knowledge, memory, experience, and leads to the understanding of the Picture of God’s Will. In this way, this knowledge is sown again and again, until the fall season comes. The crops then wait for the sickle of the harvesters.

If good seed is promptly sown into good soil, it will produce good fruit. But if weeds are sown in the good soil and they grow, it results in lives that are full of ignorance and unproductive years. They are, in the end, piled up to become burning coals of curses. Therefore, we must plant and spread good seed every day, so that it results in the fullness of the autumn harvest. Is this not the very work that the Lord asks of us again and again? The truth is sown in our minds, in our hearts, all over our bodies – indeed in our own souls. Should this not mean that it finally results in the maturing of good fruits, ready for the time of harvest?

If we all stopped to think about this, and wonder at how much we idle away our time, our regrets would be immense. Good seed and good trees must be sown in the good soil. But if the enemy silently comes in and sows weeds in them, imagine what kind of end results will appear! Should not the good soil that has been prepared by God be used for the works that please him?  Yet in no time at all, the autumn season has already come, and these questions come to my mind. The work that will truly be praised by God, however, is the work that is sustained patiently to the very end, whether it be met with the drought, the rainy season or even the tempest.

There are some people who have appeared, only with the purpose of opposing other people’s works, recognizing this as their only life time mission. This is all that they do. But we, on the other hand, use all our strength to do the work of the Lord. We must use all the faculties of our bodies so that the seed that has been sown by the Lord will grow up most pleasingly. We must use all our strength for the work of gathering and rebuilding. We must not do anything to knock down the Church – the Body – that has been bought by the blood of Jesus. Instead we must be those who fix and reconstruct it. We must be thankful that we have been recognized by God as its reconstructors. We must endure and be patient to the very end. That God has made me –  Semuon – endure to the very end, and that he has protected me until now, is the very witness that God has acknowledged me.

My beloved Sungrak people, with every strength of my body, I have sown the truth within Sungrak Church, and I have sown the will of God in it. The time has come for the harvest season to arrive. My fleshly body has now become like the autumn soil. It seems to appear all crumpled. But I have the love of God, the working of his power, the active duty of the Lord, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit within me to the fullness.  So that nothing which belongs to God would ever fall, I am enduring the harsh tempest and the beating wind. Let us all vigilantly protect this church. Let us all vigilantly protect the truth. Like Stephen, let us all stand up and look to Heaven. We will see that the Lord is raising both arms to eagerly welcome us. Amen.

Coming Soon

Outline translated by Daniel Hong and John Kim
Letter translated by John Kim
Interpretations by Daniel Hong
Korean Summary by Ki-Taek Lee