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- Aug 8, 2012
- 4 min read

5. Foundation of Good News Mission (1)

1) Foundations of Evangelical Churches that God Had Strongly Used

As commonly known, Martin Luther and John Wesley, the founders of Lutheran Church and Methodist Church, were all definitely born-again servants who mainly concentrated on preaching gospel. Therefore, Lutheran Church and Methodist Church founded by those two servants were also largely used by Him in preaching gospel. Yet, the point we have to give attention to is that evangelical churches in an early stage and today’s Korean churches are very different from each other. That is, when we compare the spiritual aspects of early evangelical churches and Korean Lutheran, Methodist, and Presbyterian Churches in present, they are remarkably distinctive from each other. We will deal with the reasons more in detail on history of Korean Church, but as a representative example, John Wesley, the founder of Methodist church, was originally a pastor of Anglican Church and ministered for ten years regardless of gospel. Then, through Moravian Church, evangelical church at that time, he found out that he was not born again, and in a small chapel on Aldersgate Street, London, he experienced being born again on May 24th, 1738. Because Presbyterian Church was formed as Wesley preached a true gospel that led him to salvation, believers of Korean Presbyterian Church still annually commemorate that day. But the problem is that most of Presbyterian followers do not have experiences of being born again unlike Wesley, besides, they are ignorant and even deny about being born again.

Likewise, many Korean believers in present live religious lives perfunctorily, without any passions towards being born again and gospel that early believers of evangelical churches had before. The biggest reason is because faith and spiritual senses that His servants who are the fundamentals of the evangelical churches had are not connected to Korean churches in present. If the faith and spiritual senses that the servants of God had are connected, Korean churches are also able to change the world with gospel just like the early evangelical churches had done. Unfortunately, Korean churches in today are not able to perform their functions as ‘the light and the salt of the world,’ which can drive out the darkness and corruptions from the world. Recently, ‘church hereditary’ and ‘financial troubles’ that could never be seen with the early evangelical churches are spread among Korean churches. For that reason, although many churches in Korea externally seem to continue genealogy of the early churches, back sides of their spiritual aspects are distinctively different. Consequently, this problem conceived corruptions of Korean churches, which surfaced as serious problems in Korean society.

2) Servants of God Who Were Raised in History of Reformation

3) A Foundation of Good News Mission, Pastor Ock Soo Park

When we divide history of gospel into two parts in overall, the early stage was a period of persecution where they protected gospel from Satan who persecuted gospel mercilessly through Roman Empire. After Edict of Milan where Roman emperor Constantine the Great officially accepted Christianity in AD 313, the second part was a history of reformation on corrupted existing churches and false churches founded by Satan. So, before the Edict of Milan in AD 313, many servants protected their faith by death and preached gospel in Satan’s persecutions, but the servants after the Edict of Milan have preached gospel demanding for reformations on corrupted and false churches that Satan rose. John Wycliffe, Jan Hus, Martin Luther, John Knox, John Bunyan, John Wesley, Charles Spurgeon, and D.L Moody are those. “Forgiveness of sins can be only done by God through Jesus Christ. So, a behavior of bargaining holy things like indulgences is treason against God. I will appeal to the only judge, Jesus Christ who is not only omnipotent but also perfectly just. I put my disposition on His hands. ‘Lord Jesus, I carry out this brutal death without any discontents because of You. Please have mercy on my enemies.’” (Jan Hus) “A lay believer armed with the Bible is more trustworthy than the Pope or the Councils. Because of the Bible, we have to refuse the Pope and the Councils. Did not God talk through even a donkey? I will speak the word exactly as I received from God. I am a theologian on Christianity. Only the Cross is the true divinity. I have decided to defense the truth I believe in until my bleeding death. I will confess only truth that God has given. (Martin Luther) “I was born again at about 8:45pm on May 24th, 1738. Before then, I thought I was standing on God’s side, but I did not even know which side I was on because I was a spiritual blind. Right after I was born again, I started to preach about ‘salvation without any price’. Once I stood on God’s side and begun attacking Satan’s kingdom, Satan did not stay quite. I was imposed as a pastor from England State Religion long time ago, but as soon as I started to preach gospel of salvation, all the churches shut down the doors towards me. My companion George Whitefield who was preaching gospel before me faced same situation. In the other word, we were just driven as ‘heresy.’” (John Wesley) As seen above, all the servants who were largely used by God in evangelizing were at the front in reformation of false and corrupted churches preaching gospel strongly. Also, when we look at the history of Christianity, we can discover that God has always raised new servants and new history of gospel whenever the existing churches got corrupted.