Title: Hill of Olives/Luke 19:41-44
Contents The Great Pilgrimage of Life (26) Hill of Olives/Luke 19:41-44
1. Because of what we did not know.
I believe that Jesus, the Lord of the same history, must have shed tears as he looked down at this Korean peninsula in the early summer of 1950 (60 years ago). No, who would not have wept if they had known the tragic tragedy of the Korean War in the history of this land at that time? At that time, in the war on this land, only 630,000 Korean military casualties (death, wounded, missing) were killed (150,000 dead), 990,000 South Korean civilian victims were killed (370,000 killed), and 150,000 UN soldiers were killed (37,000 killed). 1,000), 130,000 American casualties (33,000 dead), and 1.91 million (590,000 dead) in the south. The North Korean military lost 800,000 (520,000 dead), the Chinese 970,000 (140,000 killed), 1.5 million North Korean civilians, 3.27 million North Korean (about 1.16 million), and 518 North and South Korean casualties 100,000 people (1.75 million deaths). In addition, the Korean War, which gave birth to 3.2 million refugees, 300,000 war widows, 100,000 war orphans, and 10 million separated families, left the greatest tragedy in the history of national wars that surpassed the Jewish-Roman war depicted in today's Bible text.
So all 960 people except for the 2 women and 5 children who escaped death dramatically choose 10 men from among them and assign them the task of killing them, and in the end, the 10 of them also choose to commit an epic mass suicide by killing each other. So, even now, this hill of Massada became a place where Israeli soldiers, when commissioned, climbed this hill and swore, “We shall not fall again,” and pledged their allegiance to their homeland. Why? It was because of freedom. This thousand years ago, Jesus wept as he knew the fate of the citizens of Jerusalem and his people who would lose their freedom, which is a basic human right, and live as slaves. We must never forget that the Korean Peninsula in which we live is also a land where the blood of so much sacrifice was shed so that we can enjoy this freedom and live today. This phrase is engraved in the Korean War Memorial Park, which was built in Washington, the capital of the United States. “Freedom is never free”. However, we must weep together with Jesus for ourselves and our neighbors who still do not know the value of this freedom and for our North Korean compatriots who are deprived of this freedom.
2. Because it is <hidden> from us.
True peace can only be achieved through the reconciliation between man and God. Sin has created a gap between man and God, and nothing can fill this gap. But Jesus Christ came as the only mediator between God and man. He bore our sins, took the place of our wrath, and became the mediator of peace on the cross. Therefore, only Jesus Christ can bring true peace to an individual, a community, as well as a nation. The country we long for is neither a capitalist country nor a socialist country. The country we long for is the kingdom of God where Jesus Christ reigns as King. Therefore, we must pray for the realization of a rule that is close to the ideal of the kingdom of God in our future homeland. Above all, we must pray that the leaders of the nation today and tomorrow will accept Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord and serve the people as God's servants as God's instruments.
Just before 6.25, our country received the liberation of the country in 1945 as a gift from God, but after that, rather than rebuilding the country, it wasted time due to the confrontation and conflict between the left and right ideologies of the north and the south. It was dawning on the division of the denominations caused by the controversy. Obviously, the 6/25 war was God's scourge on this land and this people. Now, in order to protect the freedom of this land, we must continue to strive for peace while not relaxing the vigilance and tensions of the North Korean regime's ambition for redemption toward the South. And the church should serve as a bridge of peace as a tool for reconciliation between the two Koreas, while fulfilling its mission of evangelizing the nation toward the two Koreas. Because only Jesus Christ is the hidden secret of national peace. However, on this earth, as it was this thousand years ago, the Lord of peace, Jesus, is still hidden from so many people. We should weep just as Jesus cried for our neighbors in the north and south who did not know this Jesus as their own peace, salvation, and hope. Jesus alone is the peace and hope of our nation today and tomorrow.