I learned today from the guy who came out to hook up my DSL service that even though my new mailing address is for Arab, Ala., I’m actually a resident of Ruth.

Ruth is so small it’s not even listed on my brand-new Rand McNally map of the state, which I’m finding is not all that uncommon here because there’s so many of these types of itty-bitty “pothole-in-the-road” communities.

It’s easy to see Ruth’s name was taken from the Old Testament when you look at the names of other nearby towns. There’s Boaz, Hebron, Mount Carmel, Jericho, Shiloh, Joppa, Lydia, Lebanon. . . Talk about God’s Country!

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Hearing all this stuff about North Korea on the radio the last few days (I barely have any television reception and the only cable company around just informed me they don’t come out to where I am, meaning I now need a satellite dish), I was reminded of an online article I saved in my files detailing the horrific abuse of Christians in the Communist-led regime.

Scottish author Ronald Boyd-MacMillan was interviewed by Christianity Today magazine as someone who’s been to North Korea three times and even once met with Kim Jung Il. MacMillan has the forthcoming book, Faith that Endures: The Essential Guide to the Persecuted Church.

He testifies in the CT story: “Some people who have left (North Korea) have escaped from a labor camp and told us what conditions are like. We don't know any Christian that’s escaped from a labor camp. That hasn't happened, but there was one woman who escaped from a camp. She was not a Christian at the time but became a Christian later. She told us what life was like for the Christians in the camp. Apparently they are given the worst jobs. They have to live off rats and mice because their rations are never enough for them. They'll work from 6:00 a.m. until 9:00 p.m. And they're forbidden to look up at the sky. That's their particular punishment. They mustn't look up to God; they must keep their eyes on the ground at all times.”

What’s amazing is that before Communism, the country was significantly Christian.

“They talked about Pyongyang as being Asia's Jerusalem,” says MacMillan. “Ruth Graham was raised in a very famous Christian school there. Kim Il Sung changed all that in the 1940s and then he really upped his personality cult in the 1950s after the Korean War.”

MacMillan says Kim Il Sung was “extremely thorough” in wiping out nearly all of the Christian presence.

“I would say that was one of the most thorough cleansing of the land of Christians that's ever taken place, certainly in the 20th century,” he reasons. “I remember meeting a refugee from North Korea a few years ago, and she talked about how she saw her mother take a little book and put it on the end of a knitting needle and push it deep into the sofa in her house. The girl went to school the next day, and the teachers played this game where they said, ‘Do your parents have any books that they read perhaps in secret? Let's play a little game, bring it in and we'll have a peek.’ Of course she dug up this book and it was a New Testament. When she left school that day, she was met by two men who said ‘you'll never see your parents again.’ And she never has. They were taken off to the labor camps. She was reassigned to another family. The cleansing was that thorough.”

Just on today’s Oprah show, which I was invited next door to watch on satellite by my friend Charlotte, I saw a segment on North Korea in which footage was shown of the inside of a family’s house there. All that was hung on their walls were lines of portrait pictures of their leaders. The family members were shown bowing down in front of and prayed to them, actually worshipping them as gods.

MacMillan verifies, “If you go to North Korea, you get an education in biblical language. It's totally biblical except Kim Il Sung is a god. It's a very religious society. In fact that's where the hope comes from, because it could be that the same thing could happen in North Korea that happened in China. Mao set up this religion, and when he died, the whole population then said, ‘Who's the true God?’ ”

Upon becoming a Christian in North Korea, MacMillan says a person must decide whether to try and flee or stay in their homeland.

“If you stay, you live a lie,” he says. “You have to go to the festivals, you have to say grace to Kim Il Sung, you have to keep going to the statues and giving offerings. You're completely caught up in the worship system. But you mustn't give the impression that your heart is not in it.

“But if you flee, then you may die because if you're caught, you will be shot or put in a labor camp. If you decide to stay, your big question is, How do I hide my faith from those whom I love? How do I hide it from my wife? How do I hide it from my mom? How do I hide it from my children? Because, if you're caught, they all go to jail with you. These are dreadful dilemmas when you become a Christian.”

Given this sobering glimpse from the inside on what it’s really like for Christians in North Korea, take a look at this telling outtake from an old article on the Biblical Discernment Ministries’ website regarding Billy Graham’s perverted view of things as an apostate preacher:

“In a five-day visit to North Korea in 3/92, Graham preached in one Protestant and one Catholic church (the only two churches permitted to exist in North Korea!). He delivered a message from the Pope, and spoke with government approval. He praised North Korea's Marxist dictator Kim Il Sung's call for ‘reconciliation and peace,’ and Graham said that he has ‘learned to appreciate Korea's long struggle to preserve its national sovereignty.’

“On ABC's Good Morning America (4/6/92), talking about his trip, Graham said that the people of North Korea seemed ‘relaxed and happy,’ noting that they were preparing for Kim's 80th birthday, of whom Graham said was almost like ‘a grandfather’ to his people! Graham said that Kim had given the Graham party ‘a very lavish luncheon’ during which he was ‘very warm and friendly.’ But, said Graham, he had no idea why he was invited to North Korea.

“ ‘Well, I have an idea,’ says John Lofton of The Lofton Letter: ‘Graham is invited to such places as North Korea and the then Communist Soviet Union because he is a Dupe, what Lenin called 'a useful idiot' who can be counted on to not tell it like it is.’

“Graham's trip was obviously of immense propaganda value to atheist North Korea, which recently joined the United Nations, and is now contracting to sell powerful ‘terror weapons’ to Iran. (Reported in the 5/1/92 Calvary Contender and the 2/22/93 Christian News.)

“Graham has always seemed to have a higher view of communism than of Scripture. A number of years ago Graham said, ‘Mao Tse Tung's Eight Precepts are basically the same as the Ten Commandments. In fact, if we can't have the Ten Commandments read in the schools, I'll settle for Mao's Precepts.’ (Gothardism Evaluated, 1988, p. 16).

Now, look at this outtake from an interview last month with mega-pastor Rick Warren that appeared on PBS’ Religion & Ethics Newsweekly program:

Correspondent Kim Lawton asks, “Since we're talking internationally, let's discuss North Korea. A lot of eyebrows were raised when news came out that you were going there and then that you are going to go back and preach.”

The Rev. Rick Warren of Saddleback Church responds, “The first missionaries went to Korea about 120 years ago, and 20 years after that they had the first national revival, kind of like our first Great Awakening here in America. That was 100 years ago. It's called the Pyongyang Revival.

“Next March 2007 is the 100th anniversary of the Pyongyang Revival, and for whatever reason -- I don't know why -- they have decided in Korea that they're going to allow the first public meeting of Christianity, actually a stadium event, in about 60 years.

“The committee contacted me and said, ‘Will you go?’ Well, my policy has always been I go wherever I'm invited, regardless of politics. I'm not a politician. I don't go to places for political reasons. As long as I can share the message, am not limited on the message, that I can share the Good News of Jesus Christ, I'll go anywhere. I knew that I'd be criticized.

“People say, ‘Well, you're being a pawn. You're being used,’ and things like that. The truth is I want to get the Good News out. To me, when Billy Graham went to Russia before the communist regime collapsed; when the Pope went into Poland to support Solidarity and to preach the Good News; or when Mandela went back into South Africa -- there are lots of things that people get criticized for: ‘Why are you going there?’

“My reasoning is, ‘Why not?’ There are people in North Korea that have not heard for 60 years there is a God. He made you, he loves you, and he has a purpose for your life. If I get the chance to do that, I'm there.”

(Editor’s Note: I have yet to see on TV or read in any published article where Rick Warren uses his spotlight to give any simple salvation message on Jesus Christ. Instead, he just talks Norman Vincent Peale fluff about “God’s love” and how “we are made by God for God.” This is, indeed, the exact barf he chose for a quote by him that’s prominently printed on Starbucks cups.)