Truth Unites - The Korean Revival of 1907: The Power of Confession

Episode Date: March 24, 2025

Gavin Ortlund narrates the revival in Korea in 1907.Truth Unites (https://truthunites.org) exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville.SUPPORT:Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunitesFOLLOW:Website: https://truthunites.org/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truth.unites/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlundFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/

This video is about the Korean Revival of 1907. Amazing story. I hope it's inspiring for you. For Christians, I hope it encourages us to pray for God's work in the world today. If you're not a Christian, I hope it's still kind of intriguing to learn more about this. Many of us are aware that there's a huge Christian presence in South Korea today. Some of the largest churches in the world are in South Korea. But there is tremendous persecution of Christians in North Korea.

We need to pray for our brothers and sisters who are there, but it wasn't always like that. Thomas Kidd notes that it's easy to forget that Northern Korea used to be one of the Asian strongholds of Protestant Christianity. The city of Pyongyang became known to missionaries as the Jerusalem of the East. And this was largely the result of this massive revival that broke out in the first decade of the 20th century. And a huge influence for the Christian presence in South Korea was also this revival. Real quick video, let's just talk about what happened and then draw one lesson for it today. I hope it'll inspire you to do some more thorough study on it, but the big takeaway is about the role of confession of sin and confession more generally and the power of confession.

We'll talk about this. How did this happen? Well, it was preceded by many years of struggle. A key person whose picture I will put up was Robert Hardy. He was a Canadian doctor and Methodist missionary who was living there, but in the early years of his ministry, he was discouraged and he was struggling by what he perceived to be a lack of fruitfulness in his ministry, sidebar. If you're a pastor or in ministry and you ever experience an apparent fruitlessness in the midst of your attempted faithfulness, just know that

sometimes it goes on like that for a while before you head breakthrough. You know, it's not a reason to give up. But anyway, Hardy is preparing to speak at a sort of conference or gathering with other missionaries, and the Lord begins to stir in his heart from Luke 1113, where Jesus says, if you know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? And this article in the Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies notes that he came to realize that his missionary work failed because he had counted too much on his own effort in ministry. He testified that his heart was stirred by this passage, and in this scripture he found simple faith in the gift of the Holy Spirit. The feeling he

experienced was a deep conviction of sin and captivation by the holiness of God. Now there's so much wisdom in that paragraph already for us, I think. The simple idea that power, spiritual power comes and spiritual breakthrough comes when we stop relying on our own abilities and ask God to do what only he can do. And we come to the end of self-reliance and we just ask God to work. That sounds so simple, you know, but what a difference that makes in ministry and in life? And I think so often in revivals, what leads to revival is, is not some new insight usually or some, you know, turning some corner and you see some brand new thing.

Usually it's the basic truths of the gospel that we are sort of reacclimitized to. So in this passage it talks about conviction of sin and the holiness of God. Many revivals you hear about this vivid sense of the love of God. This is not some new theological concept. This is the basic truths of the gospel landing with fresh power on the heart. and you see, whoa, that's what the holiness of God is, you know, that kind of feeling. Some of you have seen something like that. I'm going to keep talking about revival, because if you've never seen something like that,

it's amazing to behold. And once you've seen it, you want to keep praying for it again. So God is stirring in his heart. Now, at this gathering, he confesses his discouragement. Hardy just opens up. He unburdens his heart, and he just shares how he's discouraged and he's honest, you know. And this makes it safe for others. to open up and unburdened their hearts. This is what happens with confession. You cannot fake it and

you can't sort of manipulate it. It has to be sincere. It has to be really what's in your heart. But when one person opens up, especially if it's the leader or a leader, many times it will be a domino effect and others feel safe to open up as well. And this is what happens here. And there begin to be other gatherings in which this kind of honest confession and even public confession of sin, starts to get traction, and it starts to create this spiritual longing, and people begin to do this more and more and more. I'll put up a picture of one Methodist Church in Korea at this time. And things kind of come to ahead when there's a sort of a conference of sorts in January 1907. By the way, I'm not an expert on this. I've just been reading it, reading a couple books and articles.

If anyone is an expert, feel free to correct me in the comments, and if there's something an error I make or something like that, or something I leave out, I'll pin the comment. but essentially a man stands up and confesses his sins. It's one of the helpers of the missionaries, and he confessed his hatred for one of the missionaries, and he repented. And then the missionary and others began to also confess their sins, and there was a spirit of reconciliation. I remember being a part of a, it was actually our church in Ohio put on an event about revival with a bunch of other churches just to learn about revival. And one of the people who was there, the other pastor said, there was a spirit of reconciliation in the air. I love that language, a spirit of reconciliation. If you've ever, I actually have kind of weird feelings about the word

reconciliation because I've seen that used so often for something that's forced, and it's not real, it's not from the heart. But if you've ever seen a sincere reconciliation, it is a beautiful thing. And this confession of sin just rumbles on. One of the sins that they are confessing is the sin of prejudice. And things, this is what happens in the heavenly realms when we open up and confess our sins. Strongholds are broken. The enemy loses grip. And there's a release of spiritual power. Let me read from this account, from the missionary, right after the man had stood up and confessed his own hatred of him, he said, I never had a greater surprise in my life. To think that this man, my associate in the men's association, had been hating me without my knowing it, it seems that I had said

something to him one day in the hurry of managing a school field day exercise, which gave offense, and he had not been able to forgive me. Turning to me, he said, can you forgive me? Can you pray for me? I stood up and began to pray, Agape, Agape, Father, and got no further. It seemed as if the roof was lifted from the building, and the spirit of God came down from heaven in a mighty avalanche of power upon us. I fell at Kim's side and wept and prayed as I have never prayed, how you'd never prayed before. Again, this leads to a series of other people confessing their sins, and the Holy Spirit falls, and it's very charismatic, and people are on the ground, confessing earnestly. To the point that the missionaries feel like they're losing control, which is always a good thing

in ministry when you feel like you're losing control. Ministry is more like riding a wave than swimming. There's power, but you're not in control, and that's the Christian life in general. It's all sort of following the direction of what God wants to do and the Holy Spirit's work in us. We're not calling the shots, you know. But the missionaries, Blair reports us, the missionary, he says, as soon as we were able, we missionaries gathered at the platform and consulted, what should we do? If we let them go on like this, some will go crazy. Yet we dare not interfere. We had prayed to God for an outpouring of his spirit upon the people, and it had come. And this is the kind of thing that begins to happen. You know, that's a wonderful thought that

we dare not interfere. That's what I long to be a part of. I want to give my life to serving a revival, and I would love to, you know, I just have these visions in my mind of like a stadium full of young people, just worshiping and so forth. And the happy thought is like, when you know God is at work in such a powerful way that you're like, this is holy, I don't want to get in the way, you know. One eyewitness describes the kind of thing that is happening in some of these meetings. Man after man would rise, confess his sins, break down and weep, and then throw himself to the floor and beat the floor with his fists in perfect agony of conviction. My own cook tried to make a confession, broke down in the midst of it, and cried to me across the room. Pastor, tell me,

is there any hope for me? Can I be forgiven? And then threw himself to the floor and wept and wept and almost screamed in agony. Sometimes after a confession, the whole audience would break out in audible prayer. And the effect of that audience of hundreds of men praying together in audible prayer was something indescribable. Again, after another confession, they would break out in uncontrollable weeping, and we would all weep. We could not help it. And so the meeting went on until 2 o'clock a.m. with confession and weeping and praying. During this time, some pretty horrific sins are confessed, things like murder. You know, people are just desperate to get right with God. And they're really unburdening what is on their heart. And there is a lot of discomfort

with it. I mean, you know, if you read that account and you're kind of like, well, that sounds intense, a lot of people were uncomfortable with the physical manifestations and there was antagonism. So, you know, there's reports of stones being hurled at the building sometimes. You can read this quote from a different book I was reading about people stealing their shoes, you know, people trying to basically harass them in the middle of the meeting and this kind of thing. So it's very dynamic. But it's impossible to deny the spiritual fruit of this event, of these various events, led to huge growth in the church, revitalization of the church, and transformed lives. One report notes that drunkards, gamblers, thieves, adulterers, murderers, and thousands of devil

worshippers have been made new men in Christ, the old things gone forever. Something interesting, by the way, is that there's other revivals going on all around the world in other places around this same time in this same decade, apparently without connection to each other, especially in Wales and India. Wales has a lot of revivals. Tons of revivals happen there. I'm going to do another video on the Welsh revival of like 1904, 1905, I think. Here's how Lee comments,

it is one of the greatest mysteries of the movement of God's spirit and the revival that his presence brings that the years 1900 to 1910 are often considered the period of the Great Awakening in Asia, Americas, and Europe. One of the lessons we can take away from that, I think, is that you, and this is, I really believe this, you can't control or plan revivals. They're not the result of human coordination.

I actually think we need to be so careful to never act like it's something we're doing. You know, we can't control. And I don't think we should be too quick to say, oh, revival is here, revivals there. It's something God does. We can pray for it and seek it, but it's something God does. And it's a movement of his spirit. It's like the wind that we can't control. It's not something we coordinate or engineer on our own.

But God's spirit is moving. And God's spirit is moving. moving in the world right now. There's things happening right now. It's exciting to think, okay, Lord, what are you doing? Well, just a basic takeaway from this is the role of confession in revival. Sometimes when you think of, okay, we want to see revival. What does that mean? Revival just means the ordinary work of the gospel going forward with special power. So it means lots of people finding Jesus, and it means sleepy Christians waking up. And it means Christians being reinvigorated in their love for Christ and so on and so forth. And sometimes we think,

Well, what will lead to that is the problems of the world that are out there. If, you know, the non-Christians over there, they need to come to Christ. The revival is for them. And that old simple prayer of Lord, send revival, start with me, is a great orientation point for us. I think in revival, it's best to not wait for others to do anything, but to start with confessing our own sins. And again, it has to be sincere. But I wonder if you've ever had a chance to really unburden what's on your heart.

I actually think a lot of young people in our culture, unfortunately, and it's probably us older people. It's our fault. We've never created structures and helped you in this. But a lot of young people have never had the occasion to really unburden your heart and share what is on your heart. Say, how are you basically doing? What is not working about your life? And just put it out there. It's incredibly therapeutic.

It can be painful and it can be humbling. but at one point in Lee's article, that's one of the articles I read about this, he describes the sense of relief that came in the midst of this revival. You know, when you think of people falling to the floor to confess their sins, or they get halfway through and they can't finish because they're just so overcome, you might think that that would be incredibly painful, but there was actually a sense of joy and relief. Confession of sin and also just confession of pain and struggle can be tremendous relief. And it can be tremendously healing. This is one of the ministries of the body of Christ, that we can receive confessions of sin from another

person, and then be like Jesus to them, and preach the gospel to them and return and be a safe person who gives grace. And I think we often miss out on this. I think we fail to move forward in our lives in many ways because we fail to take the opportunity of James 5. We don't confess our sins. And I think one of the things that we can do to seek revival is be the kinds of people who are just regularly, routinely getting together with other followers of Jesus, if you're a follower of Jesus. If you're not a follower of Jesus, the first way to you confess your sins is to Jesus himself. You literally go, you pray, and you just talk to Jesus and you confess to him that you need him to be your Savior. It's really that simple. And then you, but then you need to

find a church and you need to be in community with other Christians and you need to let people help you. We cannot do it on our own. I think what I'm trying to say here is in this revival in Korea in 1907, there's so much to learn, but just one basic thing is the way people were coming together. People were opening up. There was honesty and there was relief, and I really think we need that today. Because I'm doing this series of videos on revival because the whole point is I want to learn about these different revivals and say, okay, what does that teach us for today? I think one of the things we need right now is to come together. You know, there was such a spirit of reconciliation in this revival. The Methodists and the Presbyterians

in Korea really were interwoven together in a beautiful way. And revival can bring people together. And unity, seeking unity with other Christians, I think is a great way to seek revival. I like that word, revive. The implication of that word is there's something that's alive, but it's kind of decaying, and it needs to be reinvigorated. And I just think that's a state of Christianity in the world in most places, certainly the kind of places I live today. We see decline. and we pray for a reinvigoration of the church. So the point thus far is, number one, do your own study on the Korean Revival of 1907,

because it's awesome. But number two, let's think about what it looks like today to create structures where we can confess our sins to each other in appropriate ways. There's inappropriate ways to do it. You have to have tact. But it's one of those meaningful things you can ever do to have people who actually know what's going on inside you.

And I think a lot of people don't have that today. And the enemy just destroys us by isolating us. So what does it look like for us today? You know, I would just, I guess I could give a final encouragement. If you're a follower of Jesus, find somebody in your life, probably a friend of the same gender who is a trusted Christian friend that you respect and build a relationship with them where you can share how you're really doing and confess what's really on your heart.

It's unbelievable the strongholds that get broken when we do that. So I'm going to have more videos on revival, but this is one lesson from this one. Thanks for watching everybody. Thank you.