Lankford summarized that “our first calling” of the Gospel is to be able to love our neighbor,” and “to love God.” He added that the calling from Paul tells people to “show respect and live quiet and dignified lives. That is the subversive text that the regime is terrified of and that is astounding to me,” he added.

he Kim regime in North Korea, which has imprisoned, tortured and even killed thousands of Christians, is terrified of the Gospel, Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., told North Korean freedom activists gathered on Capitol Hill Wednesday.

As North Korea continues to rank as the top persecutor of Christians in the world, Lankford and other GOP congressmen spoke during International Christian Concern’s 2017 Capitol Hill advocacy day, which this year focused solely on the human rights abuses that have occurred under the Kim regime.

Lankford, the co-chair of the Congressional Prayer Caucus, approached the podium carrying his Congress members’ Bible study Bible.

“It’s amazing to me that when I walked up to the dais, I walked up holding this [Bible],” Lankford said. “If I did the same thing speaking in North Korea, this would give me a hard time. It would be longer if I handed it to you.”

Although North Korea has some state-run front churches designed to have people think that religion is allowed in the communist country, the practice and worship of real Christianity and other real religions is illegal in North Korea.

The thousands of Christians who participate in the underground house church movement and Christians who evangelize run the risk of being arrested and thrown into labor camps and tortured along with other people of faith, political enemies of the Kim regime and those who advocate for freedom. Hundreds of thousands of prisoners have died since the Kim regime came to power in 1948.

“I’m astounded by that. I am astounded by that as a Christian myself. But I am astounded by that because [sharing the Gospel] attracts the fear of Kim Jong Un and that regime,” Lankford said. “I think about the words that are in this book and how terrified they are of this book. I think about some of the things that it says.”

Lankford continued by citing the passage of Matthew 22:37-40.

“The regime is terrified of statements like this, where Jesus said to them all, ‘You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend the whole law and the prophets,'” Lankford said. “The Kim regime is terrified of that statement. It’s just a simple statement but here is what [God] demands — to be able to love God and to be able to love your neighbor.”

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