During March 20-21, 2008, Sri Lanka UBF had an Easter Bible conference at the Aturu Giria Christian hall located one hour away from Colombo. Our five family members, Korean teacher Nisanti and her daughter Jyani and brother Pradiv attended the conference.
I (M. Barnabas Baek) delivered two messages. The first lecture was “Son, your sins are forgiven,” from Mark 2; and the second lecture was “Father, forgive them,” from Luke 23. God blessed us through this conference with overflowing blessings and grace.
During the preparation, Satan worked hard and all the sheep slipped away and would not attend the conference, so I wondered if I should have the conference. But God gave me victory in the spiritual battle with Satan. When I practiced the message on Jesus’ cross, I realized how much Jesus suffered. But he was not shaken and went to the way of cross without any doubt about the love of God. Then he entrusted his soul to God and breathed his last. Jesus won the victory through the cross. Praise and thank God for Jesus who bore the temptation of Satan, loneliness and pain to the end to save this sinner.
Thank God for teaching me spiritual reality through this conference. The gospel work is a spiritual battle. I learned that when we overcome in the fierce battle with Satan, our spiritual capacity grows. I realized that Satan hates when the gospel is preached, especially when the word of Jesus’ cross is preached. So I decided to have Easter conference whether we had sheep or not. We had summer conferences and Christmas worship services thus far, but this was our first Easter conference. I saw new possibilities through this conference. Though Sri Lanka is a Buddhist nation, Good Friday is designated as a holiday. With this start, we want to challenge the spiritual battles against the devil through Easter conference, August conference (no concept of summer here), and Christmas conference from now on.
Praise the Lord who saved us through Jesus’ precious blood and called us as his chosen soldiers of Christ in this generation.
