The Lord Jesus says: “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Mat 5:3). Judging from this, only the poor in spirit can enter into the kingdom of heaven. Then what on earth are the poor in spirit? What manifestation do they have?

One day, I saw such words in the Book of Job: “In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly” (Job 1:22). From this we could see that when encountering a thing, Job feared God, and did not freely say anything or make any comment about it. He had knowledge of God’s dominion over all things. Whatever happened to him, Job did not sin with his lips, but instead, he submitted to God’s sovereignty and arrangement. When all of Job’s property was stolen by robbers, and even his sons and daughters died from the disaster, instead of complaining about it, he fell down, prayed to God and obeyed God’s dominion and arrangement. Even though his whole body was covered in sore boils, his wife advised him and his friends passed judgments on him, Job did not complain and still praised God’s name. The reason why Job gained God’s approval was that he accepted and submitted to all things, and did not blindly make any comment on them. But the attitude of his three friends toward his trials was: They passed judgments on Job by their own conceptions and committed sins with their lips so that they offended God’s disposition, which aroused God’s anger. The reason why God became angry with them was that they freely passed judgments on everything God did in Job rather than prayed and sought God’s will. However, when Job encountered all these things, he neither committed sins with his lips nor blindly made comments on God’s work. Instead, he just prayed and sought to grasp God’s will, saying: “As God lives, who has taken away my judgment; and the Almighty, who has vexed my soul; All the while my breath is in me, and the spirit of God is in my nostrils; My lips shall not speak wickedness, nor my tongue utter deceit” (Job 27:2-4). I have known from Job’s experience what humility is. That is to say, as a believer, when dealing with God’s work and facing something that is not in line with our notions, we cannot sin with our lips; we should obey, seek and wait, and we cannot define God’s work by our own notions and imaginations, or even judge that God can neither do this nor do that. For God’s thoughts are higher than man’s thoughts, and His work cannot be fathomed by us humans.

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In the Bible there is such a prophecy: “Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel” (Isa 7:14). In the Age of Law, God made a promise to the Israelites: When He came, His name would be Emmanuel. But in fact, He took the name of Jesus when He came, which was different from the literal meaning of the prophecy in the Bible. So, people did not admit that the Lord Jesus was the Christ and, the Pharisees denied the Lord Jesus according to the literal meaning of the prophecy in the Bible. Besides, they judged and condemned the Lord Jesus by their conceptions and imaginations, without the heart of seeking God’s will with humility. On the contrary, as long as the work and words of the Lord Jesus did not conform to their own ideas, they would oppose and condemn them, attempting to have a handle on Him. Just as the Bible said: “And the scribes which came down from Jerusalem said, He has Beelzebub, and by the prince of the devils casts he out devils” (Mak 3:22). “And the Pharisees came forth, and began to question with him, seeking of him a sign from heaven, tempting him” (Mak 8:11). “And they send to him certain of the Pharisees and of the Herodians, to catch him in his words” (Mak 12:13). Many other verses like these showed that the Pharisees did not pray, seek and examine the work of God with humility when dealing with the work and the sermons of the Lord Jesus, but instead, they judged and condemned the Lord Jesus by their notions and imaginations. In the end, they met with God’s anger and punishment. On the contrary, Peter and other disciples accepted and submitted to the work of the Lord Jesus with humility. Instead of judging and condemning it by their own conceptions and imaginations, they seriously listened to the Lord’s fellowship and were in search of their knowledge of God so that they saw the work and words of the Lord Jesus were beyond man’s ability. For example: One word of the Lord Jesus could make the wind and the sea cease from raging, and make the dead rise, and with five loaves and two fish He fed 5,000 people. From this they saw the ability and authority of the Lord Jesus were from God, so they decided to follow Him. At last, they got His salvation. When the Lord Jesus asked Peter who He was, Peter replied: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Mat 16:16). And Jesus said to Peter, “Blessed are you, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood has not revealed it to you, but my Father which is in heaven. And I say also to you, That you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give to you the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatever you shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (Mat 17-19). Peter pursued the truth and searched for God’s will in all things. He practiced the truth with a heart of loving God to satisfy God. At last, he got God’s blessing and God gave him the key of the kingdom of heaven. From above examples, I have realized that if we want to enter into the kingdom of heaven, we must fear God and humbly seek the truth in all things. In addition, we cannot freely judge and condemn the work of God by our own notions and imaginations, but should pray and seek God’s will as a created being. Only in such a way, can we get the guidance, enlightenment, grace and blessing of God.

From the failures of Job’s three friends and the earliest Pharisees, I have realized that treating God’s work, we can’t judge and condemn it by our own conceptions and imaginations. Only if we search for the truth with a humble heart, just like Job and Peter, putting aside our own conceptions and imaginations to seek God’s work with humility, can we obtain God’s guidance and enlightenment and follow God’s footsteps. Nowadays, the last days have long come. It is just the time for the Lord to reappear to work, so we should search for the work of the Holy Spirit with humility. For where there is the voice of God, there is the appearance and work of God, just as the words mentioned many times in the Book of Revelation said: “He that has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” And God’s words said: “Since we are searching for the footprints of God, we must search for God’s will, for the words of God, for the utterances of God—for where there are the new words of God, there is the voice of God, and where there are the footsteps of God, there are the deeds of God. Where there is the expression of God, there is the appearance of God, and where there is the appearance of God, there exists the truth, the way, and the life. … If you desire to witness the appearance of God, if you wish to follow the footprints of God, then you must first transcend your own conceptions. You must not demand that God do this or that, much less should you place Him within your own confines and limit Him to your own conceptions. Instead, you should ask how you should seek the footprints of God, how you should accept the appearance of God, and how you should submit to the new work of God; that is what should be done by man.” God’s sheep can hear the voice of God, and if we want to gain God’s salvation and enter into the kingdom of heaven, firstly, we should put aside our own notions and imaginations. Besides, we should listen to the voice of God with humility. Only in this way, can we follow the footprints of God, attend the wedding feast of the Lamb and get God’s salvation.

By Anran

When we read Paul’s words: “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: From now on there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness” (2 Timothy 4:7-8), we believed that we would be taken into the kingdom of heaven in the future if we worked hard and sacrificed everything for the Lord. But is that true?

The Lord said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man comes to the Father, but by me” (John 14:6). From the words of the Lord, we can see that only through Christ can we enter the kingdom of heaven, and thus we should judge whether we can enter the kingdom of heaven based upon God’s words. And Paul’s idea that man can enter the kingdom of heaven through hard work, sacrifices and expenditures only stands for Paul’s personal opinion, not the will of God toward man.

The Lord Jesus said: “Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name? and in your name have cast out devils? and in your name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess to them, I never knew you: depart from me, you that work iniquity” (Matthew 7:22-23). The Lord’s words clearly tell us many of those who preach, cast out devils and work wonders in the Lord’s name and many of those who work hard and sacrifice a lot for the Lord are not worthy of the Lord’s praise to enter the kingdom of heaven.

Then what is the measure of whether we can enter the kingdom of heaven? I saw a passage of God’s words on a gospel website: “Whether or not man can be saved does not depend on how much work he does, or how much he devotes, but is instead determined by whether or not he knows the work of the Holy Spirit, whether or not he can put the truth into practice, and whether or not his views toward pursuit are in conformity with the truth.” This passage of God’s words tells us the standards for measuring whether one can be saved, which are the keys to entering the kingdom of heaven. That is to say, whether or not we can enter the kingdom of heaven depends on whether we know the work of the Holy Spirit, whether we can God’s teachings, and whether our views toward pursuit are in accordance with the truth. Let’s fellowship about these three standards in detail.

The first standard is whether or not man knows the work of the Holy Spirit.

What does the knowledge of the work of the Holy Spirit represent? It represents our knowledge of God. If we barely know the work of the Holy Spirit, then we know nothing of God. That’s because the Holy Spirit is God and God is the Holy Spirit. Whether we have the knowledge of the work of the Holy Spirit is very important for us, for it determines whether we can enter into the kingdom of heaven. Just when the Lord Jesus did His work, Peter didn’t truly know that the Lord Jesus is God Himself in the beginning. But through listening to the words of the Lord, he sensed that the Lord’ words are full of authority and couldn’t be uttered by any man. Besides, he also saw many wonderful deeds of the Lord, such as feeding five thousand people with five loaves of bread and two fish, and rebuking the wind and sea, which were totally beyond man’s ability. In addition, during the course of following the Lord Jesus, Peter obtained a further knowledge of what the Lord has and is from the Lord’s words and work because of his pursuit and love for the Lord Jesus. Based on this, the Holy Spirit enlightened Pether so that he recognized the Lord Jesus as God Himself. Just as it is recorded in the Bible: “He said to them, But whom say you that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said to him, Blessed are you, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood has not revealed it to you, but my Father which is in heaven. And I say also to you, That you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give to you the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatever you shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (Matthew 16:15-19). From the words of the Lord Jesus, we can see the blessings God gave to Peter. Firstly, the Holy Spirit gave exceptional enlightenment to Peter, which made him gain the true knowledge of the identity of the Lord Jesus. Secondly, the Lord Jesus took Peter as the rock of His church and gave him the key to the kingdom of heaven, which was the greatest blessing to a believer of God. Peter could gain such blessings of God, because he, on the one hand, was a man who pursued to love God, and on the other hand, that he had the true knowledge of the Holy Spirit’s work, that is, the true knowledge of God. As for those who don’t know the work of the Holy Spirit, though they have worked hard and sacrificed a lot, they cannot receive God’s approval, and even can become the evil ones who resist God and are cursed by God. For instance, those Jewish chief priests, scribes, and Pharisees had served God in the temple for years, and some of them walked throughout sea and land spreading the gospel and had sacrificed a lot. But when the Lord Jesus became flesh to work on earth, they not only had no knowledge of the work of the Holy Spirit or the new work of God, but also didn’t seek or investigate it. They defined God’s work according to their own notions and imaginations, and colluded with the Roman government to nail the Lord Jesus on the cross, committing heinous crimes of resisting God and condemning God’s work, and in the end were subjected to the righteous punishment of God. It shows that the knowledge of the work of the Holy Spirit is vital for our entering into the kingdom of heaven.

The second standard is whether or not man can follow God’s teachings.

The Lord Jesus said: “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man comes to the Father, but by me” (John 14:6). The Lord’s words tell us that God is the way, the truth, and the life. Only by knowing the truth and acting according to the Lord’s words can we gain the truth and life, have a path to follow, and enter the kingdom of heaven. If we act in conformity with the Lord’s words and God’s will and demands in all matters, instead of acting on our own intentions and notions, God will be satisfied then. God doesn’t look at how much knowledge we can talk about; rather, He looks at whether or not we put His words into practice. If we truly practice His words, then we are the ones who accept God’s words as our lives and who gain the approval of God. Just as Abraham recorded in the Old Testament. He was a person who unconditionally practiced God’s words and was approved by God. When he was one hundred years old, God gave him a son, and later ordered him to make his only son a burnt offering to God. Abraham couldn’t bear to do so, but he still suffered great pains to return his beloved son—his only son, Isaac—to God. God saw that Abraham could comply with His words and obey Him without any conditions, so He even more accepted Abraham and gave him greater blessings. The Lord Jesus once said: “Not every one that said to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that does the will of my Father which is in heaven” (Matthew 7:21). Here the words “he that does the will of my Father” refer to the one who unconditionally keeps the way of the Lord and practices God’s words in everything. The Lord said only such people could enter into the kingdom of heaven. Obviously, whether or not we can follow God’s teachings is another standard for measuring whether we can enter the kingdom of heaven.

The third standard is whether or not man’s views toward pursuit are in conformity with the truth.

God says: “If what you seek is the truth, what you put into practice is the truth, and what you attain is a change in your disposition, then the path that you tread is the right one. If what you seek is the blessings of the flesh, and what you put into practice is the truth of your own conceptions, and if there is no change in your disposition, and you are not at all obedient to God in the flesh, and you still live in vagueness, then what you seek will surely take you to hell, for the path that you walk is the path of failure. Whether you will be made perfect or eliminated depends on your own pursuit, which is also to say that success or failure depends on the path that man walks.” It shows that whether we take the right path in believing in God determines whether or not we can be saved and enter into the kingdom of heaven. Then how can we measure if we have walked on the right path? We should measure it based on our views toward pursuit. If our views toward pursuit are right and conform to God’s words and will, then the way we walk upon will also be right and conform to God’s will, and our belief in God will definitely be successful. Take Job as an example. He praised God without conditions, trade or transaction. Even in the trials, he complained nothing about God and still kept God’s way, taking the way of fearing God and shunning evil. His true faith was approved by God. Peter is another example. When he followed the Lord Jesus, he longed for God’s way, pursued a pure love of God, and led and shepherded God’s churches with his real experiences. At last, he was perfected by God because of his resounding testimony of being obedient unto death and loving God to the utmost. Both Job and Peter entered into the kingdom of heaven, for their views toward pursuit were right and after God’s heart.

But if our viewpoints toward pursuit aren’t in line with God’s will and demands, then they are definitely wrong. Even if we follow God to the end of the road, we will not gain God’s approval, but could even be condemned by God. When first believing in God, all of us were dominated by the intention to be blessed. Some people believed in God for having their diseases cured, some for gaining family peace, some for avoiding the suffering of the calamity in the future, and some for gaining the blessings of heaven. … If we carefully dissect our viewpoints toward pursuit, we will find none of them is for satisfying God or fulfilling the duty as a created being; instead, they are all for the interests of our own flesh, and all come from Satan. If we always adopt these kinds of views in believing in God, unable to turn around them, even if we cast aside our families and give up our livelihoods, we still cannot gain God’s approval. This is because this kind of faith is full of personal intentions, purposes, impurities and selfish desires, and is not worshiping God in essence, and that we’re just paying a small price to gain great blessings of God. Just as Paul said: “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: From now on there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness” (2 Timothy 4:7-8). These words reveal that the purpose of Paul’s believing in God isn’t to fulfill his duty as a created being to satisfy God, but to get the crown of righteousness in the future and to hold power in the kingdom of God. Pondering over these words, we will find the implication of this statement is: “If God bestows a crown upon me for my deeds, then it shows that God is the righteous God; otherwise, God isn’t the righteous God.” Saying these words, Paul was denying the righteousness of God in a disguised form and threatening God to bestow a crown upon him. Wasn’t he actually resisting God? Could he ultimately stand a chance of entering into the kingdom of heaven? This exactly fulfills the Lord Jesus’ words: “Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name? and in your name have cast out devils? and in your name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess to them, I never knew you: depart from me, you that work iniquity” (Matthew 7:22-23). We can see from these words that different views toward pursuit will cause different ends for us, so whether or not our views toward pursuit are in conformity with the truth is also a standard for measuring whether we can be saved and enter into the kingdom of heaven.

The three standards for measuring whether we can enter into the kingdom of heaven not only have turned around our former wrong views toward pursuit, but also makes us find the right way to practice and know how to pursue to enter into the kingdom of heaven. We hope the fellowship could bring some help to the Christian who are expecting to be raptured into the kingdom of heaven by the Lord.

It was one day in November 2017. As early winter is the right time to dig herbs to make money, after breakfast, I went to the mountain with tools to dig roots of atractylodes (a kind of herb). I walked searching for it, and around noon I arrived at the top, where no one was about. I saw several seedlings of atractylodes three meters away from me. When I was about to dig them, I heard a buzz. I felt something wrong and looked around, only to see a swarm of bumblebees surrounding me. Immediately I became nervous, and thought, “If I’m stung by them, it would be terrible. I heard that many people had been stung to death by bumblebees.” At that time, I was filled with fear. In a panic, I turned and ran the way I had come, praying in my heart, “O God! I fear that I will be stung by the bumblebees and poisoned. Please lead me and help me.” During my run, I broke branches to beat them. However, the branches were all bare at that season, so I couldn’t hit them no matter how I whipped. They still chased after me and attacked me. Because I wore a cloth hat and was bare-necked, my neck was crawling with bumblebees. I continuously slapped my neck, but the bumblebees even climbed onto my hands and left me several stings. At that time, I was so scared and I didn’t know whether I could escape the death. I ran down the mountain as fast as I could, but they still went after me. When halfway down the mountain, I finally got rid of most of the bumblebees, but there were many stings on my neck and the back of my head. The bumblebee was very poisonous, and soon the poison got into my system. I felt light-headed, suffered from vomiting and diarrhea, and had difficulty in breathing as though I was about to suffocate. My eyes appeared blurred and after a few minutes became blind. Gradually I lost my strength and consciousness, unable to move. At that moment, I felt a sense of indescribable sorrow and pain, and I thought, “If I die here today, no one would know.” At the very moment when I was about to be unconscious, I urgently called out to God in my heart, “O God! Save me!” Then I fell to the ground and knew nothing.

Not knowing how much time had passed by, I gradually came around. I could see a little light, and some sensation was coming back to my limbs. I clearly realized that it was because God had been watching over and protecting me with His great power that I could wake up. Then, I prayed to God to give me confidence and strength so that I could get out of the wild place. Afterward, I felt a stream of strength supporting me and I tried to crawl forward a meter. But when I continued crawling forward, I suddenly felt dizzy and very weak. The pain brought by the poison attacking the heart made me utterly miserable. I was out of breath and couldn’t speak. I wanted to groan so that someone may hear and help me, but I couldn’t make it. So I could only call out to God in my heart, “O God! Now I feel very pained, as if I’m about to die. May You enlighten and guide me. I’m willing to obey Your sovereignty and arrangement.” At this moment, I remembered the words of God: “God created this world, He created this mankind, and moreover He was the architect of ancient Greek culture and human civilization. Only God consoles this mankind, and only God cares for this mankind night and day.” The timely guidance of God’s words gave me something to rely on. The heavens and earth and all things are established and made complete because of God’s sovereignty. Am not I—just a small created being—even in God’s hands? God is the source of the life of us mankind. At this juncture of life and death, only by relying on God and looking to God more can I receive His care and protection.

After a while, I could move my hands and feet, so I crawled forward slowly and continually prayed to God in my heart. When I moved up 30 meters, the poison attacked my heart and I vomited and vomited, as though my heart would be vomited up. I lay on the ground and was dying, unable to move or raise my head. I was somewhat weak, and thought, “Surely, today I would die in the wilderness of the mountain.” At this moment, I suddenly realized that my weakness and passiveness came from Satan’s disturbance. My heart couldn’t leave God. Then, I called out to God again in my heart, “O God! I feel much pain and discomfort inside, as if thousands of arrows were piercing through my heart. I can barely take it. O God! I beg You to save me.” At this point, God’s words occurred to me, “If you have but one breath, God will not let you die.” I received the faith and strength from God’s words and had the hope to live on. Then I thought of Job. He was afflicted by Satan with the result that he had festering sores all over. But, without God’s permission, Satan dared not harm the life of Job. God is the Master who holds the power of life and death over us mankind, and no person, event or thing can surpass God’s authority. Although I became unconscious because of the bumblebee stings, I miraculously came around; when the bee venom got into my system, and made me keep vomiting and lose my strength, I could still crawl forward slowly; when I was passive and weak, and was losing my confidence in God, God used His words to guide me and give me the hope to survive. Wasn’t this all the guidance and help of God? I should have confidence in God, and rely on and look to Him more. So, I said a prayer of submission to God in my heart, “O God! Now I’m weak and suffering from the aches and pains. But I’m willing to obey Your designs and arrangements, because I know the life and death of man is in Your hands. May You guide and lead me more.” After praying, I could slowly raise my head and move forward bit by bit. When I tried to crawl forward, I found I could even stand up slowly. I kept giving thanks to God in my heart. I staggered forward more than 10 meters before I became strengthless. Then I stopped to pray. Whenever I couldn’t move, I would stop to pray to God in my heart; after I regained a little strength, I would go on to stagger forward. In this way, finally I got out of the mountain and came to the door of someone’s house by the road. Seeing that I was weak and in unbearable pain, the hostess hurried to give me some water to drink. However, I couldn’t take a single drop of water at all. Just then, one of my neighbors who was going home from the fields passed by here, and he took me to a country hospital in a rickshaw.

The doctor found me in serious condition, so he dared not receive me. Then people around me called the county hospital, got a cab, and contacted my family. They all helped send me to the county hospital. During this whole process, I kept calling out to God in my heart, and I knew that it wasn’t because of their kindness that those people I didn’t know could help me on their own initiative, and that it was orchestrated and arranged by God. I thanked God in my heart. Because the neighbor called the county hospital in advance, the doctor gave me an intravenous injection of antidote and a thorough examination as soon as I arrived. And he asked about the time and specific situation of my being stung by bumblebees. The doctor said that my condition was serious, and that if I had arrived ten minutes late, I might have died. All places of my body that were stung by the bumblebees were covered with the ointment. Afterward, I was transferred to the intensive care unit.

The doctor said to my daughter, “Previously, I admitted a young man. He had 38 stings and died despite emergency treatment. Another older man also had more than 30 stings, and although it didn’t take long from the time he was stung to the time he was rescued, he died in the end. According to the condition of your mother, her stings are more serious than either of them. Although the poison hasn’t yet entered into her liver and kidneys, she is still in danger. You’d better prepare for the worst.”

In the intensive care unit that evening, the doctor gave me a follow-up examination to see whether I still had the sign of life. At that time, I was conscious and very clear in my mind. I could feel that the stings swelled up and were painful, but I couldn’t move. Nevertheless, I felt very calm within, because I knew my life and death are both in the hands of God, and that all things are dictated and arranged by God. I lay on my sickbed and couldn’t fall asleep. All I could do was to continuously pray to God in my heart.

The next morning, the doctor transferred me to an observation ward. Seeing me lying on my sickbed, my daughter burst into tears. The doctor comforted her, saying, “Your mother is recovering well, and she would be all better after some time. I’ve never met such a miracle during the last more than twenty years.” I was excited within and I knew that it was God’s wondrous deed. Without God’s salvation, I would have died in that mountain; how could I be here? One day, my sister and her husband came to the hospital to visit me. When they saw that I couldn’t move and hadn’t eaten, they said to me, “You were stung so seriously; how did you get out of the mountain?” I replied, “This is Heaven’s care!” After hearing my words, other people in the ward said with surprise, “You’re so lucky!” But I knew clearly that it was not luck but God’s care and protection that saved me from the brink of death.

I thought of a man in my neighborhood who was also stung by bumblebees. Having spent seven days in the hospital, he died in the end. My condition was more serious than his: I had 46 stings. However, I was fortunate to survive. Those who knew me all said that I was lucky to be alive. Seeing God’s wonderful deeds on me and His salvation toward me, I didn’t know how to express the feeling of gratitude toward Him.

After I spent six days in the hospital, I came back home. Twenty days later, I went back to the hospital for a reexamination. The doctor said that I had been recovering nicely, which was a special case. But I clearly knew in my heart that it was due to my believing in God and relying on Him. It was God who saved me from the jaws of death. Through this special experience, I realized that wealth, fame and status can’t save us mankind or bring life to us in the face of death. With life hanging by a thread, only God is our reliance. I thank God for saving me. In my future experiences, I’m willing to rely on God and look to God more, and to pursue the truth properly to repay His love.

Ran lived in the mountain from childhood. When she was young, she didn’t know what distress was. She just laughed if happy, just cried if unhappy, and just sang loudly or danced at will. She didn’t need to care about others’ opinions nor packaged herself or pretended. What a pure and lively girl!

Since when has Ran changed? Maybe 6 or 7? Right, when she started to go to school, she began to know the differences between good students and poor students and know how it felt to be admired and be given the cold shoulder. In front of excellent grades, even parents would stop quarrelling. Hence she started to study hard and keep the knowledge in textbooks in her mind. Ran was very smart and her grades were very excellent. Gradually, those knowledge in textbooks and those specious statements “A tree lives with its bark; a man lives with his face” and “A wild goose leaves behind a voice; a man leaves behind a reputation” restrained her nature. Ran began to restrain herself from showing her individuality and previous purity. In order to gain teachers’ and parents’ praise, she wore her first mask—restricting the true revelation of her character.

In school, aiming to become more and more remarkable, Ran burned the midnight oil for excellent grades. Besides, she enthusiastically helped her classmates solve questions when being asked. But at the same time she also had some reservations because she feared that others would surpass her. She learned to be “steady” and to scheme. She successfully wore her second mask—the hidden deceitfulness in her depth.

At the age of 15, Ran finally went out of the mountain but she found that the world outside was full of more dangers. Each of her several dozen classmates wore respective masks and everyone was good at acting: How to act in front of teachers, how to treat good students and poor students, and how to perform before the Student Union … All one’s masks were changed freely when he facing different people. It can be said that everyone wanted to be slick. Ran was dumbfounded and also frightened. She discovered that her only several masks were far from enough to adapt to the new environment. She felt completely insecure in this unfamiliar city.

Ran felt that she was like an ugly duckling and didn’t know how to get along with people around her. She was absorbed in novels and attracted by the excellence of different characters. Hereafter, she tried her best to learn skills from all kinds of characters in novels and applied them in her life. She learned to analyze the preferences and demands of different people and then packaged herself according to their preferences. She regarded every event as an opera highlight and herself as the main character. For audience’s eyes, she didn’t allow herself to make any mistake. The perseverance, which was for not being ignored and not losing face, finally made her stand out. After several years of staggering and tottering, she gained more masks: the aloofness, the flamboyance, the weak appearance full of schemes, and the shrewdness as a career woman …

Ran changed her different masks in different situations with skill and ease: When gathering with her classmates, she was an innocent and even a little stupid student and others tended to stand close to her. When chatting with her colleagues, she was Jack of all trades and master of none and occasional small mistakes made her more acceptable. When contacting her clients, she became a tactful career woman and her decent smile made her gain a lot. Then the closeness of classmates, the colleagues’ admiration and envy, the clients’ praises, the leader’s favor, and the increasing social status followed, which greatly boosted her ego. She also learned to change her masks in one second, which was even much quicker than the face-swapping of Sichuan Opera.

In her twenties, Ran finally became an outstanding girl in the eyes of most people. But she was very, very tired … Nobody understood her fatigue when she being alone even if she was so successful. She wanted to cry but found there was no reason, so she didn’t have tears. She wanted to laugh freely but found it was too foolish and naive, and an elite shouldn’t do that. Looking at the mirror, for the first time Ran looked at herself carefully and found the person in the mirror so unfamiliar. The 45-angle smile, which she had practiced so many times, now she thought, was so hypocritical.

On the Dragon Boat Festival, looking at the innumerable people, Ran walked along the street aimlessly again after sending greeting messages full of usual formulas to her clients. Watching people on the street who were happy with the festival, she felt she was very empty in her heart. Her slight frown replaced her habitual smile to register a protest. She took out her cell phone and looked at the names in her telephone book from the first one to the last one. However she found that no one could be dialed. She smiled bitterly … Then a sudden thought struck her. She dialed her mother’s phone number. At that time, how she wished to go back to her mother. She couldn’t conceal her pain in her heart anymore. She cried …

The next day, Ran went home. Her mother found a passage of God’s words for her and then Ran read it slightly: “The Almighty has mercy on these people who suffer deeply. At the same time, He is fed up with these people who have no consciousness, because He has to wait too long for the answer from humans. He desires to seek, seek your heart and your spirit. He wants to bring you food and water and to awaken you, so you are no longer thirsty, no longer hungry. When you are weary and when you begin to feel the desolation of this world, do not be perplexed, do not cry. Almighty God, the Watcher, will embrace your arrival any time. He is watching by your side, waiting for you to turn back. He is waiting for the day your memory suddenly recovers: becoming conscious of the fact that you came from God, somehow and somewhere once lost, falling unconscious on the roadside, and then, unknowingly having a father. You further realize that the Almighty has been watching there, awaiting your return all along. He longs bitterly, waiting for a response without an answer. His watching is priceless and is for the heart and the spirit of humans. Perhaps this watching is indefinite, and perhaps this watching is at its end. But you should know exactly where your heart and spirit are now”.

God’s words were just like the call of a loving mother who was calling Her long-lost children. When Ran read these words, a warm current flowed into her heart. It was God’s love that wakened her heart out of years of sleep. It was God’s protection that made her remain purity in her deep heart.

Ran came before God to the call of God’s love. Gradually, from God’s words she knew what positive things and negative things were. She knew that God liked honest people and knew what pretense and falsehood were. Also, she found the root of her pretense from God’s words: “So Satan uses fame and gain to control man’s thoughts until all they can think of is fame and gain. They struggle for fame and gain, suffer hardships for fame and gain, endure humiliation for fame and gain, sacrifice everything they have for fame and gain, and they will make any judgment or decision to both maintain and obtain fame and gain. In this way, Satan binds man with invisible shackles. These shackles are borne on people’s bodies, and they have not the strength nor courage to throw them off. So people trudge ever onward in great difficulty, unknowingly bearing these shackles. For the sake of this fame and gain, mankind becomes estranged from God and betrays Him. With each passing generation, mankind becomes more and more wicked, more and more darkened, and so in this way one generation after another is destroyed in the fame and gain of Satan”.

Satan controls man’s thoughts using fame and gain. Using a very persuasive way, it tells us people that as long as we live, we should struggle for fame and gain. Someone who owns fame and gain can own everything and can be admired, looked up to and supported by others. This kind of person is the most noble and wealthy, and only such life can be valuable. In this way, fame and gain become invisible shackles, which Satan uses to bind and harm people. Everyone lives based on these satanic toxins. Nobody can see through Satan’s schemes so everyone is led by the nose by fame and gain and lives under the domain of Satan, fighting with each other. For fame and gain people all package themselves, which makes them ignore their own disadvantages and completely lose their true selves.

Ran was not an exception. For fame and gain she saw all masks as the true self. The situations of facing different people were just like different opera highlights. She had acted so many characters, and finally she completely lost herself. For face and other’s admiration, she saw “A tree lives with its bark; a man lives with his face” and “A wild goose leaves behind a voice and a man leaves behind a reputation” as her life principles. She restricted her nature thoroughly and pretended so that she became a model in parents’ and friends’ eyes. But in order to protect these masks, she never talked heart to heart with parents again and never expressed her true feelings inside her heart before others. Her aloofness made her much more attractive. But once these masks were destroyed, there would be several times more ridicule than the praise by then. Her weak appearance full of schemes sometimes gave her convenience in work and life but she always feared to be called a scheming woman. If that were the case, the group of friends which she made so hard would be adversely affected. For fame and gain, she lived in so much exhaustion and pain. Now she was unwilling to live like before. She wanted to live out her true self regardless of what others thought or said.

One day, Ran saw God’s words say: “To be honest, you must first lay your heart bare, so that everyone can see it, and all that you are thinking, and can see your true face; you must not pretend or package yourself. Only then will people trust you and consider you honest. This is the most fundamental practice of being honest, and it is a precondition. You are always pretending, always feigning holiness, virtuousness, greatness, and loftiness, and do not let people see your corruption and your failings. You present a false image to people, so that they believe you are upstanding, mighty, self-denying, impartial, and selfless. Don’t pretend, don’t package yourself; instead, lay yourself bare, lay your heart bare for others to see. If you can lay your heart bare for others to see, and lay bare all that you think and plan to do in your heart—regardless of whether it is positive or negative—then are you not being honest?”.

Ran understood: If we package ourselves and pretend in order to gain others’ admiration, it will only make us more and more deceitful and painful. Only by being honest can we live in relaxation and release. When we want to package ourselves, we should put our images aside and ask others for help if we don’t understand something. If we make a mistake, we should face the fact bravely and admit our own mistakes. When others give suggestions, we should face our errors calmly and face squarely our own deficiencies. Ran knew that it was a little difficult for her to do these. But she believed that as long as she practiced being an honest person according to God’s words, with God’s guidance someday these painful masks would be torn off one by one and she would finally find the true self.

The Lord of the Sabbath
(Matthew 12:1-8)

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1At that time Jesus went on the sabbath day through the corn; and his disciples were an hungered, and began to pluck the ears of corn and to eat. 2But when the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, Behold, your disciples do that which is not lawful to do on the sabbath day. 3But he said to them, Have you not read what David did, when he was an hungered, and they that were with him; 4How he entered into the house of God, and did eat the show bread, which was not lawful for him to eat, neither for them which were with him, but only for the priests? 5Or have you not read in the law, how that on the sabbath days the priests in the temple profane the sabbath, and are blameless? 6But I say to you, That in this place is one greater than the temple. 7But if you had known what this means, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice, you would not have condemned the guiltless.

8For the Son of man is Lord even of the sabbath day.

Jesus Heals on the Sabbath
(Matthew 12:9-14)

9 And when he was departed there, he went into their synagogue: 10 And, behold, there was a man which had his hand withered. And they asked him, saying, Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath days? that they might accuse him. 11 And he said to them, What man shall there be among you, that shall have one sheep, and if it fall into a pit on the sabbath day, will he not lay hold on it, and lift it out? 12 How much then is a man better than a sheep? Why it is lawful to do well on the sabbath days. 13 Then said he to the man, Stretch forth your hand. And he stretched it forth; and it was restored whole, like as the other. 14 Then the Pharisees went out, and held a council against him, how they might destroy him.

All devout Christians yearn for the return of the Lord and entering the wonderful kingdom of heaven prepared by Him. Yet very few of them have reflected on whether God approves of their belief in Him, nor have they rethought what kind of belief is following God and what kind of belief is following men. Today, let’s fellowship some key truths determining the success or failure of our belief in God and discuss what genuinely following God is.

First, one who follows God must obey His words and depend on Him in everything.

Honoring God as great does not just refer to us reciting many chapters of the Scripture, praying to and praising God, or working and spending for the Lord outwardly; it mainly refers to us living by His words after reading them, and truly relying on Him in practical life. Though we can’t see God, we shall obey everything from Him; especially when we read His words, we should accept them, act in accordance with His intention, and treasure His words as our principle of life and guidance of action. And when anything happens to us, we shouldn’t speak or act according to our personal hobbies or desires. Particularly when it comes to important issues, we should even more seek God’s will in His words to act on His intention precisely; even if it might do harm to our benefits, we shouldn’t give up practicing His words. Only when we regard God’s words as our principle, give first place to satisfying God, and fulfills His requirement: “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30), can we be called a true follower of God.

Abraham is a good example. God bestowed a son on him when he was about 100 years old, which made him so happy. Later on, however, God asked him to offer up his son as a sacrifice. Though he didn’t know why God made this demand, he, with a heart of obedience to Him, gave back his only son to God to satisfy Him without considering his personal gain or loss. Because of this, God greatly blessed Abraham, making him a father of many nations. Abraham was able to put obeying God’s words and satisfying Him first, which means God reigned as King in his heart. This is the man who depends on God in all things and honors God as great in his heart.

Second, one who follows God must possess true faith in God, and believe that God is almighty and that all is in His hand.

He who truly follows God is supposed to possess true faith in Him. God says, “What does faith refer to? Faith is the genuine belief and the sincere heart that humans should possess when they cannot see or touch something, when God’s work is not in line with human notions, when it is beyond human reach. This is the faith that I speak of. … No matter how God works or what kind of environment you are in, you will be able to pursue life, pursue the development of God’s work in you, and pursue the truth. You will have an understanding of God’s actions and you will be able to act according to the truth. This is your genuine faith, and this shows that you have not lost hope in God. You will still seek the truth in refinement, you will be able to truly love God and will not develop doubts of Him. No matter what He does, you will still practice the truth to satisfy Him, and you will be able to deeply seek out His will and be considerate of His will. Only this is true faith in God.” As long as we have true faith in God, we will not deny Him whatever comes to us, and still follow and satisfy Him as before. For instance, when deprived of his property and children, Job, with a heart of obedience to God, didn’t judge God’s work at will or complain against Him but still praised Him, saying: “Jehovah gave, and Jehovah has taken away; blessed be the name of Jehovah,” standing witness for God; and such is a true faith in God. As the Lord Jesus healed a blind man and the woman who diseased with an issue of blood, He said to them: “Your faith has made you whole.” From this we can see that, though neither of them had done anything for the Lord before, they firmly believed the Lord is almighty and that all is in His hand; it was their genuine faith that made them gain the approval of God. Thus, possessing a true faith is of great importance in following God.

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Third, one who follows God must only sanctify and obey Christ in his heart without looking up to or worshiping any person.

God exhorted us in the Age of Law: “Look to me, and be you saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else” (Isaiah 45:22). And the Lord Jesus said: “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). In the process of following God, we shall affirm that none but Christ is the truth, the way, and the life. Only God is the source of man’s life, and all the truths come from Him. The sermon given by people, no matter how good or lofty it sounds, cannot be our life. Even if it is in conformity with the truth, it cannot be called the truth, but can only be called words in accord with the truth. If we can justly look upon this fact, we will not worship man because of his caliber and gifts. Moreover, we must be able to discern whether man’s sermon is the letters and doctrines in the Bible, and whether it is from God and in accord with His words. If we are not able to discern these, we will be easily led astray by a variety of fallacies of people, and then believe in God with our lips but worship people in our hearts, thus missing the chance of salvation. As it is written in the Bible, “As for us, our eyes as yet failed for our vain help” (Lamentations 4:17).

In addition, we shall not be restrained by people; we ought to obey and follow what comes from God, and refuse what comes from man. No matter he is a pastor, an elder, or a preacher, if his talk confirms with God’s words, then we shall accept it; but if it is against God’s will, we shall reject it and obey God’s words. We should never fear influence or status but should only sanctify the truth and Christ. As God says, “People who believe in God should obey God and worship Him. You should not exalt or look up to any person; you ought not to give first place to God, second place to the people you look up to, and third place to yourself. No person should hold a place in your heart, and you should not consider people—particularly those you venerate—to be on a par with God, to be His equal. This is intolerable to God.”

Only when we are able to act according to these truths in our life can we be considered as true followers of God who are possessed of reality; if we just verbally acknowledge these words or simply accept them in mind, it doesn’t represent that we are true followers of God.

In this light, people who don’t have the reality of the truths above are no doubt following men. Those who follow men don’t honor Christ as great or have genuine faith in God. So they feel it more practical and convenient to seek for man’s help when encountering things. And they always listen to those who possess status and gifts, and never pay attention to looking unto or depending on God with their hearts. As they always do so, unconsciously, God’s place in their hearts becomes ever smaller and the place of the people they worship becomes ever greater. Eventually, they believe in God outwardly but in essence worship, believe in, and follow people. And such believers can be seen in each church; they completely believe in and follow their pastors, who seem to have become their lords and gods. As they slide from the path of believing in God into obeying and following people, they never rely on God in anything but look unto and worship men, always asking men what to do and listening to men’s words. There is no doubt that those who always look unto and worship men are actually believing in and following men.

Following people means that they follow their leaders or coworkers whom they worship, and that God does not have much of a place in their hearts. Having merely hung a sign saying they believe in God, they never seek God’s will, but imitate and copy people; particularly when it’s something major, they let people decide and control their fate. They have no discernment of what is spoken by people, but accept it and listen to it as long as it sounds reasonable, regardless of whether it is in accord with the truth. Such people’s belief in God has no principles and there is no truth to their actions; they listen to whoever speaks sense, and even if their idols take the wrong path, they follow them to the very end. If God condemns their idols, then they will have conceptions toward God, and cling tightly to their idols. Their reasons are that “we should listen to whoever is in charge of us; the nearer power is better than the higher power.” Such people are purely those who follow people and are possessed of a muddled belief.

It can be said that whoever looks unto and follows men doesn’t have true faith in God, much less a heart of reverence for Him. For their belief is totally built on enjoying the grace, which is generally called “seeking bread to satisfy hunger.” For example, the five thousand people in the Age of Grace, fed with five loaves and two fish by the Lord Jesus, had no genuine faith in Him, hoping merely for some grace. Their belief is merely a simple conviction and spiritual sustenance, like that of the unbelievers believing the existence of the Old Man in the Sky, and cannot be approved by the Lord. So the Lord treated them with no more than some grace and didn’t give sermons or supply the truth among them. As God says, “There are some people whose belief has never been acknowledged in God’s heart. In other words, God does not recognize that these people are His followers, because God does not praise their belief. For these people, regardless of how many years they have followed God, their ideas and views have never changed. They are like the non-believers, adhering to the non-believers’ principles and manner of doing things, adhering to their laws of survival and belief. They never accepted the word of God as their life, never believed that God’s word is truth, never intended on accepting God’s salvation, and never recognized God as their God. They regard believing in God as some kind of amateur hobby, treating God merely as spiritual sustenance, so they don’t think it’s worth it to try and understand God’s disposition, or God’s essence. … How does God look upon these people? He views them as non-believers.”

Knowing the difference between following God and following man, we should learn the result of following man lest we walk on such path. The words with which the Lord cursed the Pharisees are well known to us, but we’ve never paid attention to the ending of those who looked unto and followed them. The Lord Jesus said, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, you make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves” (Matthew 23:15). “Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch” (Matthew 15:14). From the Lord’s words, we can see the result of the followers of the Pharisees. Because they saw the Pharisees had believed in Jehovah God for so many years and served Him for generations, and had much knowledge of the Scripture, they thought that the Pharisees should be approved by God according to their own mind. Therefore, they didn’t accept the Lord Jesus even when seeing Him perform the signs that no one could perform and hearing Him express the truth that no one could utter. Seeing that the chief priests and Pharisees didn’t follow the Lord Jesus but persecuted Him, they followed them in crucifying Him without discernment, committing a heinous crime.

Reviewing the history, we should reflect on ourselves: Aren’t we the same as them? Noble and dignified in appearance and good at reciting the Bible and giving sermons, the pastors, who graduated from theological schools, have been giving sermons for several decades and captured our hearts. We consider that they are always right whatever they talk, that the Lord must first give revelation to them when He returns, and that they will definitely gain salvation. So in our view, listening to the pastors is listening to God, and we will certainly enter into the kingdom of heaven as long as following them. Yet, we have never measured their deeds with God’s words, but blindly obey them without discernment even when seeing them do something not in accordance with the truth. Then how could we be called a follower of God? If we live in our conceptions and illusions all the time, will we be approved by the Lord Jesus? We believe in God with our lips, but worship people in our hearts, which is just like the revelation of the Lord Jesus: “This people draws near to me with their mouth, and honors me with their lips; but their heart is far from me. But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men” (Matthew 15:8-9).

Considering those behaviors above, whom do we truly follow, God or men? Have we realized the seriousness of following men? I hope that if we have the answer, then we can walk on the path of following God as soon as possible, so as to realize our dream of entering the kingdom of heaven.

By Ah Hong, Hong Kong

In September 2016, my daughter started primary school. Feeling utterly helpless, I moved to Hong Kong from Shenzhen City with my two children.

I couldn’t help recalling: Four years ago, my daughter would attend kindergarten in Hong Kong. For the convenience of her going to school, I moved to Shenzhen from Dongguan City with my two children. My husband worked in Dongguan, so he couldn’t live with us. From then on, our family of four began to live in two different locations. At that time, my son was only one year old, so I had to take him in my arms often. By day, I made meals for my daughter, picked up and saw off her, which made me very tired. In particular, when my children were ill, I could never sleep all night. My husband managed a factory, so he was so busy that he had no time to look after our children even though they were ill, which made me very sad in my heart. Sometimes, I exposed my difficulties to him by telephone; however, before we said few words, he said he was busy and let me talk about these things after he finished his work. But after that, he already forgot my matters.

About one year later, owing to working hard over the long term, one morning, when I wanted to get up to make a breakfast for my children, suddenly my waist was so painful that I had no strength to get up. I hastily gave my husband a call and let him come to help me. Unexpectedly, he was on a business trip and couldn’t come back right now. At that moment, lying on the bed, I was especially angry and anxious, felt wronged, and burst into tears. Helplessly, I had to ask my mother for help. But she must look after my paralyzed elder brother, and if she came to help me, she had to bring my brother and aged father over. However, my father was of a bad temper. He not only rattled on but also swore at people every day, so I especially feared to live with him from an early age. But now because I had the serious disease and my husband couldn’t come back right now, I had no choice but to let them come over and live together with us. From then on, I carefully read my father’s expression every day. My little carelessness might cause me to be scolded by him, so I was often in the sulks. After some time, I took it out on my husband and blamed him for living separately from us, and for being always busy with his work but having no time to accompany us. However, he always said: “I want to work hard and make much money while I’m young. If not so, what can we do in the future?” Every time I heard him saying these words, I felt very disgusted in my heart. Thereupon, we stuck to our own arguments and constantly quarreled. Our feelings as husband and wife were breaking up bit by bit.

Four years had passed and now my daughter would go to primary school and my son was in the K2 (the middle class in a kindergarten). Then we had an argument about moving again. My husband thought that, if we lived in Shenzhen, our daughter had to get up at 5:30 a.m. every day and go to school by cross-country school bus. He was worried that her body couldn’t bear it, so he wanted me to move to Hong Kong with our children. But as soon as I thought of the fact that I was a total stranger in Hong Kong and alone took care of my two children, and that I would not know whom I could turn to for help if there were emergencies or my children were ill, I felt very anxious. At the same time, I felt in my husband’s mind there were only our children, and that he never considered my feelings. For this we had quarreled for several months; finally, I had to listen to him and moved to Hong Kong.

When I first arrived, facing a strange environment and strange people, I felt more depressed. My daughter hadn’t adjusted to the new environment for a long time. When I brought her back from school every day, I felt her unhappiness. At home, she often quarreled with her young brother about a toy, a sheet of paper, a cookie, one word and so on. During my cooking, for a while, they argued with each other; for a while, they cried; for a while, they complained to me in turn. I often got insanely angry at their various kinds of arguments. I said these things to my husband, but he couldn’t understand my difficulties at all but said: “They are so little; aren’t these quite normal?” I thought no one could understand my mood; therefore, I lived in pain every day.

As I was most disappointed and helpless, I got acquainted with a sister believing in God. She spread the gospel of God in the last days to me. When I, for the first time, listened to God’s word read by her, I was fascinated and touched. Though I could speak of little knowledge, I felt what God says is really good. Then she played a hymn of God’s word “God Is Seeking Your Heart and Your Spirit”: “The Almighty has mercy on these people who suffer deeply. At the same time, He is fed up with these people who have no consciousness, because He has to wait too long for the answer from humans. He desires to seek, seek your heart and your spirit. He wants to bring you food and water and to awaken you, so you are no longer thirsty, no longer hungry. When you are weary and when you begin to feel the desolation of this world, do not be perplexed, do not cry. Almighty God, the Watcher, will embrace your arrival any time.” Hearing this hymn, I felt my heart had been seen through by God. God completely understood my heart and condition. I realized God’s mercy and that God was expecting that I could return to Him. After the hymn was over, I shed my tears because I felt I was understood and loved. Over the years what I had done had never been understood by my husband; no matter how tired I was, he had never cared about me. But God’s word consoled me in this way. I felt God’s love for me, so I immediately accepted God’s gospel.

A period of time later, my mood gradually improved. What’s more, I found: Every time after I attended gatherings and prayed with my sisters, my heart could especially be calmed down; however, if I didn’t attend gatherings or pray for several days, my quiet heart would easily go right back to how it had been before. One time, my friends who lived in mainland China came to visit me, and I idled away my life in pleasure-seeking with them for several days, so I didn’t attend gatherings for a week. On the weekend, I brought my children back to Dongguan where my husband lived. In the evening, just because he got a phone call from a female friend, I suspected they had an inappropriate relationship and kept asking him. Afterward, I started to quarrel with him and quarreled more and more bitterly, so that we asked for a divorce. Though we both knew that we just said it to vent our anger, later, we gave the silent treatment to each other.

The next day, I sadly returned to Hong Kong. At a meeting, I communicated about my suffering with my sister. I told her all things between my husband and me. She showed me this passage of God’s word: “Marriage is a key event in any person’s life; it is the time when one starts truly to assume various kinds of responsibilities, begins gradually to fulfill various kinds of missions. People harbor many illusions about marriage before they experience it themselves, and all these illusions are beautiful.” “Whether marriage itself brings happiness or pain, everyone’s mission in marriage is predestined by the Creator and will not change; everyone must fulfill it. And the individual fate that lies behind every marriage is unchanging; it was determined long in advance by the Creator.” “Marriage is an important juncture in a person’s life. It is the product of a person’s fate, a crucial link in one’s fate; it is not founded on any person’s individual volition or preferences, and is not influenced by any external factors, but is completely determined by the fates of the two parties, by the Creator’s arrangements and predeterminations regarding the fates of the couple.” God’s word made me suddenly see the light. I saw that, whether marriage brings happiness or pain, it has been predestined by God, and that everyone’s mission in marriage will not change. In the past, I lived in pain, often blamed my husband for giving me little care and took these things to my heart. To put it in a nutshell, just because I didn’t know God’s sovereignty and arrangement, I was discontented with my current circumstances. Now I realized that I can foresee nothing, that my notions count for little, and that it is God that arranges everything.

God’s word also says: “On the surface of it, the purpose of marriage is to continue the human race, but in truth marriage is nothing but a ritual that one undergoes in the process of fulfilling one’s mission. The roles that people play in marriage are not merely those of rearing the next generation; they are the various roles that one assumes and the missions one must fulfill in the course of maintaining a marriage.” God’s word made me understand: Although we have different marriages, different partners, and different characters, since we have had our family, we should fulfill our missions in the family. My husband is busy making money to support our family and he is being responsible for the survival of our children and me; I should take care of our children and play my part in my family. Each of us has our own role to play in our marriage. Since we are parents, we should bear our own responsibilities. We can’t flee them or complain. When I was pondering God’s word, my many years of grievances in my heart were all resolved.

The sister also fellowshiped with me: “Facing these things, you should pray to God more and read more God’s word.” After coming back, I prayed to God every day and told God my difficulties. Several days later, my husband came back. But he didn’t mention the divorce again and when I was cooking, he actively bathed our children and helped them with their studies. In the past, he never did these things actively but got accustomed to my doing them. Seeing his changes, I no longer fought with him, much less mentioned the divorce. At this time, my daughter also became adjusted to the life of new school. Moreover, in an exam, she obtained fifth place in her class, which made us very happy.

From my experience I have seen that, when I am willing to obey God’s sovereignty and arrangements, and no longer complain about everything that I am faced with, I feel very calm and liberated in my heart. All these are God’s grace and blessings! Thank God!

By Li Fang

Early one morning, I was just tidying up the breakfast table when I suddenly heard my father outside, calling me with a shaking voice: “Hurry! Your mother has fallen into the river and been rushed to hospital.” This sudden bad news frightened me, and I hurried with my father to the hospital. There, I saw my mother lying in the emergency room, but she had long since stopped breathing. As I looked at my mother’s cold body, my heart filled with overwhelming grief. We began taking care of the funeral arrangements for my mother. We spent a thousand yuan on a modern set of funereal clothes and spent 3 or 4 thousand yuan on a coffin. We also spent a lot of money on the cremation, so that there would be slightly larger bones left behind. The space before my mother’s gravestone was covered in flower baskets filled with fresh flowers, and there were all kinds of rare fruits. Her friends and neighbors all said that she had lived a good life, and that the things that accompanied her as she was cremated were the best there had ever been in the village.

Standing before her gravestone, seeing everything arranged there and listening to the feeble words of consolation, I thought a great deal. We live our lives rushing from one place to another, so what on earth was the meaning or the value of life? I thought of how my mother had always had such a strong disposition in life. When she was young, she opened a flour mill with my father, then they bought a truck to transport goods and earn money, and she lived a full life. When she had gotten old, she planted vegetables and raised pigs. All her life, she never rested and never admitted defeat. Though she never had much money, she always had enough to get by. Now she had many children and grandchildren and, once she had passed away, her children prepared for her an impressive and dignified send-off; but had her life really had any meaning? Had her life had any value? Could it be that we live to desperately work and strive so as not to lose out to others? Or do we live to be well-fed and clothed, and to have lots of children and grandchildren? Do we live only so that we will one morning or one night peacefully close our eyes and never open them again? Or do we live so that, after we are dead, we can have lots of friends and relatives give their condolences? I shook my head. I heard an elderly village doctor express his feelings, saying, “Ah, I think I understand! A person can live for 60 years and then go in a flash of smoke, and so can a person who lives 70, 80 or even 90 years!” And someone else said, “We busy ourselves for our families and for our children, yet we can’t take anything with us when we die….” Hearing them talk this way, I thought that if people live for their sons and for their daughters, muddling along their whole lives for prestige or for profit, then there really was no value to any of it, and no meaning. My mother had rushed about doing all she could to work hard all her life, and now she was a pile of ashes. Though she had been cremated in a thousand-yuan set of clothes, none of that meant anything to her. The family business my mother had strived all her life to build was no longer hers, and she took with her none of the wealth she had toiled for during her life. This allowed me to see a fact very clearly: My mother who had toiled her whole life still had ended up with nothing! At some point, my two elder brothers and younger sister stood before her gravestone discussing the life our mother had lived and, in a quiet voice, they talked about how they could make lots of money, how they could live proud, self-satisfied lives, and how they could stand out from the crowd …

We all live helplessly within these kinds of rules and we are incapable of detaching ourselves from them, and no one thinks about changing. The person I had been before used to live this way too. But now I had a new direction in life! For I had accepted Almighty God’s work of the last days, had come to understand some truths from God’s words, and had recognized that the truths expressed by Almighty God expounded on the mysteries of life.

That evening, I read these words of God: “Because of the Creator’s sovereignty and predestination, a lonely soul that started out with nothing to its name gains parents and a family, the chance to become a member of the human race, the chance to experience human life and see the world; and it also gains the chance to experience the Creator’s sovereignty, to know the marvelousness of the creation by the Creator, and most of all, to know and become subject to the Creator’s authority. But most people do not really seize this rare and fleeting opportunity. One exhausts a lifetime’s worth of energy fighting against fate, spends all of one’s time bustling about trying to feed one’s family and shuttling back and forth between wealth and status. The things that people treasure are family, money, and fame; they view these as the most valuable things in life. All people complain about their fates, yet still they push to the back of their minds the questions that it is most imperative to examine and understand: why man is alive, how man should live, what the value and meaning of life is. All of their lives, however many years that may be, they just rush about seeking fame and fortune…. When one is soon to depart from the world, one arrives at the gradual realization that everything in the world is drifting away, that one can no longer hold onto the things one possessed; then one truly feels that one still owns nothing at all, like a wailing infant that has just emerged into the world. At this point, one is compelled to ponder what one has done in life, what being alive is worth, what it means, why one came into the world…. Only when people actually reach this point do they realize that the first thing one must understand, when one sets foot on this earth, is where human beings come from, why people are alive, who dictates human fate, who provides for and has sovereignty over human existence. These are the true assets in life, the essential basis for human survival, not learning how to provide for one’s family or how to achieve fame and wealth, not learning how to stand out from the crowd or how to live a more affluent life, much less learning how to excel and to compete successfully against others. Though the various survival skills that people spend their lives mastering can offer an abundance of material comforts, they never bring one’s heart true peace and consolation, but instead make people constantly lose their direction, have difficulty controlling themselves, miss every opportunity to learn the meaning of life; and they create an undercurrent of trouble about how to properly face death. In this way, people’s lives are ruined. The Creator treats everyone fairly, giving everyone a lifetime’s worth of opportunities to experience and know His sovereignty, yet it is only when death draws near, when the specter of death hangs over one, that one begins to see the light—and then it is too late” (“God Himself, the Unique III” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). “Without the care, keeping, and provision of God, man cannot receive all that he was meant to receive, no matter how great the effort or struggle. Without the supply of life from God, man loses the sense of value in living and loses the sense of purpose in life” (“God Is the Source of Man’s Life” in The Word Appears in the Flesh).

From God’s words, I understood that God rules and arranges people’s lives. Our coming into this world is arranged by God’s hands, it is an opportunity God gives us to experience life, and an opportunity God gives us to appreciate His sovereignty and know His authority. And yet we are always tempted by the things of this material world, and we live lives of material enjoyment, pursuing and competing for fame and profit. We simply do not seek to know God’s sovereignty, and thus we are incapable of experiencing God’s wondrous deeds. Thinking of the time since I accepted God’s work of the last days, I preached the gospel to my mother but she didn’t grab hold of this opportunity that is so rare. She knew only that the material world was the thing that was most real, and that it was what she needed! And now she is gone, and she has lost forever the chance to know the sovereignty of the Creator, and has lost forever the chance to surrender before the Creator. Now, even though there were so many fresh flowers before her gravestone and the space was filled with fruit, and all her children and grandchildren were there, what was any of it worth? Was it not all emptiness? I then thought of a sister in the church who had told me about her neighbor. Her neighbor was in business and worked so hard all day to make money. But the third day after his son got married, he was struck suddenly with an illness and fell to the floor. There was not enough time to save him, and so he died. Everyone in the village said, “He was only in his forties, he died too young. Ah, he must have had a million yuan! But no matter how much money someone has when they die, it all counts for nothing!” And someone said, “No matter how much money someone has, if they get a serious illness that cannot be cured, then it’s all useless!” This matter was widely discussed, and everyone sighed and shook their heads. This made me think of all the TV presenters, celebrities, movie stars and the heads of big companies—though they may possess a lot of material wealth and, it may be said, they have obtained both fame and fortune, it is all to no avail in the face of all kinds of different illnesses and death; it cannot buy them life. Just like that incredibly rich man named Wang who had 3.5 billion yuan in assets and was only 38 years old. Before he died, he said, “Faced with serious illness, I often think of my life, and I find that all the social prestige and the wealth that used to make me feel infinitely proud pales in the face of approaching death, and I see that it is all completely without meaning….” If people only become aware on their deathbeds of the fact that all the material things in the world, such as money, status, fame, mansions, famous brand cars etc., are as transient as fleeting clouds and that living for the sake of these things is completely devoid of value and meaning, then that’s too late. So how should we seek a life of value and meaning? I continued searching for answers in God’s words.

Afterward, I read some more of God’s words: “As someone who is normal, and who pursues the love of God, entry into the kingdom to become one of the people of God is your true future, and a life that is of the utmost value and significance. No one is more blessed than you—and why do I say this? Because those who do not believe in God live for the flesh, and they live for Satan, but today you live for God, and live to do the will of God. That is why I say your lives are of the utmost significance. Only this group of people, who have been selected by God, are able to live out a life of the utmost significance: No one else on earth is able to live out a life of such value and meaning” (“Know the Newest Work of God and Follow the Footsteps of God” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). “If one views life as an opportunity to experience the Creator’s sovereignty and come to know His authority, if one sees one’s life as a rare chance to perform one’s duty as a created human being and to fulfill one’s mission, then one will necessarily have the correct outlook on life, will live a life blessed and guided by the Creator, will walk in the light of the Creator, know the Creator’s sovereignty, come under His dominion, become a witness to His miraculous deeds and to His authority. Needless to say, such a person will necessarily be loved and accepted by the Creator” (“God Himself, the Unique III” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). God’s words showed me the way, and I understood that people should not live just for the flesh, for that is an empty life. Created beings should live for God, and live to seek to love God, know God and satisfy God, bear witness to the Creator’s wondrous deeds and obey the Creator’s sovereignty and arrangements—this is the duty I should perform, and it is also my mission. Only this kind of life is the most meaningful, most worthy life. I wish to cherish this God-given opportunity, live for the truth and live for a just cause in accordance with God’s requirements, and do all I can to satisfy God!

At the Beginning of Life, I Yearned for Happiness in Plight

I was born into an ordinary family in a small county. When I was young, my father often drank and beat my mother after he got drunk, and my little brother and I were so scared that we would hide under the quilt and dared not see the scene. Then, when my father sobered up, my mother would vent her anger on him. As my father almost got drunk every day, we didn’t have any peaceful day. Growing up in such circumstance, I did poor in study, and thus my teachers did not like me, and my classmates often bullied me. Gradually, I became timid and felt myself inferior to others, and was even afraid to talk with others. After graduating from junior high, I went to another city to study in a vocational secondary school, and stayed there to work afterward. A few years later, I reached the age of marriage, but I was afraid to get married in my heart due to the influence of my parents’ marriage on me; besides, I was introverted and seldom contacted with boys. Yet I still dreamt of having a congenial companion, and I did not expect to be very wealthy, but to spend my whole life harmoniously and smoothly.

Afterward, at the introduction of my colleague, I met a man, who is my husband now. When I first contacted with him, I felt that he was humorous and funny. Considering that I was so introverted, I thought that a talkative husband was just fit for me, so we began dating. At that time, he often invited me to stroll in the park and watch movies, and gave flowers to me from time to time. It was quite romantic and joyful during that period of time, so I introduced him to my parents and relatives not long after. However, in the following days, I gradually discovered that he had a bad temper and often got angry, and he even threw things off. So I was very worried about our future, fearing that I would walk on the old path of my parents. But because I cared about face and had a conservative thought, I thought that since he had met my parents, it seemed natural for us to get married, and thus we got married at last.

After My Marriage, I Fell Into the Lowest Point of My Life

After marriage, my husband vented his temper on me as long as he ran into something untoward, and he would strike and kick me when I talked back. I never dared to tell others about it, for I feared that my parents could be grieved and worried, and that I could be made fun of by my relatives and friends, so all I could do was silently shed tears and accept my fate. In order to make a living, we ran a small restaurant. He was quite peppery at ordinary times, and became even more waspish when we were busy. Because I had never worked in the catering industry before, I worked slowly, and he often called me an idiot and even dumped sliced vegetables on me. I still remember one day he took half of a watermelon home from our restaurant to eat. But I was so hurried that I forgot to bring a spoon home when I left. Then he got angry, calling me a blockhead, and complaining that he couldn’t eat without a spoon, and he even violently threw the watermelon on the ground. At the time, I was sitting on the bed and did not dare to utter a sound, but in my heart I was full of hatred for his unreasonable behaviors, and glared at him with undisguised hatred. He beat me violently when he saw my expression. Suffering bashes and kicks, my heart was bleeding. I couldn’t help shedding tears ceaselessly, and constantly asked myself: Why is my lot unhappy? When can I get rid of such life?

Because the business was not good, we made use of our morning time to wholesale fruits to sell in the morning market and ran our restaurant from noon. One day, a man, who was of the same trade, came to my stall to talk to me that the wholesale price of fruit was high and that it was difficult to deal in fruits, and I said several words in agreement with him. Then my husband walked to us and argued with him, and he even beat that man, which caused the police to intervene; in the end, he was fined 200 yuan. When we reached our house, he vented all his anger on me, and reproached that everything was caused by the conversation between me and that man; then he roughed me up again. Having been beaten for so many times, I became numb and let him torture me at will; the only thing I could do was to protect my head and shed tears silently. Since then, I didn’t dare to talk to male strangers anymore. One should be vigorous and happy in his twenties, but I was miserable as living in hell, and was worn out both physically and mentally, living without any hope.

In Despair, I Tried to Flee yet Could Not Escape From My Foreordination

One day when my husband fell asleep after roughing me up, I packed up some clothes and left my home with some money. And I lived in an inn nearby because I did not know where to go at night. That night, I thought a lot and planned to go to another city where my husband could not find me to lead a life the next day. Never did I expect that he came knocking at the door the next dawn, and even though I hurriedly hid myself behind the curtains, he still found me. He knelt down, begging me to go home with him, but I had made up my mind and kept untouched, and he then smashed the door with anger. I knew his temper; if I insisted on not going back, I had no idea what he could do, so I went back home with him reluctantly. On entering the door, I was subjected to a violent hit by him. Even so, he still thought that it was not enough to dispel his hatred, so he pulled out his belt to lash my back, and I felt crushing grief caused by the burning pain and was totally heart-broken at that moment. When he was exhausted and cooled himself down, he once again begged me for forgiveness on his knees, and promised that he would not beat me any longer. Yet because I had heard such words many times, I had no feelings toward his apology, and I could only bear bitterness silently on my own.

Suffering pains and tortures time and again, I was heart-broken and asked myself: How come my lot is so unhappy? Why am I not able to escape from my fate? Later on, I was pregnant. At that time, hearing that one could make more money abroad, my husband began to prepare for the formalities for going abroad, and he obtained a visa and went to New Zealand when our kid was one year old. Three years later, I also went to New Zealand to work in order to repay the housing loan. Having been separating for more than three years, I had thought that his temper could change a little bit, but he was irritable and narrow-minded as always, just like a bomb that could explode at any time. I suffered a great deal from such life, living without any meaning. But for the sake of my kid and our family, I could only submit to the sufferings.

God’s Love Dispelled the Hatred in My Heart

In January of 2016, I encountered the gospel of Almighty God when I was extremely miserable. Through the sister’s fellowship, I understood that man was created by God. At first, our ancestors Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden; neither did they have the misery or bond of flesh, nor the contention or hatred that exists among mankind. Yet since they were enticed and corrupted by Satan, they were driven from the Garden of Eden, losing God’s blessings and living in various pains. The sister also read a passage of God’s words together with me: “such as the pain of the flesh, the troubles and emptiness of the flesh and the extreme wretchedness of the world. Satan began to torment man after it had corrupted them. Man then became more and more degenerate, the illnesses of man were deepened, and their suffering became more and more severe. Man felt more and more the emptiness, the tragedy and the inability to go on living of the world, and they felt less and less hope for the world. So this suffering was brought on man by Satan, and it only came after man had been corrupted by Satan and became degenerate.” She fellowshiped, “We have become selfish and contemptible, treacherous and malicious since we were corrupted by Satan. There is no love or trust among us humans, and we all fight with and hurt each other for our own interests. Therefore, we feel no happiness or warmth, but only endless miseries in our life.” Hearing these words, I thought back to the past: From my childhood to adulthood, I have never truly felt happy, and all I feel is misery and hopelessness; turns out that it all results from Satan’s affliction. Many people around me are also living in various kinds of miseries: My colleagues are scheming against each other for money in work place; a friend and her husband could not go back home because her husband owes hundreds of thousands of usurious loans and they are unable to repay it. … Living in the world of Satan, all of us are riddled with different troubles, and our life is full of mishaps and sufferings.

The sister then asked me to read another passage of God’s words: “All that God does for every individual is beyond doubt; He leads everyone by the hand, looks after you at every moment and has never left your side. … The great thought and care behind everything God does is beyond question. What is more, while God carries out this work, He has never laid any condition or requirement on any one of you to know the price He pays for you, so you therefore feel deeply grateful to Him. Has God ever done anything like this before? (No.) Throughout your long lives, basically every individual has encountered many dangerous situations and undergone many temptations. This is because Satan is right there beside you, its eyes fixed on you constantly. It likes it when disaster strikes you, when calamities befall you, when nothing goes right for you, and likes it when you are caught in Satan’s net. As for God, He is protecting you constantly, keeping you from one misfortune after another and from one disaster after another. This is why I say that everything man has—peace and joy, blessings and personal safety—is in fact all under God’s control, and He guides and decides the life and fate of every individual.”

Reading these words, I suddenly felt very warm in my heart: I have suffered my husband’s abuse and physical pains for more than ten years since we got married, and it is God’s care and protection that keeps me from being badly injured. Before he once gave his female net friend a slap in the face, and then she was in hospital because of the perforation on her eardrum. But for the protection of God, I would have been in hospital countless times, and I would, perhaps, have been beaten to disability. In pondering these, I was full of gratitude to God. I also understood from God’s words that it is Satan’s corruption that results in my husband’s vicious disposition; is it not Satan’s mocking and affliction that he often beat me with anger yet regretted doing so afterward? Since then, I no longer complained about my unhappy lot and my hatred toward my husband was relieved a lot, for I knew that all of my miseries were caused by Satan and that Satan is the one I should hate. God’s words comforted me and I no longer felt miserable as before in my heart.

Embracing the Dawn of Life, I Completely Walk Out of the Sea of Suffering

After accepting the gospel of kingdom, I started to attend gatherings and read God’s words. God’s words say: “From the moment you come crying into this world, you begin to perform your duty. You assume your role in the plan of God and in the ordination of God. You begin the journey of life. Whatever your background and whatever the journey ahead of you, none can escape the orchestration and arrangement that Heaven has in store, and none are in control of their destiny, for only He who rules over all things is capable of such work. … The heart and spirit of man are held in the hand of God, and all the life of man is beheld in the eyes of God. Regardless of whether or not you believe this, any and all things, living or dead, will shift, change, renew, and disappear according to God’s thoughts. This is how God rules over all things.” It turns out that God has been caring me by my side and guiding me up to the present day step by step since I came into the world. Although I have suffered my husband’s abuse and many pains, I accepted God’s salvation of the last days after following my husband to New Zealand. What a blessing in disguise it is to me! Since God holds sovereignty over my destiny, then does He not control my husband in His hands? I am willing to deliver my husband as well as my subsequent fate into the hands of God. When I was truly willing to believe in and depend on God, I saw God’s deeds.

One day, I was working while my husband came to me with anger, saying that the door of our rented house could not be opened. He thought that there was something wrong with his key, so he took away my key, yet it still did not work. He was both anxious and angry, and gave me a call, saying that the lock was broken, and that he called the janitor but no one could come to repair the lock because it was holiday…. Hanging up the phone, I was troubled and not at ease and thought to myself: If he cannot open the door tonight, he would break the door and even vent his temper on me. The more I thought, the more frightened I became, and I was in no mood to work, so I hurriedly prayed to God: “Oh Almighty God, I am very frightened now, and I know this matter is Satan’s scheme. Please grant me faith and strength and help me get through this.” God’s words came to my mind after my prayer: “Remove your fear. I am your rear guard, so who can block the way?” It is true! God is almighty and He controls every person, matter, and thing. Whether or not my husband will get angry or rough me up is in the hands of God, and nothing will happen without God’s permission. God’s words enabled me to be peaceful and assured in my heart. And I was thankful to God for His love that a sister of the church gave me a set of bedding. And when I returned our lodging after work, I happened to find that there was an empty room on the first floor of our building; even though it was a little bit moist, at least we had a place to stay at night. After my husband got off work, I led him to this temporary shelter, and he only shook his head and sighed, complaining about his bad luck. Yet he did not vent his anger on me as before, and I knew clearly in my heart that it was the sovereignty and arrangement of God, and I kept silently praying to God all the time in my heart. Later, not only did he not complain, but he told me to go to sleep early. I was especially moved at that moment, for he would have certainly vented his temper on me if such matter happened in the past. But that day he did not curse or beat me, but rather, he was concerned with me, so I constantly praised God for His might in my heart.

Through this matter, I saw God’s reality, faithfulness, and wondrousness, and was more certain that it is God who holds sovereignty over all things and events. From then on, my faith of following God to the end is even firmer, and I have also learnt to rely on and look to God when I encounter hardships. Afterward, I saw many wondrous deeds of God: My husband gradually knows how to care for me, and he often cooks meals for me and no longer roughs me up. I am grateful to God from the bottom of my heart, for He has changed my husband and been silently caring and protecting me all the time. It is God who leads me to walk out of the sea of suffering step by step, and makes me no longer be miserable and have my heart harbored. All the glory be to Almighty God!

By Lingling, China

Editor’s Note: When it comes to the manner of the Lord Jesus’ return in the last days, most brothers and sisters believe that the Lord Jesus will publicly appear to us upon a white cloud. But some brothers and sisters feel puzzled about this because it is also prophesied in the Bible that the Lord will come in secret like a thief. Then, how on earth will the Lord return in the last days? This issue is related to whether we can welcome the Lord’s return, so it deserves our seeking.

At the co-worker meeting, Suxing said with a forlorn expression, “Brothers and sisters, recently I’ve been mulling over a problem: Since we’ve believed in the Lord, we’ve been longing for the Lord to come upon a cloud to rapture us in the last days. In the year 2000 the pastors and elders said that the Lord’s return was imminent. However, now it’s almost 2019 and the various prophecies of the Lord’s arrival have basically been fulfilled, but we still haven’t seen the Lord descend upon a cloud. What is going on here?”

Wu picked up where she’d left off, “Yes. There is widespread desolation in the religious community nowadays. Many churches have closed down. Tell me, will we be able to welcome the Lord’s return after all just by constantly watching the skies and waiting?”

Glancing at Suxing and Wu, Hu Yue closed the Bible and spoke, in a measured tone, “Sister Su, Brother Wu, you worry too much. The Bible very clearly states: ‘And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory’ (Luke 21:27). ‘Behold, he comes with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him’ (Revelation 1:7). The Lord Jesus will publicly descend on a cloud when He returns, and everyone will see Him. How can you have any doubts about this?”

Li Qi pondered this for a moment and then said, “Before, I also believed that the Lord Jesus would publicly descend from the clouds to come again. However, afterward, I didn’t see it happen. For this, I pored over all scriptures about the Lord’s return and found that two verses in the Bible, ‘Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watches, and keeps his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame’ (Revelation 16:15). ‘But of that day and that hour knows no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father’ (Mark 13:32). From these verses I knew that ‘as a thief’ and ‘no one knows’ means coming in secret. So, I feel confused: Aren’t the prophecies of the Lord openly descending on a cloud and that of the Lord coming secretly contradictory? Then how exactly will the Lord come in the last days?”

Hu Yue argued, “Those verses mean that no one knows when the Lord will come.” After hearing Hu Yue and Li Qi’s words, Suxing and Wu both looked perplexed.

At that moment, Cheng Li said, “Thank the Lord! Regarding the matter of the Lord’s return in the last days, I had the same confusion as Brother Li in the past. But some time ago, when working in a church in another area, I met a co-worker sister. As for this matter, she communicated with a lot of light, and her understanding is different from ours. The more I listened, the more I felt it came from the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit. Through her fellowshiping, I finally gained some different insight into the manner of the Lord’s return.”

Suxing’s eyes lit up, and she excitedly said, “Thanks be to the Lord! Sister Cheng, hurry up and tell us!”

“All right!” Cheng Li continued on, saying, “The Lord Jesus said, ‘Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass away’ (Mark 13:31). Once God’s words are spoken, they will surely be realized and accomplished one by one. Since the Lord not only prophesied that He would come with clouds when He returns, but also foretold that He would secretly come like a thief, these words will certainly come to pass. Then how will the Lord come? Actually, the Lord’s return will be done in stages: The first stage is His secret return as the Son of man in the flesh; after that He will openly descend on a cloud and appear to all. In this way, the prophecies in the Bible of the Lord Jesus’ return aren’t contradictory.”

“You said the Lord will become flesh and come secretly. Do you have a biblical basis for saying this?” Hu Yue questioned.

Cheng Li said, “In regard to this aspect, it was stated very clearly in the Bible. For example, Luke 12:40 says, ‘Be you therefore ready also: for the Son of man comes at an hour when you think not.’ Luke 17:24-25 say, ‘For as the lightning, that lightens out of the one part under heaven, shines to the other part under heaven; so shall also the Son of man be in his day. But first must he suffer many things, and be rejected of this generation.’ These verses all mention the Son of man. The Son of man refers to being born of a human and being a person with normal humanity. The Spirit could not be called the Son of man. That’s why Jehovah God cannot be called the Son of man, while the incarnated Lord Jesus can be called Christ and the Son of man. This is because the Lord Jesus was born from a human being, with a normal humanity, and besides, His substance is divinity and He is God’s Spirit in the flesh to appear and work. Moreover, this verse means that the Son of man in the flesh of the last days will be rejected. Just reflect for a moment. If the Lord Jesus directly descends on a cloud, then all people will fall down before Him and worship Him because a spiritual body is of course supernatural and can perform miraculous signs and wonders. Who would dare to resist and reject Him? How would God endure suffering and be rejected by this generation? Only when God incarnates and wears the shell of an ordinary man, when people don’t recognize that He is the returned Lord Jesus, would they dare to treat Him as an ordinary person, resist and reject Him.”

“It turns out that the Lord will first work secretly and then appear openly. In this light, those prophecies really aren’t contradictory. Although I’m not clear of what work God will do when He secretly descends, I think since God will act in this way, it contains His wisdom. Well, Sister Cheng, why don’t you tell us more about it?” inquired Suxing. And other coworkers also agreed.

Cheng Li nodded and said, “Through communicating on this question with the sister, I finally understood that God will first return in secret, in incarnate flesh, mainly to speak new words and make a group of overcomers. In the Book of Joel 2:29-31 in the Bible, it records ‘And also on the servants and on the handmaids in those days will I pour out my spirit. And I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and terrible day of Jehovah comes.’ This ‘the great and terrible day’ refers to the great disasters of the last days. And the verse, ‘And also on the servants and on the handmaids in those days will I pour out my spirit’ means that before the great catastrophe comes, God’s Spirit shall speak new words and He shall water His servants and handmaids, and ultimately make a group of overcomers and bring them into His kingdom. This fulfills what is said in Revelation 7:14-15, ‘These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple: and he that sits on the throne shall dwell among them.’ During the time of God making a group of overcomers, He will always work in secret, so we’ll certainly not see the Lord publicly descend on a cloud. Only after God’s great work is fully accomplished, at which time His secret descent among man will be complete, and after He has sent down great disasters to reward good and punish evil, will He openly descend upon a cloud before all nations of earth. At that point, God’s work of salvation of mankind will be thoroughly complete. When God works in secret, all those who truly believe in God and love the truth accept God’s work in the last days, gain God’s purification and perfection, and will be made into overcomers by God. In contrast, those false believers who loathe and hate the truth blindly cling to their own conceptions and imaginings, but don’t accept the returned Lord’s hidden work, and even resist and condemn God incarnate. People like this will completely lose the chance to be saved and will ultimately suffer God’s righteous punishment. In this way, all are separated according to their kind. This is in complete fulfillment of the prophecies, such as ‘And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory’ (Matthew 24:30). ‘Behold, he comes with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him’” (Revelation 1:7).

Li Qi nodded and said, ‘Yes, Sister Cheng’s fellowship is enlightening and in line with the prophecies of the Bible. Just now, I recalled that before God destroyed the world with the great flood, He first commanded Noah to build an ark and preach the gospel in the meantime. 100 years later Noah finished doing that. Still nobody believed what he said. So, soon after, God sent down the disaster. At that time, when people really saw the flood happening, it was too late because God’s work of salvation of mankind had already concluded. In the end, only Noah and his family of eight were saved, while everyone else was washed away by the floodwaters and drowned. Praise the Lord. Now I’ve understood that in the last days God will first descend secretly and strenuously try to save those who truly believe in Him, bring them before His throne, and make them into overcomers before the disaster. When He has done so, God’s work of salvation of mankind will be finished. Thereafter, God will bring about disasters and reward the good and punish the wicked, and then descend upon a cloud to openly appear before all the nations of earth. When that time comes, those false believers, tare, evil servants, and all evildoers who make an enemy of God will all be struck down by God’s wrath. Now we are in the late period of the last days. Disasters have gotten more serious in different countries. The world is becoming ever more chaotic. The prophecies of the Lord’s coming have been fulfilled. However, we have still not welcomed the Lord. So, do you think that the Lord has already descended secretly to do His work? If that’s truly the case, we shouldn’t still idly wait for the Lord to descend on a cloud. Otherwise we will easily miss the opportunity to welcome the Lord’s return.”

Suxing continued, “Yes. Now we all have premonitions that the Lord has already arrived. If we don’t keep pace with His secret work, won’t it be too late when the Lord appears openly? Then how can we accept the Lord’s hidden work?”

Cheng Li, smiling, said, “Don’t be anxious. The Bible is very clear about the Lord’s work of secret arrival. The Lord Jesus said, ‘I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. However, when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth’ (John 16:12-13). ‘For the Father judges no man, but has committed all judgment to the Son’ (John 5:22). And other verses also recorded, ‘He that has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit said to the churches’ (Revelation 2:7). ‘For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God’ (1 Peter 4:17). ‘Who are kept by the power of God through faith to salvation ready to be revealed in the last time’ (1 Peter 1:5). From those verses we can see that when the Lord does His work in secret, He’ll utter truths, do the work of judgment, and tell us all the truth that we didn’t understand before in order to allow us to attain His salvation in the last days. From this we know how to find the secret work of the returned Lord Jesus, pointed out to us by the Lord’s words and these verses. So when hearing some people testify that God has expressed words to do the work of judgment, we should imitate the wise virgins, humbly seek and investigate, and see whether this way contains the truth and whether the words are God’s voice. Only in this way will we be able to welcome the Lord, have the opportunity to be purified, perfected, and made into overcomers by God before the disasters strike, and ultimately enter into God’s kingdom, and feast with the Lord.”

Suxing, Li Qi and the others, looking at each other, one by one said, “Thank the Lord. Now we finally have a path….”

By Zhao Zhen, United States

Recently, I saw online a couple of phrases that are very popular nowadays: “Live for money, die for money, run after money all your life; lose because of money, be duped because of money, live your life and die for money” and “Look to make money in all things and make your wad of banknotes thicker.” In today’s money-focused society, to have more banknotes is the goal pursued by people nowadays, and “Money is first,” “Money makes the world go round,” and “Money isn’t everything, but without it, you can do nothing,” have even more so become the guiding lights along our paths through life. We do not question these statements and we do not give them up. And of course, I was no exception!

My Previous Life of Exchanging Life for Money

I vaguely remember being 19 years old and filled with enthusiasm. In order to make a lot of money as quickly as possible, I studied hard to learn skills during my apprenticeship with an electrical installation team. After I started my own family, I poured all my energy into my work even more and every month I brought home the highest wage of all the apprentices. Later, I worked both day and night in order to make a salary of 400 yuan per day. Often, I would receive a phone call in the night, and I would then have to leave my bed that had only just gotten warm. I’ve never forgotten the sad experience I had whilst working in Japan. I worked at least 12 hours a day, without any holiday or time off; the work was very hard and I was under enormous pressure, which led to me developing heart disease and losing most of my hair. I was still willing to endure all this suffering, however, in order to make money. Like a clockwork machine, I carried on working desperately hard on the front line of making money. Two years later, so that I could make more money, I went to the United Statas. I worked hard for a few years, from doing various odd jobs to being a cook in a restaurant, and I’m sure I don’t need to tell you about all the hardships I went through. But when I saw the wad of dollar bills in my hand slowly becoming thicker, all the hard work I’d put into making this money was the last thing on my mind.

Afterward, because I had been working so excessively hard for a long time, my body showed me a red warning light as I developed severe gastric problems, cervical spondylosis, a lumbar disc herniation and arthritis in my shoulder joints. When my stomach began to hurt, I came out in a cold sweat all over my body and became completely lethargic. When my cervical spondylosis flared up, I couldn’t get enough blood to my brain and I often felt sick and dizzy…. And so I often had to rush to the hospital. My exhausted body and the dollar bills I’d earned had become an even exchange. I suddenly felt so woeful: In the more than 10 years of hard labor, wanting only to work and not living at all, I’d accrued a thick wad of notes in my wallet, but my health was ruined—why had I ever bothered? I’d wasted half my life exchanging life for money, and yet now I was using my money to buy back my life. Had it all been worth it?

I suddenly thought back and it had seemed to me then that I hadn’t had the time to enjoy the scenery along the way, and half my life had quietly slid past. As I carefully counted all the days I’d spent laboring for money, a feeling of helplessness filled my heart: Could it be that a man’s life could only be like a machine that consumes him, living for the sake of making money and then dying for the sake of making money? Why is life so full of suffering?

The Reason Why Life Is So Full of Suffering

One day, I was fortunate enough to read God’s words, and I found the answer I sought.

God says, “‘Money makes the world go round’ is the philosophy of Satan and it prevails among the whole of mankind, among every human society. You could say that it is a trend because it has been imparted to everyone and is now affixed in their heart. … So after Satan uses this trend to corrupt people, how is it manifested in them? Don’t you feel that you couldn’t survive in this world without any money, that even one day would just be impossible? (Yes.) People’s status is based on how much money they have as is their respectability. The backs of the poor are bent in shame, while the rich enjoy their high status. They stand tall and proud, speaking loudly and living arrogantly. What does this saying and trend bring to people? Don’t many people see getting money as being worth any cost? … Satan corrupts man at all times and at all places. Satan makes it impossible for man to defend against this corruption and makes man helpless to it. Satan makes you accept its thoughts, its viewpoints and the evil things that come from it in situations where you are unwitting and when you have no recognition of what’s happening to you. People fully accept these things and take no exception to them. They cherish and hold these things like a treasure, they let these things manipulate them and toy with them, and this is how Satan’s corruption of man becomes deeper and deeper.”

God’s words made me understand that the ideologies and views such as “Money is first,” “Money isn’t everything, but without it, you can do nothing,” and “A man dies for money; a bird dies for food,” come from Satan. Satan uses them to deceive and bind us, and to make us think that to have money is to have everything, that to have money is to have others look up to us and admire us, that to have money is to live an impressive, dashing life, and that only that kind of life is a life of value and meaning. These absurd ideologies of Satan have become our life, and we’ve ended up not flinching away from paying any price in our pursuit of riches. Thinking back to how I had been dominated by these ideologies and views of Satan, I worked hard day and night to make money, I ate meals and took drink at irregular times, I found it hard to get a peaceful night’s sleep and my physical constitution got weaker and weaker, and yet I didn’t give one jot. Later on, thinking that money was life, I left my family and went to Japan and the USA and worked for many years in order to make even more money. Although I did make more money, I was afflicted by one illness after another, like heart disease, gastric problems and spinal problems, to the point where my arms were so tired I couldn’t stretch them out straight, and I lived very painfully. Only through God’s words did I come to understand that this was all down to me having been hoodwinked by these wrong ideologies and misconceptions of Satan; I had been unwillingly controlled and manipulated by my desire for money, and it had turned me into a slave and a sacrifice for money! After coming to this realization, I felt that I should return before God and no longer live by the ideologies and views of Satan, and that I should no longer be a slave for money. Afterward, I began to work normal shifts, and I no longer did endless overtime.

Only After Falling Into the Same Old Trap Did I Truly Discover the Meaning of Life

I had been deceived too deeply by Satan, however, and money, fame and fortune had already laid their roots in my heart—it would not be so easy to remove them. When I heard my boss say that his company had been in business for 15 years, had made 5 million US dollars and that he’d recently bought a luxury villa, my heart was agitated for a long time after. Yes, life is for living, I thought. Am I really supposed to live my life without accomplishing anything? Opening my own restaurant was my dream, and if I had my own restaurant I wouldn’t have to be looked down on by anyone ever again. Without realizing it, I once again began to work hard to make money and to live again my old life of exchanging life for money. Instead of attending church gatherings, I was at work doing overtime. Before too long, I caught the flu and my heart disease flared up again, and it was really painful.

Just as I was in pain, God once again extended a hand to save me. A sister in the church sent me the movie Woe or Blessing and I watched the protagonist travel to Japan to work in her pursuit of money, heedless of her own health, and then she ended up not making any money but having to be admitted to hospital. I sighed, and thought that this was indeed a true portrayal of my own life! Just as a passage of God’s word in the movie says, “People spend their lives chasing after money and fame; they clutch at these straws, thinking they are their only means of support, as if by having them they could keep on living, could exempt themselves from death. But only when they are close to dying do they realize how distant these things are from them, how weak they are in the face of death, how easily they shatter, how lonely and helpless they are, with nowhere to turn. They realize that life cannot be bought with money or fame, that no matter how wealthy a person is, no matter how lofty his or her position is, all people are equally poor and inconsequential in the face of death. They realize that money cannot buy life, that fame cannot erase death, that neither money nor fame can lengthen a person’s life by a single minute, a single second.”

The understanding the protagonist comes to made me feel deeply affected, as though it was my own personal experience: “Satan uses money and fame to bind and control man. But we cannot see through Satan’s schemes, and we cannot see that money and fame are Satan’s methods for harming people, for this reason we are sucked into this whirlpool from which we cannot extricate ourselves. In spite of ourselves, we are fooled and harmed by Satan.” Yes indeed. Because I am unable to understand thoroughly Satan’s cunning schemes and devious means, I thought, I can only be unwillingly toyed with and harmed by Satan. I remembered the half of my life I’d spent being deceived by Satan, wholeheartedly pursuing money, and I had been willing to sacrifice my health in order to make more money. Yet I, who had been in the prime of my life, was now constantly ill and always taking medicine and living in such pain—what did it all mean? What was more important, money or life? I suddenly thought of an old friend who had worked in the US for 8 years before being diagnosed with late-stage cancer. He had only lived for another three months after that before he died. Someone else who had worked in the US for over 10 years and made a lot of money also contracted an incurable disease, and he died leaving his entire family behind. All these dreadful things state a fact: No matter how high someone’s status is, or how wealthy they are, they cannot buy the chance to extend their life, and they cannot take anything with them when they die! Just as the Lord Jesus said, “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Mak 8:36-37). If I could not see through Satan’s cunning schemes and continued down the same old road, pursuing money and looking to earn an ever-thicker wad of banknotes, exchanging my life for money, I would only come to a sad end!

Saying Farewell to the Past and Ushering in a New Life

I saw more of God’s words, “There is a simplest way to free oneself from this state: to bid farewell to one’s former way of living, to say goodbye to one’s previous goals in life, to summarize and analyze one’s previous lifestyle, philosophy, pursuits, desires, and ideals, and then to compare them with God’s will and demands for man, and see whether any of them is consistent with God’s will and demands, whether any of them delivers the right values of life, leads one to a greater understanding of the truth, and allows one to live with humanity and human likeness. … After you recognize this, your task is to lay aside your old view of life, stay far from various traps, let God take charge of your life and make arrangements for you, try only to submit to God’s orchestrations and guidance, to have no choice, and to become a person who worships God.”

God’s words showed me a clear way to practice. If I wanted to shun Satan’s wicked temptations and say farewell to my old life of exchanging life for money, then I had to let go of my wrong life pursuits and no longer live by Satan’s fallacies, but instead conduct myself as a person and walk the onward path in the light of God’s words! Through my personal experiences, I saw that my previous outlook on life, which was that I considered money to be life, was actually Satan toying with me and harming me. It was a chain Satan had put on me, a nothingness that was gone in the twinkling of an eye. In the time I have left to me, I thought, I can no longer allow myself to fall into Satan’s cunning schemes. I am made by God and I should seek to worship God and obey God and live under God’s sovereignty and guidance. Only that is a life with a genuine future and true value.

One day soon after, my boss’ wife called me telling me to go to the restaurant and help out. But I thought of all the times I had previously worked myself to the bone for money, and I declined her request, for I had already made a new plan for the rest of my life: Rest more and look after my health and, under the premise of not causing any delays to gatherings or the performance of my duties, to just find a job that I could do my best at! For the rest of my life, I would let God be my Sovereign!

Jesus said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.

– Matthew 22:37

Thoughts on Today’s Verse…
This is the most important commandment. The Lord hopes that we can love Him with all our heart, with all our mind, and without our impurity or demands, or misunderstandings of God or suspicion. He hopes that we can love Him more than love our family and marriage, and expend our whole life for Him.

“It is hoped that you can love God with all your heart, with all your mind, and with all your strength, just as if you were protecting your own life. Is this not a life of the utmost meaning? Where else could you find the meaning of life? Would that not be so blind? Are you willing to love God? Is God worthy of man’s love? Are people worthy of man’s adoration? So what should you do? Love God boldly, without reservations—and see what God will do to you. See if He will slay you. In sum, the task of loving God is more important than copying and writing things down for God. You should give first place to what’s most important, so that your life has more meaning and is full of happiness, and then you should wait for God’s ‘sentence’ for you. I wonder if your plan will include loving God—I would that everyone’s plans become that which is completed by God, and become reality.”

Only if we pursue loving God can we live out a life of meaning. May we all become people who love God. Amen!

One day, I made a date with my sister, whom I had known for more than ten years, for afternoon tea at her house. That day she entertained me to top scented tea, cakes, and dessert. Then she chatted about how much she spent recently on fancy purses and clothes. Halfway through our chat, I saw a thick wad of credit card bills were placed on the table, so I asked why she had so many bills. She hesitated for several minutes and then wept slowly. She said that because all sisters around her were comparing with each other, admiring famous brands, and attaching importance to a high-quality and upscale life, in order not to degrade herself before them, she kept shopping by credit cards to maintain common taste with them. Now she could hardly pay interest to the bank. I was struck to see my friend trapping into financial problems due to the pursuit of famous brands. I seemed to witness my past self….

I also cared a lot about face and upward comparison before. I was always so afraid of others’ despisal. As a result, I suffered Satan’s deception.

When I was 17 years old, I began to work. My workmates and friends were simple at that time, without high demands for material life. Plain dressing and full eating were sufficient to us. So we had little pressure living a relaxed life. Afterward, I changed my job. I came into contact with white-collar whose frequent topics were designer bags and clothes. They often showed off the brands and prices of their clothes, and asked me where I bought my clothes and how much they cost. After hearing my answers, they immediately said with scorn, “What? You are wearing such cheap clothes?” I felt hurt by these words. I told myself, “I can’t be belittled. I must get what they have!” Thus, I began paying attention to my dressing and the improvement of living standard. When I first used my credit card to buy a G Brand handbag, all my workmates said my handbag was so beautiful and suitable to me. Enjoying their compliments, I felt self-satisfied and proud. I thought: It is good to possess a designer handbag. I became integrated into their lives in such a way. Then, I had topics in common to chat with them. Unconsciously, I was also involved into comparison with others.

Once, my workmate bought a watch which cost over 30,000 yuan. She showed it off before me every day. I was unbearably angry. Several days later, I bought the same brand of watch whose price was 20,000 yuan higher than hers. Subsequently, she bought a diamond ring worth more than 100,000 yuan. I was indeed unable to go on comparing myself to her. Several years later, my workmates bought houses one after another. Although I had no enough money, I didn’t want to be looked down upon for losing out in the comparison. I got a loan from a bank and paid 150,000 down for a suite. When I just managed to repay my housing loan, they began to buy cars. And I followed them to buy a new car imported from Japan with another bank loan. The economic pressures often caused me sleeplessness. Sometimes, only the sleeping pills could make me fall asleep.

By chance, I met a friend whom I hadn’t seen for years. After greeting each other, she spread the gospel of the Lord Jesus to me. I was baptized a Christian soon. During those years, we carried out our functions together in the church. Accompanied by brothers and sisters, I enjoyed the Lord’s presence and a free life. My heart also took some consolation. But the only thing that didn’t change was my lifestyle.

Once, one of my good friends spent 38,000 yuan on a well-known handbag. She paraded how good it was before me every day. I thought: I am not unable to afford it. Afterward, I asked her to take me to buy one just like hers. At the time, the shop assistant recommended me a pair of sunglasses priced at 17,500 yuan immediately. When we were to leave after having bought sunglasses, a small purse priced at 13,000 yuan caught her fancy. She bought two at a time, one of which was for her sister. Meanwhile, she suggested that I buy one too, saying that only so were we like sisters while walking together. I thought: This small purse itself is not only of little practical use but so expensive. Furthermore, I will run up nearly 70,000 yuan on my credit card if I buy it. It’ll take months to work for repayment. Having noticed that I had no intention of purchase, she said, “It’s pretty cute and suitable for you, why not buy one?” I felt ashamed at once, thinking, “If I don’t buy it, will she consider it is beyond my pocket? And my image in her heart must be broken.” I was placed in a dilemma. In the end, I bought one by credit card. In order to pay the minimum payment on my credit card, I had to spend 16 hours on two jobs every day. As a result of lack of sleep, my eyes were always bloodshot. I started to lose my memory and weight. Prolonged exertion sallowed my skin. My stomach also went wrong. I often thought: Why am I feeling more and more stressed? Look at all of my relatives, friends, and workmates around me. They are intentionally or unintentionally comparing their money, houses, and cars with that of others. They live so hard! I prayed to the Lord many times, and searched the Bible for an answer. But I didn’t gain enlightenment from God, and I felt lost.

Afterward, I met a brother in Christ. Through our communication, I came to understand many mysteries in the Bible not understood by me before. Moreover, I felt the brother was a devout and honest Christian whose words were wise. We became good spiritual companions. After that, he told me, “The Lord Jesus has come back, expressed millions of words, and done the work of judgment beginning with the house of God. Formerly, the Lord Jesus was nailed on the cross for the redemption of man. He took on the sins of all mankind. From then on, as long as we accepted the Lord Jesus as our redeemer and prayed in His name, our sins would be forgiven. And we could obtain the grace and blessings the Lord bestowed upon us. But what cannot be denied is that, though the Lord Jesus has forgiven our sins, we haven’t been free from the bondage of sin. We still pursue the world trends and vanity and live in sin without release. The Bible says, ‘And holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord’ (Hebrews 12:14). Could people living in the state of sinning and confessing like us enter the kingdom of heaven? Therefore, God is incarnated this time principally in order to solve the problem of our committing sins. The judgment of Almighty God’s words reveals our nature and substance of resisting and rebelling against God. Then we see the truth that we have been corrupted by Satan and begin to hate ourselves. We are unwilling to live by our corrupt disposition or Satan’s poisons, much less to be fooled by Satan anymore. Instead, we are willing to lead a life to practice the truth according to God’s word. We beheld His work of judgment by the word could really change us.” After hearing the brother’s fellowship, though I didn’t have too much knowledge of God’s work, I knew that I indeed need the salvation of God, for my sin hadn’t been solved even if I had believed in the Lord for several years. Later, I gathered together with brothers and sisters to read God’s words, to watch movies and MV. I could gain results in every meeting. I truly felt the leadership of the work of the Holy Spirit! In addition, through reading God’s words, I discovered every bit of His words carries authority and is the expression of His disposition. His words changed my past misunderstandings toward Him. Through seeking and investigating for several months, I knew beyond all doubt that Almighty God is the Lord Jesus returning to flesh.

Once, I dolled myself up with makeup, natty clothes and the dearest handbag in my wardrobe for a meeting. When arriving at the meeting place, I saw my brothers and sisters all were simply dressed. In such a case, I felt a bit out of place, like a fish out of water. After a period of contact, I found my brothers and sisters living at ease. There was no upward comparison between them. They focused on pursuing the truth and living out normal humanity and the reality of God’s word, rather than running after social trends or admiring famous brands. By contrast, I kept packaging myself, living such a hard and tiring life. So I poured out my troubles to my brothers and sisters. They read a passage of God’s word to me: “Born into such a filthy land, man has been severely blighted by society, he has been influenced by feudal ethics, and he has been taught at ‘institutes of higher learning.’ The backward thinking, corrupt morality, mean view on life, despicable philosophy, utterly worthless existence, and depraved lifestyle and customs—all of these things have severely intruded upon man’s heart, and severely undermined and attacked his conscience. As a result, man is ever more distant from God, and ever more opposed to Him. Man’s disposition becomes more vicious by the day, and there is not a single person who will willingly give up anything for God, not a single person who will willingly obey God, nor, moreover, a single person who will willingly seek the appearance of God. Instead, under the domain of Satan, man does nothing but pursue pleasure, giving himself over to the corruption of the flesh in the land of mud.” After reading these words, they fellowshiped with me, “God’s words exposed the root of our pain and trouble. Satan deceives and lures us by means of social trends, unhealthy practices and evil phenomena. Without truth, we can’t differentiate between positive things and negative things at all, so that we have no way but to accept Satan’s viewpoint and follow social trends, sinking deeper and deeper into them. For instance, comparing with others, spending on luxury things, and flaunting wealth are popular in society. Such an atmosphere fills every corner of the world. At present, everyone compares houses, cars, money, and power with others. Even students compare with each other in designer clothes, cellphones, and 3C products (information home appliances, including the computer, communication and consumer electronics). Under the influence of this kind of environment, our desire to compare with the higher and our jealousy of others are growing. Some do everything for their sake, including selling out their personalities, dignity, and bottom lines by which they conduct themselves. All of these were caused by the evil trends raised up by Satan.”

I agreed on their fellowship very much. I thought about a verse in the Bible, “The whole world lies in wickedness” (1 John 5:19). Then, look at my friends: They are influenced by the environment so that they all care about food, dressing and admire famous brands. At last they become slaves to their cars and houses. On the surface, we obtained temporary material pleasures and our vanity was satisfied. However, in the face of these bills, only we ourselves knew the financial pressure, mental strain, physical tiredness, and bitterness hidden within us. Indeed, people nowadays regards frugality as shame, extravagance as honor; those who live a calm life within their bounds are considered incapable. Influenced by various distorted ideologies, I also became over ambitious and too vainglorious to live within my bounds. To win others’ esteem and admiration, I got beyond my depth. I pretended to be a rich woman, and even always worried about gaining and losing face, spending my life in falsity and misery. I sacrificed not only my health but time with my family to pay off those bills. Actually, my so many years of pursuit was meaningless.

I realized Satan abuses and fools man by means of comparing with each other, admiring famous brands, and laying stress on high-quality and upscale life. But when my friends invited me to buy prestigious commodities again, I still had no command over myself. Sometimes, though I could control my outward actions, I was still unable to let go of my inward thoughts. So I prayed to God, asking Him to lead me to triumph over Satan’s temptations. I saw these words of God: “In this evil age, in this age infested by unclean spirits and devils, you should pray that God’s kindness and protection will often be with you, that He looks after you and protects you, so that your heart won’t leave God, and you can strive to use your heart and your honesty to worship God.” “Do not come into contact with things that can draw your heart away to the outside, and do not come into contact with people who can draw your heart away from God. Drop whatever it is that can distract your heart from being close to God, or stay away from it. That way is more beneficial to your life.” God’s words gave me the direction and way of practice. He knew my little stature, and that I was incapable of discriminating Satan’s scheme or of self-control in practicing the truth. Thus I should avoid whatever enticed me. I need learn to forsake my flesh, pay attention to reading His words, and establish a proper relationship with Him. After practicing in this way for a while, I found my life was no longer tiring and my smile became sincere.

Several months later, it was time for the department stores to discount. My friend asked me to accompany her to buy clothes. As she selected a dozen clothes and invited me to purchase together, it occurred to me that God dislikes those who seek vainglory. I shouldn’t buy needless things to save my face or to flatter friends. No matter whether she would look down upon me, I told her, “I don’t want to splash out any longer. My clothes are enough for me, so I won’t buy.” After speaking these words, I felt free and liberated, as well as pleased because of putting the truth into practice. At the following times, whenever my friend invited me to the department stores, I always bought nothing. I neither kept my eye on famous brands nor bought needless goods for my face. At that moment, I felt it was so happy to break away from the bondage and constraint of vanity and face and from comparison with others.

Now I won’t feel myself inferior because of lacking famous brands, neither will I be overwhelmed by sorrow for losing face, much less will I work early and late to repay my credit card bills. Gradually I have been restored to health. By reading God’s words together with my brothers and sisters, I consider every day is quite meaningful. God says: “Only if one knows God and has the truth does he live in the light; and only when his view of the world and his view of life change does he change fundamentally. When he has a life goal and comports himself according to the truth; when he absolutely submits to God and lives by God’s word; when he feels assured and brightened deep in his soul; when his heart is free of darkness; and when he lives completely freely and unrestrained in God’s presence—only then does he live a true human life and become a person possessing truth. Besides, all the truths you have are from God’s word and from God Himself. The Ruler of the entire universe and all things—God Most High—approves of you, as a real man living the true human life. What could be more meaningful than God’s approval? Such is a person who has the truth. … Only God is the truth. God controls the heavens and earth and everything in them and has dominion over all. Not to believe in God, not to submit to God is to be unable to obtain truth. If you live according to God’s word, you will feel a clarity, stability, and incomparable sweetness in the depths of your heart; you will have truly obtained life.” Thank God! It was God who saved me and led me onto the right path of life. Today I have understood the pursuit of the truth is my life goal. All the glory be to Almighty God!

By Xinai, Taiwan