Christian testimonies | How I Prostrated Myself Before Almighty God

How I Prostrated Myself Before Almighty God

Dong Xiguo
Huaian City, Jiangsu Province

Picture of The Church of Almighty God | How I Prostrated Myself Before Almighty God

I was formerly a district leader of the Joseph Church. In 1998, in a co-workers’ meeting, my senior leader warned me in particular, “Brother Dong, the situation of the churches in your district is rather messy, so you have to work harder. Now the preachers of Almighty God are very rampant, and they grow very fast in number. And their little scroll is even more intriguing. You must guard the flock carefully and not let any of them be taken captive. If you neglect your duty, you will have no crown.” From then on, I began to wantonly seal off all the churches in my charge.

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Testimonies of Experience of Christ’s Judgment Volume | Source: "The Secret Held Deep Within My Heart" in Testimonies of Experience of Christ’s Judgment

picture of the Church of Almighty God

Testimonies of Experience of Christ’s Judgment Volume  | The Secret Held Deep Within My Heart

Wuzhi Linyi City, Shandong Province In the spring of 2006, I was stripped of my position as leader and sent back to where I had come from because I was considered too much of a “yes-man.” When I first got back, I plunged into a crucible of torment and agony. I never thought that after years of leadership things would go downhill on account of being a “yes-man.” This was the end for me, I thought, everyone familiar with me would know of my failure and I would be held up as a bad example in the church. How could I face others after all this? The more I thought, the more negative I became, until I finally lost the faith to continue seeking the truth. However, when I thought of all the sacrifices and expenditures I had made in these past few years, I couldn’t bring myself to quit. If I completely write myself off and accept failure, won’t all my efforts be for naught? Won’t people then think even less of me? I can’t let that happen! I’ve got to stand up for myself and not let others look down their noses at me. Now, no matter how hard I must try, how many wrongs I suffer, I’ve got to buck up—I can’t quit halfway! As long as I remember the lessons of failure and focus on seeking the truth, maybe one day I can become a leader again. With these thoughts in mind, all the negativity and sadness faded and I felt a renewed energy in my pursuit.

From that moment onward, I put in long hours every day, actively eating and drinking God’s word to equip myself with truth while reflecting and making insight into my past transgressions. I wrote countless essays detailing my experience of life, as well as sermons. A while later, when I saw that two of my essays had been selected, I felt even more faith in my pursuit. I thought to myself: Just keep working and soon enough my dream will become a reality. In that way, I continued in my pursuit and felt comforted that my condition had more or less returned to “normal.” One day during spiritual cultivation, I was drawn to a certain passage of God’s word: “If you are to understand yourself, you must understand your true situation; the most important thing in understanding your own situation is to have a grasp on your own thoughts and ideas. In every time period, people’s thoughts have been controlled by one major thing; if you can get a hold of your thoughts, you can get a hold of the thing behind them” (“People Who Always Have Requirements for God Are the Least Reasonable” in Records of Christ’s Talks). Thinking over God’s word, I suddenly turned the question back on myself: What dominates my thoughts now? What lies behind all my thoughts? I began to carefully reflect on my thought process and, with God’s guidance, came to realize that ever since I had been replaced, my thoughts had been dominated by the desire that “I must wrest back my former reputation and status and stand up for myself. I can’t keep being looked down upon by others.” This thought had been like a spiritual pillar, allowing me to persevere through the crucible of my own despair and giving me the drive to pursue my goal. With this thought in mind, I had remained “staunch and unyielding” under the constant barrage of “insults and humiliation.” At this moment, I realized that my pursuit was impure, full of desire and not in the least bit positive. Thinking back, I see that God had exposed me to allow me to reflect on myself and understand my own satanic nature so that I could be grounded and forthright in my pursuit of truth, cast of evil and sin and receive the salvation of God. However, I certainly did not thank God for His gift of salvation, nor did I hate myself for the evils I committed. What’s more, I didn’t reproach myself or feel repentant for failing to live up to God’s hopes. Rather, driven by the arrogant nature that “I must prevail at any cost,” I poured myself into the scheming of this plot, thinking only of the day when I would rise again, be reanointed as a leader, and regain the reputation that I had so thoroughly damaged. Effectively, I was hoping to rebuild a satanic image of myself for others to admire and worship. Clearly, I had grand ambitions—so grand that I was willing to go fist for fist against God to the very end. I was arrogant in the extreme and had not the least bit of reverence or fear for God in my heart. Reflecting back on my former state, I felt the hair stand up on my neck. I never would have imagined that such wild ambition lay behind my thoughts. No wonder God said, “if you can get a hold of your thoughts, you can get a hold of the thing behind them.” Indeed. In the past, I viewed my thoughts as fleeting notions and never took the time to analyze and understand them. Only now do I understand that grasping one’s thoughts and actively analyzing the things held deep within one’s heart is of grave importance to understand one’s inner nature! Thank God for this enlightenment, which has lifted me out of blindness. If not, I would still be hoodwinked by my own falsity—careening forth with blind ambition toward my own imminent demise. How incredibly scary! In the process, I also realized that in replacing me, God was protecting me and granting me salvation. For someone with such arrogance and mad ambition, if I had not gone through the tormenting crucible of God’s chastisement and judgment, I would invariably become an antichrist and invite my own demise. Dear God, I vow to abandon all wrongful pursuits, turn away from my arrogance and ambition and obey Your every command. I will pursue the truth in earnestness, fulfill my every duty and live as a real and true person to comfort Your heart.

Source: "The Secret Held Deep Within My Heart" in Testimonies of Experience 

of Christ’s Judgment

     Recommended ：The last days Almighty God does His work of judgment. How do we recognize that the judgment work of the last days and the redemption work of the Age of Grace are from one God?
    The Eastern Lightning is the manifestation of the Lord and His work.

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The Greatest Wisdom Is to Lift Up God and Look Upon Him

The Greatest Wisdom Is to Lift Up God and Look Upon Him

Lingxin Shijiazhuang City, Hebei Province

The Picture of The Church of Almighty God | The Greatest Wisdom Is to Lift Up God and Look Upon Him

A few days ago, I read a passage from “The Way to Entering Into Reality” in Sermons and Fellowship on Entry Into Life (IV): “For example, now there is someone who has taken a wrong turn. Using this as a talking point to communicate the truth, how would you do it? … First, you should testify to the work of God, testify to how God saves mankind. Then, you can talk about whether the road he is on leads to God’s salvation, whether he can obtain the work of the Holy Spirit, and whether this is a road which God approves. So, first you testify to God’s work, and then testify to the road God is leading us down, that is, the road to salvation. Let him see God’s love and His salvation, and only then can he go on the right way.

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Eastern Lightning | A Small Blade of Grass That Grew Among the Brambles (Part 3)

A Small Blade of Grass That Grew Among the Brambles

Yixin, Singapore

 The Picture of The Church of Almighty God | A Small Blade of Grass That Grew Among the Brambles (Part3)

The pastor asked me when I first started believing in the Lord, and then talked about many things to do with faith in the Lord. Then he asked me: “Do you know about The Church of Almighty God? Are you still in touch with them? …” Then he said many things that blasphemed Almighty God and falsely incriminated The Church of Almighty God. I got angry listening to him, and said: “Why is it that The Church of Almighty God that you are talking about is nothing like the one that I have been in contact with and know something about? We have all seen the stuff online. What I’ve seen are the words of Almighty God and the films and videos produced by The Church of Almighty God, as well as the written testimonies of the brothers and sisters. I’ve also looked at some of the negative propaganda, but all I saw was a lot of baseless rumors and lies. No matter which rumor it is they are unable to produce a shred of believable evidence to back it up. They either make things up from scratch or take an existing falsehood and embellish it and then spread it around more. These are all Satan’s lies, so I don’t believe them and have absolutely no interest in them. How is it that you only believe negative rumors but never even look at the words of God on The Church of Almighty God’s website? None of you read Almighty God’s words, nor do you investigate God’s work of the last days, but you just condemn it as you please. Is that the right thing to do?” The pastor didn’t answer my question directly but instead said: “The Church of Almighty God has expanded very quickly, and they’ve been actively going to other churches to steal their members. If you insist on believing in Almighty God, then we won’t be nice to you. We’ll tell all of the brothers and sisters in our church that you now believe in Almighty God, so the next time you come to our congregation they’ll think you’ve come to steal them away and they’ll give you the cold shoulder.” He then tried to use some false testimonies to scare me but nothing he said affected me. In fact, I felt even more emboldened and said: “This stuff that you’re talking about, did you personally see it happen? Or have you done a thorough investigation and got solid evidence? What proof do you have that the members of The Church of Almighty God did all this? Where’s the evidence? You’re just taking the rumors and false testimonies spread by the CCP and religious community to condemn Almighty God and falsely incriminate The Church of Almighty God. Aren’t you worried that you’ll be condemned by the Lord, just like the Pharisees were?”

I also said: “The Lord Jesus predicted this about His return, ‘But first must he suffer many things, and be rejected of this generation’ (Luk 17:25). What does this mean? At present, the whole religious community and the atheist Communist government of China are trying their best to resist and condemn Almighty God’s work of the last days. Doesn’t this fulfill the Lord’s prediction? Isn’t the resistance to and condemnation of Almighty God the same as the Jewish Pharisees’ resistance to and condemnation of the Lord Jesus? The Pharisees resisted the Lord Jesus and denied that He was the returning Messiah, but the Lord’s disciples were able to recognize that the Lord Jesus was the Messiah foretold in the prophecies and so they followed Him. In our time, we have the same situation. The pastors and elders don’t accept Almighty God’s work of the last days, and even resist and condemn Almighty God, but the good sheep in the various denominations are able to recognize the voice of God in the words of Almighty God. Almighty God is the return of the Lord Jesus, but how is it so? The Lord Jesus said that God’s sheep are able to hear God’s voice, and that God’s return would separate the sheep from the goats. I’ve only believed in the Lord for a short time, and I don’t understand the Bible all that well, so I don’t know how the Lord will separate the sheep from the goats. Pastor Liu, you’ve been to seminary and have been a pastor for many years now. Perhaps you’d be so good as to explain it to me?” Pastor Liu looked at me angrily, because he clearly didn’t know how to explain this to me. All he said was: “We believers gain eternal life because we have been baptized.” So I said: “What? Gaining eternal life is that easy?! So everyone who has come to your church and been baptized will enter the kingdom of heaven? Does that accord with what the Lord said? Are they all people who treat the Lord with true hearts? Do they all abide by the will of the heavenly Father? Every sermon in the church mentions giving offerings, but the Lord never said that giving offerings is the same as loving the Lord. So what is loving the Lord?” Pastor Liu replied: “Reading the Bible a lot, praying a lot is loving the Lord.” Although I didn’t know what truly loving the Lord meant, I knew that it was a load of baloney to say that reading the Bible and praying is loving the Lord. The Pharisees read the Bible and did plenty of praying, but can it be said that they loved the Lord? If they loved the Lord, then why did they blaspheme and condemn Him, and nail Him up on a cross? It seemed to me that the pastor didn’t understand what loving the Lord meant at all. Pastors may well understand biblical knowledge and theological theories but that doesn’t mean that they understand truths! But I could only blame myself for not previously having enough discernment and holding them in too high esteem.

When I realized this, I didn’t see the point of continuing to debate with Pastor Liu, so I stopped talking. But the pastor had more to say: “Do you know that they say that the Lord has returned incarnated as a female to do the work?” On hearing this I felt that I had to reply: “What form the Lord takes when He returns and incarnates to do the work is God’s business. We are just tiny, tiny beings created by God, so how can we make rules for God’s work? In the Bible it says: ‘or who has been his counselor?’ (See Rom 11:34). Almighty God’s words say: ‘Man should not define the work of God; moreover, man cannot define the work of God. In the eyes of God, man is smaller than an ant, so how can man fathom God’s work?’ (Preface to The Word Appears in the Flesh). God is the Creator of all things and God’s wisdom exceeds everything, so however God does His work He doesn’t need to check in with us humans first!” Seeing that they didn’t have the slightest interest in seeking and investigating God’s work of the last days, but only wanted to nitpick and look for chances to attack and blaspheme God and prevent me from accepting God’s work of the last days, I decided not to continue the conversation. My final question to them was: “Did you ever think about how your coming to the salon today would affect my work here?” To my utter surprise, the pastor lied to my face: “Your boss doesn’t know what this conversation is about.” If I’d heard him say that before I would have been very shocked that this pastor—a man who preaches and instructs people and knows the Bible so well—could tell such bare-faced lies. But after having just heard them make up lies that blasphemed God, I wasn’t at all surprised. It was obviously quite normal for them to tell lies. I couldn’t help but think of the Lord Jesus’ words: “You are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father you will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and stayed not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it” (Jhn 8:44). In my heart I said these words to God: “Thank You, God! You have allowed this event to happen to me today so that I can see that they have no understanding of the truths. You have let me see that they are liars who brazenly spread falsehoods and deceive people. They’re hypocritical Pharisees.” I had nothing more to say to them and wanted to leave immediately.

Seeing that I was in no mood to continue the conversation, Sister Yun said to me: “Yixin, you should think about your children and parents.” I replied: “They are all doing well and we all feel peaceful and secure. I believe in the one true God, the Creator of all things. Almighty God is the return of the Lord Jesus. God is the God that loves and saves people, and with God’s blessings and leadership my family will do better and better.” The pastor and Sister Yun wanted to pray for me, but I refused. So Pastor Liu finished off with a warning: “If you don’t leave The Church of Almighty God then you’ll be ostracized from our church!” I thought: “And what is the church like these days? It’s like the temple when the Lord Jesus first started His work: a den of thieves. The gatherings don’t provide any spiritual sustenance, so what is there for me to miss?” I’ve already accepted God’s work of the last days, and I’ve followed the footprints of the Lamb and come before God’s throne. I’m being provided with the living water of life issued by Christ and I’m enjoying face-to-face nurturing and shepherding from God. Nobody is more fortunate than me, and The Church of Almighty God is now my true home.

Almighty God’s words say: “Everything that has been arranged now is for the purpose of training you so that you may grow in your lives, to make your spirit keen and sharp, to open your spiritual eyes and recognize the things that come from God” (Utterances and Testimonies of Christ in the Beginning). I’m grateful to God for taking pity on me and using the disturbance of religious forces to make me develop discernment. I saw how full of lies those pastors are, how they resist and condemn God’s work of the last days, how they don’t have a shred of fear or reverence for God. I saw how their congregations cling to their sinful ways, how they blindly follow the trends and fashions of the material world, how they deceive each other, and how lacking in piety they are. All this convinced me that the religious community no longer had the work of the Holy Spirit, that it was smothered in darkness and under Satan’s control. At the same time, I was able to see that the brothers and sisters of The Church of Almighty God are seeking truths and knowledge of God through the guidance in God’s words. When they encounter difficulties, they seek to use God’s words to resolve their problems and then it is wholly the truth, God’s words, and the Holy Spirit wielding power. Almighty God’s words cannot be taken back, and what is said will be done. Nobody can stand in the way of what God wants to accomplish, and this is an undeniable fact! Almighty God’s words are indeed truths, and Almighty God is the manifestation of the Lord of creation. I’m now willing to follow Almighty God for the rest of my life!

Source The Internet

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Eastern Lightning | Persecution and Adversity Helped Me to Grow Up

Persecution and Adversity Helped Me to Grow Up 

Baituo Dezhou City, Shandong Province

The Picture of The Church of Almighty God | Persecution and Adversity Helped Me to Grow Up

Before, I only knew that God’s wisdom is exercised based on Satan’s plots, that God is a wise God and that Satan will ever be God’s defeated foe in theory, but I had no understanding or knowledge of it based on actual experience. Later, only within an environment arranged by God did I gain some real experience of this aspect of the truth

I was at a meeting one afternoon, when suddenly the district leader’s partner hurriedly ran over to me and said, “Your mother has been taken by the great red dragon. Don’t go home for a while. The church will arrange a host family for you.” This news struck me like a bolt from the blue and shook me so much that I was suddenly stupefied: What? My mother has been taken by the great red dragon? How will the great red dragon torture her? Will she be able to endure it? I may never see my mother again. What should I do? Thinking these things, my heart was in torment and I couldn’t stop my tears. After the meeting finished, I was taken to my arranged host family and, after I was settled, my thoughts returned again to my mother. At home, I was closest to my mother. Although my non-believing father tried to force me to give up God, my elder sister ignored me because of my belief in God and all my other relatives abandoned me, I never felt lonely, because I still had my mother who also believed in God. Whether spiritually or physically, my mother always cared for me, doted on me, and helped me often. Whenever I had some problem I could always talk to her about it; you could say that she was my rock. Yet now the only one I could depend on had been taken by the great red dragon. I felt as though I had suddenly become an orphan, not knowing how to walk the road ahead, nor knowing who to go to when I came across difficulties. For the next few days, I cried all day long, lived in constant pain and felt very down. As I was living in this state, unable to free myself, God guided me from within: “Are you really willing to live always in darkness, allowing Satan to make a fool of you? And are you really not willing to understand God in His work and live in the light?” God’s guidance woke me from my pain. That’s right, I thought. Am I really going to always live like this in darkness, allowing Satan to make a fool of me? No, I can’t! This situation that has befallen me must surely hold the kindness of God. Afterward, I went before God many times to pray and to seek for God, asking God to enlighten me so that I could understand His will.

After a while, I discovered that I had started to enter into some of the truth that I had not previously understood or that I had been unable to put into practice. I used to be spoiled at home and food, clothing and having fun took up most of my time. My flesh could suffer no wrong and could not endure the slightest hardship. In the few days after I left home and was living with the host family, I could no longer do anything I wanted, could no longer do as I pleased like I had done at home. Gradually, my pampered nature and bad habits lessened, and I came to know that to have food and clothing in life is to be content. I also gained an insight into the essence of the flesh, never again to continue to pursue satisfaction of the flesh, and I came to know that seeking to satisfy God is the most important thing a creation can do. Before, when my mother was at home, no matter whether I had physical issues or problems in my life, I always depended on her and let her help me resolve them. When I came across problems, I didn’t pray to God, didn’t seek the truth, nor did I have a normal relationship with God. After my mother was taken away, I had no one I could depend on when I came across difficulties. I could only go before God more often to pray to Him, to eat and drink more of God’s words, to seek His will more often. Gradually, the place my mother had held in my heart grew smaller, while God’s place in my heart grew bigger. I felt that God could help me any time I needed, that I could not leave God even for one moment. Moreover, I also learned to rely on prayer and to rely on my pursuit of the truth to resolve my problems, and I tasted the feeling of peace, sureness and dependability that comes from having God with me. When I lived at home, although I knew that believers and non-believers were two kinds of people that were incompatible with each other, I still felt as though only my parents and my elder sister were my family, and I always saw my brothers and sisters in the church as outsiders, always feeling some distance between us. After God had used the environment to “drive” me out of my home, I was together with my brothers and sisters in my host family from morning till night, and felt their concern and care for me, their tolerance and understanding. We spoke the same language, shared the same aspirations and helped each other through life; from my heart, I felt that this was my only true family, that only my brothers and sisters in the church were my father, mother and siblings. There was no longer any estrangement between me and my brothers and sisters in the church, no distance, and I experienced the warmth that comes from having a large family. Through this environment with my brothers and sisters, I also learned how we could love each other, pardon each other and support each other through life, so that my normal humanity was recovered. This truth was what I could not put into practice before, when I lived at home and relied on meetings and sermons. After my mother was taken by the great red dragon and I was forced to leave home, in these exceptional circumstances and unbeknown to me, God wrought this truth within me and gradually deepened my understanding of it. In the wake of my entering into this truth, my heart that sought to love and satisfy God became ever stronger and my will to live my entire life for God became ever more resolute. The person I had been—who believed in God but had no purpose, who weakened whenever some problem came along—was undergoing a gradual change. What God bestowed on me really was more than I ever could have thought, and my heart became full of gratitude and praise for Him.

One day, during my spiritual devotions, I read God’s words that say: “In doing all this work, He has not only allowed humanity, who has been corrupted by Satan, to receive His great salvation, but also allowed them to see His wisdom, almightiness and authority, and in the end He will let humanity see His righteous disposition—punishing the wicked and rewarding the good. He has battled Satan to this very day and has never been defeated, for He is a wise God, and His wisdom is exercised based on Satan’s plots. … He still carries out His work in this same realistic manner today; in addition, as He carries out His work He also reveals His wisdom and almightiness …” (“You Should Know How the Whole of Humanity Has Developed to the Present Day” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). God’s words suddenly lit up my heart, and I couldn’t help but release a sigh from deep within: God really is a wise God! God’s deeds really are wonderful and unforeseen! This situation has today befallen me and, on the surface, it looks as though the great red dragon has taken my mother, taken away my only rock, made it hard for me to return home, tried in vain to use this to obstruct my belief in God and to make me cave in, or grow weak and give up by scaring me with its influence. But God’s wisdom is exercised based on the plots of Satan, and God used it to great effect. He sprung me out of my comfy nest and, through this environment, tempered my will, perfected my will to undergo suffering, trained me to have the ability to live independently, taught me how to live out normal humanity and how to be a real person; this truth was something that I had no way to understand, no way to obtain in an environment of ease and comfort. Through this environment, God wrought His truth and what He is in life inside me, so that not only did I not give up because of the persecution of the great red dragon but, on the contrary, I obtained the truth that God had bestowed on me and I was brought under God’s salvation. Furthermore, through the persecution of the great red dragon, I saw its savage, cruel face and its reactionary nature even more clearly. From my heart, I loathed it even more, and my heart that sought to love God became even stronger.

I give thanks to God! From this experience, I gained some practical understanding of God’s almightiness and sovereignty, and gained some practical experience of the fact that God’s wisdom is exercised based on the plots of Satan. I understood that everything that befalls that does not conform to man’s conceptions is the wise deed of God. No matter how Satan enforces its plots, God will ever be a wise God, and Satan will ever be God’s defeated foe. Understanding this, my will to follow God is now more resolute, and I am filled with faith for the road ahead!

Source: "Persecution and Adversity Helped Me to Grow Up" in Testimonies of Experience of Christ’s Judgment 

       Recommendation:  Eastern Lightning, The Church of Almighty God was founded by Almighty God personally

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Eastern Lightning | What Is It That Has Deceived My Spirit?

What Is It That Has Deceived My Spirit? 

Xu Lei Zaozhuang City, Shandong Province

The Picture of The Church of Almighty God | What Is It That Has Deceived My Spirit?

One day I received a notice about a meeting. Normally this is a happy event, but as soon as I thought about what a complete mess my own work had been in lately, I couldn’t help feeling worried. If my superior knew how I hadn’t finished any of my work, he would certainly have to deal with me, and may even replace me. What would I do then? The next day I went along to the meeting with a heavy heart. When I got there, I saw that my superior had not yet arrived, but some co-workers were there already. I thought: “I don’t know what state any of their work is in. At the last meeting, I heard them say how they’d pretty much done their work, and this time they must surely have finished it all. If they have finished all their work and it’s only me who is so bad, then I’m done for.” I was surprised then that, when we were together talking about our own work situations, many of my co-workers were saying how they hadn’t finished some parts of their work. When I heard this, my heart that had been so heavy before suddenly felt a lot lighter. I thought: “It turns out that no one has finished their work, not just me. No need to worry then. We can’t all be replaced.” The greater part of my uneasy feelings then disappeared in an instant.

Just as I was starting to get comfortable in my state of self-consolation, a passage in a fellowship from the above drifted into my mind: “If one brings worldly views into God’s family, then they are conceptions and they defy God. Many people have the same views on things as unbelievers. Because they have no truth within them, once they arrive at God’s family they use worldly views to view the work of God’s family, to comment on the matters of God’s family, with the result that they hold themselves back, causing themselves to always be weak and negative, to be unable to seek the truth or pay the price. Is this not created by their ignorance?” (“How to Know Man’s Conceptions and Judgments” in Sermons and Fellowship On Entry Into Life (III)). These words made me think of my reaction a moment ago. When I thought of how I hadn’t finished my work, my heart felt very heavy and I couldn’t stop worrying. But when I knew that my co-workers had also not finished their work, I felt immediately relieved, and thought with an easy conscience that it wasn’t just me whose work had not achieved anything. If our superior was to deal with us, then everyone would have their share. Since so many of us had not finished our work, our supervisor certainly couldn’t replace us all. Wasn’t this type of thinking dominated by Satan’s viewpoint: “It is not a sin if everyone does it”? Wasn’t I really using Satan’s viewpoint to measure the principles of the church’s work? I had applied Satan’s logical viewpoint to the church, used it to console myself, to indulge myself—but wasn’t I just harming myself? I was in fact so blind and ignorant! Thinking back, there were many times when I accepted the domination of this viewpoint of Satan’s to console myself. For a while, I lived in the flesh with no entry into life and, although worried about my own salvation, when I saw some brothers and sisters having also made no entry into the truth, I became free from anxiety and stopped giving myself a hard time. I thought that if so many people had not entered into life, then God couldn’t sift us all out, could He? I therefore lived in a laissez-faire state of self-indulgence, carrying no real burden for my own life. When I had not written any article for a long time and had feelings of self-condemnation, I would see others who also hadn’t written anything, and the condemnation in my heart would disappear. I would think: It’s no big deal to not write an article and, anyway, it’s not just me who hasn’t written one. When I never saw any result from my gospel work, I would feel anxious. But when I saw the gospel work of others having no result either, I would feel calm, thinking that everyone was like this, that it wasn’t just me who never brought anyone into the church. … At that time, I saw that the viewpoint of Satan—“It is not a sin if everyone does it”—had taken root in my heart so very deeply. Under the domination of this viewpoint, I was constantly indulging myself when performing my duties, wasn’t putting my all into them and wasn’t seeking the best possible outcome. It not only caused great loss to the work of the church, but also brought a great deal of loss to my own life. Because I had accepted the fallacious poison of Satan—“It is not a sin if everyone does it”—I had taken up no real burden in my work for the church, was always making do with half-hearted work and was not seeking any outcome; I had lost the conscience and reason that one of God’s creations should have. Because I had accepted the shackles of Satan’s viewpoint of “It is not a sin if everyone does it,” I was always just muddling along in the course of my following God. I had not considered my belief in God to be of any consequence at all, I did not seek the truth in earnest, did not care about or focus on my own entry into life; I had no objective to pursue, no direction in life. I just muddled along and did the bare minimum to get by. Only then did I see that I had been harmed so badly by Satan’s viewpoint of “It is not a sin if everyone does it,” and had completely lost the conscience, reason, integrity and dignity that a normal person should possess. Thinking carefully, I had been living within my own imagination and conceptions all the while, believing in “It is not a sin if everyone does it,” that if many people commit the sin then God will let us slip through the net and not hold anyone accountable, never thinking whether or not God would actually treat people this way. At that time, I couldn’t help thinking of God’s words, that say: “He who defies the work of God shall be sent to hell; any country that defies the work of God shall be destroyed; any nation that rises up to oppose the work of God shall be wiped from this earth, and shall cease to exist” (“God Presides Over the Fate of All Mankind” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). God’s words made me tremble with fear, as I saw that God’s disposition will not allow anyone to commit offense and that He will not base His decision on whether or not to destroy man on the number of sinners. Thinking back, the people in Noah’s day were sinful and promiscuous and God destroyed all that lived in that time apart from Noah’s family. His destruction of the city of Sodom was also like this. Now the people in the last days have reached several billion, a number far surpassing those in Noah’s day. But God has not set His law aside and shown mercy because there are too many sinners in the last days; for these people God has only hatred, punishment, detestation and rejection, using all kinds of natural calamities and man-made misfortunes to gradually wipe them out. In the end, apart from the few who are saved, God will utterly destroy all that are left. Only then did I see how little I had understood God’s disposition. I didn’t understand that God is a righteous, holy God who does not allow man to commit offense, to the extent that I had been confounded by Satan’s lies and had fallen into its cunning schemes. Today, if it had not been for God’s enlightenment, I would still be living in sin without thinking it was sin, in the end being punished by God without even knowing why I was to die—it really had been so dangerous!

I give thanks to God for His enlightenment that made me wake up from Satan’s deception and realize that “It is not a sin if everyone does it” was entirely a heretical fallacy of Satan. It was Satan’s cunning scheme to harm and ruin people. Moreover, I saw that God is righteous, that God’s disposition will not allow any offense, that God will base the final decision on people’s end on whether or not they have the truth, and that He will not show exceptional mercy on someone who has no truth. From today on, I wish to spare no effort in seeking the truth, in seeking to understand God, to base my view of all things on God’s words, to use God’s words as the standard by which I will make strict demands of myself, to abandon all the lies and deceptions of Satan, and to seek to be one who lives in reliance on the truth.

Source: "What Is It That Has Deceived My Spirit?" in Testimonies of Experience of Christ’s Judgment

Recommendation:  Eastern Lightning, The Church of Almighty God was founded by Almighty God personally

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Eastern Lightning | A Brief Talk About the Source of the World’s Darkness and Evil

A Brief Talk About the Source of the World’s Darkness and Evil 

Yang Le Wuhai City, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region

The Church of Almighty God | A Brief Talk About the Source of the World’s Darkness and Evil 

When I was still at school, my father grew sick and passed away. After he died, uncles on both sides of the family who had often been helped by my father not only did not take care of us—my mother who had no source of income, my two sisters and I—but, on the contrary, did everything they could to make a profit off of us, even fighting with us for the little legacy my father had left behind. In the face of my relatives’ indifference and all the things they did that I never could have expected, I felt such extreme pain and couldn’t help but hate the utter lack of conscience and the heartlessness that these relatives displayed, at the same time also gaining a sense of the fickleness of human nature. After that, whenever I saw some occurrence in society of family members fighting each other over money, or people robbing and murdering over money, I would often lament that the world today was too full of darkness, that people’s hearts really were sinister and the world really was too fickle. At that time, I thought the reason why the world was so full of darkness was because people today had turned bad, that they no longer had any conscience and that there were too many evil people in the world. Afterward, only through eating and drinking the words of God did I realize that what I had thought had only just scratched the surface, and was not the source of the world’s darkness and evil. From God’s words I saw clearly the real source of darkness and evil in the world.

God’s words say: “Before he was corrupted by Satan, man naturally followed God and obeyed His words. He was naturally of sound sense and conscience, and of normal humanity. After being corrupted by Satan, his original sense, conscience, and humanity grew dull and were impaired by Satan. Thus, he has lost his obedience and love toward God. Man’s sense has become aberrant, his disposition has become the same as that of an animal, and his rebelliousness toward God is ever more frequent and grievous. Yet man still neither knows nor recognizes this, and merely blindly opposes and rebels” (“To Have an Unchanged Disposition Is to Be in Enmity to God” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). “Knowledge of several thousand years of ancient culture and history has closed off the thinking and concepts and mental outlook of man so tightly as to be impenetrable and nondegradable. … Feudal ethics have taken the life of man into ‘Hades,’ so that man has even less ability to resist. Various kinds of oppression forced man to gradually fall deeper into Hades…. Knowledge of ancient culture has quietly stolen man from the presence of God and turned man over to the king of devils and its sons. The Four Books and Five Classics have taken the thinking and concepts of man into another age of rebellion, causing man to further worship those who wrote the Books and Classics, furthering their notions of God. The king of devils heartlessly cast out God from the heart of man without their awareness, while it gleefully took over the heart of man. From then on, man was possessed of an ugly and wicked soul with the face of the king of devils. A hatred of God filled their chests, and the maliciousness of the king of devils spread within man day by day…. This gang of accomplices! They come down among the mortals to indulge in pleasures and stir up disorder. Their disturbance causes fickleness in the world[a] and brings panic in the heart of man, and they have distorted man so that man resembles beasts of unbearable ugliness, no longer possessing the slightest trace of the original holy man” (“Work and Entry (7)” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). From these words of God I understood that the mankind God had created in the beginning was originally obedient to God, they worshiped Him, had the conscience and reason of normal humanity, and they had not been defiled, nor had they committed any evil. After mankind had been corrupted by Satan, sin began to be man’s constant companion. Over several thousand years, Satan has continually harassed and corrupted man. It instills reactionary thoughts and theories into man, so that man lives in reliance on its poison, resulting in mankind becoming ever more corrupt and depraved, and the world ever more dark and evil. Phrases such as “Everyone for himself and the devil take the hindmost,” “Why get up early if there’s nothing in it for me?” “A man dies for money; a bird dies for food,” “As a small mind makes no gentleman, a real man is not without venom,” “Seize the day for pleasure, for life is short,” “There has never been any Savior” and “There is no God on earth whatsoever” are all poisons instilled in man by Satan. These things become people’s lives and become their rules for life, so that no one believes in the existence of God anymore, no one worships Heaven anymore, and no one listens to reason or their conscience anymore. There is no longer any place for God in man’s heart, no longer any restrictions from the laws and regulations that came from God. Man has all been poisoned and controlled by Satan, so that man has become ever more treacherous, selfish, contemptible, greedy, arrogant, ever more evil and debauched, unrestrained, ever more lawless, godless and perverse. They have become the demon embodiment of a man devoid of conscience, of morality, of human nature, and of one where maliciousness comes as second nature. In particular, “Everyone for himself and the devil take the hindmost” is a lethal poison that Satan plants in man, and this was most evident with my uncles. Man lives only for the sake of their own self-interests, placing profit above everything else, thinking “Why get up early if there’s nothing in it for me?” To obtain more and greater interests, man can do any evil or wicked thing, make any shameless, contemptible or low-down shady deal. There is no true love or affection between people—it is all cheating, using and harming each other. That members of the same family can fall out with each other and become enemies, fighting each other for money and interests. Then even more so, relations and friends forget all moral principles for the sake of profit; they may look human, but they have the hearts of beasts. … That man can do these evil things is all because they have been poisoned by Satan’s “Everyone for himself and the devil take the hindmost,” and are under its domination. It can be seen that the source of man’s evil deeds is the poison of Satan, and that this is the source of the darkness in the world.

In the many phenomena that we live amongst, we can see most easily the darkness of the world. We can say that the people who lead world trends nowadays are all the embodiment of Satan. Particularly, those who hold power and authority are the princes of the devils, and among these the great red dragon is the darkest and most evil power. Ever since the great red dragon took power, it has used the power in its hands to do its utmost to corrupt man, corrupting them so that they become devils in human forms, so that man no longer resembles man. The great red dragon reveres violence and advocates revolution. It uses violence to seize power and uses violence to govern the nation. Those who live under its domain also enjoy violence and consistently use force to resolve every issue, often coming to blows over the smallest matter. There are ever more cases of robberies and murders that make people’s blood boil, and the ways in which people are murdered are also ever more cruel and odious. These are all facts that are there for all to see. The great red dragon guides its people to “develop the economy,” and reveres sayings such as “Doesn’t matter if the cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice,” “Prostitution is better than poverty,” “Money makes the world go round,” “One can be without anything but money” and “Money can do anything.” With its powerful advocacy of such things, people esteem money and power, whoever has the money and the power can prosper, and whoever has no money and no power can only be oppressed and swallow all grievances, with the result that people’s hearts are filled only with money. For money, the ties of kinship are forgotten; for money and power they can take and offer bribes, buy and sell officials, rob, defraud, kill people and take their possessions, fight and kill each other—it can be said they will use any means necessary. What’s more, prostitution is ubiquitous in today's society and the places for whoring and drugs can be seen everywhere. Sexual bribes and sexual transactions are in vogue and people adhere to evil, esteem evil, not thinking it is shameful, but instead thinking it is glorious. These are also the results of developing the economy, making the relationship between people a relationship of money. The great red dragon uses this to corrupt people’s morals and make them devoid of conscience. The darkest, most reactionary aspect of this is that the great red dragon does not acknowledge that there is a God, but instead propagates atheism so that people deny God, deny His sovereignty, abandon the real God and worship Satan. Those who live under the great red dragon’s deception and disinformation do not believe there is a God and do not worship the real God, but instead follow Satan, esteem evil, and are removed from righteousness so that they are ever more corrupt and depraved. … Now I can see ever more clearly that because of this “model” of the great red dragon, man became so corrupted and evil, with no conscience, no humanity. The root of all this ruin lies entirely with the great red dragon. The arch-criminal that created the evil in man’s hearts, the corrupt morals and fickleness of the world in society today is the great red dragon; that the great red dragon took power is the root cause of all the world’s darkness and evil. If the great red dragon took power for just one day, if Satan is not one day annihilated, then mankind would not be able to live in the light and the world would never again know peace.

After seeing the darkness and evil of the great red dragon and how it corrupts and tramples people underfoot, I feel even more the holiness and beauty of Christ. Christ is the only light in this world of darkness, only Christ can save mankind and help them break away from this dark and evil place, and only when Christ takes power will light be brought to mankind. Because only God has an essence that is beautiful and good, only God is the origin of righteousness and light, God is the only symbol that cannot be overwhelmed or violated by all the darkness and evil, only God can change the old face of the entire world and bring light to earth, and only God can bring mankind to a wonderful destination. Apart from God, no one can perform this work and no one can defeat or annihilate Satan. Just like it says in God’s words: “In the vast world, countless changes have occurred, over and over. None are able to lead and guide this mankind except for He who rules over all things in the universe. There is no mighty one to labor or make preparations for this mankind, much less a person who is able to lead this mankind toward the destination of light and the liberation from earthly injustices” (“God Is the Source of Man’s Life” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). “I want to correct the injustices of the human world. I will do My work personally throughout the entire world, forbidding Satan from harming My people again, forbidding the enemy from doing whatever they please again. I will become King on earth and move My throne there, making all the enemy fall to the ground and confess their crimes before Me” (“The Twenty-seventh Utterance” of God’s Utterances to the Entire Universe in The Word Appears in the Flesh). I saw in God’s words His almightiness and His authority, saw that only God can save us who live under the domain of the great red dragon and who have been so trampled underfoot by it. Because of this my heart yearns all the more for Christ to take power, and for the great red dragon to soon meet its end.

I give thanks to the enlightenment of God’s words that allowed me to see the source of the darkness and evil in the world, that caused to arise in my heart a true loathing of the great red dragon, and that allowed me to understand that only Christ can lead man to break away from this dark place, to enter the light. Only by following Christ and worshiping Christ can man break away from Satan’s affliction. From today on, I wish to seek the truth and follow Christ’s lead, to accept God’s words and make them my life, to rid myself of all the great red dragon’s poisons, to cast off the control of the great red dragon’s influence, to utterly rebel against the great red dragon, and to reach God’s salvation and be perfected by God.

Source: " A Brief Talk About the Source of the World’s Darkness and Evil " in Testimonies of Experience of Christ’s Judgment

Recommendation:  Eastern Lightning, The Church of Almighty God was founded by Almighty God personally

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