Religious Way of Service Must Be Banned

Since the beginning of His work in the entire universe, God has predestined many people to serve Him, including people from every walk of life. His purpose is to fulfill His own will and to ensure that His work on earth is brought smoothly to fruition. This is God’s purpose in choosing people to serve Him. Every person who serves God must understand this will of God. Through this work of His, people are better able to see God’s wisdom and God’s omnipotence, and to see the principles of His work on earth. God actually comes to earth to do His work, coming into contact with people, so that they may know His deeds more clearly. Today, this group of you are fortunate to serve the practical God. This is an incalculable blessing for you. In truth, it is God raising you up. In selecting a person to serve Him, God always has His own principles. Serving God is absolutely not, as people imagine it to be, simply a matter of enthusiasm. Today you see that whosoever serves God in His presence does so because they have the guidance of God and the work of the Holy Spirit, and because they are people who pursue the truth. These are the minimum requirements that all who serve God must have.

Corrupt Man Is Incapable of Representing God

Man has been living under the shroud of the influence of darkness, held in bondage to Satan’s influence with no escape. And the disposition of man, after it has undergone processing by Satan, is becoming increasingly corrupt. One could say that man has always lived with his corrupt satanic disposition, unable truly to love God. This being so, if man wishes to love God, he must be stripped of his self-rightness, self-importance, arrogance, conceit, and the like, all of which belong to Satan’s disposition. Otherwise, the love of man is an impure love, a love of Satan, and one which absolutely cannot receive the approval of God. Without being directly perfected, dealt with, broken, pruned, disciplined, chastened, or refined by the Holy Spirit, no one is able truly to love God. If you say that a part of your disposition represents God and therefore you are able truly to love God, then you are one who speaks words of arrogance and are a preposterous man. And men like this are the archangel! The inborn nature of man is unable directly to represent God. Man has to cast off his inborn nature through the perfection of God and then, only by caring for God’s will, fulfilling God’s will, and furthermore undergoing the work of the Holy Spirit, can his living out be approved by God. No one who lives in the flesh is able directly to represent God, unless he be a man used by the Holy Spirit. However, even for a person like this, his disposition and what he lives out cannot be said completely to represent God; one can only say that what he lives out is directed by the Holy Spirit. The disposition of such a man cannot represent God.

What Viewpoint Believers Ought to Hold

What is it that man has received since he first believed in God? What have you known about God? How much have you changed because of your belief in God? Now you all know that man’s belief in God is not solely for salvation of the soul and welfare of the flesh, nor is it to enrich his life through love of God, and so on. As it stands, if you love God for the sake of welfare of the flesh or momentary pleasure, then even if, in the end, your love for God reaches its peak and you ask for nothing, this love you seek is still an impure love and not pleasing to God. Those who use love for God to enrich their dull lives and fill a void in their heart are those who seek to live in ease, not those who truly seek to love God. This kind of love is against one’s will, a pursuit of emotional pleasure, and God does not need this kind of love. What kind, then, is a love such as yours? For what do you love God? How much true love do you have for God now? The love of most among you is as previously mentioned. This kind of love can only maintain the status quo; it cannot attain eternal constancy, nor take root in man. This kind of love is that of a flower which bears no fruit after it has bloomed then withered. In other words, after you have loved God once in such a way and there is no one to lead you on the path ahead, then you will fall. If you can only love God in the times of loving God and you make no changes to your life disposition afterward, then you will continue to be shrouded by the influence of darkness, unable to escape, and still unable to break free from being bound and fooled by Satan. No such man can be fully gained by God; in the end, their spirit, soul, and body will still belong to Satan. This is unquestionable. All those who cannot be fully gained by God will return to their original place, that is, back to Satan, and they will go down to the lake that burns with fire and brimstone to accept the next step of punishment from God. Those gained by God are those who rebel against Satan and escape from its domain. Such men will be officially numbered among the people of the kingdom. This is how the people of the kingdom come to be. Are you willing to be this kind of person? Are you willing to be gained by God? Are you willing to escape from the domain of Satan and return to God? Do you now belong to Satan or are you numbered among the people of the kingdom? Such things should all be clear and require no further explanation.

Beholding the Appearance of God in His Judgment and Chastisement

Like the hundreds of millions of others who follow the Lord Jesus Christ, we abide by the laws and commandments of the Bible, enjoy the abundant grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and gather together, pray, praise, and serve in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ—and all this we do under the care and protection of the Lord. We are often weak, and we are also often strong. We believe that all of our actions are in accordance with the teachings of the Lord. It goes without saying, then, that we also believe ourselves to be on the path of obedience to the will of the Father in heaven. We long for the return of the Lord Jesus, for His glorious descent, for the end of our life on earth, for the appearance of the kingdom, and for everything as it was foretold in the Book of Revelation: The Lord arrives, He brings disaster, He rewards the good and punishes the wicked, and He takes all those who follow Him and welcome His return up to meet Him in the air. Whenever we think of this, we cannot but be overcome with emotion and filled with gratitude that we were born in the last days and have the good fortune to witness the coming of the Lord. Though we have suffered persecution, we have got in return “a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.” What a blessing! All of this longing, and the grace bestowed by the Lord, render us constantly sober unto prayer, and make us more diligent in gathering together. Maybe next year, maybe tomorrow, and again, maybe within a space of time shorter than man can conceive, the Lord shall suddenly descend, appearing among a group of people who have been waiting for Him with eager solicitude. We rush to get ahead of each other, none willing to fall behind, all for the sake of being in the first group to behold the appearance of the Lord, of being among those who are raptured. We have given everything, heedless of the cost, for the coming of this day, some leaving their jobs, some abandoning their families, some renouncing marriage, and some even donating all of their savings. What selfless acts of devotion! Such sincerity and loyalty is surely beyond even the saints of ages past! As the Lord bestows grace upon whomever He pleases, and shows mercy to whomever He pleases, our acts of devotion and of expending, we believe, have long since been beheld by His eyes. So, too, have our heartfelt prayers reached His ears, and we trust that the Lord will give us recompense for our dedication. Moreover, God had been gracious toward us before He created the world, and the blessings and promises He has given to us no one can take away. We are all planning for the future, and as a matter of course have made our dedication and expending into counter chips or capital to exchange for being raptured to meet the Lord in the air. What is more, we have, without the slightest hesitation, placed ourselves on the throne of the future, to preside over all nations and all peoples, or to reign as kings. All this we take as a given, as something to be expected.

The Appearance of God Has Ushered in a New Age

God’s six-thousand-year plan of management is coming to an end, and the gate of the kingdom has already been opened to all those who seek His appearance. Dear brothers and sisters, what are you waiting for? What is it that you seek? Are you waiting for God to appear? Are you searching for His footprints? How one yearns for the appearance of God! And how difficult it is to find God’s footprints! In an age such as this, in a world such as this, what must we do to witness the day on which God appears? What must we do to keep pace with the footsteps of God? Questions of this kind are faced by all those who are waiting for God to appear. You have all considered them on more than one occasion—but with what outcome? Where does God appear? Where are God’s footprints? Have you got the answer? Many people would reply in this way: God appears among all those who follow Him and His footprints are in our midst; it’s that simple! Anyone can provide a formulaic answer, but do you understand what is meant by the appearance of God or His footprints? The appearance of God refers to His arrival on earth to do His work in person. With His own identity and disposition, and in the way that is innate to Him, He descends into mankind to conduct the work of initiating an age and ending an age. This kind of appearance is not a form of ceremony. It is not a sign, a picture, a miracle, or some kind of a grand vision, and even less is it a kind of religious process. It is a real and actual fact that can be touched and beheld by anyone. This kind of appearance is not for the sake of going through the motions, or for the sake of a short-term undertaking; it is, rather, for the sake of a stage of work in His management plan. The appearance of God is always meaningful and always bears some relation to His management plan. What is called “appearance” here is completely different from the kind of “appearance” in which God guides, leads, and enlightens man. God carries out a stage of His great work each time He reveals Himself. This work is different from that of any other age. It is unimaginable to man, and has never been experienced by man. It is work that starts a new age and concludes the old age, and it is a new and improved form of work for the salvation of mankind; moreover, it is work that brings mankind into the new age. This is what the appearance of God signifies.

29. Experiencing the Tribulations, I Was Accompanied by God’s Love

Wang Yu Henan Province

My name is Wang Yu. I’m 76 years old. In 1978, I believed in the Lord Jesus because of illness. I received much grace during my believing. Because of that, I was very zealous in working for the Lord, giving messages and preaching the gospel everywhere and also hosting the brothers and sisters. Very soon, the believers in our church increased to over 2000. Then, the persecution of the CCP government also came. In order to stop me from believing in God and preaching the gospel, the policemen searched my house many times. Each time, they would take away anything that was worth some money and could be moved at my home, and they even unscrewed the light bulbs and took them away. Moreover, I was arrested and imprisoned by the Public Security Bureau a dozen times. In 1996, I accepted Almighty God’s end-time work. Two years later, I experienced more frenzied arrest and persecution of the CCP government. Although having undergone a great many afflictions, I felt God’s salvation and love for me.