The Experience of Growth of a Christian Born in the 1990s(part-2)

I’m so grateful to our Lord for taking pity on me and listening to my pleas. After about 2 months, one of the brothers came to my home. At the time, I was the only one at home, and out of politeness I sat with him for a while, chatting about this and that. But during our chat the brother bore witness to Almighty God’s work of the last days for me. He said that the Lord Jesus has already returned and is called Almighty God, and that He is already expressing truths to do His work of judgment starting with God’s house in the last days. The brother also said that Almighty God is going to save mankind, which has been deeply corrupted and harmed by Satan, from its sins, free mankind from Satan’s influence and take us into His kingdom, thus ending this evil age. The more I listened, the more extraordinary and stranger it seemed. I had believed in the Lord Jesus for all these years but had never heard any of this. In particular, the parts where the brother dissected the various evil phenomena now prevalent in society, schools, and religious circles and revealed their substance and true situation were all issues that I had long puzzled over. I ended up fellowshiping about all of the things that I’d seen and heard over many years with the brother. I expressed my bemusement over why schools—that were supposed to be places of innocent learning—had become dens of lies, and why churches—that were supposed to be holy places—had become dens of fakery and in-fighting. Moreover, I wanted to be an honest person, as the Lord Jesus demanded, but it was just a pipe dream, as every day my life was lived from behind a mask. With regard to my puzzlement, the brother read some passages of God’s words to me: “Satan corrupts people through the education and influence of the national governments and the famous and great. Their lies and nonsense have become man’s life and nature. ‘Everyone for himself and the devil take the hindmost’ is a well-known satanic saying that has been instilled into everyone and become the human life. There are some other words of life philosophy that are also like this” (“How to Know Man’s Nature” in Records of Christ’s Talks). “Cruel, brutal mankind! The conniving and intrigue, the jostling with each other, the scramble for reputation and fortune, the mutual slaughter—when will it ever end? God has spoken hundreds of thousands of words, yet no one has come to their senses. They act for the sake of their families, and sons and daughters, for their careers, prospects, status, vanity, and money, for the sake of clothes, for food and the flesh—whose actions are truly for the sake of God? Even among those whose actions are for the sake of God, there are but few who know God. How many do not act for the sake of their own interests? How many do not oppress and discriminate against others for the sake of maintaining their own status? Thus, God has been forcibly condemned to death innumerable times, countless barbaric judges have condemned God and once more nailed Him to the cross. How many can be called righteous because they truly act for the sake of God?” (“The Wicked Must Be Punished” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). “Why do people engage in such deceit? To achieve their own aims, and to achieve the objectives they desire. And so they adopt certain methods, which shows that they are not upstanding, and that they are not honest. At such times, people’s insidiousness and cunning is revealed, or else their maliciousness and ignobility. With these things, you feel that it is especially hard to be honest; without them, you would feel that being honest is easy. The greatest obstacles to being honest are people’s insidiousness, their deceitfulness, their maliciousness, and their ignoble motivations” (“To Be Honest, You Should Lay Yourself Open to Others” in Records of Christ’s Talks). After reading these words of God the brother continued to fellowship more with me and that was when I had a sudden flash of realization: The root of all of our problems is that Satan has power over mankind and is corrupting us! Satan the Devil has filled us with poisonous ideas such as “Everyone for himself and the devil take the hindmost,” “Money is first,” and “Power is above all else.” These poisons have taken root in the deepest recesses of our hearts and have become our lives; these concepts control our every word and action. So regardless of whether people are in a school or in a religious community, they will be unable to stop themselves from furthering their own interests, and will compete and struggle against others to do so. When the pastors put up a sign saying: “Work for the Lord and serve His flock,” they still intend to fill their own pockets, and when the school hangs up a banner with the slogan “Impart knowledge and educate students to benefit the nation and the people,” it’s all just a charade. In fact, teachers use the slogan “Be diligent and industrious to serve as role models for others” as a cover to grab as much for themselves as they can. I’ve even heard of teachers losing all their humanity and humiliating or viciously beating students in order to further their own interests. This sort of thing is now so common that it’s no longer news. Satan the Devil uses power and money to control our hearts and spirits, which causes us to become more and more evil and sinister. In order to get what we want we will stop at nothing, and as our treacherous and cunning methods get more accomplished the profit they bring gets bigger and bigger. As a result, we just get more evil and corrupt and become capable of committing the most heinous of sins. It is just like the Chinese saying, “If the upper beams aren’t straight the lower beams will be crooked too”: Under the evil governance of the CCP all government officials are embezzling large amounts of money, and so senior staff and teachers in China’s schools naturally copy them as best they can. Concepts such as morality and justice get cast to one side and the word “profit” takes center stage, and that’s how schools become a microcosm of the evil society that they exist in. And once the eyes and ears of the students have been exposed to this evil contamination they will naturally become more and more evil themselves, just like blotting paper soaking up black ink. Some examples of this include students flirting with each other in the dark corners of the school and students smoking and getting really drunk in bars. I also saw young lovers hugging and holding hands in public places, and these days it’s even common for elementary school students to have a boyfriend or girlfriend. Some students will deceive their parents or make life difficult for them in order to get more pocket money, and there have even been cases of children attacking their parents with knives after being refused of more money. Heaven knows how many parents have spent every dollar they have and pulled out all the stops in order to send their innocent little darlings to a high-quality school, only to see them not only not learn much or develop good characters but actually become more debased and evil and eventually turn into accomplished cheats or even murderers. People are always complaining that students are getting worse by the year, but this is the rotten fruit of the CCP’s rule. The brother also told me that the Age of Grace was when the Lord Jesus was doing the work of redemption—forgiving mankind’s sins—which isn’t the same as the work of the last days to judge, cleanse and transform mankind’s corrupt disposition. In other words, although believers in the Lord can gain redemption for their sins, their sinful nature is still firmly rooted inside of them, and they still cannot help but be corrupted by Satan to do evil and resist God. Such people live in a vicious cycle of committing sins in the daytime and admitting to their sins at night: Even the pastors are unable to extricate themselves from their sinful ways. For the last days, God expresses truths and does the work of judging and purifying mankind through His incarnation in order to thoroughly cleanse and transform mankind’s satanic disposition and resolve the issue of the source of their tendency to sin, so that they can be completely saved from Satan’s domain and be able to live in the light. As I listened to the brother talking it was like dark clouds were dispersing to reveal a clear blue sky: All of the doubts and bemusement of many years disappeared and I there and then accepted the gospel of the last days of Almighty God.

The brother then read another passage of God’s words: “The vast and hazy world has made many of you, unflinching and dauntless in filling the different roles of this world. It has formed many ‘warriors’ that do not fear death at all. More than that, it has created batches of desensitized and paralyzed humans who do not understand the purpose of their creation.” “Mankind, who left the supply of life from the Almighty, does not know why they exist, and yet fears death. There is no support, no help, but mankind is still reluctant to close their eyes, braving it all, drags out an ignoble existence in this world in bodies without the consciousness of souls. You live like such, with no hope; he exists like such, with no aim. There is only the Holy One in the legend who will come to save those who moan in suffering and long desperately for His arrival. This belief cannot be realized so far in the people who are unconscious. However, the people still yearn for it so. 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” (“The Sighing of the Almighty” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). I was very moved by these words. In the past, in my confusion and pain, I had shed many bitter tears, but no one had ever been able to so clearly penetrate the secrets in my heart with their words or describe the true state of my heart and mind. And there had certainly been no one to tell me how to walk the path of my life in the future. But a few short sentences of Almighty God’s words were able to fully express what was hidden deep in my heart, and, more importantly, were able to show me a way forward. Now I not only know that the source of mankind’s degeneracy and corruption is because mankind has moved away from God’s life sustenance and fallen under the domain of Satan, but I also know that God always hopes that we—people who have been tricked and harmed by Satan—can return to Him as soon as possible and receive His salvation. God’s words brought me illumination and hope, and brought an end to many years of living in darkness. From then on, I started to devour God’s words and to participate enthusiastically in church life. I began to hate those dimly-lit bars where I used to get falling down drunk, and gave up drinking for good. Whenever my drinking buddies tried to get me to go out with them I’d find a good reason not to go. If I couldn’t think of an excuse, I would go with them, but not a drop of liquor ever passed my lips again. I watched them drink bottle after bottle, and when they were totally loaded they started acting crazy as usual. Out of the blue, I felt an unexplainable sadness. I felt that they were truly pitiful and I remembered that I too once behaved like that, getting drunk time and time again in order to numb myself and temporarily forget my worries and the emptiness inside of me. But drinking just caused the suffering and emptiness to last even longer. Now that I have something that I can really rely on, my heart feels full and joyous, and I’m truly grateful for Almighty God’s immense salvation!

What makes me even more grateful is that Almighty God not only relieved me of my spiritual emptiness but also led me away from all the filth and contamination. Every time I met up with the brothers and sisters I always felt totally liberated, because among them there is no fakery, no bravado, no empty talk, and neither is there any deception or suppression. The brothers and sisters seek to be honest people who are always ready to say what is on their minds because they know that the more honest they are the more God will approve of them and grant His blessings and the more they are liked by others. After seeing how each one of the brothers and sisters was living in a simple, open and liberated way, I decided to rebel against my own ego and vanity and tell one of the sisters about how I’d been under the influence of evil trends and fashions and just how degenerate and useless I’d become. The sister not only didn’t look askance of me but even told me about all of her own transgressions and the process of how God had saved her. And she was someone who I’d only known for fewer than 10 days! With my good friends who I’d known for years I rarely heard anything that really came from the heart, but here at The Church of Almighty God everyone is like this—everyone is making honesty into a practice. God’s house is a place of purity and piety that is completely different than the outside world! In the church there is no differentiating between high and low, rich and poor, or automatic seniority of the more qualified over the less qualified. The speech and actions of all of the church members is in accordance with God’s words, and these words are the rules and standards by which they behave. In God’s house I saw the true future and the true destination, and I started to hate my dry and monotonous school life where I was learning nothing of value and was just becoming more and more treacherous and cunning. In a society where good educational qualifications mean a bright future, I firmly and resolutely decided to abandon my schooling and to plan instead how I was going to remake myself. A lot of people didn’t understand my decision, and some even called me a fool who was destroying his own future. My relatives and classmates didn’t understand either, and when our pastor—the one who was full of fake kindness and fairness—heard the news that my mother and I had accepted Eastern Lightning, she spouted: “You’re both wrong! You’re both putting your faith in a person! Eastern Lightning has already been designated an evil cult by the government! If you keep on believing in it, you’ll be abandoned by the Lord. You’d be wise to study hard while you’re still young….” But I knew that I was absolutely on the right path, and I never regretted my decision because I knew that I have no future worth mentioning in a school that is full of lies and fakery. In fact, staying in such a place will only bring about the complete annihilation of my conscience and the loss of my humanity. Furthermore, how could those pastors and elders in the religious community, who don’t have a bit of the reality of truth and are tainted with the filth and corruption of the world, clearly understand my spiritual decision?

In The Church of Almighty God I have personally experienced how the truth and Christ rule in God’s house. Whoever practices truths gains respect and support, while those who promote dishonest practices or do evil are stonewalled, and if they don’t repent after being warned a few times then they are expelled. Because I have been too deeply corrupted by Satan and love status and prestige too much, during the period when I was a church leader I used my power to protect and fortify my position by attacking and taking revenge on a sister who disagreed with me. It got to the point where I demanded that she be expelled, and if she weren’t then I would leave, and anybody who tried to fellowship with me became my enemy. Even after multiple attempts by the brothers and sisters to support me and help me, I still stubbornly insisted that I was in the right. In the end, the sister wasn’t expelled and I was stripped of my leadership position for not accepting truths and not treating people fairly. This was God’s righteousness in action, and was also an example of God’s love and salvation. Even more so, it clearly showed me that God’s house and the outside world are very different: In God’s house it is truth and righteousness that rule, and they treat everyone equally and fairly. After I was removed from the leadership position, my corruption led me to misunderstand and complain about God, and I even considered betraying God and going back to my old life of uncontrolled drinking and debauchery with my school pals. But God didn’t give up on my salvation, and the enlightenment of God’s words and the fellowshiping of the brothers and sisters were able to pull me back from the brink of danger once again. Although I’m now just an ordinary believer in The Church of Almighty God, here I know what it means to be a real human and I understand that if people leave God then they will inevitably be trampled on and harmed by Satan. Almighty God allowed me to find true direction in life, and it was God that saved me from the dark and evil trends of this material world. I have no way of expressing the depth of God’s love and compassion, but can only dedicate the rest of my life to Him by pursuing truths and fulfilling my duties to repay His love!