My name is Zhuo Aiyan. I was born into a Christian family. I began to preach at the age of 12 and left home to serve God full time at the age of 19. I had studied theology and contacted many overseas pastors and missionaries, which I always took as my capital. In addition, as I wasvery familiar with the Bible, had many years of working experience, and was gifted by the Lord, I always considered myself superior to others. As such, I limited the Lord Jesus’ return within the Bible and my imaginations and notions. But I never dreamed that Almighty God, whom I had resisted frenziedly for six years, was actually the Lord Jesus I had been expecting day and night. During those six years, no matter how I resisted, God’s hand never left me…
In October, 1986, I believed in Jesus because of my wife’s illness. In February, 1990, I joined the sect of “Hua Xuehe.” From then on, I ran around preaching the way of Hua Xuehe, rain or shine. For his sake, I withdrew from the Communist Party, resigned as schoolmaster of a primary school and teacher in the state sector, and sold all the three houses of my family and spent all the money preaching the gospel, and I was even caught into the police station twice and suffered many torments. However, for the sake of defending the way of Hua Xuehe, I never complained. So, I thought that by my faith and the price I had paid, I would surely go to heaven and receive eternal life in the future.
I, a once junior leader of the “Hua Xuehe sect,” was a son of disobedience who resisted God. If Almighty God hadn’t forgiven me, I would have long died somewhere. Today, when I recall the past, it is still as fresh as ever in my memory…In the summer of 2001, the leader above called us to have a co-workers’ meeting. The leader Li X said, “The ‘Eastern Lightning’ is a new name used by the denomination of Witness Lee. This group of people are very fierce and rampant. In order to win over people, they take every possible means. They use psychedelic drugs, money, and sex to tempt people. If you refuse to obey, they will cut off your nose or gouge out your eyes. So you should be strictly on guard against them! If they come, just revile and beat them, and drive them away in every possible way. Once you are caught in their deceptions and join them, you can’t get out.” The leader’s words made me shiver. So, after I came back, I “carried out” this “order” immediately and sealed off all the churches under my charge.
My name is Zhuo Aiyan. I was born into a Christian family. I began to preach at the age of 12 and left home to serve God full time at the age of 19. I had studied theology and contacted many overseas pastors and missionaries, which I always took as my capital. In addition, as I was very familiar with the Bible, had many years of working experience, and was gifted by the Lord, I always considered myself superior to others. As such, I limited the Lord Jesus’ return within the Bible and my imaginations and notions. But I never dreamed that Almighty God, whom I had resisted frenziedly for six years, was actually the Lord Jesus I had been expecting day and night. During those six years, no matter how I resisted, God’s hand never left me…
In the winter of 1993, my mother died. This misfortune deprived me of the opportunity to continue my education. Lost and sad, I went to join a Christian meeting near my campus and became a believer in Jesus.There, I tasted the care and love I had never tasted before and found the direction of my life. So, I began to read the Bible and attend meetings in the Seventh-day Adventist Church.Due to my zealous pursuit, I was soon selected as a leader and later became a full-time paid worker. From then on, I began to run around preaching the gospel and shepherding and sustaining the churches along with several senior workers. And we joined in union with all the other Seventh-day Adventist churches in China. And I became a co-worker in the Union of the Seventh-day Adventists who was in charge of the work in the three northeast provinces. Having gained fame, position, and money, I was filled with a sense of achievement, and I resolved to consecrate myself to the Lord and was ready to spread my wings on the spiritual path.
Almighty God says: “… if man has a heart that truly yearns for God, then he will not be abandoned by God. Man fails to gain God not because God has emotion, or because God is unwilling to be gained by man, but because man does not want to gain God, and because man does not urgently seek God. How could one of those who truly seeks God be cursed by God? How could one of sound sense and sensitive conscience be cursed by God? How could one who truly worships and serves God be consumed by the fires of His wrath? How could one who is happy to obey God be kicked out of God’s house? How could one who could not love God enough live in God’s punishment?” “Those who willfully stand against the incarnate God shall be punished for their disobedience. Their willful opposition to God stems from their conceptions of Him, which result in their disturbance to the work of God. Such men knowingly resist and destroy the work of God. Not merely do they have conceptions of God, but they do that which disturbs His work, and it is for this reason that such manner of men shall be condemned.”
Holding Fast to the “Bible” Cannot Gain Me God’s Approval
Holding Fast to the “Bible” Cannot Gain Me God’s Approval
Wan Xiu
Xinyang City, Henan Province
I had considered myself very faithful to the Lord. To safeguard the “true way” and the dignity of the “Bible,” I once disowned my younger sister and wantonly attacked and blasphemed Almighty God. When I, a watchdog of the Bible, became subject to Almighty God, I discovered that it was a great mistake to believe that I could be saved through the Bible.
In this world, if one offends a person, it’s not a terrible thing. But if he offends the God who created the heavens and the earth and all things, what will happen to him? …
3) The Parable of the Mustard Seed (Matt 13:31-32)
4) The Parable of the Leaven (Matt 13:33)
5) The Parable of the Tares Explained (Matt 13:36-43)
6) The Parable of the Treasure (Matt 13:44)
7) The Parable of the Pearl (Matt 13:45-46)
8) The Parable of the Net (Matt 13:47-50)
8. The Commandments
(Matt 22:37-39)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. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like to it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
Let’s first look at each part of “The Sermon on the Mount.” What are all of these related to? It can be said with certainty that these are all more elevated, more concrete, and closer to people’s lives than the regulations of the Age of Law. To speak in modern terms, it’s more relevant to people’s actual practice.
Let’s read the specific content of the following: How should you understand the beatitudes? What should you know about the law? How should anger be defined? How should adulterers be dealt with? What is said, and what kind of rules are there about divorce, and who can get divorced and who cannot get divorced? How about vows, eye for eye, love your enemies, instruction about giving, etc.? All of these things have to do with every aspect of the practice of mankind’s belief in God, and of their following God. Some of these practices are still relevant today, but they are more rudimentary than the current requirements of people. They are fairly elementary truths people encounter in their belief in God. From the time the Lord Jesus began working, He was already beginning to work on the life disposition of humans, but it was based on the foundation of the laws. Did the rules and the sayings on these topics have anything to do with the truth? Of course they did! All of the previous regulations, principles, and the sermon in the Age of Grace were all related to God’s disposition and what He has and is, and of course to the truth. No matter what God expresses, in what way He expresses it, or using what kind of language, its foundation, its origin, and its starting point are all based on the principles of His disposition and what He has and is. This is without error. So even though now these things He said seem a little shallow, you still can’t say that they’re not the truth, because they were things that were indispensable for people in the Age of Grace in order to satisfy God’s will and to achieve a change in their life disposition. Can you say that any of the things in the sermon are not in line with the truth? You can’t! Each one of these is the truth because they were all God’s requirements for mankind; they were all principles and a scope given by God for how to conduct oneself, and they represent God’s disposition. However, based on the level of their growth in life of that time, they were only able to accept and comprehend these things. Because mankind’s sin had not yet been resolved, the Lord Jesus could only issue these words, and He could only utilize such simple teachings within this kind of scope to tell the people of that time how they should act, what they should do, within what principles and scope they should do things, and how they should believe in God and meet His requirements. All of this was determined based on the stature of mankind at that time. It was not easy for people living under the law to accept these teachings, so what the Lord Jesus taught had to stay within this scope.
Next, let’s take a look at what’s in “The Parables of the Lord Jesus.”
The first one is the parable of the sower. This is a really interesting parable; sowing seeds is a common event in people’s lives. The second is the parable of the tares. As far as what tares are, anyone who has planted crops and adults will know. The third is the parable of the mustard seed. All of you know what mustard is, right? If you don’t know, you can have a look through the Bible. For the fourth one, the parable of the leaven, most people know that leaven is used for fermentation; it’s something that people use in their daily lives. All of the parables below, including the sixth, the parable of the treasure, the seventh, the parable of the pearl, and the eighth, the parable of the net, are all drawn from people’s lives; they all come from people’s real lives. What kind of picture do these parables paint? This is a picture of God becoming a normal person and living alongside mankind, using the language of a normal life, using human language to communicate with humans and to provide them with what they need. When God became flesh and lived among mankind for a long time, after He had experienced and witnessed people’s various lifestyles, these experiences became His textbook for transforming His divine language into human language. Of course, these things that He saw and heard in life also enriched the Son of man’s human experience. When He wanted to get people to understand some truths, to get them to understand some of God’s will, He could use parables similar to the ones above to tell people about God’s will and His requirements of mankind. These parables were all related to people’s lives; there was not a single one that was out of touch with human lives. When the Lord Jesus lived with mankind, He saw farmers tending their fields, He knew what tares were and what leavening was; He understood that humans like treasure, so He used the metaphors of both the treasure and the pearl; He frequently saw fishermen casting their nets; and so on. The Lord Jesus saw these activities in mankind’s lives, and He also experienced that type of life. He was the same as every other normal person, experiencing humans’ three meals a day and daily routines. He personally experienced the life of an average person, and He witnessed the lives of others. When He witnessed and personally experienced all of this, what He thought of wasn’t how to have a good life or how He could live more freely, more comfortably. When He was experiencing an authentic human life, the Lord Jesus saw the hardship in people’s lives, He saw the hardship, the wretchedness, and the sadness of people under the corruption of Satan, living under the domain of Satan, and living in sin. While He was personally experiencing human life, He also experienced how helpless people were who were living amongst corruption, and He saw and experienced the misery of those who lived in sin, who were lost in the torture by Satan, by evil. When the Lord Jesus saw these things, did He see them with His divinity or His humanity? His humanity really existed—it was very much alive—He could experience and see all of this, and of course His essence, His divinity saw it as well. That is,ChristHimself, the Lord Jesus the man saw this, and everything He saw made Him feel the importance and the necessity of the work He had taken on this time in the flesh. Even though He Himself knew that the responsibility He needed to take on in the flesh was so immense, and how cruel the pain He would face would be, when He saw mankind helpless in sin, when He saw the wretchedness of their lives and their feeble struggles under the law, He felt more and more grief, and became more and more anxious to save mankind from sin. No matter what kind of difficulties He would face or what kind of pain He would suffer, He became more and more resolute to redeem mankind living in sin. During this process, you could say that the Lord Jesus began to understand more and more clearly the work He needed to do and what He had been entrusted with. He also became increasingly eager to complete the work He was to take on—to take on all of mankind’s sins, to atone for mankind so that they no longer lived in sin and God would be able to forget man’s sins because of the sin offering, allowing Him to further His work of saving mankind. It could be said that in the Lord Jesus’ heart, He was willing to offer Himself up for mankind, to sacrifice Himself. He was also willing to act as a sin offering, to be nailed to the cross, and He was eager to complete this work. When He saw the miserable conditions of human’s lives, He wanted even more to fulfill His mission as quickly as possible, without the delay of a single minute or second. When He had such a feeling of urgency, He was not thinking of how great His own pain would be, nor did He think any longer of how much humiliation He would have to endure—He held just one conviction in His heart: As long as He offered up Himself, as long as He was nailed to the cross as a sin offering, God’s will would prevail and He would be able to commence new work. Mankind’s lives in sin, their state of existing in sin would be completely changed. His conviction and what He was determined to do were related to saving man, and He had only one objective: to carry out God’s will, so that He could successfully begin the next step in His work. This was what was in the Lord Jesus’ mind at the time.
Living in the flesh, the incarnate God possessed normal humanity; He had the emotions and the reasoning of a normal person. He knew what happiness was, what pain was, and when He saw mankind in this type of life, He deeply felt that merely giving people some teachings, providing them with something or teaching them something could not lead them out from sin. Neither could just having them obey the commandments redeem them from sin—only when He took on hum
God Is a Consuming Fire and Does Not Tolerate Man’s Offense
—the change of a person who frenziedly resisted Almighty God’s work because of her blind trust in the leaders’ words
Xia Suzhi
Nanyang City, Henan Province
The Picture of The Church of Almighty God
“Xia X, female, aged 33, a junior leader of the Praise Church. In spring 1999, when God’s work of the last days was preached to her, she didn’t accept it but slandered and blasphemed Almighty God everywhere with her upper leaders and hindered the believers under her from having contact with the gospel preachers.In May of the same year, her husband was crushed to death by a car. In September, her son had his leg broken. In July 2000, Xia’s house (a wing-room) was on fire without any reason, and everything in the room was burned up. That her family encountered the disasters one after another shows that the wicked shall be filled with mischief.” (from Typical Cases of Punishment for Resisting Almighty God)
“God is the Beginning and the End.” Only God Himself can usher in a new age and conclude the old age. Since the Lord Jesus opened up the Age of Grace and brought the Age of Law to an end, it has been two thousand years. During which, man has been living in the Lord’s grace and enjoying His love and mercy.
I was formerly an elder of the Local Church. Because I held on to my arrogant and erroneous views and because I was deceived by the rumors, I developed a great hatred for the Almighty God and collected materials to attack the work of God many times.
I. Resisting the Lord Blindly Because of Listening to the Rumors and Believing the Lies
Almighty God Saved Me
Shutting the Door on the Lord in order to “Guard the Church” and “Defend the Way”
My name is Wang Haijun. I was a preacher of the Justification by Faith Church. Like other brothers and sisters, I believed in God in order to go to heaven and gain eternal life, and I labored and worked in serving God in order to gain the crown of righteousness. But while I was desperately yearning for the Lord to return and reward me, I believed the rumors and shut the door on the Lord because of my foolishness and ignorance, becoming an opponent of God.
I Held Fast to the Bible and Became a Pharisee of the Present Age
Feng Gang
Shangqiu City, Henan Province
I Held Fast to the Bible and Became a Pharisee of the Present Age
In May 2002, I accepted the gospel of the last days of Almighty God. When I went to preach to the brothers and sisters of my former denomination with guilt, they said to me, “In the past, you didn’t allow us to have contact with the believers in Almighty God, and said that they would gouge out people’s eyes and cut off their noses and commit adultery. But now you yourself have followed them. You are an apostate. How can you have the face to come to preach to us? …” When I heard those words, my thoughts returned to the past…
I was once a co-worker in the Praise Church. I remember that when I had just believed in the Lord, a preacher said, “Our generation is the most blessed and can be raptured alive to meet the Lord in the air. The Lord is right at the door now….” Since then, I had been expecting the day of the Lord’s coming. I made a resolution before the Lord that I would wait for Him until His coming.
