I Prostrated Myself Before Almighty God
Li Fei
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| I Prostrated Myself Before Almighty God |
I was formerly a deacon of the Church of the True Jesus’ Bride. In my years of believing in God, I always considered myself as a true lover of God and a good soldier of Christ because I had offered up everything for the sake of “serving God only.” So I thought that one day I would surely ascend to the kingdom of heaven with Jesus on the same cloud. But when “Jesus” truly came to receive me, I became His enemy…
On March 4, 1998, when we were having a meeting, two young brothers came to study the Bible with us. However, I quickly found that when they read the Bible or spoke, they didn’t add the word “true” before the word “God,” and they also revealed that many people were reading the little scroll. So I purposely said to them in a loud voice, “You see, there is a blank space left before the word ‘God’ in the Bible. This is a secret in the Bible, and no one can tell the reason except us. It is a space reserved for the word ‘true.’ If one does not add the word ‘true’ before the word ‘God’ when speaking, he is not a child of the true God. When you speak, you don’t speak in the name of the true God. What is this? And you said that there is a little scroll. What can you know? The Bible is the standard for everything. Any belief apart from the Bible is from an antichrist or a false prophet’s deception. In the name of the true God, I tell you to get out right away! Don’t come here to disturb us!”
One month later, two young sisters came to my home and said to me, “The true God has done a new work…” “Nonsense! That’s utterly impossible. I’m so faithful before the true God that I never watch TV or associate with the unbelievers but do the will of the true God only. If the true God has done a new work, who are you to know it first?” I shouted angrily at them before they finished. After they left, the more I thought about their words, the more I felt they were nonsense. So I firmly believed that what they preached was a “heresy.”
On April 26, I went out to attend a meeting. On the way I met two sisters, and they told me, “The true God has been incarnated to do the work, as a female…” Upon hearing this, I flared up into a fury, “Jesus was a male, but you are preaching a female God. You don’t want to live anymore? You dare to blaspheme the true God like this and even want to deceive me. I’ll never fall into your trap. I’ve heard that you people have no humanity! You strike, revile, and detain others, and even cut off others’ ears or gouge out their eyes. You dare to do anything. You are truly ‘wolves in sheep’s clothing.’ I tell you, I have the word of the Lord Jesus as the foundation of my life. You want to draw me in? No way!” As I said this, I cursed them in my heart spitefully, “These preachers of the ‘heresy’ deserve to go to hell and be consumed by fire and brimstone!”
At the end of May, another two brothers came to preach the work of Almighty God to me. From their words I knew immediately that they were also from the “Eastern Lightning.” I clenched my teeth in bitter hatred. So, I called several people at once and drove them away with wooden sticks. I thought that they would never dare to come again from then on. But unexpectedly, after only two weeks, a brother wheeled his bicycle and entered the gate of my house. At the sight of him, I pulled a long face and asked, “Why do you come here?” After a moment’s silence, he said, “The true God has done a new work in the last days…” Without a word, I dashed forward and, wheeling his bicycle, ran out of the gate, and threw it into a sewage pool outside. Seeing that he still didn’t want to go, I gave him a thick ear and shouted abuse at him, “Get away quickly! I tell you to go. You don’t, why?! Do you want to have a taste of my fist?” Taking a look at my devilish, malicious look, the brother raised his bicycle from the sewage pool and left reluctantly.
After that, for quite a long time, no one came to “disturb” me. I lived such a “quiet” life for four months. One day another brother came to visit me with a book. He said to me humbly, “This is the word of the true God. Please read it.” Without giving it a glance, I waved my hand and said, “Take it away quickly! You read it yourself! The true God knows my faithfulness to Him. I’ve seen through the devil’s scheme. Away from me, Satan!”
After such battles with the preachers of the “Eastern Lightning,” I began to hate them and also be afraid of them, and I didn’t dare to let down my guard a little. So I stepped up my efforts to seal off the church. Many times in the meetings I said, “Now the heresies are very prevailing. They try to draw us in with money and beautiful women. You must be careful! Never have contact with them, especially those preachers of the ‘Eastern Lightning.’ If they come, you just lock your door and tell them you are going to work in the field. Never speak too much with them. When necessary, you can drive them away by force as I did!” When I saw that the brothers and sisters didn’t dare to contact those who preached the “Eastern Lightning,” I was very complacent and pleased with my performance, thinking that I had stood the testimony for the Lord. From then on, many more preachers of the gospel of the last days came to my home, but I never gave them a chance to speak. Once I saw them enter my house, I would hurl dirty words at them, saying that they were so cheeky that they idled about every day and tried to draw people away from our Church. If they didn’t leave at once, I would strike them violently with a tool. I hated them so much as to want to smash them to a pulp. These were the evil things done by me—a person who believed in God but resisted God.
On October 27, 2000, a few of us co-workers were assigned by the leader to visit a new place out of town that would be under our charge. During our meeting there, two relatives of the host family came. After introduction, we knew that they were also believers in Jesus. So we began to fellowship together. We fellowshipped from noon until nightfall, and we all had a very good time. Seeing that they were humble and polite in speech and manner, I had a feeling of regret that I hadn’t met them earlier. Unexpectedly, when we were about to rest in the evening, we heard a sister say, “We no longer read the Bible now.” Upon hearing this word, we several brothers were immediately aware that they were by no means true believers in the “true God” but probably the people of the “Eastern Lightning.” I thought, “Humph, you even stop reading the Bible? You dare to act against the Lord Jesus. You devils are doomed to come to no good! You want to induce us to betray Jesus. That’s absolutely impossible. We firmly believe that the Lord Jesus is our Savior, and we would rather die than leave the presence of the Lord.” It was already eleven o’clock at night, and all the buses had stopped running. So after a discussion, we decided to leave immediately after daybreak the next day. I tossed and turned restlessly that night, unable to fall asleep. At last it came to 4 o’clock the next morning, and we got up and were ready to leave. Then the two sisters came in. Seeing that we were ready to go, they said, “Don’t hurry. If you have any questions, we can sit down and talk about them!” Although I was very angry at that time, at the thought that what they had talked about the day before was quite to our taste and they had given me a good impression, I suppressed my anger and said, “So then I would like to ask a few questions. If you can’t answer them, we’ll go at once!” They agreed. Then I raised the questions that had bothered us over a long time, “First, why don’t you read the Bible anymore? Second, what do the last days refer to? Third, how come God is incarnated as a female this time?” Pondering for a while, a sister answered, “First, the Old Testament and the New Testament record only the first two stages of God’s work, which were the needs of the people of the first two ages. That is to say, from the Bible, people can only know about the law of Jehovah and the salvation of Jesus, but these cannot take the place of God’s work of the last days, nor can they purify man of his corrupt disposition. God does His work according to man’s actual needs, and He does not continue one work or certain requirements for man for several thousand years. For example, in the Age of Law, it was right for people to read the Old Testament, but after Jesus came, they should obey the teachings from Jesus’ mouth. As these teachings were not in the Old Testament, they should not cling on to the Old Testament. It’s the same today. The work of the last days has come, and God has spoken new words and expressed more truths, the truths God has never made known to man. As all these words are the actual needs of the people of the last days, of course they are not in the Bible. So, the people of today should not cling on to the former practices or God’s former words, but should follow the footsteps of the Lamb closely. This is why today we who have kept up with the footsteps of the Lamb do not read the Bible.” When answering the second question, the sister quoted Matthew 24:32-39 and said, “In these few verses, the Lord told people a sign of His advent and of the end of the world. We all know that ‘when her branch is yet tender, and puts forth leaves’ refers to the time when Israel is restored as a nation. Israel, after being destroyed, was formally restored on May 14, 1948. The Lord told us that when we see the nation of Israel restored, the Son of man will be right at the door, and that will be a sign of the last days, namely, an indication that the last days is about to come. It has been over 50 years since the nation of Israel was restored. At that time the Lord was already at the door and the last days was about to come. Do you think the last days should not have come now? The Lord Jesus said in Matthew 24:37-39, ‘But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.’ In these few verses, the Lord told us that we should judge whether or not the last days have come from the sign of the days of Noah. Before the destruction of the world by the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, and planting and building. They were licentious and corrupt, and their sins had reached the peak in God’s eyes. Aren’t the present generation more corrupt than the people in Noah’s time? That is to say, the last days have already come. About the third question you asked, we know that God is Spirit, formless and imageless, and with Him there is no gender. He is male or female only when He is incarnated for the sake of His work. If God still came as a male this time, then people would hold the misconception that God is male. In that case, wouldn’t God be fixed in a particular image? In the beginning God created man and woman in His image. So He has been incarnated as a male or a female. If we say that God should not be incarnated as a female, aren’t we also saying that it was wrong for God to create Eve? God’s wonderfulness and wisdom are much higher than man’s mind, and man can never fathom it.”
The sister’s answer at once dispelled the mists shrouding my heart. I couldn’t help exclaiming to myself, “Has God really come? Has He really done a new work?!” Then I quieted my heart to hear her fellowship. The sister testified to us in detail the new work Almighty God does on earth in the last days. What thrilled us was that there we read the personal utterance of Almighty God. A passage of the piece of God’s word “When You Behold the Spiritual Body of Jesus Will Be When God Has Made Anew Heaven and Earth” especially pierced my heart. It says: “Do you wish to know the root of why the Pharisees opposed Jesus? Do you wish to know the substance of the Pharisees? They were full of fantasies about the Messiah. What’s more, they believed only that the Messiah would come, yet did not seek the truth of life. And so, even today they still await the Messiah, for they have no knowledge of the way of life, and do not know what the way of truth is. How, say you, could such foolish, stubborn and ignorant people gain God’s blessing? How could they behold the Messiah? They opposed Jesus because they did not know the direction of the Holy Spirit’s work, because they did not know the way of truth spoken by Jesus, and, furthermore, because they did not understand the Messiah. And since they had never seen the Messiah, and had never been in the company of the Messiah, they made the mistake of paying empty tribute to the name of the Messiah while opposing the substance of the Messiah by any means. These Pharisees in substance were stubborn, arrogant, and did not obey the truth. The principle of their belief in God is: No matter how profound Your preaching, no matter how high Your authority, You are not Christ unless You are called the Messiah. Are these views not preposterous and ridiculous? I ask you again: Is it not extremely easy for you to commit the mistakes of the earliest Pharisees, given that you have not the slightest understanding of Jesus? Are you able to discern the way of truth? Can you truly guarantee that you will not oppose Christ? Are you able to follow the work of the Holy Spirit? If you do not know whether you will oppose Christ, then I say that you are already living on the brink of death. Those who did not know the Messiah were all capable of opposing Jesus, of rejecting Jesus, of slandering Him. People who do not understand Jesus are all capable of denying Him, and reviling Him. Moreover, they are capable of seeing the return of Jesus as the deceit of Satan, and more people shall condemn Jesus returning to flesh. Does not all of this make you afraid? What you face shall be blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, the ruination of the words of the Holy Spirit to the churches, and the spurning of all that is expressed by Jesus. What can you gain from Jesus if you are so befuddled? How can you understand the work of Jesus when He returns to flesh on a white cloud, if you obstinately refuse to realize your errors? I tell you this: People who do not accept the truth, yet blindly await the arrival of Jesus upon white clouds, will surely blaspheme against the Holy Spirit, and they are the race that shall be destroyed. You merely wish for the grace of Jesus, and merely want to enjoy the blissful realm of heaven, yet you have never obeyed the words spoken by Jesus, and have never received the truth expressed by Jesus when He returns to flesh. What will you hold up in exchange for the fact of Jesus’ return upon a white cloud? Is it the sincerity in which you repeatedly commit sins, and then confess them, over and over? What will you offer in sacrifice to Jesus who returns upon a white cloud? Is it the years of work with which you exalt yourselves? What will you hold up to make the returned Jesus trust you? Is it that arrogant nature of yours, which does not obey any truth?” When I examined myself according to God’s words, I remembered my past doings, and I felt so ashamed that I wished to sink through the ground. Faced with these words of truth and this great salvation, I felt heartbroken with remorse. “O Almighty God! I’m really a thoroughgoing Satan and a typical Pharisee of the present age. I believed in God but didn’t recognize God. I should be cast into the lake of fire and brimstone. O God! I have no virtue or ability, yet You have uplifted me and granted me such a great grace. You showed care for me and sent the brothers and sisters to preach the gospel to me over eighty times. I resisted and reviled You time after time and blasphemed You countless times like a mad dog, but You didn’t punish me because of my evil deeds. O Almighty God, You really love me so much. I will spend the rest of my life repaying You to make up for my past transgressions, fulfilling the duty a created being should fulfill.”
Now I have followed Almighty God for more than two years. During this precious time, from God’s word I have understood much about the true meaning of life and known how mankind has been corrupted by Satan beyond all recognition. I have also personally experienced that if one wants to be perfected and purified and become a real man, he must undergo Almighty God’s chastisement and judgment in the last days so that he can eventually put off all his unrighteousness and be saved by God. In experiencing the fact, I, enlightened by the true light, hate myself even more that I was so blind and ignorant that I did so many things of resisting God yet thought that I was faithful to the Lord. Here, I only hope that the brothers and sisters who have not yet returned to God can gain some enlightenment from my experience and enter the “ark” (the last salvation) God has prepared for us as soon as possible to escape the coming “flood” (disasters). Be a wise man!
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