Eastern Lightning | Breaking Through the Fog to See the Light

Breaking Through the Fog to See the Light

Faith, China

I am an ordinary worker. At the end of November, 2013, a coworker saw that my wife and I would always make a lot of noise about little things, that every day we were worried and distressed, so he passed on the work of Almighty God in the last days to us. From the word of Almighty God, we have learned that the heavens and earth and all things were created by God, and that man’s life is bestowed on him by God. We have also understood the truth of the mystery of the six-thousand-year management plan, the mystery of the incarnation, God’s three stages of work in saving mankind, the significance of God’s work of judgment in the last days, and other respects. My wife and I thought that happening upon God having come to save mankind during our lifetimes was a great blessing. We happily accepted God’s work in the last days, and led a church life. Under the guidance of the word of God, we both pursued the truth and to transform ourselves, and whenever something happened and we started to argue, we wouldn’t just find fault with each other like we used to, but rather we would reflect on ourselves and try to know ourselves.
After that, we acted in a way that forsook the flesh in accordance with God’s demands, and our marital relations became better and better, and our hearts became peaceful and steady. We felt that believing in God was truly good. However, while we were joyous and happy to follow God, when we were enjoying the blessed life, we were faced with a violent attack coming from our families…. Just when I was losing my way, it was the word of God that guided me to see through Satan’s scheme, and to break through the fog and enter onto the radiant and correct path for life.

Eastern Lightning | Church Life

When I had just retired in February of 2014, my daughter in law got us two elderly folks to travel to Sichuan to babysit our grandson. I prayed to God: “Almighty God! My daughter in law has asked me to babysit our grandson, but I’m not used to life in that place, and it’s not convenient to believe in God or read the word of God in that place. I hope You will open up a way out for us….” Not long after that, my daughter in law called me again to say that she would bring my grandson to us. When I heard this news I was overjoyed, and felt how almighty God is. God heard my prayer and opened up a way out for me. Before too many days had passed, my daughter in law and her parents brought over my grandson. As it happened, the day after that I was going to a gathering, and I told them that I believed in Almighty God. After hearing this, my daughter in law said unhappily, “Dad, how can you believe in Almighty God? I’m sure you know that the government doesn’t allow people to believe in Almighty God, and in recent years they have been arresting believers in Almighty God. You can’t continue to believe in Him.” I refuted her by saying, “When we believe in God, we don’t do it out of opposition to the government. We just attend gatherings, read the word of God, pursue the truth, and follow the right path. How can they not let us believe?” My daughter in law said, “No matter what you say, and even if believing in God is the right path, as long as the government opposes it, you can’t believe in Him!” I thought to myself, “No matter what you say, it is the true God who I believe in. Even if the CCP government doesn’t allow it, I will still believe.” Later, my daughter in law went and found my wife and urged her that we shouldn’t believe in God…. Afterward, my son in faraway Sichuan called me up and said, “Dad, I heard you believe in Almighty God. That’s something the CCP opposes, so you can’t believe in Him anymore.” When I heard my son say this, I felt perturbed in my heart: Believing in God is the law of heaven for me, so why are you all trying to block me from it over and over? It’s so hard to believe in God and follow the correct path! I then prayed silently to God to guard me so I could resist the disturbances of my son and daughter in law. After praying, my heart gradually became tranquil. Although my son and daughter in law did not understand, I was clear that my faith in God and following the correct path was not mistaken, and that I could not be influenced by them. After three days, my daughter in law hurriedly came running home, and I saw that she had two stacks of something printed in her hands. She urged me to look at them quickly, and when I looked I saw that they were filled with rumors and falsehoods of the CCP government vilifying, condemning, and defaming The Church of Almighty God. For a moment I felt some confusion in my heart, and I thought: It can’t be, I’ve been attending meetings for several months and I’ve never seen any brothers or sisters missing arms or legs! Why does the CCP government want to spread rumors and defamation about The Church of Almighty God? What is really going on here? In the evening that day, I couldn’t sleep because I kept turning this over in my mind. “Alas! My son and daughter in law are trying so forcefully to block me, and the CCP government is also trying to persecute me, so what should I do?”

The next day, I went out for a stroll in the neighborhood, and also saw these rumors slandering and condemning The Church of Almighty God posted on a bulletin board. I thought: What I believe in is the true God, so why does the CCP government oppose it in this way? It seems that in the atheistic state controlled by the CCP, believing in God really isn’t an easy thing! … When I thought about this, I felt some weakness in my heart, and I returned home downcast and dejected. Just when I got home, my daughter in law said to me again, “Dad, I’m begging you to give up your faith. If the government finds out that you believe in God, I won’t be able to keep my job, and your son who will soon get his doctorate won’t even be able to find a job. Even your little grandson might get caught up in this, and it’s possible that in the future he won’t be able to attend school.” When I heard this, I thought it was a disaster. Believing in God can even involve the future of one’s children! I got more and more scared, and I knew that the CCP government’s ways of disciplining and punishing people are extremely cruel, so cruel that you could say that “they kill people without batting an eye.” I also thought it wouldn’t be easy for me to make my son graduate with his doctorate, and now what will I do if believing in God even gets my son involved? Better to just forget about it. The price I would pay for believing in God and following the right path is too high. Then, my daughter in law threatened me, saying, “My dad said that if you continue to believe, he will report you to the police. You know that my dad is a party secretary, and has given more than thirty years of his life to them. He hears and obeys whatever the CCP wants. He’s as good as his word, and this isn’t just to try to scare you.” The defenses in my heart then completely collapsed and toppled over, and I felt that it was too hard to believe in God, that the pressure was too much. With my son and daughter in law attacking me like this, if they really wanted to report me to the CCP government to be arrested and imprisoned, an old man like me could not bear such a thing. Forget it, it’s better to just give up my belief. After that, I didn’t attend gatherings anymore, and sisters came to my house looking for me several times and I always hid so they couldn’t find me.

But during that time when I was not attending gatherings, as long as I thought about how it was God’s immense love that saved me from my suffering and the sweetness and happiness of the brothers and sisters and I singing hymns and praising God together, I missed and yearned for it a lot but still feared my daughter in law and others reporting me to the police. I felt so much pain and torture in my heart and I didn’t know what the best course of action was. At that time, a coworker (a brother who believed in God) came to my house to visit me to see why I hadn’t been attending gatherings recently. I explained to him how my daughter in law had been harassing me about believing in God. After he heard this, he fellowshiped to me, “When we are beset by these things, it’s actually a spiritual struggle. It’s just like the disaster that Job was faced with, in that on the surface it seemed like it had been caused by thieves robbing him, but actually what was behind it was Satan’s torment of people and fighting over mankind with God. Because Job revered God and was able to shun evil, in the end he could stand witness for God while Satan was humiliated in defeat. So when we are beset by these things, God’s intention is to get us to distinguish Satan’s essence of evil. When we believe in God, all we need to do is rely on God, seek the truth, and be spiritually keen, and only then will we be able to see through Satan’s scheme and to stand witness! Then we can avoid being captured by Satan. Otherwise, we will lose the opportunity to receive salvation.

After that, my coworker read to me from the word of Almighty God: “God works, God cares for a person, looks upon a person, and Satan dogs His every step. Whoever God favors, Satan also watches, trailing along behind. If God wants this person, Satan would do everything in its power to obstruct God, using various evil ways to tempt, harass and wreck the work God does in order to achieve its hidden objective. What is its objective? It does not want God to have anyone; it wants all those that God wants, to possess them, control them, to take charge of them so they worship it, so they commit evil acts alongside it. Is this not Satan’s sinister motive? Normally, you often say that Satan is so evil, so bad, but have you seen it? You can only see how bad man is and has not seen in reality how bad Satan actually is. But have you seen it in this issue concerning Job? (Yes.) This issue has made Satan’s hideous countenance and its essence very clear. Satan is at war with God, trailing along behind Him. Its objective is to demolish all the work God wants to do, to possess and control those whom God wants, to completely extinguish those whom God wants. If they are not extinguished, then they come to Satan’s possession to be used by it—this is its objective” (“God Himself, the Unique IV” in Continuation of The Word Appears in the Flesh). “You must be awake and waiting at every moment, and you must come before Me more. You must recognize the various plots and cunning schemes of Satan, know the spirit, know people and be able to discern all kinds of people, matters and things; you must eat and drink more of My words and, more importantly, you must be able to eat and drink them by yourselves. Equip yourselves with all the truth, come before Me so that I may open your spiritual eyes and allow you to see all the mysteries that lie within the spirit…” (“The Seventeenth Utterance” in The Word Appears in the Flesh).

After he had finished reading from the word of God, my coworker fellowshiped to me about it, saying: It is an intense spiritual struggle when we are beset with these things. At present, the whole world is under the domain of Satan, the evil one, and Satan continues to do its work of corrupting mankind. It wants to fully take possession of and destroy mankind whom God created, and this is Satan’s evil goal. God’s six-thousand-year management plan is for the sake of saving mankind from the dark influence of Satan. Especially in the present time of the last days, in expressing His word, God is doing the last stage of work of cleansing and saving mankind, and Satan is afraid that we will accept God’s work, and that we will understand the truth and receive salvation. It is afraid that we will distinguish its evil and reactionary essence, abandon it, and forsake it. Because of this it is in the throes of its final deathbed struggle—battling with God for the chosen people of God and using every contemptible strategy to block us from coming into God’s presence. Schemes like the suppression and seizures done by the CCP, family members’ disruption and persecution, as well as all the rumors and slander spread by the religious circle together with the CCP government are all implemented in order to prevent us from turning toward God. But God’s wisdom is exercised based on Satan’s scheme, and God is currently using Satan’s disruption to do service for God’s work. Through this He perfects our faith and loyalty. From the outside, it is your son and daughter in law together with the CCP government using all kinds of tricks and means to prevent and obstruct us from believing in God, but actually behind the scenes it is a ruse carried out by Satan. As long as we do more to seek the truth and to understand God’s will, have some knowledge of God’s work, are able to discern all of Satan’s tricks and ruses, and are able to stand witness for God, Satan will be humiliated in defeat. As long as we don’t seek to understand the truth and don’t understand the spiritual struggle, when Satan causes disruptions for us we are liable to be led astray and to give rise to doubts about God even to the point of denying God, betraying God, and leaving God behind. This way it will happen that you will fall victim to Satan’s tricks and miss the opportunity to receive salvation. In the end you will be devoured by Satan. So we absolutely must do more to pray and draw near to God, and step up our reading of the word of God and equipping ourselves with the truth. Only in this way can we understand God’s will, see through Satan’s tricks, and stand witness to God.

Through reading the word of God and what my coworker fellowshiped, I suddenly realized: This is actually a spiritual struggle. God expresses the truth in the last days in order to save mankind, but Satan thinks up every conceivable way to use pressure and persecution by my son, daughter in law, and the CCP government to prevent me from believing in God and following God. It is afraid that I will accept God’s work in the last days and understand the truth. Thus I will distinguish its evil, hideous, satanic, demonic essence and betray and forsake it, and obtain God’s salvation. Today, I have finally seen Satan’s contemptible malice and understood the painstaking care and thought that God put into saving me. Afterward, I will read more of the word of God and equip myself with the truth so as not to be taken advantage of by Satan. The emotions I had restrained for so long were finally set free in the word of God, and I felt so happy as if I was seeing the light of day again.

Although I understood that my daughter in law harassing me for believing in God was just one of Satan’s tricks, and that I should not be fooled by Satan, I was still rather worried that if the CCP government found out about my faith it would have an impact on the careers of my son and daughter in law. I was even more afraid of the impact it would have on my grandson going to school. So I told my coworker about my concerns and he read me another passage from the word of Almighty God: “God’s authority exists regardless of the circumstances; in all situations, God dictates and arranges every human fate and all things in accordance with His thoughts, His wishes. This will not change because humans change, and it is independent of man’s will, cannot be altered by any changes in time, space, and geography, for God’s authority is His very substance. … At all times God wields His authority, shows His might, continues His management work as always; at all times He rules all things, provides for all things, orchestrates all things, just as He always did. No one can change this. It is fact; it has been the unchanging truth since time immemorial!” (“God Himself, the Unique III” in Continuation of The Word Appears in the Flesh). After he had read the word of God, my coworker went on to fellowship about it: God is the Creator, and is the sovereign over the heavens, earth, and everything within. He also controls the fate of every person, and whatever kind of work or future each of us has was decided long ago by God. This is something no one can decide or change by himself. Your son and daughter in law’s careers and future are all controlled by God. It doesn’t matter if they believe in God or not; their fate is dictated and arranged by God. It is unnecessary for us to be worried about this or that. Job was never worried about it, because it was clear to him that all he had was given to him by God, and whatever was conferred upon him or taken away from him was done by God. So we should only be concerned with praying to God, and entrust the future of our sons and daughters to God’s hands and have faith that God has a suitable plan…. Through these words fellowshiped to me about knowing God’s authority, I came to have faith in God, and was steady and at peace in my heart. I would no longer worry about the future of my son or daughter in law.

Afterward, through reading the word of God, I made progress in knowing the evil essence of the CCP government’s hostility to God. The word of Almighty God says: “The devil tightly trusses all of man’s body, it puts out both his eyes, and seals his lips firmly shut. The king of devils has rampaged for several thousand years, right up until today, when it still keeps a close watch on the ghost town, as if it were an impenetrable palace of demons; this pack of watchdogs, meanwhile, stare with glaring eyes, deeply fearful that God will catch them unawares and wipe them all out, leaving them without a place of peace and happiness. How could the people of a ghost town such as this have ever seen God?” (“Work and Entry (8)” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). The Sermons and Fellowship on Entry Into Life also says: “In the heart of the great red dragon, it thinks God has come to take away from it all the people who belong to it, and He is making an enemy of it. This great red dragon is a peremptory and unreasonable thing! Mankind is created by God, and God has the authority to save mankind. Originally, mankind belongs to God, and it is the great red dragon which has usurped the chosen people of God, corrupting and trampling on them at will, eventually devouring them all. However, when God comes to save mankind it antagonizes Him. We can see from this that the great red dragon’s essential nature is in opposition to heaven, reactionary, unreasonable, and absurd in the extreme. It is a wild beast and a demon” (“The True Significance of Forsaking the Great Red Dragon to Receiving Salvation” in Sermons and Fellowship on Entry Into Life (III)). Now, I understand that in this atheistic country the authority of the CCP is the authority of Satan. It does not permit God to come to this land and do the work of saving people, nor does it allow people to break free of its dark influence and be obtained by God, to be led by God into a beautiful destination. So it does all it can to resist and condemn Almighty God and the work of Almighty God, frantically disturbing and obstructing us from following Almighty God. If we do not have the truth, don’t know the schemes of the CCP, and don’t see into its essence, it will be easy to be led astray by all the kinds of lies it disseminates, or to be frightened into submission by its repression and persecution. We won’t dare to come into the presence of God, and this means it has achieved its goal of devouring people and destroying God’s work of saving people. But there is no one who can penetrate God’s wisdom. God perfectly makes use of the persecution by the CCP to do service for perfecting the chosen people of God, to allow people to understand the truth, and to completely understand that the CCP government is a satanic demon which is full of enmity for the truth and takes God as its enemy, so they can completely forsake it and turn fully toward God. It is like when I experienced this persecution, in that my son and daughter in law, as well as my daughter in law’s parents, were all led astray by the lies of the CCP government. Under duress by the CCP abusing its power, they forced me to abandon Almighty God and caused me to miss out on receiving salvation from Almighty God. But now, through reading the word of God, I have seen clearly that the CCP government uses lies to lead people astray, and uses extremely violent methods to restrict people and stop them from believing in God. I have seen that its goal is to bring us all under its control and ultimately to be harmed and devoured by it. The more I think about it, the more I hate this satanic demon, this great red dragon that is the CCP. It is tyrannical, rides roughshod over people, and oppresses and persecutes those who believe in God. Its evil crimes truly do overflow the heavens, and it will inevitably face God’s retribution! I am grateful to the guidance of the word of God, which allowed me to distinguish the devilish essence of the CCP’s resistance to God and to no longer be restrained by its threats. I am also grateful that God caused my coworker to come to my home and assist me in a time when I was negative and weak, and when I had fallen down and lost my way. He used His word to guide me and saved me from being tempted by Satan, and made me break through Satan’s net and return to the presence of God and have an opportunity to receive salvation. I have resolved that no matter how many difficulties there are on the road ahead, I will follow Almighty God all the way to the end of the road!

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