The Church of Almighty God | At Last I Found the True God

At Last I Found the True God

Long Zhonghou

Zaozhuang City, Shandong Province

The Gospel

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.

In April, 2001, I was informed to have a meeting with the higher-ups. In the meeting a leader instructed me, “Teacher Hua made the arrangement before his departure from this world, saying that Almighty God was a heresy. Make this clear to the brothers and sisters below you and tell them not to be deceived by the false Christ. You shall resist it resolutely and stand firm even if you are the only one left in the end…” Because of these words, I began to go to various regions to seal off the churches, and I told the brothers and sisters, “Don’t receive anyone who comes to preach the ‘Eastern Lightning.’ Spare nobody’s feelings, including your parents. Brothers and sisters should oversee each other and must pull together to guard our church well.” Even so, I still felt worried, and I often went to inspect the churches, openly or secretly, and I taught the brothers and sisters many ways to resist it. Once, a brother called me to ask for my instruction. He said, “They’re here again. I tried to drive them, yet they simply refuse to leave. What should I do?” “Shovel them with a spade. I’ll take the responsibility if they are shoveled to death.” I said angrily.

From August 2001 to October 2002, the brothers and sisters came to preach God’s gospel of the last days to me not less than seventy to eighty times, but every time I drove them away. On March 4, 2002, I remember, as a sister in the church received a book of Almighty God’s word and a recorder from her relative, after I learned of it, I, being so angry, rushed to her house furiously and broke the recorder then and there, and I also tore up and burned the book of God’s word.

On June 13, 2002, Sister Wen, who had come to preach God’s gospel of the last days to me many times, came again. Without a word, I lifted up her bicycle, threw it to the ground, and struck it fiercely with a stone, and I threatened her, “If you come again, I’ll break your legs. I’ll see whether you will come or not!” She raised the broken bicycle and said to me with tears in her eyes, “Brother, God’s salvation has come to you many times, but you have rejected it every time. We believe in God yet do not know God; are we any different from the Pharisees of that time?” But I, having already lost my sense, couldn’t take in anything she said. Instead, I considered that I had won another battle for Hua Xuehe, and was very pleased with myself.

Early in October, 2002, I went to Jiangsu Province to attend a meeting, and there I met Brother Man, my comrade-in-arms. At his house, we had a fellowship about the Bible. He started from Genesis and went all the way to Revelation, and his fellowship sounded very good and profound to me, which made me begin to admire him secretly. But when he said that God was incarnated the second time and was doing the third stage of work, I suddenly realized: He has joined the “Eastern Lightning”! Then my face immediately turned “from sunny to cloudy,” and I began to guard against him in my heart. No matter what he fellowshipped about with me, I ignored it, because in my heart only Hua Xuehe was God, and the others were all false Christs and deceivers. In the evening, he prepared a dinner of all my favorite dishes, but I wasn’t willing to take a morsel and only wanted to leave as soon as possible. However, as the way was long, I could only spend the night there. Unexpectedly, my eyes somehow became red and swollen that night, and no matter how I cried out to Teacher Hua, it was of no avail. They ached all night.

The next morning, Brother Man took me to the hospital. After three days of treatment, my eyes were finally healed. In those few days, he busied himself taking care of me, and I saw again the mutual love among the brothers and sisters in former days. Meanwhile, I thought to myself, “At that time Paul hunted Jesus’ disciples and was struck blind by a light. It was because he resisted the true God. Could it also be that because I resisted God, my eyes suddenly became red and swollen? Am I too blind to know the true God?” For this I felt uneasy in my mind and didn’t know what to do. Seeing that I had a heavy heart, he found an opportunity to fellowship with me. He said, “God has come to earth through incarnation, and He has done a new work and opened a new age. Hua Xuehe was not God…” Hearing that, I got heated again, and I sternly rebuked him, “Stop blaspheming Hua Xuehe. Blaspheming him is the same as blaspheming the Holy Spirit, which will not be forgiven in this age or in the age to come.” With a smile he asked me, “You say that Hua Xuehe was God; what evidence do you have?” I said, “He healed the sick and drove out demons, spoke prophecies, and performed signs. Once, a man born blind was brought before him. He made a prayer for him, and his eyes were opened. Who except God can perform such a sign? At that time Jesus healed the sick, drove out demons, and performed miracles, and today Hua Xuehe did exactly the same. Can you say that he was not the returned Savior?” Then Brother Man explained to me, “Matthew 24:23-24 says, ‘Then if any man shall say to you, See, here is Christ, or there; believe it not. For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders; so that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.’ 1 Corinthians 13:8 says, ‘But whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.’ What do these two passages show? ‘Then’ refers to the last days, and ‘that which is perfect’ surely refers to God. That is to say, when the Lord Jesus comes again in the last days, He will not do the work of healing the sick and driving out demons, nor will He perform signs and wonders, and both prophecies and tongues shall fail then. If Hua Xuehe was the returned Lord, as you say, then why did he still heal the sick and drive out demons, perform signs and wonders, and speak in tongues? Since the true God will not do such work, then who actually did it? When God comes again, He will not repeat His work but will bring a new work. Only false Christs and false prophets will imitate the work Jesus has done, and they will show signs and perform miracles to deceive people into following them. But the Lord Jesus has already told people beforehand that in the last days false Christs will rise and show signs and perform miracles, so as for people to discern them. If when the Lord comes, He still did such work, then how could people discern who is the true One and who are the false ones? When the true God comes again, He will not do the work of healing the sick, driving out demons, or performing signs and wonders, because God’s work advances continuously and is always new and never old, and He does not repeat His work. Once God accomplishes a work, He will never repeat it. In the Old Testament God gave the law for people to keep. In the New Testament God did the work of healing the sick and driving out demons, performing miracles, and being crucified. Today when God comes again, will He repeat the work of performing signs and wonders? Just as God’s word says, ‘If, during the present day, there is to emerge a person who is able to display signs and wonders, and can cast out demons, and heal, and perform many miracles, and if this person claims that they are Jesus who has come, then this would be the counterfeit of evil spirits, and their imitation of Jesus. Remember this! God does not repeat the same work. Jesus’ stage of work has already been completed, and God will never again undertake that stage of work. … In the conceptions of man, God must always display signs and wonders, must always heal and cast out demons, and must always be just like Jesus, yet this time God is not like that at all. If, during the last days, God still displayed signs and wonders, and still cast out demons and healed—if He did exactly the same as Jesus—then God would be repeating the same work, and the work of Jesus would have no significance or value.’” After hearing the brother’s fellowship, I was utterly convinced. Especially when I heard that “God does not repeat the same work,” I was suddenly enlightened, “Yes! God is always new and never old, so how can He repeat His work? If He repeated the work of the old age in the new age, what would be the point of that? Doesn’t John 4:37, which says, “One sows, and another reaps,” mean that God does not repeat His work? God has prophesied in Revelation that in the last days He will do the work of judgment and chastisement. Hua Xuehe just performed miracles and showed signs; wasn’t he imitating the work of the Lord Jesus? So Hua Xuehe was not God?”

Seeing that my attitude somewhat changed, Brother Man continued, “We all know that Jesus is God. Then, did Jesus have a wife and children?” I said, “No.” “Hua Xuehe claimed to be God and the Christ;” he went on, “why did he have a wife and children? God is the Ruler who created the heavens and the earth and all things. If He also had a wife or husband and children when He comes to earth, then would He be any different from the created beings? God’s word says, ‘Some people say, however, that God incarnate can be said to possess normal humanity only if He has a wife, sons and daughters, a family. … I ask you then, does God have a wife? Is it possible for God to have a husband? Can God have children? Are these not fallacies?’ ‘In other words, how could God start a family and raise children on earth? Would this not be a disgrace? He possesses the normal humanity only for the purpose of carrying out work in a normal manner, not to enable Him to start a family as an ordinary man would. … God comes to earth, meaning the Word becomes flesh; He is simply allowing man to understand His word and to see His word, that is, allowing man to see the work carried out by the flesh. His intention is not for people to treat His flesh in a certain way, but only for man to be obedient to the end, that is, to obey all words that issue forth from His mouth, and to submit to all the work that He does.’” When I heard this, I was fully enlightened. “This is God’s personal utterance. Except for God, who can unlock these mysteries? And who can make so clear the things concerning God Himself?” So I was fully clear that Hua Xuehe was an absolute false Christ and that only Almighty God is the only true God incarnate the second time.

Brothers and sisters, the above is my experience of finding the true God, the details of which are still as fresh as ever in my memory. Thinking of my past resistance against Almighty God, I all the more feel that I have no face to live before Almighty God. I had followed Hua Xuehe for many years and had been so loyal to him as to work myself to death for him, but in the end it turned out that I had pledged my life to defend a false Christ and had been frenziedly resisting every day the only true God whom I had been longing for day and night. In sorrow, I came before God and prayed, “O God! I’m really not worthy to be saved by You and I don’t have the face to live before You, because I rejected Your coming as an accomplice of the false Christ and became his watchdog… O Almighty God! According to what I have done, I’m unworthy to call Your holy name, because I have committed monstrous sins! O God, so many brothers and sisters cannot come before You because of my hindrance. I’m simply an exceedingly sinful ‘murderer.’ Today You didn’t treat me according to my evil deeds but delivered me from the abyss of death, giving me the opportunity to be saved. I really don’t know how to repay Your great love and bountiful grace!”

Dear brothers and sisters, after I followed Almighty God, I went out to preach the gospel like others, yet when I preached the gospel enthusiastically to the brothers and sisters in the sect I used to be in, they not only refused to accept it, but dealt with me by the means I had taught them in the past. This made me see more clearly the evil I had done in the past and see that I deserved to be cursed, punished, and cut to pieces… In deep sorrow, I made a resolution inwardly: O God! I’m too indebted to You. I’m willing to cooperate with You, and no matter how hard and difficult it may be, I will bring the brothers and sisters in darkness before You, to make up for my indebtedness to You!