Coming Home (Part 2)

In this period, there was another brother named Yang who also investigated Almighty God’s work in the last days together with me. I had always had a careless and absent-minded attitude, but Brother Yang was earnest in his studies. Brother Yang said that he had rejected the gospel of Almighty God when people had preached it to him before but that hearing it again today must be an opportunity granted by God! He wanted to investigate it. Brother Yang saw that I was only interested in listening to the pastor’s words and not investigating with an open mind.

He found a passage for me, which was Matthew 5:3–6: “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. … Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.” Reading the word of the Lord, I wondered: Why is it that I can’t seek tranquilly in the presence of the Lord? If the Lord were really to return by some chance, and I did not listen to Him or investigate it, would I not be left behind? I should also learn some humility, and I must not blindly come to conclusions based on my own imagination. Just when I had decided to settle my heart to investigate it sincerely, a missionary of the church gave me a call out of the blue and asked me if I were still with the people from The Church of Almighty God. I said that yes, the missionary again reminded me to cease contact with them. The missionary’s words dispelled the thought that I had just been wanting to investigate. I thought, “The pastor and missionary have a much better understanding of the Bible than I do, and none of them acknowledges that the Lord has returned. I had too little understanding of the Bible and had no ability to discriminate for myself, so I had better just listen to what the pastor and missionary were saying.” When I hung up the phone, I said to Brother Cheng: “If Brother Yang wants to investigate, then you two go on speaking. I don’t want to hear it.” Just like that, I had once again stiffly rejected the salvation of God.

I returned to work after a week of treatment. Due to my mother’s passing, my heart was full of sorrow and anguish and I could not stop thinking about her. Every day when I came home from work, I would look at a picture of my mother and speak with her. One day I suddenly remembered that I was a believer in God and that whenever I was going through a period of difficulty and weakness I could always tell these things to God. After that, whenever I encountered hardships I would come into the presence of the Lord and pray, asking the Lord to console me. But no matter how I prayed, I never felt moved within. Sometimes I would fall asleep while praying. I was living in anxiety every day so severe, even to the point that any sound I heard behind me caused me unspeakable terror. In that fear and helplessness, I prayed earnestly to the Lord: “Lord! My heart is full of darkness and I am trembling with fear. Could I have made a mistake somewhere? Lord! The past few days, people have been telling me that You have returned as Almighty God. Lord! If You really have returned and really are the Almighty God they told me about, I ask You to set up a time and prepare appropriate circumstances for Brother Yang to call me or send me a text message. When they come back, no matter what they say, I want to have a heart that accepts Your new work and words obediently and eagerly. If it is not Your work, and if the message they are preaching to me is false and deceptive, then please block their way and not let them come back ever again.”

Amazingly, after I prayed like this, God fulfilled exactly what I had prayed about. Brother Yang actually did call me, and I told him about everything that had been going on the last few days. Brother Yang said that my heart had been darkened because I had rejected God’s work in the last days and gone against Him. He hoped that I would continue to investigate, and this time I did not decline to.

Soon afterward, Brother Yang sent me a gospel movie. There was a line of dialogue in this movie that woke me up: “Since we believe in God we should listen to God, not people.” That’s right! It is God that I believe in, and God’s word I should listen to! But during that time when Brother Jin and Brother Cheng were telling me of God’s work in the last days, I kept asking the pastor about it. I complied with what the pastor and missionary said and did not want to investigate the new work of Almighty God or listen to God’s word. I believed in God but did not pray to or seek from God, instead blindly trusting the words of the pastor and missionary. How stupid could I have been? The Bible says: “We ought to obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). I believed in the Lord but did not obey Him. Instead, I obeyed people, so had I not become someone who believes in and follows men? Isn’t this resisting and betraying the Lord? If Almighty God is the Lord Jesus returned, and I went against and resisted Him like this, not accepting Almighty God, would I not be a blind fool? Would I not be shutting God out? With this in mind, I deeply repented in my heart and tears welled up in my eyes.

I again came into the presence of the Lord and prayed: “Lord Jesus Christ! Someone preached the gospel saying that You have already returned incarnate, and that You are Almighty God, Christ of the last days. I don’t dare to be certain of this, but I am willing to come into Your presence to seek for You to inspire me to be able to recognize Your voice. If You really have returned and are Almighty God, I want to repent to You and accept Your work and salvation. I ask You to lead me into Your presence.” After praying, I had a kind of joy and consolation that I could not put into words. It was something I had not felt in a long time, and I knew that the Lord had heard my prayers, that it was the Lord comforting me, and that it was proof given to me by God. I wanted to go right away to The Church of Almighty God but thought about how I had “committed an offense” against the brothers and sisters of The Church of Almighty God. How could I dare to go to church?

Right in the middle of this dilemma, Brother Yang called me to ask if I had time and said that he hoped that I could continue to investigate the work of Almighty God in the last days. I told him about my misgivings. Brother Yang said: “No problem, we believers in God are all one family, and brothers and sisters in The Church of Almighty God won’t care about it.” When I heard Brother Yang’s words, I knew that this was God being understanding of my immature stature. The next day I went to The Church of Almighty God with Brother Yang.

The brothers and sisters were happy to see that I had found my way back to the path. They formally bore witness to me that the Lord Jesus had returned to express the truth to do the work of judgment in the last days starting from the house of God. They also fellowshiped to me the meaning of the incarnate God’s work in the last days as well as the importance of the incarnation to mankind’s salvation. After that, I read in the word of God: “I tell you, those who believe in God because of the signs are surely the category that shall suffer destruction. Those who are incapable of accepting the words of Jesus who has returned to flesh are surely the progeny of hell, the descendants of the archangel, the category that shall be subjected to everlasting destruction. Many people may not care what I say, but I still want to tell every so-called saint who follows Jesus that, when you see Jesus descend from the heaven upon a white cloud with your own eyes, this will be the public appearance of the Sun of righteousness. Perhaps that will be a time of great excitement for you, yet you should know that the time when you witness Jesus descend from the heaven is also the time when you go down to hell to be punished. It will herald the end of God’s management plan, and will be when God rewards the good and punishes the wicked. For the judgment of God will have ended before man sees signs, when there is only the expression of truth. Those who accept the truth and do not seek signs, and thus have been purified, shall have returned before the throne of God and entered the Creator’s embrace. Only those who persist in the belief that ‘The Jesus who does not ride upon a white cloud is a false Christ’ shall be subjected to everlasting punishment, for they only believe in the Jesus who exhibits signs, but do not acknowledge the Jesus who proclaims severe judgment and releases the true way of life. And so it can only be that Jesus deals with them when He openly returns upon a white cloud. They are too stubborn, too confident in themselves, too arrogant. How could such degenerates be rewarded by Jesus? The return of Jesus is a great salvation for those who are capable of accepting the truth, but for those who are unable to accept the truth it is a sign of condemnation. You should choose your own path, and should not blaspheme against the Holy Spirit and reject the truth. You should not be an ignorant and arrogant person, but someone who obeys the guidance of the Holy Spirit and longs for and seeks the truth; only in this way will you benefit” (“When You Behold the Spiritual Body of Jesus Will Be When God Has Made Anew Heaven and Earth” in The Word Appears in the Flesh).

After reading the word of God, I again carefully thought back on the truths that my brothers and sisters had fellowshiped to me and to which they had born witness. I understood that there are two ways in which the Lord would return in the last days, one being the hidden advent and the other being a return known to all. Now, the incarnate Almighty God’s work of judgment, beginning in the house of God, is indeed the work of the Lord’s hidden advent. Because the incarnate God has returned among mankind, His appearance is that of an ordinary person and no one is able to tell that He is God. No one knows His true identity, and this is kept secret from people. Only those who are able to distinguish the voice of God will know, accept, and follow Him. It is just as the Lord Jesus said: “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me” (John 10:27). Those who do not recognize the voice of God will certainly treat the incarnate God as an ordinary person. They will deny, resist, and refuse to follow God, just like the Jewish Pharisees did in their time. They saw the Lord Jesus but did not know His identity, and they blindly accused the Lord. The present time is the stage of God’s hidden work of saving mankind. Almighty God expresses the word to judge, purify, and perfect people. Before the disasters, He will make a group of overcomers, and after perfecting them into a group of overcomers, the incarnate God’s work of the hidden advent will come to an end. When the disasters begin, God will reward the good and punish the evil, and He will make Himself known to all nations and peoples. At that time, the prophecy that the Lord shall come openly will be fulfilled, just as it says in the Bible: “And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory” (Matthew 24:30). “Behold, he comes with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him” (Revelation 1:7). This is the reason why when the Lord descends upon a cloud all the kindreds of the earth shall wail. At this time, my heart was suddenly brightened, and I saw that the Lord’s work of the hidden advent is a great salvation for us. We can only attain cleansing and salvation if we accept the judgment of the word of God during the Lord’s hidden advent. If we do not accept God’s work of judgment now, then when He comes upon the clouds and makes Himself known to all we will have become those who resisted God. We will be weeping and gnashing our teeth, and then our repentance will come too late because Almighty God says: “The judgment of God will have ended before man sees signs, when there is only the expression of truth.”

Thanks be to Almighty God! The word of God unveiled all the mysteries and clearly elucidated the truth in all its aspects. It opened my eyes and convinced me thoroughly. In the following days, I regularly went to church to share the word of God in the last days together with the brothers and sisters. We heard hymns and watched music videos, videos of recitations of the word of God, and gospel films produced by the brothers and sisters of The Church of Almighty God. I felt that I gained something new every time and my heart was happy beyond compare. Especially in the gospel movies, the brothers and sisters focused on fellowshiping all the questions with such detail and clarity. All the doubts and confusion I had in believing in God for so many years were able to be resolved little by little. I saw that The Church of Almighty God really did have the truth and the work of the Holy Spirit, and that Almighty God is the returned Lord Jesus! What made me even more excited was that on the third day of coming to the church, I saw the sister who had performed onstage the song of praise at Christmas in 2016. She had also accepted the work of Almighty God in the last days. It is thanks to God for guiding and inspiring us to catch up with the footsteps of the Lamb, reaching the good land of Canaan from the wilderness, returning to the house of God, and directly enjoying the abundance and supply of God’s words of life!

I reflected that it was because of a special kindness from God that I was able to return to the house of God. Given my rebellious nature, how could I have welcomed the Lord’s return without God’s leadership and guidance or the patience of the brothers and sisters in fellowshiping the word of God to me? God’s love for me truly is great. It is impossible to describe! I want only to sing my praise to God through hymns and to unswervingly follow Almighty God!