Relevant Words of God:
First God created Adam and Eve, and He also created a serpent. Of all things, this serpent was the most poisonous; its body contained venom, which Satan utilized to take advantage of it. It was the serpent that tempted Eve to sin. Adam sinned after Eve did, and the two of them were then able to distinguish between good and evil. If Jehovah had known that the serpent would tempt Eve and that Eve would tempt Adam, then why did He place them all inside a garden? If He had been able to predict these things, then why did He create a serpent and place it within the Garden of Eden? Why did the Garden of Eden contain fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? Had He meant for them to eat the fruit? When Jehovah came, neither Adam nor Eve dared to confront Him, and it was only then that Jehovah knew that they had eaten the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and fallen prey to the serpent’s trickery. In the end, He cursed the serpent, and He cursed Adam and Eve as well. When the two of them ate of the fruit of the tree, Jehovah was not at all aware that they were doing it. Humanity became corrupted to the point of being evil and sexually promiscuous, going even so far that everything they harbored in their hearts was evil and unrighteous; it was all filth. Jehovah therefore regretted having creating humanity. After that, He carried out His work of destroying the world with a flood, which Noah and his sons survived. Some things are not actually as advanced and supernatural as people might imagine. Some ask, “Since God knew the archangel would betray Him, why did He create it?” These are the facts: Before the earth existed, the archangel was the greatest of heaven’s angels. It had jurisdiction over all the angels in heaven; this was the authority God had granted it. With the exception of God, it was the greatest of heaven’s angels. Later, after God had created humanity, down on earth the archangel carried out an even greater treachery against God. I say it betrayed God because it wanted to manage humanity and to surpass God’s authority. It was the archangel that tempted Eve into sin, and it did so because it wished to establish its kingdom upon earth and to get humans to turn their backs on God and obey the archangel instead. The archangel saw that so many things could obey it—the angels could, as could the people upon the earth. The birds and beasts, trees, forests, mountains, rivers, and all things upon the earth were under the care of humans—that is, Adam and Eve—while Adam and Eve obeyed the archangel. The archangel therefore desired to surpass God’s authority and to betray God. After that, it led many angels in rebellion against God, which later became various sorts of unclean spirits. Has not humanity’s development to this day been caused by the archangel’s corruption? Humans are only the way they are today because the archangel betrayed God and corrupted humanity. This step-by-step work is nowhere near as abstract and simple as people might imagine. Satan carried out its betrayal for a reason, yet people are unable to comprehend such a simple fact. Why did God, who created the heavens and earth and all things, also create Satan? Since God despises Satan so much, and Satan is His enemy, why did He create Satan? By creating Satan, was He not creating an enemy? God did not actually create an enemy; rather, He created an angel, and later that angel betrayed Him. Its status had grown so great that it wished to betray God. One could say that this was a coincidence, but it was also an inevitability. It is similar to how a person will inevitably die after maturing to a certain point; things have just developed to that stage. Some absurd fools say, “Since Satan is Your enemy, why did You create it? Did You not know that the archangel would betray You? Can You not gaze from eternity to eternity? Did You not know the archangel’s nature? Since You clearly knew that it would betray You, why did You make it into an archangel? Not only did it betray You, it also led so many other angels with it and descended to the world of mortals to corrupt humanity, yet to this day, You still have been unable to complete Your six-thousand-year management plan.” Are those words correct? When you think in this way, are you not putting yourself through more trouble than is necessary? There are others who say, “Had Satan not corrupted humanity through to the present day, God would not have brought humanity salvation like this. As such, God’s wisdom and almightiness would have been invisible; where would His wisdom have been revealed? God therefore created a human race for Satan so that He could later reveal His almightiness—otherwise, how could man discover God’s wisdom? If man did not resist God or rebel against Him, it would be unnecessary for His acts to be revealed. If all of creation were to worship Him and submit to Him, God would have no work to do.” This is even further from reality, for there is nothing filthy about God, so He cannot create filth. He reveals His acts now only in order to defeat His enemy, to save the humans He created, and to defeat the demons and Satan, which hate, betray, and resist God, and which were under His dominion and belonged to Him in the very beginning. God wants to defeat these demons and, in doing so, reveal His almightiness to all things. Humanity and everything on earth are now under Satan’s domain and lie under the domain of the wicked. God wants to reveal His acts to all things so that people may know Him, and thereby defeat Satan and thoroughly vanquish His enemies. The entirety of this work is accomplished through revealing His acts. All of His creation is under Satan’s domain, so God wishes to reveal His almightiness to them, thereby defeating Satan. If there were no Satan, He would not need to reveal His deeds. If not for Satan’s harassment, God would have created humanity and led them to live in the Garden of Eden. Why, prior to Satan’s betrayal, did God never reveal all His deeds to the angels or to the archangel? If, in the beginning, all the angels and the archangel had known God and had submitted to Him, then God would not have carried out those meaningless acts of work. Because of the existence of Satan and demons, humans, too, have resisted God, and are filled to the brim with rebellious disposition. God therefore wishes to reveal His acts. Because He wishes to do war with Satan, He must use His own authority and all His acts to defeat it; in this way, the work of salvation that He performs among humans will allow them to see His wisdom and almightiness. The work God is doing today is meaningful, and in no way resembles that to which some people refer when they say, “Is not the work You do contradictory? Is not this succession of work merely an exercise in making trouble for Yourself? You created Satan, and then allowed it to betray and resist You. You created humans, and then handed them over to Satan, allowing Adam and Eve to be tempted. Since You did all these things on purpose, why do You still detest humanity? Why do You loathe Satan? Are these not all of Your own making? What is there for You to hate?” Quite a few absurd people say such things. They wish to love God, but deep down, they complain about God. What a contradiction! You do not understand the truth, you have too many supernatural thoughts, and you even claim that God made a mistake—how absurd you are! It is you who are fiddling with the truth; it is not the case that God has made a mistake! Some people even complain over and over, “It was You who created Satan, and You who cast Satan down among humans and handed them over to it. Once humans possessed satanic disposition, You did not forgive them; on the contrary, You hated them to a certain degree. At first You loved them to a certain degree, but now You detest them. It is You who has hated humanity, yet You are also the one who has loved humanity. What exactly is going on here? Is this not a contradiction?” Regardless of how you look at it, this is what happened in heaven; this is the manner in which the archangel betrayed God and humanity was corrupted, and this is how humans have continued to this day. Regardless of how you phrase it, that is the entire story. However, you must understand that the whole purpose behind this work God is doing today is to save you and to defeat Satan.
Because the angels were particularly frail and possessed no abilities to speak of, they grew arrogant as soon as they were given authority. This was especially true of the archangel, whose status was higher than that of any other angel. A king among angels, it led millions of them, and under Jehovah, its authority surpassed that of any of the other angels. It wanted to do this and that, and to lead the angels down among humans to control the world. God said that He is the One who is in charge of the universe; but the archangel claimed that it was in charge of the universe—thenceforth, the archangel betrayed God. God had created another world in heaven, and the archangel wished to control this world and also to descend to the mortal realm. Could God allow it to do so? Thus, He struck the archangel and cast it down into midair. Ever since it corrupted humans, God has waged war with the archangel in order to save them; He has used these six millennia toward its defeat. Your conception of an almighty God is incompatible with the work God is currently carrying out; it is absolutely impractical, and is very much a fallacy! Actually, it was only after the archangel’s betrayal that God declared it to be His enemy. It was only due to its betrayal that the archangel trampled upon humanity after arriving in the mortal realm, and it is for this reason that humanity has developed to this point. After that happened, God vowed to Satan, “I will defeat you and bring salvation to all of the humans I created.” Unconvinced at first, Satan replied, “What can You honestly do to me? Can You really strike me down into midair? Can You truly defeat me?” After God cast it down into midair, He paid the archangel no further attention, and later on began to save humanity and carry out His own work in spite of Satan’s ongoing disturbances. Satan was able to do this and that, but it was all thanks to the power God had previously given to it; it took these things with it into midair, and has kept them to this day. When striking the archangel down into midair, God did not take back its authority, and so Satan continued to corrupt humanity. God, on the other hand, began saving humanity, whom Satan had corrupted soon after their creation. God did not reveal His acts while in heaven; however, prior to creating the earth, He allowed people in the world He created in heaven to see His acts, thus guiding those people above heaven. He gave them wisdom and intelligence, and led those people to live in that world. Naturally, none of you has ever heard of this before. Later, after God created humans, the archangel began to corrupt them; on earth, all of humanity fell to chaos. It was only then that God began His war against Satan, and it was only at this time that humans began to see His deeds. In the beginning, such acts had been concealed from humanity. After Satan was cast down into midair, it did its own things and God continued to do His own work, continuously waging war against Satan, right up until the last days. Now is the time in which Satan should be destroyed. In the beginning, God gave it authority, and He later struck it down into midair, yet it remained defiant. After that, it corrupted humanity upon earth, but God was there managing humanity. God uses His management of humans to defeat Satan. By corrupting people, Satan brings their fate to a close and disrupts God’s work. On the other hand, God’s work is the salvation of humanity. Which step of the work God does is not meant to save humanity? Which step is not meant to cleanse people, and to make them behave righteously and live out the image of ones who can be loved? Satan, however, does not do this. It corrupts humanity; it continuously carries out its work of corrupting humanity throughout the universe. Of course, God also does His own work, paying no attention to Satan. No matter how much authority Satan has, that authority was still given to it by God; God simply did not actually give it all His authority, and so no matter what Satan does, it can never surpass God and will always be within God’s grasp. God did not reveal any of His acts while in heaven. He merely gave Satan a small portion of authority and allowed it to exercise control over the other angels. Therefore, no matter what Satan does, it cannot surpass God’s authority, because the authority that God originally granted it is limited. As God works, Satan disrupts. In the last days, its disruptions will be finished; likewise, God’s work will also be finished, and the kind of humans God wishes to complete will be completed. God directs people positively; His life is living water, immeasurable and boundless. Satan has corrupted man to a certain degree; in the end, the living water of life will complete man, and it will be impossible for Satan to interfere and carry out its work. Thus, God will be able to gain these people completely.
—The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. You Should Know How the Whole of Humanity Has Developed to the Present Day
No matter how corrupt humanity grows or how the serpent tempts them, Jehovah still has His wisdom; as such, He has been engaged in new work ever since He created the world, and none of the steps of this work has ever been repeated. Satan has continuously put plots into motion, humanity has constantly been corrupted by Satan, and Jehovah God has unceasingly carried out His wise work. He has never failed, nor has He ever stopped working, ever since the world was created. After humans were corrupted by Satan, He has kept working amongst them to defeat it, the enemy that was the source of their corruption. This battle has raged since the beginning, and will continue until the world’s end. In doing all this work, Jehovah God has not only allowed humans, who have been corrupted by Satan, to receive His great salvation, but also allowed them to see His wisdom, almightiness, and authority. Furthermore, in the end, He will let them see His righteous disposition—punishing the wicked and rewarding the good. He has battled Satan to this very day and has never been defeated. This is because He is a wise God, and He exercises His wisdom based upon Satan’s plots. Therefore, God not only makes everything in heaven submit to His authority, but He also has everything upon earth rest below His footstool and, not least, He makes the wicked who invade and harass humanity fall within His chastisement. The results of all this work are brought about because of His wisdom. He had never revealed His wisdom prior to the existence of humanity, for He had no enemies in heaven, upon earth, or anywhere in the entire universe, and there were no dark forces invading anything among nature. After the archangel betrayed Him, He created humanity upon the earth, and it was because of humanity that He formally began His millennia-long war with Satan, the archangel—a war that grows more heated with every successive stage. His almightiness and wisdom are present in each of these stages. Only then has everything in heaven and upon earth witnessed God’s wisdom, almightiness, and, in particular, God’s reality. He still carries out His work in this same realistic manner to this day; in addition, as He carries out His work, He also reveals His wisdom and almightiness. He allows you to see the inside truth of each stage of work, to see exactly how to explain God’s almightiness, and, moreover, to see a definitive explanation of God’s reality.
—The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. You Should Know How the Whole of Humanity Has Developed to the Present Day
My entire management plan, the six-thousand-year management plan, consists of three stages, or three ages: the Age of Law of the beginning; the Age of Grace (which is also the Age of Redemption); and the Age of Kingdom of the last days. My work in these three ages differs in content according to the nature of each age, but at each stage this work befits the needs of man—or, to be more precise, is done according to the tricks that Satan employs in the war that I wage against it. The purpose of My work is to defeat Satan, to make manifest My wisdom and omnipotence, to expose all of Satan’s tricks, and thereby to save the entire human race, which lives under Satan’s domain. It is to show My wisdom and omnipotence, and to reveal the unbearable hideousness of Satan; even more than that, it is to allow created beings to discriminate between good and evil, to know that I am the Ruler of all things, to see clearly that Satan is the enemy of humanity, a degenerate, the evil one, and to allow them to tell, with absolute certainty, the difference between good and evil, truth and falsehood, holiness and filth, and what is great and what is ignoble. Thus will ignorant humanity become able to bear witness to Me that it is not I who corrupt humanity, and only I—the Creator—can save humanity, can bestow upon people the things that they can enjoy; and they will come to know that I am the Ruler of all things and Satan is merely one of the beings that I created and that later turned against Me. My six-thousand-year management plan is divided into three stages, and I work thus to achieve the effect of enabling created beings to bear witness to Me, and comprehend My will, and know that I am the truth.
—The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. The True Story Behind the Work of the Age of Redemption
Such is the management of God: to hand mankind over to Satan—a mankind that does not know what God is, what the Creator is, how to worship God, or why it is necessary to submit to God—and allow Satan to corrupt him. Step by step, God then recovers man from the hands of Satan, until man fully worships God and rejects Satan. This is God’s management. This may sound like a mythical tale, and it may seem perplexing. People feel like this is a mythical story because they have no inkling of how much has happened to man over the past several thousand years, much less do they know how many stories have occurred in the cosmos and the firmament. And furthermore, that is because they cannot appreciate the more astonishing, more fear-inducing world that exists beyond the material world, but which their mortal eyes prevent them from seeing. It feels incomprehensible to man because man has no understanding of the significance of God’s salvation of mankind or the significance of the work of His management, and does not comprehend how God ultimately wishes mankind to be. Is it to be utterly uncorrupted by Satan, like Adam and Eve were? No! The purpose of God’s management is to gain a group of people who worship God and submit to Him. Although these people have been corrupted by Satan, they no longer see Satan as their father; they recognize the repulsive face of Satan and reject it, and they come before God to accept God’s judgment and chastisement. They come to know what is ugly and how it contrasts with that which is holy, and to recognize the greatness of God and the evil of Satan. A mankind such as this will no longer work for Satan, or worship Satan, or enshrine Satan. This is because they are a group of people who have truly been gained by God. This is the significance of God’s work of managing mankind.
—The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. Appendix 3: Man Can Only Be Saved Amidst God’s Management
