(1) Human life and death are entirely in God’s hands, both arranged and determined by Him. One should not have their own choice in the matter;

(2) A person’s fleshly body and soul belong entirely to God; they are not one’s own. One should commit them into God’s hands and defer to His orchestration, unto life or death;

(3) God is righteous. He scrutinizes the innermost heart of man, and His arrangements for each person are both fair and reasonable. Do not draw inferences about matters that are inscrutable to you;

(4) That God has allowed us to live a single day means we should expend ourselves for Him. To live for the sake of one’s fleshly body is to be a beast or a devil; only by understanding the truth can one submit to God.

Relevant Words of God:

In the vastness of the cosmos and the firmament, countless creatures live and reproduce, follow the cyclical law of life, and adhere to one constant rule. Those who die take with them the stories of the living, and those who are living repeat the same tragic history of those who have perished. And so, mankind cannot help but ask himself: Why do we live? And why do we have to die? Who commands this world? And who created this mankind? Was mankind really created by Mother Nature? Is mankind really in control of his own fate? … These are the questions mankind has asked ceaselessly for thousands of years. Unfortunately, the more that man has become obsessed with these questions, the more of a thirst he has developed for science. Science offers brief gratification and temporary enjoyment of the flesh, but is far from sufficient to free man from the solitariness, loneliness, and barely-concealed terror and helplessness deep within his soul. Mankind merely uses scientific knowledge that he can see with his naked eye and understand with his brain in order to anesthetize his heart. Yet such scientific knowledge is not enough to stop mankind from exploring mysteries. Mankind simply does not know who the Sovereign of the universe and all things is, much less the beginning and future of mankind. Mankind merely lives, perforce, amidst this law. None can escape it and none can change it, for among all things and in the heavens there is but One from everlasting to everlasting who holds sovereignty over everything. He is the One who has never been beheld by man, the One whom mankind has never known, in whose existence mankind has never believed—yet He is the One who blew the breath into mankind’s ancestors and gave life to mankind. He is the One who provides and nourishes mankind, allowing him to exist; and He is the One who has guided mankind up to the present day. Moreover, He and He alone is the One mankind depends on for survival. He holds sovereignty over all things and rules all living beings in the universe. He commands the four seasons, and it is He who calls forth wind, frost, snow, and rain. He brings mankind sunshine and ushers in the night. It was He who laid out the heavens and earth, providing man with the mountains, lakes, and rivers and all of the living things within them. His deeds are omnipresent, His power is omnipresent, His wisdom is omnipresent, and His authority is omnipresent. Each of these laws and rules is the embodiment of His deeds, and each one reveals His wisdom and authority. Who can exempt themselves from His sovereignty? And who can discharge themselves from His designs? All things exist beneath His gaze, and moreover, all things live under His sovereignty. His deeds and His power leave mankind with no choice but to acknowledge the fact that He really does exist and holds sovereignty over all things. Nothing apart from Him can command the universe, much less endlessly provide for this mankind. Regardless of whether you are able to recognize God’s deeds, and regardless of whether you believe in the existence of God, there is no doubt that your fate is determined by God, and there is no doubt that God will always hold sovereignty over all things. His existence and authority are not predicated upon whether or not they are recognized and comprehended by man. Only He knows man’s past, present, and future, and only He can determine the fate of mankind. Regardless of whether you are able to accept this fact, it will not be long before mankind witnesses all of this with his own eyes, and this is the fact that God will soon bring to bear. Mankind lives and dies under the eyes of God. Man lives for the management of God, and when his eyes close for the final time, it is for this management that they close as well. Man comes and goes over and over again, back and forth. Without exception, it is all part of God’s sovereignty and His design.

—The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. Man Can Only Be Saved Amidst God’s Management

If one’s birth was destined by one’s previous life, then one’s death marks the end of that destiny. If one’s birth is the beginning of one’s mission in this life, then one’s death marks the end of that mission. Since the Creator has determined a fixed set of circumstances for a person’s birth, it goes without saying that He has also arranged a fixed set of circumstances for one’s death. In other words, no one is born by chance, no one’s death arrives abruptly, and both birth and death are necessarily connected with one’s previous and present lives. The circumstances of one’s birth and death are both predetermined by the Creator; this is a person’s destiny, a person’s fate. Since there are many explanations for a person’s birth, it is also true that a person’s death will naturally occur under its own, special set of various circumstances. This is the reason for people’s varying lifespans and the different manners and times of their deaths. Some people are strong and healthy, yet die young; others are weak and sickly, yet live to an old age and pass away peacefully. Some perish of unnatural causes, others die naturally. Some end their lives far from home, others shut their eyes for the final time with their loved ones by their side. Some people die in midair, others beneath the earth. Some sink beneath the water, others are lost in disasters. Some die in the morning, others at night. … Everyone wants an illustrious birth, a brilliant life, and a glorious death, but no one can reach past their own destiny, no one can escape the Creator’s sovereignty. This is human fate. Man can make all kinds of plans for his future, but no one can plan the manner and time of their birth and of their departure from the world. Though people do their best to avoid and resist the coming of death, still, unbeknownst to them, death silently draws near. No one knows when they will perish or how, much less where it will happen. Obviously, it is not humanity that holds the power of life and death, not some being in the natural world, but the Creator, whose authority is unique. Mankind’s life and death are not the product of some law of the natural world, but a consequence of the sovereignty of the Creator’s authority.

—The Word, Vol. 2. On Knowing God. God Himself, the Unique III

Because of the Creator’s sovereignty and predestination, a lonely soul that started out with nothing to its name gains parents and a family, the chance to become a member of the human race, the chance to experience human life and see the world. This soul also gains the chance to experience the Creator’s sovereignty, to know the marvelousness of the Creator’s creation, and more than that, to know and become subject to the Creator’s authority. Yet most people do not really seize this rare and fleeting opportunity. One exhausts a lifetime’s worth of energy fighting against fate, spends all of one’s time bustling about, trying to feed one’s family and shuttling back and forth between wealth and status. The things that people treasure are family, money, and fame, and they view these as the most valuable things in life. All people complain about their fates, yet still they push to the back of their minds the issues that are most imperative to examine and understand: why man is alive, how man should live, what the value and meaning of life are. They spend their entire lives, however long they may last, merely rushing about seeking fame and fortune, until their youth has fled and they have become gray and wrinkled. They live in this way until they see that fame and fortune cannot stop their slide toward senility, that money cannot fill the emptiness of the heart, that no one is exempt from the laws of birth, aging, sickness, and death, that no one can escape what fate has in store. Only when they are forced to confront life’s final juncture do they truly grasp that even if one owns vast wealth and extensive assets, even if one is privileged and of high rank, one still cannot escape death and must return to their original position: a solitary soul, with nothing to its name. When people have parents, they believe their parents are everything; when people have property, they think that money is one’s mainstay, that it is the means by which one lives; when people have status, they cling tightly to it and would risk their lives for its sake. Only when people are about to let go of this world do they realize that the things they spent their lives pursuing are nothing but fleeting clouds, none of which they can hold onto, none of which they can take with them, none of which can exempt them from death, none of which can provide company or consolation to a lonely soul on its journey back; least of all, none of these things can save a person and enable them to transcend death. The fame and fortune that one gains in the material world give temporary satisfaction, passing pleasure, a false sense of ease; in the process, they cause one to lose one’s way. And so people, as they thrash about in the vast sea of humanity, craving peace, comfort, and tranquility of heart, are engulfed by wave after wave. When people have yet to figure out the questions that are most crucial to understand—where they come from, why they are alive, where they are going, and so forth—they are seduced by fame and fortune, misled and controlled by them and irrevocably lost. Time flies; years pass in the blink of an eye, and before one realizes it, one has bid farewell to the best years of one’s life. When one is soon to depart from the world, one arrives at the gradual realization that everything in the world is drifting away, that one can no longer hold onto possessions that originally were theirs; then one truly feels that one is like a wailing infant that has just emerged into the world, with nothing yet to their name. At this point, one is compelled to ponder what one has done in life, what being alive is worth, what it means, why one came into the world. And it is at this point that one increasingly wants to know whether there really is a next life, whether Heaven really exists, whether there really is retribution…. The nearer one comes to death, the more one wants to understand what life is really about; the nearer one comes to death, the more one’s heart seems empty; the nearer one comes to death, the more helpless one feels; and so one’s fear of death grows greater by the day. There are two reasons such feelings manifest in people as they approach death: First, they are about to lose the fame and wealth upon which their lives have depended, about to leave behind all that the eye beholds in the world; and second, they are about to confront, all alone, an unfamiliar world, a mysterious, unknown realm where they are afraid to set foot, where they have no loved ones and no means of support. For these two reasons, everyone who faces death feels uneasy, experiences panic and a sense of helplessness such as they have never known before. Only when someone has actually come to this point do they realize that when one sets foot on this earth, the first thing they must understand is where human beings come from, why people are alive, who dictates human fate, and who provides for and has sovereignty over human existence. This knowledge is the true means by which one lives, the essential basis for human survival—not learning how to provide for one’s family or how to achieve fame and wealth, not learning how to stand out from the crowd nor how to live a more affluent life, much less learning how to excel and to compete successfully against others. Though the various survival skills that people spend their lives mastering can offer an abundance of material comforts, they never bring true peace and consolation to one’s heart, but instead make people constantly lose their direction, have difficulty controlling themselves, and miss every opportunity to learn the meaning of life; these survival skills create an undercurrent of anxiety about how to face death properly. People’s lives are ruined in this way. The Creator treats everyone fairly, giving everyone a lifetime’s worth of opportunities to experience and know His sovereignty, yet it is only when death draws near, when its specter looms, that one begins to see the light—and then it is too late!

People spend their lives chasing after money and fame; they clutch at these straws, thinking they are their only means of support, as if by having them they could live on, exempt from death. But only when they are about to die do they realize how distant these things are from them, how weak they are in the face of death, how easily they shatter, how lonely and helpless they are, with nowhere to turn. They realize that life cannot be bought with money or fame, that no matter how wealthy a person may be, no matter how lofty their position, all are equally poor and insignificant in the face of death. They realize that money cannot buy life, that fame cannot erase death, that neither money nor fame can lengthen a person’s life by a single minute, a single second. The more people feel this way, the more they yearn to keep on living; the more people feel this way, the more they dread the approach of death. Only at this point do they truly realize that their lives do not belong to them, are not theirs to control, and that one has no say over whether one lives or dies—that all of this lies outside of one’s control.

—The Word, Vol. 2. On Knowing God. God Himself, the Unique III

At the moment a person is born, one lonely soul begins its experience of life on earth, its experience of the Creator’s authority which the Creator has arranged for it. Needless to say, for the person—the soul—this is an excellent opportunity to gain knowledge of the Creator’s sovereignty, to come to know His authority and to experience it personally. People live their lives within the laws of fate laid out for them by the Creator, and for any rational person with a conscience, coming to terms, over the decades of their life, with the Creator’s sovereignty and coming to know His authority is not a difficult thing to do. Therefore, it should be very easy for every person to recognize, through their own life experiences over several decades, that all human fates are predestined, and it should be easy to grasp or to summarize what it means to be alive. As one embraces these life lessons, one will gradually come to understand where life comes from, to grasp what the heart truly needs, what will lead one to the true path of life, and what the mission and goal of a human life ought to be. One will gradually recognize that if one does not worship the Creator, if one does not come under His dominion, then when the time comes to confront death—when one’s soul is about to face the Creator once more—one’s heart will be filled with boundless dread and turmoil. If a person has been in the world for several decades yet has not understood where human life comes from nor recognized in whose palm human fate rests, then it is no wonder that they will not be able to face death calmly. A person who has gained, in their decades of experience of human life, knowledge of the Creator’s sovereignty is a person with a correct appreciation for the meaning and value of life. Such a person has a deep knowledge of life’s purpose, with real experience and understanding of the Creator’s sovereignty, and beyond that, is able to submit to the Creator’s authority. Such a person understands the meaning of God’s creation of mankind, understands that man should worship the Creator, that everything man possesses comes from the Creator and will return to Him some day not far in the future. This kind of person understands that the Creator arranges man’s birth and has sovereignty over man’s death, and that both life and death are predestined by the Creator’s authority. So, when one truly grasps these things, one will naturally be able to face death calmly, to calmly lay aside all one’s worldly possessions, accept and submit happily to all that follows, and welcome the last life-juncture, arranged, as it is, by the Creator, rather than blindly dreading it and struggling against it. If one views life as an opportunity to experience the Creator’s sovereignty and come to know His authority, if one sees one’s life as a rare chance to perform one’s duty as a created human being and to complete one’s mission, then one will surely have the correct outlook on life, will surely live a life blessed and guided by the Creator, will surely walk in the light of the Creator, will surely know the Creator’s sovereignty, will surely come under His dominion, and surely become a witness to His miraculous deeds, a witness to His authority. Needless to say, such a person will surely be loved and accepted by the Creator, and only such a person can hold a calm attitude toward death and welcome life’s final juncture with joy. One person who obviously held this kind of attitude toward death is Job. Job was in a position to accept the final juncture of life happily, and having brought his life’s journey to a smooth conclusion and completed his mission in life, he returned to be at the Creator’s side.

—The Word, Vol. 2. On Knowing God. God Himself, the Unique III

In the scriptures it is written about Job: “So Job died, being old and full of days” (Job 42:17). This means that when Job passed away, he had no regrets and felt no pain, but departed naturally from this world. As everyone knows, Job was a man who feared God and shunned evil while he was alive. His deeds were commended by God and memorialized by others, and his life may be said to have had worth and significance that exceeded all others’. Job enjoyed God’s blessings and was called righteous by Him on earth, and he was also tried by God and tested by Satan. He stood witness for God and deserved to be called a righteous person by Him. In the decades after he was tried by God, he lived a life that was even more valuable, meaningful, grounded, and peaceful than before. Because of his righteous deeds, God tried him, and also because of his righteous deeds, God appeared to him and spoke to him directly. So, in the years after he was tried, Job understood and appreciated life’s value in a more concrete way, attained a deeper understanding of the Creator’s sovereignty, and gained a more precise and definite knowledge of how the Creator gives and takes away His blessings. The Book of Job records that Jehovah God bestowed even greater blessings upon Job than He did before, putting Job in an even better position to know the Creator’s sovereignty and to face death calmly. So Job, when he grew old and faced death, certainly would not have been anxious about his property. He had no worries, nothing to regret, and of course did not fear death, for he spent all his life walking the way of fearing God and shunning evil. He had no reason to worry about his own end. How many people today could act in all the ways Job did when he confronted his own death? Why is no one capable of maintaining such a simple outward bearing? There is only one reason: Job lived his life in the subjective pursuit of belief, recognition, and submission to God’s sovereignty, and it was with this belief, recognition, and submission that he passed through the important junctures in life, lived out his last years, and greeted his life’s final juncture. Regardless of what Job experienced, his pursuits and goals in life were not painful, but happy. He was happy not only because of the blessings or commendation bestowed on him by the Creator, but more importantly, because of his pursuits and life goals, because of the growing knowledge and true understanding of the Creator’s sovereignty he attained through fearing God and shunning evil, and moreover, because of his personal experience, as a subject of the Creator’s sovereignty, of the wondrous deeds of God, and the tender yet unforgettable experiences and memories of man and God’s coexistence, acquaintance, and mutual understanding. Job was happy because of the comfort and joy that came from knowing the Creator’s will, and because of the reverence that arose after seeing that He is great, wondrous, lovable, and faithful. Job was able to face death without any suffering because he knew that, in dying, he would return to the Creator’s side. It was his pursuits and gains in life that allowed him to face death calmly, allowed him to face the prospect of the Creator taking back his life calmly, and moreover, allowed him to stand unsullied and free from care before the Creator. Can people nowadays achieve the kind of happiness that Job possessed? Do you have the conditions necessary to do so? Since people nowadays do have these conditions, why are they unable to live happily, as Job did? Why are they unable to escape the suffering of the fear of death? When facing death, some people urinate uncontrollably; others shiver, faint, lash out against Heaven and man alike; some even wail and weep. These are by no means natural reactions that occur suddenly when death draws near. People behave in these embarrassing ways mainly because, deep in their hearts, they fear death, because they do not have a clear knowledge and appreciation of God’s sovereignty and His arrangements, much less truly submit to them. People react in this way because they want nothing but to arrange and govern everything themselves, to control their own fates, their own lives and deaths. It is no wonder, therefore, that people are never able to escape the fear of death.

—The Word, Vol. 2. On Knowing God. God Himself, the Unique III

When one does not have clear knowledge and experience of God’s sovereignty and of His arrangements, one’s knowledge of fate and of death will necessarily be incoherent. People cannot see clearly that everything rests in God’s palm, do not realize that everything is subject to God’s control and sovereignty, do not recognize that man cannot cast off or escape such sovereignty. For this reason, when their time comes to face death, there is no end to their last words, worries, and regrets. They are weighed down by so much baggage, so much reluctance, so much confusion. This causes them to fear death. For any person born into this world, birth is necessary and death inevitable; no one can rise above this course of things. If one wishes to depart from this world painlessly, if one wants to be able to face life’s final juncture with no reluctance or worry, the only way is to leave no regrets. And the only way to depart without regrets is to know the Creator’s sovereignty, to know His authority, and to submit to them. Only in this way can one stay far from human strife, from evil, from Satan’s bondage, and only in this way can one live a life like Job’s, guided and blessed by the Creator, a life that is free and liberated, a life with value and meaning, a life that is honest and openhearted. Only in this way can one submit, like Job, to the trials and deprivation of the Creator, to the Creator’s orchestrations and arrangements. Only in this way can one worship the Creator all one’s life and win His commendation, as Job did, and hear His voice, see Him appear. Only in this way can one live and die happily, like Job, with no pain, no worry, no regrets. Only in this way can one live in light, like Job, and pass every one of life’s junctures in light, smoothly complete one’s journey in light, successfully complete one’s mission—to experience, learn, and come to know, as a created being, the Creator’s sovereignty—and pass away in the light, and for ever after stand at the Creator’s side as a created human being, commended by Him.

—The Word, Vol. 2. On Knowing God. God Himself, the Unique III

If you acknowledge you are a created being, you must prepare yourself to suffer and pay a price for the sake of fulfilling the responsibility to spread the gospel and for the sake of doing your duty properly. The price might be suffering some physical ailment or difficulty, or the persecutions arising from your environment or the misunderstandings of worldly people, as well as being beaten, scolded, and forsaken by gospel targets; or, in the most severe cases, possibly having your life endangered. It is possible, in the course of spreading the gospel, that you will die before God’s work is completed, and that you will not live to see the day of God’s glory. You must be prepared for this. This is not meant to frighten you; it is a fact. However, now that I have made this clear, and you have understood it, if you still have this aspiration, and it has not yet changed, this proves you possess a certain stature. Do not assume that spreading the gospel in these overseas nations with religious freedoms and human rights will be free from danger and that everything you do will go smoothly, all with God’s blessings and in company with His great power and authority; this is something from the human imagination. You cannot spread the gospel without wisdom, and mishaps often befall the ignorant. The Pharisees also believed in God, yet they took the incarnate God and crucified Him upon the cross. Do you think that today’s religious world would not do such a thing? Do not forget that those who took the Lord Jesus and crucified Him upon the cross were believers. Only they had the opportunity to do this sort of thing. The unbelievers did not care about those things. It was these believers who colluded with the government to take the Lord Jesus and crucify Him upon the cross. Moreover, how did those disciples of the Lord Jesus die? Among the disciples, there were those who were stoned, dragged behind a horse, crucified upside down, dismembered by five horses—every sort of death befell them. What was the reason for their deaths? Were they lawfully executed for their crimes? No. They were condemned, beaten, scolded, and put to death because they spread the Lord’s gospel and were rejected by the people of the world—that is how they were martyred. Let us not speak of the final end of those martyrs, or of God’s definition of their conduct, but ask this: When they arrived at the end, did the way they met the end of their lives accord with human notions? From the perspective of human notions, if they paid such a great price to spread the work of God, they should at least have received a good death. But these people died tragically before their time. This does not accord with human notions, but God did precisely that—God allowed it to happen. What truth can be sought in God’s having allowed this to happen? Was God’s allowing them to die this way His curse and condemnation, or was it His plan and blessing? It was neither. What was it? People now reflect on their deaths with much heartache, but that was how things were: Those who believed in God died that way, and it makes people’s hearts ache. How is this to be explained? When we touch on this topic, you put yourselves in their position; are your hearts then sad, and do you feel a hidden pain? You think, “These people did their duty to spread God’s gospel and should be considered good people, so how could they come to such an end, such an outcome?” Actually, this was how their bodies died and passed away; this was their means of departure from the human world, yet that did not mean their outcome was the same. No matter what the means of their death and departure was nor how it happened, it was not how God defined the final outcomes of those lives, of those created beings. This is something you must see clearly. On the contrary, they used precisely those means to condemn this world and to testify to God’s deeds. These created beings used their lives that are most precious—they used the last moment of their lives to testify to God’s deeds, to testify to God’s great power, and to declare to Satan and the world that God’s deeds are right, that the Lord Jesus is God, that He is the Lord, and is God’s incarnate flesh; even down to the final moment of their lives, they never denied the name of the Lord Jesus. Was this not a form of judgment upon this world? They used their lives to proclaim to the world, to confirm to human beings that the Lord Jesus is the Lord, that the Lord Jesus is Christ, that He is God’s incarnate flesh, that the work of redemption He wrought for all humanity allows humanity to live on—this fact is forever unchanging. To what extent did they perform their duty? Was it to the ultimate extent? How was the ultimate extent manifested? They paid the price with their lives. Family, wealth, and the material things of this life are all external things; the only thing that is internal to self is life. To every living person, life is the thing most worthy of being treasured, the most precious thing and, as it happens, these people were able to offer their most precious possession—life—as confirmation, in exchange for worldly people’s acknowledgment of God’s work. Until the day they died, they did not deny God’s name, nor did they deny God’s work, and they used their last moment of life to testify to the existence of this fact—is this not the highest form of testimony? This is the best way of doing one’s duty; this is what it is to fulfill one’s responsibility. When Satan threatened and terrorized them, and, in the end, even when it made them pay the price of their lives, they did not abrogate their responsibility. This is what it is to fulfill one’s duty to the utmost extent. What do I mean by this? Do I mean to have you use the same method to testify of God and to spread the gospel? You do not necessarily need to do so, but you must understand that this is your responsibility, that if God needs you to, you should accept it as a moral obligation. People today have fear and worry inside them, but what purpose do those feelings serve? If God does not need you to do this, what is the use in worrying about it? If God needs you to do this, you should not shirk this responsibility nor reject it. You should cooperate proactively and accept it without worry. No matter how one dies, they should not die before Satan, and not die in its hands. If one is going to die, they should die in God’s hands. People came from God, and to God they return—such is the sense and attitude that a created being should possess. This is the final truth one should understand in performing their duty of spreading the gospel—one must pay the price of their life to spread and testify to the gospel of God incarnate performing His work and saving mankind. If you have this aspiration, if you can achieve this, that is wonderful. If you still do not possess this sort of aspiration, you should, at the very least, properly fulfill the responsibility and duty that lie before you, giving the rest to God. Perhaps then, as the months and years pass and your experience and maturity increase, and your understanding of the truth deepens, you will realize that you have an obligation and a responsibility to offer your life to the work of God’s gospel, even unto the end of your life.

—“Spreading the Gospel Is the Duty to Which All Believers Are Honor-Bound” in Records of Talks of Christ of the Last Days

According to human notions, good is rewarded and evil punished, good people are recompensed with good and evil ones are recompensed with evil, and those who do no evil should all be recompensed with good and receive blessings; this is because God is righteous. It would appear that, in all cases where people are not evil, they should be recompensed with good; only this is God’s righteousness. But what if someone fails to be recompensed with good? Should you then say that God is not righteous? Suppose the people in this era were to see an account in a book that said God created a human race in the preceding era. After thousands of years had passed, God saw that humanity had become corrupt to the point that they were no longer recognizably human, and, being in no mood to save them, He therefore destroyed them. How would you regard this? Would you say that God has no love? In human eyes, if God has destroyed people, it means He has no love. Knowledge of God is not saying what He is like based on a human view of things; there is no truth in the way humans view things. You must see what His essence is, as well as what His disposition is. People should not see God’s essence on the basis of any external phenomena resulting from what He has done or dealt with. The human race itself has been corrupted by Satan. Humanity simply does not know what its own nature is, nor what the corrupted human race is before God, and how it should be treated. Consider Job, a righteous man blessed by God. This was God’s righteousness. Satan made a wager with Jehovah: “The reason why Job worships You is because You’ve given him way too much. If You take all of that away from him, let’s see if he still worships You?” Jehovah God said, “As long as you don’t take his life, you may do whatever you please.” So Satan went to Job, and afterward Job encountered trials. Everything he had was stripped away—he lost his children and his property. Now, did Job’s trials have within them the righteous disposition of God? You can’t say clearly, can you? Even if you are a righteous person, God has a right to subject you to trials and to allow you to bear Him witness. God’s disposition is righteous; He treats everyone equally. This is not to say that righteous people do not then need to undergo trials or that they must then be protected; this is not the case. God has the right to put you through trials. This is the revelation of His righteous disposition. Finally, after Job had finished undergoing trials and bearing witness to Jehovah, Jehovah blessed him even more than before, giving him twice as many blessings and even better blessings. Furthermore, Jehovah appeared to him, and spoke to him from out of the wind, and Job saw Him as though face to face. This was a blessing given to him. This was God’s righteousness. What if the opposite had taken place? When Job had finished undergoing trials and Jehovah saw how Job had borne witness to Him in Satan’s presence and shamed Satan, what if Jehovah then turned away and left, ignoring him, and Job did not receive blessings afterward—would this have God’s righteousness in it? Regardless of whether Job was blessed after the trials or not, or whether Jehovah appeared to him or not, all of this contains God’s good will. Appearing to Job would have been God’s righteousness, and not appearing to him would also have been God’s righteousness. Upon what basis do you—a created being—make demands of God? People are not fit to make demands of God. There is nothing more unreasonable than making demands of God. He will do what He ought to do, and His disposition is righteous. Righteousness is by no means fair or reasonable; it is not egalitarianism, or a matter of allocating to you what you deserve in accordance with how much work you have completed, or paying you for whatever work you have done, or giving you your due according to what effort you expend. This is not righteousness. Suppose God had eliminated Job after Job bore witness for Him: God would have been righteous then, too. Why is this called righteousness? From a human point of view, if something is in line with people’s notions, it is then very easy for them to say that God is righteous; however, if they do not see that thing as being in line with their notions—if it is something that they are incapable of comprehending—then it would be difficult for them to say that God is righteous. If God had destroyed Job back then, people would not have said He was righteous. Actually, though, whether people have been corrupted or not, does God have to justify Himself when He destroys them? Should He have to explain to people upon what basis it is that He does so? Should His decision be based on this: “If they are useful, I will not destroy them; if they are not, I will”? There is no need. In God’s eyes, someone who is corrupt may be dealt with howsoever He wishes; whatever God does will be appropriate, and all are the arrangements of God. If you were displeasing to God’s eyes, and if He said that He had no use for you after your testimony and therefore destroyed you, would this, too, be His righteousness? It would. You might not be able to recognize this right now from the facts, but you must understand in theory. What would you say—is God’s destruction of Satan an expression of His righteousness? Also, what if He allowed Satan to remain? You dare not say, yes? God’s essence is righteousness. Though it is not easy to comprehend what He does, all that He does is righteous; it is simply that people do not understand. When God gave Peter to Satan, how did Peter respond? “Mankind is unable to fathom what You do, but all of what You do contains Your good will; there is righteousness in all of it. How can I not utter praise for Your wise deeds?” Today, you should see that God does not destroy Satan in order to show humans how Satan has corrupted them and how God saves them; ultimately, due to the degree to which Satan has corrupted people, they shall behold the monstrous sin of Satan’s corruption of them, and when God destroys Satan, they shall behold God’s righteousness and see that it contains God’s disposition. Everything that God does is righteous. Though it might be unfathomable to you, you should not make judgments at will. If something He does appears to you as unreasonable, or if you have any notions about it, and that leads you to say that He is not righteous, then you are being most unreasonable. You see that Peter found some things to be incomprehensible, but he was sure that God’s wisdom was present and that His good will was in those things. Humans cannot fathom everything; there are so many things that they cannot grasp. Thus, to know God’s disposition is not an easy thing.

—“How to Know God’s Righteous Disposition” in Records of Talks of Christ of the Last Days