By Muyi, South Korea

During this time, there was another brother surnamed Yang who was looking into Almighty God’s work of the last days like I was. Whereas I always had a careless and absent-minded attitude, Brother Yang was earnest in his investigation of The Church of Almighty God. 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, and so he’d become willing to investigate it. Brother Yang saw that I was only interested in listening to the pastor’s words and not seeking 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.” After I’d read the word of the Lord, I wondered: “Why is it that I can’t quiet myself in the presence of the Lord and seek the truth? If by some chance the Lord really has returned, and I don’t listen to or investigate their preachings, won’t I be left behind? I should also be a bit more open-minded, and I must not blindly come to conclusions based on my own imaginings.” Just when I had decided to quieten my heart and investigate it sincerely, a preacher from my 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 I was, and the preacher again reminded me to cease contact with them. The preacher’s exhortation dispelled the thoughts that I had just had about looking into The Church of Almighty God. I thought, “The pastor and preacher have a much better understanding of the Bible than I do, and they do not acknowledge that the Lord has returned. I have too little understanding of the Bible and I lack discernment, so I had better just listen to what the pastor and preacher say.” When I hung up the phone, I said to Brother Cheng, “If Brother Yang wants to look into it, then you two can go on with your discussions. I’m not listening to it anymore.” Just like that, I once again abruptly 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 talk to her. One day, I suddenly thought: “I’m a believer in the Lord and whenever I experience any difficulty or weakness, I can always tell these things to the Lord.” 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 a state of severe anxiety every day at that time, so much so that the slightest sound behind me caused me to feel indescribable fear. In my fear and helplessness, I prayed earnestly to the Lord: “O Lord! My heart is full of darkness and I am trembling with fear. Could I have made a mistake somewhere? O Lord! Over the past few days people have been telling me that You have returned as Almighty God. O 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 will 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 for. 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 of the last days and had rebelled against Him. He hoped that I would continue to look into God’s work of the last days, and this time I did not reject his suggestion.

Soon afterward, Brother Yang sent me a gospel movie. There was a line of dialogue in this movie that shook me awake: “Since we believe in God we should listen to God, not people.” “That’s right!” I thought. “It’s God that I believe in, and it’s God’s word I should listen to! But during that time when Brother Jin and Brother Cheng were telling me of God’s work of the last days, I kept asking the pastor about it. I complied with what the pastor and the preacher said and did not want to earnestly investigate the new work of Almighty God or listen to God’s word. I had believed in the Lord but had not prayed to or sought from the Lord, and had instead blindly trusted what the pastor and preacher had said. How stupid I was! 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 have 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’ve rebelled against Him and resisted Him like this, unwilling to accept Almighty God, have I then not been a blind fool? Have I not been shutting the Lord 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 cannot bring myself to feel certain of this, but I am willing to come into Your presence to seek and to ask You to enlighten me, so that I might 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 back into Your presence.” After praying, I felt a kind of joy and a feeling of being comforted 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 to look into it, but I thought about how I must have offended the brothers and sisters of The Church of Almighty God, and so I felt too ashamed to go to their 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 of the last days. I told him about my misgivings. Brother Yang said, “No problem, we believers in God are all one family, and it doesn’t bother the brothers and sisters in The Church of Almighty God at all.” When I heard Brother Yang say this, I knew that God was showing understanding for my immature stature, and so 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 and perform the work of judgment beginning in the house of God in the last days. 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 God’s words that say: “I tell you, those who believe in God because of the signs are surely the category that shall be destroyed. Those who are incapable of receiving 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. That will be the time of the end of God’s management plan and it 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” (The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. By the Time You Behold the Spiritual Body of Jesus, God Will Have Made Heaven and Earth Anew).

After reading the word of God, I carefully thought about 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 returns in the last days, one of which being the hidden advent and the other being the Lord’s coming openly to all. Now, the incarnate Almighty God’s work of judgment that begins 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 just by looking at Him 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 condemned 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 people into overcomers, and once this group of overcomers is made complete, 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 appear openly to all nations and peoples. At that time, the prophecies 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 why all the kindreds of the earth shall wail when the Lord descends upon a cloud. At this time, my heart was suddenly filled with light, and I saw that the Lord’s work of the hidden advent is a great salvation for us. We can only be cleansed and attain God’s salvation by accepting 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 openly with clouds we will have become those who resisted the Lord, and we will surely weep and gnash our teeth. At that point, our regret will come too late, for 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 unveils all mysteries and clearly elucidates the truth in all the aspects—my eyes were opened and I was thereafter convinced in heart and by word. In the following days, I regularly went to church to read the words expressed by God in the last days together with the brothers and sisters. We listened to hymns and watched music videos, videos of recitations of the word of God, and gospel movies, all produced by the brothers and sisters of The Church of Almighty God. I felt that I gained something new at every gathering and I felt incomparably happy. Especially in the gospel movies, the brothers and sisters fellowshiped about every issue with such detail and clarity that all the doubts and confusion I had harbored in my belief in the Lord for so many years were resolved little by little. I saw that The Church of Almighty God really does have 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 after I’d joined the church, I saw the sister who had performed onstage the song of praise at Christmas in 2016. She had also accepted Almighty God’s work of the last days. I truly give my thanks to God, for it was the guidance and enlightenment of God that led us to keep pace with the footsteps of the Lamb, that led us to reach the good land of Canaan from the wilderness and to return to the house of God, and that led us to enjoy the abundance and supply of God’s words of life together with Him!

I think 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 is truly so great that I find it impossible to describe! I want only to sing my praise to God through hymns and to unswervingly follow Almighty God!