By Li Mo, China

In 2004, I accepted Almighty God’s work of the last days, and before long, I was reported for spreading the gospel. On that day, I was working at the hospital, and my colleague told me the hospital director was looking for me. I went into the director’s office and saw two tall, uniformed police officers standing there. They said to me, “Someone reported that you believe in Eastern Lightning and have been going around preaching the gospel. Eastern Lightning is a key national crackdown target, and its believers are all political criminals who will be sentenced to prison!” They also threatened me, saying that if I continued to believe in God, they could ban me from my job any time they wanted, and I might not get paid even if I went to work. Even my husband’s job, and my son’s eligibility to go to university, join the army or go abroad would suffer. They said I would be sent to prison if they ever caught me preaching. I was worried by this, and thought, “The police aren’t going to drop this if I don’t give up my faith. If I lose my job and my husband’s business suffers, how are we going to get by? Who would take care of my young son if I’m arrested and sent to prison? What a wretched mother that would make me, if his prospects have to suffer because of my faith.” The more I thought about it, the more distressed I became. I quickly called out to God to protect my heart. At that moment, I thought of a passage of God’s word: “From the moment you come crying into this world, you begin to fulfill your duty. For God’s plan and for His ordination, you perform your role and start your life’s journey. Whatever your background, and whatever the journey ahead of you, no one can escape the orchestrations and arrangements of Heaven, and no one is in control of their own destiny, for only He who rules over all things is capable of such work” (The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. God Is the Source of Man’s Life). I contemplated God’s word, and then I understood: The destiny of all comes under the rule of God. Whatever would happen to our family was in God’s hands, and was not for any one person to decide. God is the Creator, and it is natural and right for people to believe in God and worship God. But now the police were using my and my husband’s jobs, and my son’s future, to threaten me and force me to abandon the true way and betray God. How utterly despicable! There and then, I made up my mind that no matter how my life unfolded, I would never compromise with Satan. The police went on to demand that I report my brothers and sisters, but I ignored this, and eventually they went away.

After that, they often came by the hospital to ask if I still believed in God and was spreading the gospel. Sometimes I had to break off in the middle of an operation, no matter how urgent it was. It was starting to make me angry. I thought, I hadn’t done anything bad, I was only believing in God and following the right path, so why were the police harassing me and preventing me from doing my job in peace? The fact that I was under constant investigation caused a ruckus in the hospital. Colleagues saw me as a dangerous person. Some talked about me behind my back, and some asked directly, “What are you doing believing in God? Why are the police always investigating you? Your faith has brought the police right to our door. It’s really serious.” The director’s attitude toward me also changed. He had always regarded me highly, but after that incident, every time he saw me, he asked, “You haven’t been out preaching, have you?” He also told me to keep my phone on 24/7, so that I was always reachable. Once, the director told me, “The police have been here a number of times because of your belief in God. You need to stop believing. You’ve always done your job well, and everyone has a high opinion of you. Don’t let faith ruin your future. It’s not worth it. It’s going to be a big problem for me too, as your boss, if you get arrested or worse.” I felt miserable and depressed throughout that period, under constant surveillance by my director and getting wary looks from my colleagues. I prayed to God for faith and strength, and asked Him to help me stand strong under these trying circumstances. Then, I read a passage of God’s word: “The great red dragon persecutes God and is the enemy of God, and so, in this land, those who believe in God are thus subjected to humiliation and oppression…. Because it is embarked upon in a land that opposes God, all of God’s work faces tremendous obstacles, and accomplishing many of His words takes time; thus, people are refined as a result of God’s words, which is also part of suffering. It is tremendously difficult for God to carry out His work in the land of the great red dragon—but it is through this difficulty that God does one stage of His work, making manifest His wisdom and His wondrous deeds, and using this opportunity to make this group of people complete” (The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. Is the Work of God As Simple As Man Imagines?). From God’s word, I understood His intention. China is ruled by the Communist Party and is where God is most acutely resisted. People of faith, in China, will inevitably be persecuted and humiliated, but God uses Communist Party persecution as a means of perfecting our faith, thereby creating a body of overcomers. Such is God’s wisdom. Because of my believing in God and walking the right path, I was being subjected to harassment and monitoring by the police along with humiliation and criticism from colleagues and friends. And behind it all there was a purpose. I didn’t feel so bad, once I understood this. I promised myself that no matter how the Communist Party tried to persecute and obstruct me, I would follow God to the end.

My husband was away on business at the time, and I didn’t tell him about the police investigation because I didn’t want to worry him. He returned from his travels in January 2005, and was alarmed when he learned what had happened. Very sternly, he told me he’d found out that believers in Almighty God were political criminals who could be arrested and jailed at any time, and could be beaten half to death in detention. He said our son’s future and our relatives’ jobs would suffer, and he asked me to stop believing in Almighty God. I thought, “My husband’s belief in the Lord is in name only. He doesn’t really understand anything. It’s normal that he has these concerns. The Communist Party persecutes us believers so much, even going after our family members. Who wouldn’t be afraid?” I also thought of how he had been away on business the whole time, meaning that I hadn’t had a chance to testify to Almighty God’s work of the last days to him. We needed this opportunity for a proper talk, so I fellowshipped a lot with him, but he didn’t listen at all. He simply brushed it off, saying that life was going well and that we should just enjoy the grace of the Lord Jesus and there’s no need to accept the work of judgment. He was afraid of our family being dragged into it if I was arrested, so he started trying to stop me from believing in God. After that, he began to watch me very closely. If I wasn’t home on time after work, he called to ask where I was and urge me to come home, and he stopped going out to see his friends in the evening, which was unlike him. Instead, he just sat at home watching me. When it was time for me to attend a gathering, he would find other things for me to do for him. He essentially tried every means to stop me from believing in God or performing my duties. At the start, I felt very constrained, but later, I recalled a passage of God’s word: “You must possess My courage within you, and you must have principles when it comes to facing relatives who do not believe. For My sake, however, you also must not yield to any dark forces. Rely on My wisdom to walk the perfect way; do not allow any of Satan’s conspiracies to take hold” (The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. Utterances of Christ in the Beginning, Chapter 10). As I pondered God’s word, I understood that to all appearances it was my husband trying to hinder my belief in God, but behind the scenes Satan was manipulating and disrupting things, using tricks to get me to betray and deny God. I couldn’t give in to Satan. Later, I found excuses to avoid my husband’s surveillance, and went to gatherings and did my duties in secret. I was also looking out for chances to talk with my husband, hoping he would not be afraid of Communist Party persecution and would seek to examine the work of Almighty God. But my husband always excused himself, saying he would believe when priests and nuns started believing. He also asked me not to go to gatherings or go spreading the gospel, so as not to get arrested and sent to prison. I saw that my husband wasn’t interested at all in the truth or receiving the Lord’s coming, so I stopped talking to him about it. I thought, “No matter what, I have to believe in God and do my duty. I can’t be constrained by him.”

After the Spring Festival that year, my husband stayed at home to watch me rather than going back on the road for business. One day, he dropped to his knees in tears and implored me, “You’re always going out for gatherings and to preach the gospel. How will we get by in the future if you are arrested and sent to prison? What will happen to this family, what will happen to our son? You have to think about our family, and our son’s future.” To be honest, in all those years together I’d never seen my husband cry. It felt awful to see him on his knees like this, begging me, and I started crying too. To console him, I said, “Everything is in God’s hands. Whether I will be arrested, and what happens to our son in the future—it’s all ordained by God. Ours is to lean on God and live the experience. We don’t need to fret about these things.” My husband, with tears in his eyes, shook his head and said, “The police are already onto you. You’re going to get arrested sooner or later if you carry on believing like this, and then everything will be ruined.” Seeing my husband in such anguish, I felt bitterly aggrieved. This was all the Communist Party’s doing! We believe in God and spread the gospel so that people can accept God’s salvation of the last days and survive the disaster. This is saving people, and nothing is more just, but the Communist Party frantically tries to obstruct and disrupt us. They are nothing but Satans and demons opposed to God! God’s words say: “Forefathers of the ancient? Beloved leaders? They all oppose God! Their meddling has left all beneath heaven in a state of darkness and chaos! Religious freedom? The legitimate rights and interests of citizens? They are all tricks for covering up sin! … Why put up such an impenetrable obstacle to the work of God? Why employ various tricks to deceive God’s folk? Where is the true freedom and the legitimate rights and interests? Where is the fairness? Where is the comfort? Where is the warmth? Why use deceitful schemes to trick God’s people?” (The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. Work and Entry (8)). Ostensibly, the Communist Party promotes religious freedom, but actually they suppress and arrest believers, and they use people’s jobs and families to force them to deny and betray God. Utterly despicable! If not for the Communist Party’s persecution, things would never have come to this between my husband and me, and my husband wouldn’t have been so fearful. Wherever the dark hand of the Communist Party reaches, it brings disaster. My husband was afraid, and wanted to protect his work and our family, and for that reason he was going along with the Communist Party by pushing me to abandon my faith. But I wasn’t going to do as he said. I had to fortify my faith and go with God.

After that, my husband read a lot of Communist Party slander against The Church of Almighty God online, and simply stayed at home watching me rather than going on his business travels. He also asked around to find out who my faith brought me into contact with and who I called. He even went to the telecom company to have my six-month call log printed out, and then asked me about the numbers one by one. To monitor me, he escorted me to and from work every day. He followed me wherever I went and wouldn’t let me leave the house on my own. I had no freedom at all—it was like being shackled. I couldn’t live the church life and I couldn’t perform my duty, which made me feel really bad, so I took advantage of my husband’s laxness to slip out and preach the gospel. One time, he said angrily, “If you’re still getting out and preaching, even with my eyes on you all the time, then there’s really nothing I can do. It’s the Communist Party that rules now, and it won’t allow you to follow your faith. If you carry on like this you will be arrested sooner or later and the family will be broken up. So let’s divorce. You can believe what you want once we’re divorced, without there being repercussions for our son or anyone else.” I couldn’t believe it when I heard he wanted a divorce. All I was doing was believing in God. How had it come to this? Did all our years together count for nothing? The thought of my own perfectly good family being torn apart by the Communist Party was terribly distressing. This was something I couldn’t bear to accept. I prayed to God, “God, please give me faith and strength, so that I can stand strong in these trying circumstances.” After I prayed, I remembered this passage of God’s word: “The utmost faith and love are required from us in this stage of work. We may stumble from the slightest carelessness, for this stage of work is different from all the previous ones: What God is perfecting is mankind’s faith, which is both invisible and intangible. What God does is convert words to faith, to love, and to life. People must reach a point where they have endured hundreds of refinements and possess faith greater than Job’s. They must endure incredible suffering and all manner of torture without ever leaving God. When they are submissive unto death, and have great faith in God, then this stage of God’s work is complete” (The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. The Path … (8)). I contemplated God’s word, and then I understood that in His work of the last days, God uses His words and various trials and refinements to perfect people’s faith and love. I thought of Satan’s temptations of Job. He lost his children and wealth overnight, and then was covered in terrible boils. In the midst of such enormous tribulations, Job never complained, but continued praising God’s name. Through all his trials, he stood firm in his witness for God. Then I thought about myself. My family was coming apart because of Communist Party persecution, and I was already complaining. I saw that I really was small of stature, and had no testimony at all. I felt very remorseful, so I prayed to God, promising that even if my husband divorced me, I would not abandon the truth for the sake of flesh and family.

A few days later, my husband unexpectedly apologized to me and said he was wrong. He said he shouldn’t have mentioned divorce, and only did so because of the Communist Party’s vicious coercion. A while later, he suddenly said, “If I can’t persuade you, then I’ll join you in believing in Almighty God.” I was thrown by this sudden about-face but I felt he must have thought it through, so the two of us read God’s word together at home. A week later, he asked me to take him to a gathering. I thought his behavior was a little strange, so I didn’t agree. I was taken by surprise when he turned on me and said, “If you don’t take me to a gathering, I won’t believe anymore.” He also said he did this to persuade me to change my mind. Only then did I realize my husband was pretending to believe in Almighty God, and his purpose was to find where we held our gatherings so that he could better monitor and control me. I hadn’t expected him to do anything that ridiculous. From then on, we were in a cold war. One day, I was reading God’s word at home, when my husband pounded on the door, calling out, “We can’t go on like this.” When I opened the door he charged in like a madman and gripped me by the neck, shouting, “Why do you have to believe in Almighty God? Is He really more important to you than family and son?” His grip was so tight that it hurt and I couldn’t breathe, so I desperately called to God to save me. I struggled, and he let go. I was terribly upset about what had happened, and deeply saddened. Later, I read a passage of God’s word: “Why does a husband love his wife? Why does a wife love her husband? Why are children dutiful to their parents? Why do parents dote on their children? What sorts of intentions do people actually harbor? Is their intent not to satisfy their own plans and selfish desires?” (The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. God and Man Will Enter Into Rest Together). As I contemplated God’s word, I asked myself if my husband really loved me. I thought back on all our years of marriage. My husband clearly knew better than anyone about the sacrifices I had made for our family, and he knew I had believed in the Lord since I was a child and looked forward to the Lord’s coming. But when I welcomed the Lord, he didn’t support me. In fact, he sided with the Communist Party against me, threatening divorce and even trying to strangle me. All to protect his own interests. There was not even the barest of respect that should bind husband and wife. How could this be called love? I also thought of how, although my husband believed in the Lord Jesus, he only did so to obtain grace. He didn’t look forward to the coming of the Lord at all. Such was his fear of being arrested by the Communist Party, and of Satan’s regime, that he didn’t accept God’s work of the last days when God came to express the truth and do the work of salvation. And he went along with the Communist Party in trying to force me away from my faith. I saw that my husband wasn’t a true believer in God at all. He was a disbeliever. God’s words say: “Believers and nonbelievers are not compatible; rather, they are opposed to one another” (The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. God and Man Will Enter Into Rest Together). My husband and I weren’t on the same path at all, so I couldn’t let him constrain me. Following that, my husband threatened me with divorce several more times when he saw I wasn’t going to abandon my faith. I couldn’t bear the thought of really losing my family, so I prayed to God every day, asking Him to guide me.

One day, I saw a passage of God’s word: “As someone who is normal, and who pursues the love of God, entry into the kingdom to become one of the people of God is your true future, and a life that is of the utmost value and significance; no one is more blessed than you. Why do I say this? Because those who do not believe in God live for the flesh, and they live for Satan, but today you live for God, and live to follow the will of God. That is why I say your lives are of the utmost significance. Only this group of people, who have been selected by God, are able to live out a life of the utmost significance: No one else on earth is able to live out a life of such value and meaning” (The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. Know God’s Newest Work and Follow His Footsteps). I used to think that having a happy family, having a loving relationship with my husband and having my material needs fulfilled, was the definition of happiness, and that living this way was meaningful. But now, I saw clearly that so-called conjugal love is fragile. As they say: A husband and a wife are like two birds in a grove; when calamity comes they fly their own ways. In the past, when I worked hard for my family and my husband, he cared deeply for me, but now that I had faith he felt the Communist Party’s persecution of believers was a threat to his own interests, so he had turned to persecuting me and demanding a divorce. To put it bluntly, our “love,” as husband and wife, was just two people using each other. Where’s the happiness in such a life? I thought of how he had been monitoring me over the previous months, and forbidden me from going to gatherings and performing my duties. I couldn’t meet with my brothers and sisters to fellowship on the truth, my heart wasn’t at peace when I read God’s word at home, and I had to think of ways to handle my husband when I went out preaching the gospel. I had no freedom of faith whatsoever, as if bound by an invisible rope that was squeezing the life out of me. If this went on, my life would suffer and I would also lose the chance to gain the truth and receive salvation. It wasn’t worth it. This was when I realized, more and more clearly, that family life with marital love was not true happiness. I could only live a meaningful life by pursuing the truth and doing the duties of a created being. I also remembered the words of the Lord Jesus: “He that loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me: and he that loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he that takes not his cross, and follows after Me, is not worthy of Me” (Matthew 10:37–38). I thought of the saints down the ages, and how, to carry out God’s commission, they had forsaken their homes and livelihoods and crossed oceans to preach the gospel and testify to God, enduring suffering and even giving up their lives. Their testimony earned God’s approval. And now God was being gracious to me, bringing me before Him to receive salvation of the last days. It was a once-only opportunity. If I couldn’t properly perform my duties because of my husband’s constraints, then I would be a heartless wretch, unworthy before God! Realizing that, I swore an oath that I would do as the saints of old, forsaking everything, following God, and performing the duties of a created being. This is how I would live a life of meaning.

One evening I came home from a gathering and froze when I opened the door. The place was full of people. There were colleagues of mine, along with friends and relatives of my husband, and as soon as they saw me they all started talking at once, trying to persuade me to give up my faith. Some said they’d seen on the news that a lot of believers in Almighty God had recently been arrested by the Communist Party, and some had been sentenced to at least 10 years. Others said it wasn’t just a matter of being arrested and sent to prison; many believers in Almighty God were crippled or killed in custody, and their families were dragged into it as well. Some also repeated the Communist Party’s slanderous fallacies and rumors about the church, saying that believers in God abandon their families. Hearing all this made me very angry. “If not for Communist Party persecution,” I thought, “my family wouldn’t oppose and attack me like this. The Communist Party distorts facts and spreads rumors so that people who don’t know the truth join with it in opposition to God. Together with it they are condemned by God, and together with it they will ultimately be destroyed. It’s absolute evil!” I refuted what they had said, telling them, “Don’t talk nonsense if you don’t understand what it is to have faith. Why do I insist on believing in God despite these risks? It’s because the Savior has come and expressed many truths, to save mankind from the influence of Satan and free us from disaster. It’s a once-only opportunity! But the Communist Party doesn’t permit faith in God. It frantically oppresses and persecutes people who believe in God, arresting and locking up so many of them. So many people can’t return home, so many have been crippled and beaten to death, and so many Christian families have broken up. Isn’t that all the doing of the Communist Party? It’s patently the Communist Party persecuting people of faith and breaking up Christian families, but they turn things around and say believers in God are abandoning their families. Isn’t that inverting the truth? You don’t hate the CCP but you want to stop me from believing in God. Can’t you tell right from wrong? The path of faith was my own choice. Even if I go to prison, I am determined to follow Almighty God.” They saw they couldn’t persuade me, and eventually they all left. My husband said grimly, “It looks like no one can change your mind, so let’s get a divorce. You believe in Almighty God, which means the state is going to attack and arrest you. When that happens, you’ll lose your job, our family and maybe even your life. But the rest of us want to stay alive, so divorce is the only way. The Communist Party pushes people into impossible corners.” My heart ached at this, but I knew for sure that the time to choose had come. I chose to believe in and follow God, and to pursue the truth and life, whereas my husband chose to go along with the Communist Party, for his job and for his future. So we had to go our separate ways. At the time, I prayed to God, “God, no matter what happens, I will follow You to the end.” The next morning, my husband and I went to the Civil Affairs Bureau to carry out divorce proceedings, ending twelve years of married life. Since then, I’ve been able to go to gatherings and perform my duties normally, and I’ve felt very much at peace. I think that performing the duties of a created being is the only way to lead a life of meaning.