I

The first time that God became flesh to work on earth, His work was simple and brief, but it was an indispensable and important stage of work for the salvation of mankind. However, after the Lord Jesus was crucified, He came back to life and ascended to heaven, without appearing to mankind again. This is the humility and hiddenness of God. In this stage of the work, God came quietly and silently, without any ceremony, and was quietly born in a stable. The rest of the life of the Lord Jesus Christ was filled with hardships and suffering, which only ended with His crucifixion. God helped people escape from sin and the sea of suffering, and He's the Redeemer of mankind. So, it stands to reason that God should have enjoyed mankind's worship, admiration, and prostration. However, God departed quietly and silently, without making a sound.

II

In the present incarnation, God came among people in the same manner and form. God's coming in the flesh is a huge blessing for mankind, an incredibly rare opportunity, and even more so, it's the good fortune of mankind. But it is the most painful thing for God Himself. God lacks an arrogant disposition, wickedness, and deceitfulness, He loves positive things, He is righteous and holy, but what He faces is precisely a group of humans that is opposite and inimical to His essence. What God gives the most is His love and patience, His mercy and tolerance. God's love, mercy, and tolerance are His humility and hiddenness.

III

Regardless of what God does, there's none of man's so-called "transactions" to it; God does not "seek remuneration" as humans call it. God does not have a desire for status, like corrupt mankind does. God lacks precisely this kind of essence; He has no ambition, He does not have corrupt mankind's arrogant disposition, and He doesn't declare Himself. God possesses God's essence; no matter how humble and hidden He is, how secretly He works, how He shows mercy and tolerance to mankind, the ultimate effect of His words, work, actions, and so forth on people is bound to be humans accepting the Creator's sovereignty, bowing down to and worshiping the Creator, and willingly submitting to the Creator's sovereignty and arrangements. This is determined by God's essence.

IV

Judging from this series of God's different identities, different perspectives—from God's Spirit, the essence of God Himself to the incarnate God's humanity—there's no arrogance or any of Satan's ambitions and desires within God's essence, and even less so is there man's so-called drive for status. Aside from His own essence, the most prominent feature of what God is possessed of, from God's Spirit to His incarnate flesh, is His humility and hiddenness. This humility is not feigned, this hiddenness is not deliberate evasion; this is God's essence, this is God Himself. Whether God is in the spiritual realm or incarnated as a human, the essence of God does not change.

from The Word, Vol. 4. Exposing Antichrists. Item Fifteen (Part Two)