In your belief in God, how should you know God? You should come to know God based on the words and work of God today, without deviation or fallacy, and before all else you should know the work of God. This is the foundation of knowing God. All those various fallacies that lack a pure acceptance of the words of God are religious conceptions, they are an acceptance that is deviant and erroneous. The greatest skill of religious figures is taking the words of God that were accepted in the past and checking them off against the words of God today. If, when serving the God of today, you cling to the things enlightened by the Holy Spirit in the past, then your service will cause an interruption, and your practice will be outdated and nothing more than religious ceremony. If you believe that those who serve God must be outwardly humble and patient…, and if you put this kind of knowledge into practice today, then such knowledge is religious conception, and such practice has become a hypocritical performance. “Religious conceptions” refers to things that are outmoded and obsolete (including the acceptance of words previously spoken by God and light directly revealed by the Holy Spirit), and if they are put into practice today, then they are the interruption of God’s work, and of no benefit to man. If man is unable to purge those things within him that belong to religious conceptions, then they will become a great hindrance to man’s service to God. People with religious conceptions have no way of keeping up with the steps of the Holy Spirit’s work, they fall one step behind, then two—for these religious conceptions cause man to become extraordinarily self-right and arrogant. God feels no nostalgia for what He spoke and did in the past; if it is obsolete, then He eliminates it. Surely you are able to let go of your conceptions? If you cling to the words that God spoke in the past, does this prove that you know the work of God? If you are unable to accept the light of the Holy Spirit today, and instead cling to the light of the past, can this prove that you follow the footsteps of God? Are you still unable to let go of religious conceptions? If that is the case, then you will become someone who opposes God.

If man can let go of religious conceptions, then he will not use his mind to measure the words and work of God today, and instead obeys directly. Even though God’s work today is manifestly unlike that of the past, you are able to let go of the views of the past and directly obey the work of God today. If you are capable of such knowledge that you give pride of place to the work of God today no matter how He worked in the past, then you are someone who has let go of their conceptions, who obeys God, and who is able to obey the work and words of God and follow the footsteps of God. In this, you will be someone who truly obeys God. You do not analyze or study the work of God; it is as if God has forgotten His previous work, and you, too, have forgotten it. The present is the present, and the past is the past, and since today God has put aside that which He did in the past, you should not dwell on it. Only then will you be someone who completely obeys God and has completely let go of their religious conceptions.

—The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. Only Those Who Know the Work of God Today May Serve God