A Letter to a Sister in the Lord: How to Be an Honest Person in Whom God Delights

By Wang Yue

Sister Wang Yue,

Hi there! I have a question for which I’ve yet to find a good answer—I’d like to seek with regard to this question for a moment. The Lord Jesus taught us, “Truly I say to you, Except you be converted, and become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3). The Lord Jesus calls for us to be honest people, to be as simple and honest as children and to tell things like they are. Only as such may we enter into the kingdom of heaven. Having read God’s word, I know that being honest is very important and I would like to practice being an honest person in accordance with God’s request. However, in my interactions with people, when it comes to my own personal profit, I can’t bring myself to communicate my actual thoughts and beliefs. Sometimes I lie and deceive—I know this makes God unhappy and afterward I’m always very regretful, but I just can’t help it. I’m feeling very frustrated and don’t know how I ought to resolve this issue. With regard to this aspect of the truth concerning how to be an honest person, I’m curious to hear how you practice. Would you mind fellowshiping with me on this issue?

Yours sincerely,

Chen Xin

June 25, 2018

I Welcome the Second Coming of Jesus After Watching a Gospel Movie

By Difrem, India

The Bible Is the Basis of My Faith

I was born into a Catholic family. Although many of us in the local area followed God, many still smoked, drank alcohol, and worshiped idols, and there were even some in our church congregation who committed adultery. I knew nothing about the Bible back then, and when I saw the church leaders and my fellow believers living in such a way, I blindly followed suit and smoke and drank as well. One day in 2011, several brothers who believed in the Lord Jesus came to our village to preach the gospel. While I listened to their sermon, my heart was stirred by several passages from the Bible: “And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32). “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man comes to the Father, but by Me” (John 14:6). Although I wasn’t entirely clear what the Lord Jesus meant when He said these things, I knew that God possessed the truth, that He could bestow life upon us, and that if we believed in God then we had to listen to His words, for only by doing this would God be pleased. Only then did I begin to reflect, and I thought: "I believe in God."

Question 2: We still haven’t determined whether God’s kingdom is on earth or in heaven. The Lord Jesus once talked about “the kingdom of heaven being at hand” and “the kingdom of heaven coming.” If it is the kingdom of heaven, it should be in heaven. How can it be on earth?

Answer: We should all be clear that “Heaven” is always referred to as God. The “heavenly kingdom” obviously refers to God’s kingdom. Revelation says, “the tabernacle of God is with men,” “The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ.” This means that God’s kingdom will be established on earth.

Question 1: The Lord said it to us long ago: “I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you to myself; that where I am, there you may be also” (Jhn 14:2-3). The Lord Jesus has already reserved a place for us in the heaven. When He returns, He will directly lift us into the kingdom of heaven. If the Lord has already returned, why are all His saints still on the earth? Why haven’t they been raised up?

Answer: The Lord has prepared a place for His believers. That is true. But is this place on earth or in heaven? We’re not really sure about that. We think the heavenly kingdom is in heaven, but that’s based on our own conceptions and imaginations. Is that really the truth, though?

Question 2: I’ve believed in the Lord for over half my life. I’ve worked tirelessly for the Lord and have been on constant lookout for His second coming. If the Lord came, why didn’t I receive His revelation? Has He cast me aside? This has left me very confused. How do you explain this?

Answer: Man thinks that if he believes in the Lord for half his life, works hard for the Lord, and vigilantly awaits His second coming, when the Lord comes again He will give revelation to them. This is man’s conception and imagination and is not in keeping with the fact of God’s work. The Jewish Pharisees compassed land and sea spreading the way of God. Did the Lord Jesus ever give them any revelation when He came?

Question 1: The Lord’s promise is that He will come again to take us into the kingdom of heaven, and yet you testify that the Lord has already been incarnated to do the work of judgment in the last days. The Bible clearly prophesies that the Lord will descend with power and great glory on clouds. This is quite different from what you’ve testified, that the Lord has already been incarnated and secretly descended among men.

Answer: You say that the Lord promised man that He would come again to take man into the kingdom of heaven, that is for sure, because the Lord is faithful, He will invariably make good on His promises. But we need to first be clear that the Lord's coming again through incarnation in the last days to do the work of judgment is directly related to how we are raptured into the kingdom of heaven.

Question 3: Right now, desolate churches are widespread throughout the entire religious world, but we have never fully understood the primary cause. That’s why we’ve been earnestly reading the Old Testament and have focused on how the actions of the Jewish chief priests, scribes and Pharisees in the late Age of Law led to such desolation in religion. Although some problems have been discovered, it’s never been entirely clear. We’ve also gone to churches in many different places and from different denominations, but we haven’t seen the work of the Holy Spirit. We’re not very clear on why the entire religious world is so desolate. What’s the real reason for this?

Answer: Now, the whole of the world of religion is a widespread desolation, devoid of the work of the Holy Spirit, and many people’s faith and love have cooled—this has already become an accepted fact. What exactly is the primary cause of the desolation in the world of religion is a question that all of us must thoroughly understand. First let us look back a moment at why the temple became desolate in the latter days of the Age of Law, and we will then be able to understand thoroughly the cause of the religious world’s desolation in the last days.