Sermons and Fellowship About God’s Word “God’s Work and Man’s Practice”

【126-A-3】

Why do we feel we only like to associate with honest people? Because associating with deceitful people is too dangerous, annoying and disgusting. When you hear deceitful people say something, it’s really disgusting. It puts you off your food. Actually you already know, “When you say this it isn’t sincere, what are you being pretentious about? What are you arguing about? What are you trying to show off? Do you imagine I don’t know what’s in your heart?” So deceitful people can upset you with just a few words, and it’s as though you are boiling over. It’s awful, horrible, as if you’re seeing right through them. And because it’s so awful, disgusting and boring to associate with deceitful people, people don’t enjoy it and don’t associate with them. But as soon as you associate with honest people you find it happy and bright. They say what they think. So you feel light-hearted, happy, excited. You can share openly something in common with them, and this creates a resonance. And you will feel peaceful and pleasurable. This is one side of it: the very real emotional enjoyment and happiness. Furthermore, it is not dangerous no matter how you deal with honest people: they won’t deceive you or cheat you. They certainly won’t harm you. You could happily go out and leave them in your home to look after things. Imagine, you could put your gold ring and gold necklace in a drawer and tell them, “Look after these for me, will you? I am putting them here.” “Fine, don’t worry!” When you come back and check the drawer, the ring and the necklace are gone. “What’s happened?” “They weren’t safe there, I hid them away in a safe place.” You check and there they are. “Fine, you’re more careful than I am!” You see how it is to associate with honest people? You feel secure. If you associate with evil people, if something goes wrong, they will scowl. “This guy is so ferocious, with such a horrifying expression. It’s best not to have anything to do with him. If you just say some small thing wrong and offend him, you don’t know whether he might take out a knife behind your back, and you don’t know what will happen to you. You just can’t associate with such an evil person, it’s like bumping into a poisonous snake!” Isn’t there this kind of feeling? To be with an evil person, first of all you won’t feel secure; secondly, you can’t fathom them out; thirdly, you never know when they will become devilish. It’s just too dangerous to deal with this kind of person. So after having experienced being an honest person for three to five years, or five to six years, you will have the likeness of an honest person, the likeness of mankind. People will like to see you as an honest person. Then won’t you enjoy this? You will. How will you enjoy it? “Now I know what the likeness of a real man is, and what kind of person I should be.” Surely to have insight into this is to understand a mystery of life, right?

Sermons and Fellowship About God’s Word “God’s Work and Man’s Practice”

【126-A-2】

We’ve just read a passage from God’s word “God’s Work and Man’s Practice.” This passage tells people clearly how to experience God’s work and how to fulfill their duty. Now, let’s have a fellowship. Read this first: “Each stage of the Holy Spirit’s work simultaneously requires the testimony of man. Each stage of work is a battle between God and Satan, and the object of the battle is Satan, while the one who will be made perfect by this work is man. Whether or not God’s work can bear fruit depends on the manner of man’s testimony to God. This testimony is what God requires of those who follow Him; it is the testimony made before Satan, and also proof of the effects of His work.” What is this paragraph saying? It’s easy to see the literal meaning of God’s word: God has requirements for those who experience His work. What does He require? He requires you to bear witness once you’ve experienced a step of God’s work. What will the result be if you don’t bear witness? Needless to say, you will definitely be eliminated. Those who bear witness are those who will be gained by God and receive God’s blessing. It is extremely important that people bear witness during every step of work done and it should not be treated as a trifling matter; but if people don’t pay attention, does this show they are heartless? God requires people to bear witness during every step of His work, but what exactly does it mean to bear witness? Someone once said: “It means fulfilling my duty, and fulfilling it in every step of the work done; that’s what it means to bear witness.” Is this right? It’s good, but not complete, though you can say that the response is correct. Why is it said that it’s correct? What is the basis for determining whether or not one’s performing duty is bearing witness? It’s based on whether one fulfills their duty adequately. Fulfilling your duties adequately; that is bearing witness. Like when someone says, “When I fulfill my duties well, is that not bearing witness?” This sounds absolutely correct! Fulfilling one’s duty well is bearing witness. But what is the standard for “fulfilling one’s duty well”? Does it mean to fulfill one’s duty adequately? When you fulfill your duty, and do so adequately, that is bearing witness. Someone might ask if doing good deeds had any relationship to bearing witness. Doing good deeds is a part of bearing witness. Aren’t most of the good deeds man does part of duties they should fulfill? You can say that good deeds are the duties that one should fulfill; the more good deeds one does, the more of their duty they fulfill, and their testimony will resonate. If someone fulfills their duty only in one aspect, does that mean they’ve done many good deeds? If they fulfill their duty in one aspect without accomplishing any other good deeds, is their testimony bright and resounding? This does not meet the standard!

3. The True Meaning of Service and the Duties of Workers

The true meaning of service is to exalt God, to bear witness to God, and to do God’s will. It is that simple, but to truly perform service is not easy. All those church leaders were eliminated in the past because they did not carry out such service and they were despised and proscribed by God. They exalted themselves, bore witness to themselves, firmly established their own authority making others acknowledge them and obey them, achieving the aim of acting tyrannically. These people are mean little men who have lost their conscience and reason. Of course, in spite of themselves, they understand principles but they do not act on them. It is obvious that their humanity is too bad. If they had had the slightest humanity, they would not have come to such a final outcome of being eliminated after having undergone so much pruning and dealing. Truly exalting God and bearing witness to God enables man to worship God in the highest, to magnify God and to submit under God’s dominion, making men know God and worship God, allowing God to be glorified. Doing God’s will means to bring men before God so that they can be completely obtained by Him, and it is only by attaining this outcome that service is in accord with God’s will. It was often communicated in the past that service to God means leading man to know God, and by taking the opportunity to exalt God, and to bear witness to God, man is led before God and able to submit to God, and to know and love God. If anyone’s service has reached this outcome, then his service is qualified, while the service of those which cannot reach this outcome is unqualified. Should anyone exalt himself and bear witness to himself in his service so that others are submitting to him and do not know God, he is an antichrist. This is absolutely right, and this is the state of things. It has subsequently come to light that the service of some people is of this kind. They are always concerned about the state of their personal prestige, and if they perceive that no one is attaching much importance to them or paying them much heed, they are discomfited and view the matter as particularly grave. They believe that if they cannot resolve this problem they will have no means of doing their work and therefore they display death-defying determination to bring others under their control and establish their individual prestige. This is how work is performed when man’s life disposition has not changed. Even though from the outside they treat God quite kindly, their essence is still disobedient. To resolve the question of submission to God, one needs to commence with understanding the truth and resolve the question of changing their disposition. They should not first resolve the problem of their own prestige as this is too selfish. It is important that they be considerate of God’s intentions because God wants to obtain men, and it is God that man believes in. God asks man to exalt Him in order to resolve the question of man’s submission to God, and of man knowing God. It is not in order to resolve the question of whether or not people are taking heed of you. Some people always complain, asking why others don’t listen to them. First, they have not grasped the essence of the problem. Secondly, because they do not know God, they do not have the truth. Thirdly, in the way they go about things they have lost their reason and do not have humanity. Therefore, no one pays them any heed. If your communication truly has achievements in respect of others’ life, and it truly enables them to know God, submit to God, and have a path to practice, then others will immediately like you and respect you, and be willing to open up their hearts to communicate with you, and to do as you say. This is absolute, and my understanding is very profound.

2. Practicing the Truth and the Duties One Should Do

Most people now are basically clear regarding the question of what after all we should obtain from our faith in God, namely we obtain from God the truth, the way, and the life. On the two occasions that He was God incarnate, God said that He is the truth, the way, and the life. This also explains that God’s intention and the aim of God’s work is to confer upon man the truth, the way, and the life. Regardless of the manner in which God conducts His work, men are able to obtain from God the truth, the way, and the life. What is the relationship between the truth, the way, and the life? We may put it this way, the truth is the life, and it is the path that man ought to follow. Once he obtains the truth, he also has life, and he has a path for his life. Once he obtains the truth, all is resolved. These three things are in fact one thing that is explained from three aspects, God is the truth and He is also the life and the way. These three aspects are three major aspects that ought to be resolved through man’s belief in God. Once these three questions are resolved, the important questions in the life of man are resolved. We obtain life once we have the truth, and the truth itself is also the way. When we have the life, our lives are resolved, and when we have life, the fundamental questions of man are resolved. This is precisely the entire work of God’s salvation of man, and it is a simple and generalized way of explaining it.

1 How to Pursue to Be an Honest Person

Miaoxiao Anyang City, Henan Province

In the past, when reading in God’s word that we were required to be an honest person, many brothers and sisters thought that it was not hard to be an honest person and that as long as one told the truth without cheating others in everything, he was an honest person. Most people did not meditate or seek whether they had lived up to the standards of an honest person, and even less did they pay attention to entering into being an honest person. Thus, the matter of practicing being an honest person was shelved. Recently, through the man’s fellowship “The Four Indices People Have to Grasp in Pursuing the Truth to Gain the Transformation of Their Disposition,” we have clearly realized the importance and crucialness of being an honest person, knowing that being an honest person is the prerequisite and the foundation for the transformation of our disposition and is the start of pursuing the transformation of our disposition. Because God likes honest people and loathes crafty people, only if we begin by practicing and entering into being an honest person will we be able to establish a normal relationship with God, and will we easily communicate with God and receive the working of the Holy Spirit. If we have no entering in in being an honest person, we cannot have transformation of our disposition, even less can we be saved and perfected by God.

Sermons and Fellowship About God’s Word “Only Christ of the Last Days Can Give Man the Way of Eternal Life”

124-A-1

Let’s first read a passage of God’s words, “Only Christ of the Last Days Can Give Man the Way of Eternal Life.”

Not just anyone can possess the way of life, nor can every single person easily obtain it. That is because life can only come from God, which is to say, only God Himself possesses the substance of life, and only God Himself has the way of life.

1. What Is the Work of Managing Mankind?

Relevant Words of God:

The work of managing mankind is divided into three stages, which means that the work of saving mankind is divided into three stages. These three stages do not include the work of creating the world, but are rather the three stages of the work of the Age of Law, the Age of Grace, and the Age of Kingdom. The work of creating the world was the work of producing the whole of mankind. It was not the work of saving mankind, and bears no relation to the work of saving mankind, for when the world was created mankind had not been corrupted by Satan, and so there was no need to carry out the work of mankind’s salvation. The work of saving mankind only began when mankind had been corrupted by Satan, and so the work of managing mankind also only began when mankind had been corrupted. In other words, God’s management of man began as a result of the work of saving mankind, and did not arise from the work of creating the world. It was only after mankind acquired a corrupt disposition that the work of management came into existence, and so the work of managing mankind includes three parts, rather than four stages, or four ages. Only this is the correct way to refer to God’s management of mankind. When the final age comes to a close, the work of managing mankind will have come to a complete end. The conclusion of the work of management means that the work of saving all mankind has been completely finished, and that mankind has reached his journey’s end. Without the work of saving all mankind, the work of managing mankind would not exist, nor would there be the three stages of work. It was precisely because of mankind’s depravity, and because mankind was in such urgent need of salvation, that Jehovah concluded the creation of the world and began the work of the Age of Law. Only then did the work of managing mankind begin, which means that only then did the work of saving mankind begin. “Managing mankind” does not mean guiding the life of mankind, newly created, on earth (which is to say, a mankind that had yet to be corrupted). Rather, it is the salvation of a mankind that has been corrupted by Satan, which is to say, it is to transform this corrupt mankind. This is the meaning of managing mankind. The work of saving mankind does not include the work of creating the world, and so the work of managing mankind does not include the work of creating the world, and only includes three stages of work that are separate from the world’s creation. To understand the work of managing mankind, it is necessary to be aware of the history of the three stages of work—this is what everyone must be aware of in order to be saved.

from “Knowing the Three Stages of God’s Work Is the Path to Knowing God” in The Word Appears in the Flesh