In my childhood, my father often drank a lot, and after he got drunk, he would beat my mother or abuse us siblings; this left a shadow of fear on my mind. When I grew up, I specially sympathized with those whose hearts once suffered trauma. Later I met my husband. He saw a gentleness in me, and so married me. After the marriage, however, he gradually changed. When things came up, he often argued with me on the grounds of the cultural difference. I was tolerant and patient toward him, while he became more strong-willed, making his own decision on everything. What he did often left me speechless with resentment. I could do nothing but bury all the misery in my heart. Sometimes I cried bitterly in secret, as I had no one to pour out my grievance to.
In 2015, I was in great misery. At that time I got pregnant with my second child. Because I had severe morning sickness, I went to the hospital for examination, and the doctor told me to prevent miscarriage. It so happened that I got a nettle rash all over. After that, I had a cough and then developed bronchitis. I also often had diarrhea, and my blood sugar level was high. What’s more, my young daughter often got fever and caught cold in the nursery school. I was tormented beyond words and almost cracked up. Just when I had no way out, the mother of one of my daughter’s classmates preached to me the gospel of the Lord Jesus, and I saw this word of His: “Come to me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). I was deeply touched by the word. I attended the church, and through hearing the sermon there, I knew the Lord Jesus’ love and redemption, and so I accepted Him as my Savior. Gradually I had the faith for preventing miscarriage of my baby and was much philosophical about my husband’s words and deeds. I appreciated the Lord’s salvation from my heart. Every time when I felt miserable or was hurt, I would pray to the Lord and ask for His help. Then I would feel comforted and have more confidence in life.
Not long after I began to go to the church, however, I felt no more love there. Whoever I talked to replied in a cold and indifferent manner. What they talked about most were things in their personal lives, such as finding someone a job, doing business, enrolling their kids in nurseries, and so on, and I felt that they were no different from the unbelievers. I couldn’t feel enjoyment in that Chinese church, so I went to a Japanese church, hoping to get some supply. However, I noticed that the believers of many years there, whether they be believers of ten years or believers of thirty years, simply attended the meetings when they pleased and absented themselves when they didn’t, and some believers even fell into a doze during the gatherings. Seeing such a situation in the church, I lost half of my zeal for believing in the Lord Jesus. Although I also didn’t get any supply in the Japanese church, I didn’t deny the salvation of the Lord, and still wished to find a good church. So I downloaded some interpretations of the Bible in Chinese from the internet. However, no matter how many interpretations I listened to, I didn’t have peace or joy in my heart, and my prayers were dry. Once when I was listening to the sermon on the internet, the preacher told us to seek to pray in tongues. So I pinned my hope on praying in tongues, wishing to recover my faith. However, I couldn’t pray in tongues like others no matter how hard I tried. Gradually I saw that the tongues those people prayed in were not understandable, and I didn’t feel that their praying in tongues could bring me closer to the Lord. … I also tried other ways to find a good church, but to no avail. So I had no faith to seek anymore, but just prayed to the Lord at home myself.
At the end of October, 2016, Jiang Xue, a Christian friend of mine, told me that her cousin (a preacher) was coming to Japan on a business trip and that she would take this opportunity to ask him to interpret the Bible. She invited me to join her. I was very glad to hear that her cousin was coming, for I was eager to listen to his preaching, hoping to get some supply in my spirit. That day, Brother Li, Jiang Xue’s cousin, after finding out our condition, told us that he quite understood it, and he said, “I used to be thirsty in spirit too. It is through the actual words of God that I have received the provision of life. … Do you know? Our longed-for Lord Jesus has come back!” Hearing him say that the Lord Jesus is back, I felt both surprised and pleased because I had been longing for the Lord to come to take me. So I listened to him carefully. He said, “The Lord Jesus has returned to do new work, to judge and purify mankind by expressing His words. Anyone who hears His voice and seeks will receive the provision of life from God and obtain God’s salvation in the last days. The Lord Jesus redeemed us and forgave our sins, but our sinful nature still exists within us. For example, arrogance and self-conceit, crookedness and craftiness, selfishness and baseness, and so on—these satanic dispositions still remain rooted within us Though after believing in the Lord, we have had some external changes like being tolerant and patient toward others and being able to endure hardship, when God’s work doesn’t accord with our illusions, we still can produce notions about God and disobey and resist Him. In the last days, Almighty God has come to continue on from the Lord Jesus’ work. He has carried out the work of judgment beginning with the house of God to judge and purify people and separate all according to their kind. After I read two passages of Almighty God’s word, you will understand this better. Almighty God says, ‘The work of the last days is to separate all according to their kind, and to conclude the management plan of God, for the time is near and the day of God has come. God brings all who enter His kingdom—all who are loyal to Him to the very end—into the age of God Himself. Yet prior to the arrival of the age of God Himself, God’s work is not to observe the deeds of man, or to inquire into the life of man, but to judge man’s disobedience, for God shall purify all those who come before His throne. All who have followed the footsteps of God to this day are those who come before the throne of God, and this being so, every single person who accepts God’s work in its final phase is the object of God’s purification. In other words, everyone who accepts God’s work in its final phase is the object of God’s judgment’” (“Christ Does the Work of Judgment With the Truth” in The Word Appears in the Flesh).
When hearing this, I got rather confused. “When God comes to judge man, isn’t it that He will reward the good and punish the wicked? The good will be saved and have no suffering anymore and the wicked will be cast into hell, so how can it be that those who come before God will be those who will be judged by God?” When I was thinking about it, Brother Li continued to read, “In the judgment beginning at the house of God spoken of in times past, the ‘judgment’ of these words refers to the judgment that God today passes on those who come before His throne in the last days. There are, perhaps, those who believe in such supernatural imaginings as that, when the last days have arrived, God will erect a big table in the heavens, upon which a white tablecloth will be spread, and then, sitting upon a great throne with all men kneeling on the ground, He will reveal the sins of each man and thereby determine whether they are to ascend to heaven or be sent down to the lake of fire and brimstone. No matter what man imagines, it cannot alter the essence of God’s work. The imaginings of man are nothing but the constructs of man’s thoughts; they come from the brain of man, summed up and pieced together from what man has seen and heard. Therefore I say, however brilliant the images conceived, they are but depictions, and are incapable of substituting the plan of God’s work. Man, after all, has been corrupted by Satan, so how could he fathom the thoughts of God?” (“Christ Does the Work of Judgment With the Truth” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). Hearing this, I thought, “These words are so practical. I believed that when God came to judge people, the wicked would be destroyed in hell, the believers in the Lord would be taken into heaven, and those old, weak, sick, or disabled believers in the Lord would become healthy instantly and be saved too. Could this view be wrong?”
I was still thinking about this question, when Brother Li began to share his understanding of God’s words: “Each of us have imagined how God will do His work of judgment, but we cannot measure God’s work by our thoughts and concepts, because God Himself does His own work. There is no denying that the judgment work of the last days is the work of separating all according to their kind and also the work of rewarding the good and punishing the wicked. But before God does the work of finally determining the outcomes of all people, He will first judge and purify people with His word. Eventually only those who accept the judgment of God’s word and are purified will be brought into the kingdom by God. Among believers in God, there are true believers and false believers, but they can’t be distinguished by our naked eyes, and so they have to be revealed through God’s work. The true believers in God can accept God’s judgment work of the last days and pursue to be purified. In the end they will become the real citizens of the kingdom. Those false believers and false apostles will be gradually revealed through God’s work of judgment of the last days and be eliminated and even punished in the end. Let’s read some words of Almighty God. Almighty God says, ‘In His final work of concluding the age, God’s disposition is one of chastisement and judgment, in which He reveals all that is unrighteous, in order to publicly judge all peoples, and to perfect those who love Him with a sincere heart. Only a disposition such as this can bring the age to an end. The last days have already arrived. All things in creation will be separated according to their kind, and divided into different categories based on their nature. This is the moment when God reveals humanity’s outcome and their destination. If people do not undergo chastisement and judgment, then there will be no way of exposing their disobedience and unrighteousness. Only through chastisement and judgment can the outcome of all creation be revealed. Man only shows his true colors when he is chastised and judged. Evil shall be put with evil, good with good, and all humanity shall be separated according to their kind. Through chastisement and judgment, the outcome of all creation will be revealed, so that the evil may be punished and the good rewarded, and all people become subject to the dominion of God. All this work must be achieved through righteous chastisement and judgment. Because man’s corruption has reached its peak and his disobedience become exceedingly severe, only God’s righteous disposition, one that is principally compounded of chastisement and judgment and is revealed during the last days, can fully transform and complete man. Only this disposition can expose evil and thus severely punish all the unrighteous. … Take, for example, a judge who is always loving, a judge with a kindly face and a gentle heart. He loves people irrespective of the crimes they may have committed, and he is loving to and forbearing with them whoever they may be. In that case, when will he ever be able to reach a just verdict? During the last days, only righteous judgment can separate man according to their kind and bring man into a new realm. In this way, the entire age is brought to an end through God’s righteous disposition of judgment and chastisement’ (“The Vision of God’s Work (3)” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). From Almighty God’s words we see that only through the judgment of the last days can people be saved from the bondage of sin. This is the only way by which we can be purified and saved. And also only this work can make us know the righteous disposition of God.”
After I listened to Almighty God’s words and Brother Li’s fellowship, I suddenly woke up, thinking, “We are all living in sin, are still bound by sin, and still have many corruptions, so how can we be worthy to enter God’s kingdom? It turns out that we can only be truly saved through the judgment and chastisement of the last days. So I have imagined God’s work to be quite simple. From God’s words, I have also seen God’s intolerance of man’s offense. God has dignity, and He has His principles in doing His work. God does not save everyone, and people can only be separated through God’s work of judgment. God is so wise! Thank God! The words of Almighty God are all truth indeed! They have revealed the mysteries that I didn’t understand.” So I decided to investigate Almighty God’s work of the last days seriously.
On the next day, when my family and I were on our way to eat in a restaurant, I ran into a Christian of my acquaintance. She attended the meetings of the Chinese church regularly, so I asked her, “Is there anything important that has happened in your church recently? Or is there anyone who went to your church to preach to you any good news?” She said, “No, there were no such things, but recently our pastor and elders always told us that the people of the Eastern Lightning are spreading the gospel everywhere to steal the sheep. You also should be careful and not deviate from the Lord’s way.” I asked her, “Do you know anything about the Eastern Lightning?” She said her pastor and elders told her how bad this church was. What she said were all words of condemnation and resistance…. At her words, I had doubt in my heart, wondering, “Was I wrong to investigate it?” So I called Jiang Xue and told her the problem that my Christian friend had told me. Jiang Xue said, “My cousin is a preacher who has worked for the Lord for many years. He wouldn’t accept a way casually, not to mention the return of the Lord Jesus. We can ask him what we don’t understand.” I thought her words made sense. So we settled that we would gather together and fellowship on Monday. When Monday came, however, my daughter got sick, and I had to take her to the hospital. So I had doubt again: Why does my daughter suddenly have a fever? Is this reminding me that I am wrong to investigate it? But then I thought, “To investigate whether Almighty God is the returned Lord Jesus, I should do it by discerning His words and utterances. But I almost judged it according to my feelings. My feeling is not the truth. Moreover, Jiang Xue is upright, and she treats others sincerely. All that her cousin talked about last time was to guide us to know God. He didn’t cheat or entrap me. He told me the news of the return of the Lord and asked me to investigate it. Through reading Almighty God’s words, I have much understanding of the mysteries of the Bible that I didn’t understand in the past. So why do I doubt God’s work of the last days?”
Later, Brother Li read these words of God to me: “In every step of work that God does within people, externally it appears to be interactions between people, as if born of human arrangements or from human interference. But behind the scenes, every step of work, and everything that happens, is a wager made by Satan before God, and requires people to stand firm in their testimony to God. Take when Job was tried, for example: Behind the scenes, Satan was making a bet with God, and what happened to Job was the deeds of men and the interference of men” (“Only Loving God Is Truly Believing in God” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). After reading God’s words, he said, “This is a spiritual war. When God wants to save people, Satan always tries in every possible way to deceive people through the rumors and lies made up by man. Look back to Adam and Eve’s betrayal of God in the beginning. Was it not because they listened to the enticement of the serpent? Satan lies in order to control people and make people listen to it. It wants to replace God and take possession of man. Human beings were created by God. All true believers in the Lord are the Lord’s sheep. Is God wrong to find His sheep and take them back home after His return? Why do some people persist in condemning the spreading of the good news of God’s salvation in the last days? We should see clearly: Satan is God’s enemy, so God’s work in each age encounters Satan’s disturbance. This is the reason why there are varied rumors and words of condemnation and judgment against God’s work. In fact, they are all lies that Satan uses to stop people from coming to God. The truth has been persecuted since ancient times. At that time, when the Lord Jesus came to do His work, it was the chief priests, scribes, and Pharisees, who served God, that resisted the Lord’s new work and nailed the Lord to the cross. Nowadays the Lord Jesus has returned; there are again many figures of Satan the devil that are disturbing God’s work, who know not God and hate God. These are all antichrists and God’s enemies that are revealed by God’s work of the last days.”
Afterward, through the brothers’ and sisters’ fellowship, I knew for sure that Almighty God is the returned Lord Jesus. I felt very excited, and it was long before I calmed down. I thought, “I didn’t taste the love of my parents from my childhood, but after I believed in the Lord Jesus, He loved me like a kind mother. Now Almighty God has come, and He has made me taste God’s love and salvation again. I believe that through the judgment and chastisement of Almighty God’s word, I can be changed into a real human being.” Now I don’t resent my husband that much, because through reading Almighty God’s words I know that he has also been corrupted by Satan and has not experienced the judgment and chastisement of God’s word, and so his disposition cannot possibly have been changed. I have accepted God’s work of the last days, so I have the hope of being changed. I will rely on God to make my husband accept God’s work of the last days, accept God’s judgment and chastisement, so that he may get rid of his corrupt disposition and live out the likeness of a real human being. What touches me most is the behavior of my two kids. When I taught them according to God’s word, they became very sensible. My friends all praised them, and so did those who contacted them. Later, my father-in-law came to Japan. When he saw his grandson and granddaughter so clever and lovely, he was loath to part with them and unwilling to go back. Only I know that they are clever and lovely thanks to God, as I have taught them to pray to and rely on God and thank God in all things they encounter. We sing hymns to praise God together and live happily and joyfully every day. I’ve realized that the true happiness comes from God. I really am most grateful to Almighty God! Now I live the church life with my brothers and sisters in Japan. I will rely on God and exert myself to spread the gospel to more people, so that those in misery will accept God’s work of judgment in the last days, for only this is the way for us to be truly saved. Thank Almighty God. All the glory be to Him!