On August 28, 2016, a cross-border family search drama was presented at the Church of Almighty God in Seoul. Tian, together with her son, came from China to search for her husband. She cried and shouted, saying that her husband had abandoned the family after believing in Almighty God, and refused to return despite her twice coming to South Korea in an attempt to persuade him to go back to China. Besides, she claimed that the Church of Almighty God was to blame for her family’s breakdown. Meanwhile, the CCP successively published articles on Xinhua Net, one of the party media, and Northeast News Net which criticized in detail the Christians who dedicated themselves to God after believing in God, attacked the Church of Almighty God on the accusation that it split up the families of the believers, and condemned it as an offense that the Christians forsook their families to work and preach the gospel. The overseas protest and the domestic reports echoed one another and went hand in hand. Such allegations appear well-founded, but then, who will approve them? To be honest, I, as a Christian, was very surprised to see such an incident and the accusations above. How could it be connected with breaking families and committing a crime that the Christians leave their families to follow God? What is the real intention of the CCP government to make such absurd claims and create momentum home and abroad? Do the Christians break the law actually when they leave their families for the sake of their belief? Who is the real breaker of the Christian’s families? Who is the real culprit?
God is the Creator. Man’s all, including his life, is bestowed by God. It is God’s requirement of man that they, as creatures, believe in and follow Him, give up everything and expend themselves for Him, which is absolutely right and proper. Just as the Lord Jesus said in the Bible, “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brothers, and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. And whoever does not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple. … So likewise, whoever he be of you that forsakes not all that he has, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26-27, 33). “And Jesus said to him, No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:62). The Lord Jesus’ words are the words of God, the Creator, which are God’s highest will toward man as well as the highest truth, exceeding the authority of the law of any country. This is public knowledge to the religious world, even to the whole mankind. When the Lord Jesus worked personally in the flesh, who among His apostles and disciples did not lay aside everything to follow Him? In order to preach the Lord Jesus’ gospel into China, who among the hundreds of foreign preachers did not forsake family and career to go to China? In modern times, many Christians gave up their families and marriages, and devoted their lives to following the Lord in spite of arrests and imprisonment. And throughout history, tens of millions of saints in Christianity have followed God according to His such requirement. Who dares toChristianity a religion that destroys the believers’ families? Or who can condemn those saints? On the contrary, most people will not only not condemn them, but highly admire and imitate them. Just think: If the Christians all had clung to their own little families, and been reluctant to leave their husbands or wives, and children, how could have the Lord Jesus’ gospel been spread to the end of the earth? And how could have mankind received His great grace of redemption? Likewise, the Christians of the Church of Almighty God leave their families and relatives for the purpose of spreading the kingdom gospel. Is it not the same as what the saints did to spread the Lord Jesus’ gospel? Is this not practicing the Lord Jesus’ requirement of man? This is exactly the good and righteous deed to cooperate with God’s management plan of saving mankind. It fully conforms to the Bible and the truth, and is most after God’s heart and approved by God.
Since forsaking one’s family and work to believe in God corresponds to the truth and the Bible, and is generally acknowledged to be positive, then why does the CCP government condemn it as a negative thing that ruins families, or even an offense? Why does the CCP government call white black? On the basis of which law does it convict the Christians’ forsaking their families as an offense? It is well known that the CCP government is atheistic and dictatorial, and has been hostile to God and persecuting Christians all along. Its rhetoric and discourses in all respects contradict the Bible, oppose God, and confound white and black. China’s Constitution says clearly that “Citizens of the People’s Republic of China enjoy freedom of religious belief,” so it’s absolutely legitimate for the Christians to believe in God; besides, the Constitution doesn’t say that it is illegal for the Christians to forsake their families to spend for God. Nevertheless, the CCP government condemns the Christians not in accordance with the law, but totally at will. It convicts and sanctions whoever it considers to have violated the law, pulls the wool over people’s eyes and disregards the law. The CCP itself is a real perpetrator.
Then, which has caused the breakdowns of the Christians’ families actually, the Church of Almighty God or the CCP government? The CCP has taken every conceivable means to suppress the Christians. It resorts to all kinds of media, including the Internet, to widely slander and frame the Church of Almighty God, and incites the masses unclear about the truth to oppose and become hostile toward the Christians of the Church. If one believes in God, his whole family will be excluded, oppressed, and persecuted. In this way, many originally peaceful families fall apart. Is what the CCP does not breaking families? The CCP sends spies to various villages and towns across the country to investigate openly and inquire secretly, exerts control at every level of the state hierarchy, and promises rewards to the reporters. Once a Christian is spotted, he will immediately be arrested and sentenced in secret. Many Christians have to flee from place to place to escape arrest, unable to return home; many others have been tortured and jailed, or even died from persecution. Is what the CCP does not ruining families? According to investigative interviews over 3 years by the Committee for Investigation on Persecution of Religion in China, a non-profit American organization (as many people dared not or refused to speak out, the following figures are incomplete, conservative ones smaller than the actual numbers of the victims), from the implementation of the reform and open-up policy to 2000, among the 60 to 100 million Christians of house churches, at least 2.7 million (or one in 22 persons) were arbitrarily arrested, 440,000 were sentenced to reform or re-education through labor, 750 were wanted and hunted, 200,000 were forced into displacement or missing, over 10,000 lost their lives as a result of persecution, over 20,000 were disabled by torture, 130,000 were placed under residential surveillance, and 1.12 million were extortionately fined (up to over 800,000 yuan). According to incomplete statistics from the Church of Almighty God, in the two short years from 2011 to 2013, 380,380 Christians of the Church were arrested and detained by the CCP government throughout the country. Among these people, 43,640 suffered all kinds of torture while under illegal interrogation, and more than 10 died from persecution based on documented information; 111,740 had various charges imposed on them and were illegally fined or extorted about 243,613,000 RMB in total; 35,330 had their homes ransacked, and over 1 billion RMB (including God’s offerings and personal property) was forcibly and groundlessly confiscated by the public security organs and their subordinates or pocketed by evil police officers. Besides, it has been verified that 52 Christians were deprived of their rights to work and cut off their livelihoods by the CCP government due to belief in Almighty God. Although the statistics above is just the tip of the iceberg, these startling facts are proof enough that the disintegration of thousands of Christians’ families is entirely caused by the CCP devil. In fact, in order to safeguard its dictatorial rule, the CCP has never ceased its massacre of the Chinese people since it took power in 1949, as manifested in the 1950s Land Reform, the Cultural Revolution, the June Fourth Incident…. It is estimated that more than half Chinese people have been subjected to the CCP’s persecution, and that around 80 million have been killed by the CCP, 6 or 7 times the death toll of the Holocaust. The CCP is a real butcher that persecutes Christians, slaughters mankind, and destroys families! Moreover, rapid growth of the divorce rate is now a widespread social phenomenon. In atheistic China, it is particularly serious, and leading a double life has even become a fashion and trend. What’s the cause of it? Is it not the result of the fact that the CCP’s atheism leads man to not believe in God, betray God, live in sin, and get increasingly evil? Is what the CCP does not wrecking families? A great many facts have proven that the CCP government is the real culprit that breaks up and ruins families! However, it goes so far as to slander and frame the Church of Almighty God on the charge of breaking families apart and violating the law, which is actually confusing black with white, and an instance of “a thief calling on people to catch a thief”!
Why did the CCP government seize on Zhang’s leaving his family to perform duty overseas? Why was it so generous with financial and material resources to have Zhang’s wife come to South Korea, stir up trouble, and shape public opinion, thus slandering and smearing the Church of Almighty God? At this point, the CCP’s habitual means of exclusionism and religious belief repression come to me: First, it finds a theoretical basis for its suppression and persecution of religious belief through disinformation and false accusation; then, it creates massive momentum in public opinion; finally, there follows a rampant arrest and slaughter. Here are some real proofs: the June 4 Student Movement in 1989, the Tiananmen Square Self-immolation Incident in 2001, the March 14 Tibet Riots in 2008…. And by the means above, the CCP treated the students in the June 4 Incident, the Falun Gong practitioners, the Tibetans, and the Church of Almighty God. Taking advantage of the family search incident, the CCP slandered and smeared the Church of Almighty God, charging the Church with coercing the believers and splitting up their families, and attempted to deceive and incite the religious world and people from all walks of life in South Korea to oppose the Church and deport the believers. In that case, it would be able to extradite these believers to China, arrest and persecute them, and finally get the Church abolished. The CCP did so for the sole reason: Along with the release of the videos, movies, and choir albums made by the Church of Almighty God overseas, an increasing number of people around the world are seeking and investigating the kingdom gospel of Almighty God, and more and more people have returned to Almighty God, which has aroused its great shock and panic. The CCP government is extremely afraid that people behold God’s appearance and accept God’s work in the last days, and hence its ambition to make a place without God on earth will come to nothing. So, it appears humane, just and virtuous, and waves the flag of “being committed to the reunion and peace of the Christians’ families” to widely slander and smear the Church of Almighty God. All its efforts are to let people refuse Almighty God’s work in the last days, lose their opportunity to be saved, end up in hell, and to impair God’s management plan of saving mankind. The CCP government is truly a satanic regime that opposes God and makes an enemy of God, and a devilish group that devours man’s souls!
God never forces man, nor does the Church of Almighty God force man to sacrifice for God. However, it is perfectly justified for those who truly believe in God to forsake their families and careers to spend for God, which is in complete accord with the truth and God’s will. For those who expend themselves for God, the religious world will not disapprove or condemn them, nor will the genuine democracies. Only the atheistic CCP government opposes and condemns them, as well as the so-called religious figures who follow and worship it. Such people are all the ones who go against the Bible, hate the truth and make enemies of God. They definitely are false believers! If a believer in God can believe the discourses of the atheistic government, and even resist God and attack the Christians, then he is unable to tell right from wrong, or black from white, and he is a disgrace to all the believers. I believe all true believers in God are capable of distinguishing between right and wrong, good and evil, and that they can stand on the side of the truth, of God in the spiritual war between positive and negative, black and white, truth and fallacies, so that Satan will have its schemes routed miserably and bring shame on itself, while God will gain His glory and testimony!
Xingwu