By Yang Le, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region

When I was still at school, my father grew sick and passed away. After he died, uncles on both sides of the family who had often been helped by my father not only did not take care of us—my mother, my two sisters and I, who had no source of income—but, on the contrary, did everything they could to make a profit off us, even fighting with us for the little legacy my father had left behind. In the face of my relatives’ indifference and all the things they did that I never could have expected, I felt such extreme pain and couldn’t help but hate the utter lack of conscience and the heartlessness that these relatives displayed, at the same time also gaining a sense of the fickleness of human nature. After that, whenever I saw some occurrences in society of family members fighting each other over money, or even suing and murdering each other over money, I would feel that the world today was too full of darkness, that people’s hearts really were sinister and the world really was too fickle! At that time, I thought the reason why the world was so full of darkness was because people had turned bad, that they no longer had any conscience and that there were too many evil people in the world. Afterward, only through reading the words of God did I realize that what I had seen was just a surface-level phenomenon, and was not the source of the world’s darkness and evil. From God’s words I saw clearly the real source of darkness and evil in the world.

God’s words say: “Before he was corrupted by Satan, man naturally followed God and obeyed His words after hearing them. He was naturally of sound sense and conscience, and of normal humanity. After being corrupted by Satan, man’s original sense, conscience, and humanity grew dull and were impaired by Satan. Thus, he has lost his obedience and love toward God. Man’s sense has become aberrant, his disposition has become the same as that of an animal, and his rebelliousness toward God is ever more frequent and grievous. Yet man still neither knows nor recognizes this, and merely opposes and rebels blindly” (“To Have an Unchanged Disposition Is to Be in Enmity to God” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). “Knowledge of ancient culture and history spanning several thousand years has closed off man’s thinking and notions and his mental outlook so tightly as to render them impervious and non-biodegradable.^[1] … Feudal ethics have taken the life of man into ‘Hades,’ further weakening man’s power to resist. All sorts of oppression push man, step by step, to fall deeper into Hades…. Knowledge of ancient culture has surreptitiously stolen man from the presence of God and turned him over to the king of devils and its progeny. The Four Books and Five Classics^[a] have taken man’s thinking and notions into another age of rebellion, causing him to give even greater adulation than before to those who compiled the Book/Classic of Documents, and as a result to further exacerbate his notions about God. Unbeknownst to man, the king of devils heartlessly cast God out from his heart and then occupied it itself with triumphant glee. Since that time, man became possessed of an ugly and wicked soul and of the countenance of the king of devils. A hatred of God filled his chest, and the spiteful malice of the king of devils spread within man day…. This gang of accomplices in crime!^[2] They come down into the mortal realm to indulge in pleasures and cause a commotion, stirring things up so much that the world becomes a fickle and inconstant place and the heart of man is filled with panic and unease, and they have toyed with man so much that his appearance has become that of an inhuman beast of the field, supremely ugly, and from which the last trace of the original holy man has been lost” (“Work and Entry (7)” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). God’s words expose the root of all of the darkness and evil in the world, and that all of this came about because of Satan’s corruption. In the beginning, mankind created by God obeyed and worshiped Him; they were able to obey God’s words and they possessed the consciences and reason of normal humanity. But ever since mankind was corrupted by Satan, they started to listen to Satan’s words, thus losing God’s oversight and protection and falling under Satan’s domain. Over several thousand years Satan has continuously used theories of materialism, evolution, and atheism to deceive and corrupt people. Phrases such as “There is no God on earth whatsoever,” “There has never been any Savior,” “Everyone for himself and the devil take the hindmost,” “A man dies for money; a bird dies for food,” “A man leaves his name behind wherever he stays, just as a goose utters its cry wherever it flies,” “A small mind makes no gentleman; a real man is not without venom” and “Seize the day for pleasure, for life is short” are all poisons instilled in us by Satan. These things become our lives and become the laws of survival that we rely upon, so that very few people believe in the existence of God anymore, no one worships Heaven anymore, and no one listens to reason or their conscience anymore. There is no longer any place for God in corrupt humanity’s heart, no longer any restrictions from the laws and regulations that came from God. Man has all been poisoned and controlled by Satan, so that man has become ever more arrogant, crafty, selfish, contemptible, greedy, fierce, ever more evil and debauched, unrestrained, ever more lawless, godless and perverse. They have become the degenerates devoid of conscience, of morality, of human nature, and maliciousness has come as second nature to them. In particular, “Everyone for himself and the devil take the hindmost” is a lethal poison that Satan plants in man. I developed a deep understanding of this from my uncles. Corrupt humanity lives only for the sake of their own self-interests, placing profit above everything else, thinking “Why get up early if there’s nothing in it for me?” To obtain more and greater interests, man can do any evil or wicked thing, make any shameless, contemptible or low-down shady deal. There is no true love or affection between people—it is all cheating, using and harming each other. Members of the same family can fall out with each other and become enemies, fighting each other for money and interests. Then even more so, relatives and friends forget all moral principles for the sake of profit; they may look human, but they have the hearts of beasts. That man can do these evil things is all because they are corrupted by Satan. And this is the source of the darkness in the world.

In the many phenomena that we live amongst, we can see most easily the darkness of the world. We can say that the people who lead the evil trends of the world nowadays all belong to Satan. Particularly, the atheist authoritarian rulers are the princes of the devils, and among these the CCP is the darkest and most reactionary power. Ever since the CCP took power, it has used the power in its hands to suppress and control its people, spreading all sorts of fallacies and lies to deceive people and poison their minds, so that man no longer resembles man. The CCP reveres violence and advocates revolution. It uses violence to seize power and to govern the nation. Across the board, it uses force to resolve things, and under its authority people also prefer violence. Interpersonal conflict and violence are all too common. There are ever more cases of robberies and murders that make people’s blood boil, and the ways in which people are murdered are also ever more cruel and odious. These are all facts that are there for all to see. In the CCP’s economic development, sayings such as “Doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice,” “Prostitution is better than poverty,” “Money makes the world go round,” “One can be without anything but money” and “Money can do anything” are all revered. With its powerful advocacy of such things, people esteem money and power, whoever has the money and the power can prosper, and whoever has no money and no power can only be oppressed and swallow all grievances, with the result that people’s hearts are filled only with money. For money, the ties of kinship are forgotten; for money and power they can take and offer bribes, buy and sell official posts, rob, defraud, kill people and take their possessions—it can be said they will use any means necessary. What’s more, prostitution is ubiquitous in today’s society and the places for whoring and drugs can be seen everywhere. Sexual bribes and sexual transactions are in vogue and people adhere to evil, esteem evil, not thinking it is shameful, but instead thinking it is glorious. What is most evil and reactionary is that the CCP strongly advocates atheism, it denies the existence of God, it denies God’s sovereignty, and forbids people to worship the real God but instead makes them worship Satan. Those who live under the CCP’s deception and disinformation do not know there is a true God or worship the true God, but instead follow Satan and esteem evil so that they are ever more corrupt and depraved. Now I can see ever more clearly that because of this “model” of the CCP, man became so corrupted and evil, with no conscience, no humanity. The root of all this ruin lies entirely with the CCP. The arch-criminal that created the evil in man’s hearts, the corrupt morals and fickleness of the world in society is the CCP. The CCP having power is Satan having power; the CCP is the root cause of all the world’s darkness and evil. So long as the CCP does not crumble and Satan is not annihilated, mankind will not be able to live in the light and the world will never know peace.

After seeing the darkness and evil of the CCP and how it corrupts and tramples people underfoot, I feel even more the holiness and beauty of Christ. Only Christ can save mankind and help them break away from this dark and evil place, and only when Christ takes power will light be brought to mankind. Because God is the origin of righteousness and light, only God cannot be overwhelmed or violated by all the darkness and evil, only God can change the old face of the entire world and bring light to earth, and only God can bring mankind to a wonderful destination. Apart from God, no one can perform this work and no one can defeat or annihilate Satan. Just like it says in God’s words: “In the vast expanse of the world, countless changes have occurred, oceans silting into fields, fields flooding into oceans, over and over. Except for He who rules over all things in the universe, no one is able to lead and guide this human race. There is no mighty one to labor or make preparations for this human race, still less is there anyone who can lead this human race toward the destination of light and liberate it from earthly injustices” (“God Is the Source of Man’s Life” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). “I will correct the injustices of the human world. I will do My work with My own hands throughout the world, forbidding Satan from harming My people again, forbidding the enemies from doing whatever they please again. I will become King on earth and move My throne there, making all My enemies fall to the ground and confess their crimes before Me” (“Chapter 27” of God’s Words to the Entire Universe in The Word Appears in the Flesh). I saw in God’s words His almightiness and His authority, saw that only God can save us who live under the domain of Satan and who have been so afflicted and trampled underfoot by it. Because of this my heart yearns all the more for Christ to take power, and for Satan’s kingdom to soon meet its end.

I give thanks to the enlightenment of God’s words that allowed me to see the source of the darkness and evil in the world, that caused to arise in my heart a true loathing of Satan, and that allowed me to understand that only Christ can lead man to break away from this dark place, to enter the light. Only by following Christ and worshiping Christ can man break away from Satan’s affliction. From today on, I wish to pursue the truth and follow Christ’s lead, to accept God’s words and make them my life, to rid myself of all the great red dragon’s poisons, to cast off the control of Satan’s dark influence, to utterly rebel against Satan, and to attain God’s salvation and be perfected by God.

Footnotes:

1. “Non-biodegradable” is intended as satire here, meaning that people are rigid in their knowledge, culture, and spiritual outlook.

2. “Accomplices in crime” are of the same ilk as “a band of hoodlums.”

a. The Four Books and Five Classics are the authoritative books of Confucianism in China.