The Return of a Prodigal Son
Ruth, United States
I was born in a small town in southern China, and starting from my paternal great-grandmother’s generation, our family has believed in the Lord. Stories from the Bible, hymns of worship and ecclesiastical music in the church accompanied me as I passed through the happy days of my childhood. As I started getting older, pressure grew in my studies, and in my heart I started to slowly grow distant from the Lord. However, the Lord never left me, whenever I would call out for Him, He would help me. The grace and holy name of the Lord Jesus are rooted deep within my heart. I remember in the year I took the college entrance exam that no one thought I’d be able to test into a good college, and this included my teachers.
Amidst all these setbacks I nearly gave up all hope, and I too thought that I certainly would not be able to test into the college I wanted to get into. But I inadvertently recalled a phrase I heard in the church in my childhood: “When people have reached their limit, that’s when God begins,” and in a flash it was as if I’d been enlightened: That’s right, my extremity is God’s opportunity, the Lord’s abilities are the greatest, I believe that as long as I sincerely rely on the Lord then He will certainly help me. Thereupon, I often prayed to the Lord Jesus: “Oh Lord, please help me, if I’m able to test into the college of my dreams without a hitch then starting from today I promise I will never shun You, and I will accept You as my only Savior in this life.” At the same time, I also paid a price that a normal person would be unable to imagine, during my entire senior year of high school, besides when I was eating and sleeping, I was practicing the piano. I was basically keeping up 10 to 12 hours of practice a day. I didn’t know where this strength was coming from that was supporting me, but I thought that it must be the Lord listening to my prayers and secretly helping me, and in my heart I gave more thanks to the Lord. In the end, I was awarded with my long-cherished wish by testing into one of the top music academies in the country, and as a result I believed firmly that the Lord Jesus was my only Savior. In my fourth year of college I didn’t know what path I should take after graduating, so I called on the Lord Jesus and asked the Lord to show me the way and set up a path for me to take. In 2004, shortly after America had gone through the 9/11 terrorist attack, when almost all visas for entry into America were frozen, I was relying on a music CD that I had recorded professionally for myself, and to my surprise I received a full-ride scholarship to a university in America. On top of that, I got a student visa without a hitch and went to America to pursue my studies. After experiencing these two events—testing into college and going abroad—I saw that the Lord had helped me to achieve goals that I would not have been able to achieve by relying solely on myself, and I was of even firmer conviction that the Lord Jesus is the true God and that He is my Savior, and I need to properly practice my faith in the Lord and follow the Lord.
Amidst all these setbacks I nearly gave up all hope, and I too thought that I certainly would not be able to test into the college I wanted to get into. But I inadvertently recalled a phrase I heard in the church in my childhood: “When people have reached their limit, that’s when God begins,” and in a flash it was as if I’d been enlightened: That’s right, my extremity is God’s opportunity, the Lord’s abilities are the greatest, I believe that as long as I sincerely rely on the Lord then He will certainly help me. Thereupon, I often prayed to the Lord Jesus: “Oh Lord, please help me, if I’m able to test into the college of my dreams without a hitch then starting from today I promise I will never shun You, and I will accept You as my only Savior in this life.” At the same time, I also paid a price that a normal person would be unable to imagine, during my entire senior year of high school, besides when I was eating and sleeping, I was practicing the piano. I was basically keeping up 10 to 12 hours of practice a day. I didn’t know where this strength was coming from that was supporting me, but I thought that it must be the Lord listening to my prayers and secretly helping me, and in my heart I gave more thanks to the Lord. In the end, I was awarded with my long-cherished wish by testing into one of the top music academies in the country, and as a result I believed firmly that the Lord Jesus was my only Savior. In my fourth year of college I didn’t know what path I should take after graduating, so I called on the Lord Jesus and asked the Lord to show me the way and set up a path for me to take. In 2004, shortly after America had gone through the 9/11 terrorist attack, when almost all visas for entry into America were frozen, I was relying on a music CD that I had recorded professionally for myself, and to my surprise I received a full-ride scholarship to a university in America. On top of that, I got a student visa without a hitch and went to America to pursue my studies. After experiencing these two events—testing into college and going abroad—I saw that the Lord had helped me to achieve goals that I would not have been able to achieve by relying solely on myself, and I was of even firmer conviction that the Lord Jesus is the true God and that He is my Savior, and I need to properly practice my faith in the Lord and follow the Lord.
One day in 2007 I gave my mother back in China a phone call as I often did to chat. In our call she blurted out: “Did you know that the Lord Jesus Christ has returned?” When I heard mother say this I felt pleasantly surprised, but then I immediately thought about how in the Bible it says that in the last days false Christs will appear, so I didn’t know if this event of the Lord having returned was real or fake, so I had to treat it with caution. Nowadays the internet is so fast and convenient, so I thought I should go online to check this out. After I hung up the phone I gleefully went online to seek reliable news sources. To my surprise, all that I came across were voices of protest blaspheming and condemning Almighty God—the returned Lord Jesus. I wasn’t able to clearly distinguish if this negative information was true or false, which made me feel anxious, for I feared that my mother would be unable to distinguish right from wrong and that she would go down the wrong path. So I immediately called her to tell her about the negative news that I had read online, but mother was very calm, and she comforted me by saying: “My child, you haven’t read the word of Almighty God so you don’t understand, and it would take a long time to explain it to you, but don’t be nervous, your mother isn’t going down the wrong path, rather I am following the footsteps of the Lamb. So you don’t need to discuss this matter with me over the phone anymore.” I knew that China was ruled by an atheistic dictatorship, and that the CCP government was always persecuting and arresting Christians, so it wasn’t good for my mother to discuss the matter of believing in God over the phone. I didn’t dare say too much about it with her over the phone, so I gave a call to a pastor in China that I was well acquainted with to ask for help, pleading with him to go “rescue” my mother. When the pastor told me the news that he was unable to retrieve my mother, I got so angry that I practically lost my mind. Afterward, in order to obstruct my mother’s faith in Almighty God, I even forced her to make a choice between me and her faith in Almighty God. After I told my mother this, I had the same dream for three nights in a row. I dreamed that in a pitch-dark night, torrents of rain were crashing down, and I carried a black umbrella as I walked along a once familiar seaside. There wasn’t a single person around, and all of a sudden a flash of lightning as bright as day struck my umbrella…. Every time I had this dream I would wake up scared and in a cold sweat, but I was insensitive, ignorant and stubborn, and I didn’t even try at all to seek through prayer as to why I was continuing to have this dream. Was the Lord warning me and telling me to stop going down a path of resisting God and instead return to Him? Later on, I saw that it was of no use however I tried to persuade my mother, and on top of that I was in a faraway foreign land and had a busy life, so I stopped trying to force my mother’s hand.
In 2010 when I returned to China my mother talked to me about her faith in Almighty God. She seemed to know just what I was thinking, and she asked me bluntly: “You’ve seen how I’ve practiced my faith in Almighty God over the past several years, so do you think there’s anything strange about me like what they say online?” I was at a loss for words by her question, and for a while I wasn’t able to respond. I thought about it carefully, those things they said online that made me tremble with fear had not happened to my mother, she was quite normal, and stood unharmed before me. I even noticed that she went through a greater change after she started believing in Almighty God compared to when she believed in the Lord Jesus, the things she said and the things she did were not only more rational, but she also had a higher understanding when it came to looking at issues. As I looked at these things, I thought: It seems like what is said online isn’t true, because facts speak louder than words. Mother said: “Why don’t you believe your mother’s words, why don’t you look at the facts, why do you instead believe the rumors online? Have you investigated and gathered evidence for those things they talk about online?” I answered shamefully: “I haven’t.” Then mother continued: “You didn’t do any research to find out that it’s all just hearsay, you believe the rumors you hear online, and just come to whatever conclusion you want. You have a great intellect, so how can it be that you don’t have any reason? You should look into the Four Gospels, and you’ll see that when the Lord Jesus was carrying out His work the Jewish priests, scribes and Pharisees at the time made up all kinds of rumors and false testimony. They said that the Lord Jesus was a friend of sinners, that He was a man who imbibed in food and alcohol, they framed the Lord Jesus by saying that He lured the people into banning payment of the Caesar tax, and they even bribed soldiers into giving false testimony, making them say that the body of the Lord Jesus was stolen by His disciples and that He wasn’t resurrected. Surely you know about these things? The Four Gospels are only a small part of the record of the work carried out by the Lord Jesus, and in them there are written accounts of so many rumors that the Jewish leaders made about the Lord Jesus. Have you thought about this before? If they had the Internet at that time then the Jewish priests, scribes and Pharisees certainly would have spread their rumors and false testimony online, and their words of slandering, blaspheming, framing and condemning the Lord Jesus would fill up the Internet just like how it is with the religious world today condemning Almighty God. Do you know what this means? The Lord Jesus said: ‘This is an evil generation’ (Luk 11:29). ‘Light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that does evil hates the light, neither comes to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved’ (Jhn 3:19–20). Almighty God said: ‘Man lost his God-fearing heart after being corrupted by Satan and lost the function that one of God’s creatures should have, becoming an enemy disobedient to God. Man lived under Satan’s domain and followed Satan’s orders’ (‘God and Man Will Enter Into Rest Together’ in The Word Appears in the Flesh). ‘God’s creation of the world goes back thousands of years, He has come to earth to do an immeasurable amount of work, and He has fully experienced the human world’s rejection and slander. No one welcomes God’s arrival; everyone merely regards Him with a cold eye. In the course of these several thousand years’ worth of hardships, man’s conduct has long ago shattered God’s heart’ (‘Work and Entry (4)’ in The Word Appears in the Flesh). God’s word very clearly reveals the nature and substance of the corrupt human race’s resistance to God and its treatment of God as an enemy. Mankind has been deeply corrupted by Satan, and the whole human race has become enemies of God, no one loves the truth, no one welcomes the arrival of God. In the time when the Lord Jesus was in Judea carrying out work and expressing the truth, He performed many miracles, attracting many common people to follow Him, which made Jewish leaders worry that all the common people were going to follow the Lord Jesus and abandon them, so they made up rumors and gave false testimony on the Lord Jesus, they frantically resisted and condemned the Lord Jesus, and ultimately they nailed the Lord to the cross. This is ironclad evidence of the corrupt human race hating the truth and viewing God as the enemy. Today God has once again become flesh, and He is once again being met with the frantic resistance and condemnation of the corrupt human race. The CCP government is afraid that the people will all follow Almighty God and be able to discern its evil substance, which will cause them to forsake it, then it will lose its position of power, and leaders in the religious world also fear that believers will follow Almighty God, which will make them lose their status and livelihood. So, just like the Roman regime and Jewish leaders of that time, they are adopting contemptible and malicious strategies to make up a large volume of rumors about and give a large amount of false testimony on The Church of Almighty God, thereby slandering and condemning Almighty God and discrediting The Church of Almighty God. Their goal is to make people stand up and condemn and forsake Almighty God’s words and work, and block people from receiving God’s salvation. We must be able to discern Satan’s tricks! The CCP is an atheistic and satanic regime, it has always been an enemy of God, when it first came to power it destroyed copies of the Holy Bible, demolished churches, slaughtered Christians and even deemed the Holy Bible, a work recognized all over the world, as the work of an evil cult and Christians and Catholics as members of an evil cult in order to suppress them and persecute them. It commits every misdeed imaginable, so what rumors would they dare not come up with? The facts show that both the CCP and leaders in the religious world hate the truth and are satanic devils that are enemies of God. We must be able to see this point clearly. In our faith in God we must believe His word, we must believe the truth, and we absolutely cannot believe the rumors and lies of the CCP and the leaders in the religious world. If we do not discern the various rumors spread by the CCP government and the religious world, if we do not seek and inspect the word and work of Almighty God, then in the end we will be just like the Jewish people and forsake Christ and refuse the true way because of believing the rumors that we hear, and in this way we will not only lose God’s salvation, but in the end we will also be met with God’s righteous punishment for resisting Him!”
The Return of a Prodigal Son |
Mother’s words made me feel as if I was awakening from a dream, and I couldn’t help but reflect on them: She’s right, why did I blindly believe the negative news online without having read the word of Almighty God and without inspecting it? This world has been corrupted by Satan to the point where it’s brimming with lies and deception, and there is treachery everywhere, making it impossible for people to defend against it effectively. I didn’t do any kind of research into the information online, I just blindly believed it, I just went along with what everyone else was saying and was drawing arbitrary conclusions. Wasn’t this so careless and ignorant of me? Is this not following wicked individuals and making arbitrary judgments? Mother saw that I wasn’t saying anything, so she handed over a copy of The Word Appears in the Flesh to me, and calmly said to me: “This book contains words spoken by God in the last days, I hope you will be able to set aside your conceptions and inspect it carefully. If you have any questions, bring them forward, and we can fellowship about them together.” I took the book and started reading it without saying a word. But I wasn’t really reading it with an attitude of seeking the truth, instead, I had the mentality of a researcher, and I wanted to rely on my grasp of knowledge to measure God’s word and approve God’s word, and I even wanted to refute God’s word. It was precisely because of this kind of irreverent and resisting attitude I treated God’s word with that I was unable to attain the enlightenment and illumination of the Holy Spirit, so much so that the entire time I was not getting acquainted with the work being carried out by Almighty God, but nevertheless, I continued holding on to my erroneous conceptions, not wanting to accept God’s new work. I talked it over with my mother: “Ma, before, I believed all of the rumors I heard online and thought you had been forced to believe in Almighty God, but in reality it was I who was blind and ignorant. Starting from today, I will not oppose your faith in Almighty God, but there is no way that I can pray with you in the name of Almighty God, because I called on the name Lord Jesus to test into my dream school and receive a full-ride scholarship to pursue my studies abroad. I received such great grace, how could I abandon the Lord Jesus? Wouldn’t this be forgetting favors and violating justice?” Mother gave me a passage from the word of Almighty God to read that was directed at my conception: “From the work of Jehovah to that of Jesus, and from the work of Jesus to that of this current stage, these three stages cover in a continuous thread the entire gamut of God’s management, and are all the work of one Spirit. Since the creation of the world, God has always been at work managing mankind. He is the Beginning and the End, He is the First and the Last, and He is the One who begins an age and the One who brings the age to an end. The three stages of work, in different ages and different locations, are unmistakably the work of one Spirit. All those who separate these three stages stand in opposition to God. Now, it behooves you to understand that all the work from the first stage until today is the work of one God, the work of one Spirit. Of this there can be no doubt” (“The Vision of God’s Work (3)” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). Mother fellowshiped to me, saying: “You think that accepting Almighty God’s name is to betray the Lord Jesus, but this is entirely your own conception and imagination. In fact, Jehovah God, Lord Jesus and Almighty God are all one God. In the Age of Law, God was called by the name Jehovah, and He issued laws to guide mankind’s life on earth and made man follow the laws and commandments in order to restrict him and guide him. Toward the end of the Age of Law, mankind had been corrupted by Satan to the point that it could no longer abide by the laws, and all of mankind was living within the condemnation and cursing of laws. God became flesh using the name Jesus to carry out the work of the Age of Grace, and in order to redeem mankind He was nailed to the cross, as an eternal sin offering for man, and from that point on, as long as we come before God to confess our sins and repent, then our sins will be absolved, and man is no longer condemned and cursed by laws. In addition, we also received the Lord’s boundless blessings and mercy. However, even though our sins are able to be absolved and we enjoy the Lord Jesus’ abundant grace, still our sinful nature and corrupt disposition have not been eliminated, we still live in a vicious cycle of committing sins and then confessing them, unable to free ourselves. In the last days, God once again has become flesh using the name of Almighty God to express the truths that will judge man and cleanse man, allowing man to come to an understanding of the truth and obtain the truth through God’s judgment, throw off Satan’s corrupt disposition, be thoroughly cleansed by God and live out the likeness of a real man, so that in the end man will be qualified to inherit God’s promise and be brought into His kingdom. So, the Lord Jesus and Almighty God are the incarnated fleshes of God in different ages, and they are one God.”
Mother’s fellowship was reasonable, and there was nothing I could refute, but my conceptions were still manifold, so I immediately replied: “Since Almighty God is the returned Lord Jesus, then whether I call Him by the name Jesus or the name Almighty God it’s all the same, either way it is the God that bestows grace.” Mother said: “Jehovah God, Lord Jesus and Almighty God are one God, this is undoubtedly true, but we must understand one truth: God has come to carry out different kinds of work based on His name in each age. It’s like how in the Age of Law God used the name Jehovah to carry out work, and people prayed in the name of Jehovah, and God listened to and blessed man. Then, in the Age of Grace God used the name Jesus to carry out work, and at this time people needed to pray in the name of Jesus, otherwise their sins wouldn’t be able to be absolved, nor would they receive the Lord’s grace and blessing, just like those Israelites in the temple who cried out for Jehovah God and did not have God’s presence and did not obtain the Lord Jesus’ salvation because they did not accept the Lord Jesus’ name. Now it is the Age of Kingdom, and God is using the name Almighty God to carry out new work, and only by praying in the name of Almighty God can you receive the work of the Holy Spirit and attain God’s salvation. If you hold on to the name Jesus and do not accept the name Almighty God, then you are actually believing in God’s past work and resisting God’s present work, which in essence is resisting God and betraying God. This kind of faith exists in name only, it is an empty eggshell, and it is self-deception. The Holy Bible says: ‘You have a name that you live, and are dead’ (Rev 3:1). Only by accepting God’s new name and submitting to the present word and work of God will we have the reality of belief in God. Do you understand what I am saying?”
I felt everything that my mother was saying was reasonable, and also very practical, but in my heart I still could not let go of the name Jesus, because the Lord had given me such great grace. The prospects I have today were all given to me by the Lord Jesus, and I couldn’t not follow my original promise: to properly practice my faith in the Lord and follow the Lord. And as a result I continued to refuse the gospel of Almighty God.
After my summer vacation ended and I returned to America, my busy studies and fast-paced life very quickly brought me back into the real world. Whenever I went back to church assemblies, I discovered that regardless of whether it was pastors in a Chinese church or an English-speaking church, none of the sermons being preached had any new conceptions, it was all just the same old songs and platitudes. Church life was tedious, and my life didn’t seem to be being provided for in the least bit. Co-workers, in order to keep the flock, would often organize trips, outings, parties and other activities for all of us to take part in. There were all kinds of people within the church, including many people who weren’t really religious investigators, but rather people looking for a boyfriend or girlfriend, a roommate, someone to travel with, someone to eat together with, etc., and I realized that the church was no longer a place where I could find peace of mind, which brought pain and suffering to my heart. Later on, I stopped participating in meetings, which gave me a constant feeling of anxiety. I felt like a desperate child who had lost its way and was just passing through life in a daze.
In 2014, after my son was born, my fights with my husband intensified because there wasn’t breast milk to feed our child with. Every day when my husband would return home from work, the first thing that he would say was: “How is there still no milk? There’s no milk for our son to eat, and that will lower his immunity.” This was the first time I had experienced my own incompetence, and it made me feel as though I was entirely unfit to be a mother. I saw Western doctors and Chinese doctors, I even searched for home remedies online, but not a single method got me to produce milk. I felt hurt, sad, angry, as if I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and I felt that if I continued in this way then I would truly soon go insane. During my entire convalescence after childbirth I was washing my face with tears nearly every day, and no matter what I did I couldn’t get over why this was happening to me. I often felt an indescribable panic come over me, and all it took was for me to hear words such as “mother’s milk” or “feeding,” and I would immediately burst out sobbing, completely unable to control myself.
After my mother learned of the difficult situation I was in, she came overseas to look after me. When she saw how I was suffering she said to me: “Have you ever thought about why your days are growing darker and darker and becoming more and more filled with suffering? It’s because you are a person who verbally claims to believe in God but you do not seek the truth, you have no knowledge of God, you still resist God in every respect. You do not accept God’s new work, you have lost God’s care and protection, you live under the domain of Satan, you can only be afflicted or fooled by Satan, filling your life with more and more suffering.” Hearing my mother say these words cast a silence over me. In the days that followed, whenever mother would put my child to sleep, she would play some hymns of God’s words for me to listen to. A wonderful thing happened, my mind unexpectedly started to slowly find peace in the wake of the merriment of these hymns. One time, I listened to this hymn: “The heart and spirit of man are too distant from God. Therefore, even as man follows God, he unknowingly remains in the service of Satan. None actively seek out the footsteps or appearance of God, and none wish to exist in the care and keeping of God. Rather, they are willing to rely on the corrosion of Satan and the evil one in order to adapt to this world and to the rules of life the wicked mankind follows. At this point, the heart and spirit of man are sacrificed to Satan and become its sustenance. Moreover, the human heart and spirit become a place in which Satan can reside and a fitting playground for it. In this way, man unknowingly loses his understanding of the principles of being human, and of the worth and purpose of human existence. The laws from God and the covenant between God and man gradually fade away in man’s heart and man no longer seeks or pays heed to God. As time passes, man no longer understands why God created man, nor does he understand the words that come from the mouth of God or realize all that is from God. Man begins to resist the laws and decrees from God; the heart and spirit of man become deadened. … God loses the man of His original creation, and man loses the root of his beginning. This is the sorrow of this mankind” (“The Sorrow of Corrupt Mankind” in Follow the Lamb and Sing New Songs). Every line of Almighty God’s words penetrated my heart, and I could see that I was in the situation being described by God’s words, that I had recognized God with my lips, but in reality my heart had been completely possessed by Satan, all my thoughts and feelings were about matters of the flesh, what I was pursuing was also the flesh, and what I was going down was the secular path. In the Holy Bible it says: “For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace” (Rom 8:6). “Know you not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God” (Jas 4:4). I thought about how there was nothing about any of my actions that conformed to God’s will, how they all ran counter to God. I came before God and prayed: “O God, today I’m faced with this kind of environment because I view my degree, identity, marriage and other things of this world as so precious, thinking that so long as I obtained these things then it would be enough. I simply have not sought out the truth, nor have I pursued the knowledge of God, to the extent that each time You have knocked on the door to my heart and arranged the truth of God’s word before me I have not understood the value of this. When I heard that You have arrived to carry out new work I was obstinate and self-opinionated, and made baseless judgments. I was fully aware that there was reason in my mother’s fellowships, yet I stubbornly held on to my own conceptions without inspecting the true way. O God, all I cherished was Your grace while rejecting the truth, I really was so stubborn and disobedient! If You will still give me an opportunity, I will certainly inspect Your work as best I can.” At that time I didn’t know if this kind of prayer would be heard by God, but I still kept on crying out to God in this way.
In April 2015 I went with my mother back to China because of a health issue, which gave me an opportunity to get in touch with The Church of Almighty God. I thought about how I had fought and struggled in this world without attaining happiness, and how within religion I had not found the truth that could dispose of the darkness and emptiness in my heart, and there was a kind of strong premonition in my heart that perhaps it was because I had continuously refused to accept Almighty God as the Savior Jesus who helped me test into college and let me go to America! As I thought about this, I told my mother that I wanted to take part in church activities at The Church of Almighty God. Before long, brothers and sisters from The Church of Almighty God would come meet with me, and I saw that when these brothers and sisters got together what they read was the word of God, what they fellowshiped about was the truth, and what they put into practice was the truth; no matter what they did, God’s word served as their standard and the truth served as their principle; they did not act according to the flesh, and they didn’t take part in secular dealings. The Church of Almighty God is the good land of Canaan where the truth rules. In this place, my spirit is filled, I am provided for, my heart is no longer empty, and I have a sense of fulfillment.
One day, I once again met with some brothers and sisters, and sister Wang read this passage from the word of God: “The Almighty has mercy on these people who suffer deeply. At the same time, He is fed up with these people who have no consciousness, because He has to wait too long for the answer from humans. He desires to seek, seek your heart and your spirit. He wants to bring you food and water and to awaken you, so you are no longer thirsty, no longer hungry. When you are weary and when you begin to feel the desolation of this world, do not be perplexed, do not cry. Almighty God, the Watcher, will embrace your arrival any time. He is watching by your side, waiting for you to turn back. He is waiting for the day your memory suddenly recovers: becoming conscious of the fact that you came from God, somehow and somewhere once lost, falling unconscious on the roadside, and then, unknowingly having a father. You further realize that the Almighty has been watching there, awaiting your return all along” (“The Sighing of the Almighty” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). This passage from the word of God moved me deeply, I felt that Almighty God was just like a loving mother calling out for her missing child, waiting for His child to someday soon return to His side. I heard that this was the voice of the Lord, that Almighty God is the Lord Jesus who helped me time and again to get over the crises I faced, that He never left me a single step of the way, and that every day He called out to me, persistently waiting for me to turn back. I thought about how I believed in God yet I didn’t seek the truth or believe God’s word, rather I believed online rumors, I believed the words of pastors, and I acknowledged the bandit as my father, and joined the CCP government and religious pastors in disparaging and attacking God, who has been caring for me night and day, and I forsook God’s salvation. I truly was so blind and ignorant. I still believed in God according to my conceptions and imagination, I believed that the Lord Jesus had helped me successfully test into college and guide me to go abroad without a hitch to pursue my studies, that in every moment I must hold on to the Lord Jesus’ name, and that this alone was being loyal to the Lord. I relied on my conceptions and imagination to look upon things, when God changed the age and changed His name I did not recognize God’s work, and time and again I refused God’s salvation of me. By no means did I believe in God by acting this way. Wasn’t this me believing in myself? All that God has given me is love, yet time and again I have hurt God, I owe such a great debt to God …
I couldn’t help but kneel down and cry bitter tears as I prayed to God: “Oh Almighty God! Before, I was blind and ignorant, I believed the rumors of the CCP and the religious world and forsook You and condemned You, I relied on my own imagination and conceptions to delimit You, I refused Your gospel of the last days, and I am a modern-day Pharisee. On the basis of my actions and deeds I should be destroyed together with Satan, but, because You love me, and have not punished me based on my actions, You have instead time and again given me opportunities to repent. Oh God, I am willing, just like the people of Nineveh, to come before You ‘in sackcloth and ashes’ and truly confess my sins to You and repent, and ask You to have mercy on me, I am willing to cooperate with You, and be cleansed and saved by Your word.”
The Return of a Prodigal Son |
After this, brothers and sisters from The Church of Almighty God would come meet with me three times a week, this went on uninterrupted for over four months. During this time I read several passages from the word of God almost every day, and as I came to understand more and more of the truth, my relationship with God became more and more normal, and my original faith was restored, I felt at peace in my heart, and I no longer felt anxious or desolate. Through reading the word of Almighty God and meeting to fellowship about the truth, I came to be absolutely certain of God’s work in the last days, and that Almighty God is the Lord Jesus whose return I had looked forward to. I firmly decided that I was willing to follow Almighty God to the end of the road, and repay God’s love by serving as a truth-seeker.
In 2016, after returning to America, I got in touch with brothers and sisters of The Church of Almighty God through their website and started taking part in activities at their church. Thanks be to God! It was God who led me each step of the way to where I am now, so in order to repay God for His love, I am willing to offer all of my strength to carry out the work of spreading God’s gospel, so that more people who thirst for and seek the truth can come to know that Almighty God is the returned Lord Jesus, and at the same time I will tell them that they should not follow in my footsteps: Blindly believe Satan’s rumors, join Satan in resisting God, and in the end the only one who will be at a loss will be yourself.
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