1. Why Does God Do the Work of Saving Mankind?

1. Why Does God Do the Work of Saving Mankind?

Relevant Words of God:

In the beginning, God was resting. There were no humans or anything else upon the earth at that time, and God had not done any work whatsoever. God only began His management work once humanity existed and once humanity had been corrupted. From this point on, God no longer rested but instead began to busy Himself among humanity. It was because of humanity’s corruption that God was taken from His rest, and it was also because of the archangel’s rebellion that God was taken from His rest.
If God does not defeat Satan and save humanity, which has been corrupted, God will never again be able to enter into rest. As man lacks rest, so does God. When God once again enters into rest, man will also enter into rest. The life in rest is one without war, without filth, without persisting unrighteousness. This is to say that it lacks Satan’s harassment (here “Satan” refers to hostile forces), Satan’s corruption, as well as the invasion of any force opposed to God. Everything follows its own kind and worships the Lord of creation. Heaven and earth are entirely tranquil. This is humanity’s restful life. When God enters into rest, no more unrighteousness will persist upon the earth, and there will be no more invasion of any hostile forces. Humanity will also enter a new realm; they will no longer be a humanity corrupted by Satan, but rather a humanity that has been saved after having been corrupted by Satan. Humanity’s day of rest is also God’s day of rest. God lost His rest due to humanity’s inability to enter into rest; it was not that He was originally unable to rest.

from “God and Man Will Enter Into Rest Together” in The Word Appears in the Flesh

These are the facts: When the earth did not yet exist, the archangel was the greatest of heaven’s angels. It had jurisdiction over all the angels in heaven; this was the authority that God granted it. With the exception of God, it was the greatest of heaven’s angels. When God later created humanity, the archangel carried out a greater betrayal toward God upon the earth. I say it betrayed God because it wanted to manage humanity and to surpass God’s authority. It was the archangel that tempted Eve into sin; it did so because it wished to establish its kingdom upon earth and to make humanity betray God and obey it instead. It saw that there were many things that obeyed it; the angels obeyed it, as did the people upon the earth. The birds and beasts, trees, forests, mountains, rivers and all things upon the earth were under the care of man—that is, Adam and Eve—while Adam and Eve obeyed it. The archangel thus desired to surpass God’s authority and to betray God. Later on it led many angels to betray God, which then became various unclean spirits. Has not humanity’s development to this day been caused by the archangel’s corruption? Humanity is only the way it is today because the archangel betrayed God and corrupted humanity. … Humanity and all things upon the earth are now under Satan’s domain and under the domain of the wicked. God wants to reveal His acts to all things so that people may know Him, and thereby defeat Satan and utterly vanquish His enemies. The entirety of this work is accomplished through revealing His acts. All of His creatures are under Satan’s domain, and so He wishes to reveal His almightiness to them, thereby defeating Satan. If there were no Satan, He would not need to reveal His acts. If not for Satan’s harassment, He would have created humanity and led them to live in the Garden of Eden. Why did He never reveal all His acts for the angels or the archangel before Satan’s betrayal? If the angels and archangel had known Him, and also obeyed Him in the beginning, then He would not have carried out those meaningless acts of work. Because of the existence of Satan and demons, people resist Him and are filled to the brim with rebellious disposition, and so God wishes to reveal His acts. Because He wishes to do war with Satan, He must use His own authority to defeat Satan and use all His acts to defeat Satan; this way, His work of salvation that He performs among humanity will let people see His wisdom and almightiness.

from “You Should Know How the Whole of Humanity Has Developed to the Present Day” in The Word Appears in the Flesh

Mankind, trampled under Satan’s feet long ago, has from the first been an actor taking on Satan’s image—even more, Satan’s embodiment, serving as the evidence that bears witness to Satan, loud and clear. How can such a human race, such a bunch of degenerate scum, and such offspring of this corrupt human family bear witness to God? Whence comes forth My glory? Where can one begin to speak of My witness? For the enemy that, having corrupted mankind, stands against Me, has already taken mankind—the mankind that I created long ago and that was filled with My glory and My living out—and soiled them. It has snatched away My glory, and all it has imbued man with is poison heavily laced with the ugliness of Satan, and juice from fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In the beginning, I created mankind, that is, I created mankind’s ancestor, Adam. He was endowed with form and image, brimming with vigor, brimming with vitality, and was, furthermore, in the company of My glory. That was the glorious day when I created man. After that, Eve was produced from the body of Adam, and she too was the ancestor of man, and so the people that I created were filled with My breath and brimming with My glory. Adam was originally born from My hand and was the representation of My image. Thus the original meaning of “Adam” was a being created by Me, imbued with My vital energy, imbued with My glory, having form and image, having spirit and breath. He was the only created being, possessed of a spirit, who was capable of representing Me, of bearing My image, and receiving My breath. In the beginning, Eve was the second human endowed with breath whose creation I had ordained, so the original meaning of “Eve” was a created being who would continue My glory, filled with My vitality and furthermore endowed with My glory. Eve came out of Adam, so she also bore My image, for she was the second human to be created in My image. The original meaning of “Eve” was a living human, with spirit, flesh, and bone, My second testimony as well as My second image among mankind. They were mankind’s ancestors, man’s pure and precious treasure, and, from the first, living beings endowed with spirit. However the evil one took the progeny of mankind’s ancestors and trampled on them and took them into captivity, plunging the human world into complete darkness, and making it so that the progeny no longer believe in My existence. Even more abominable is that, even as the evil one corrupts people and tramples them down, it is cruelly wresting away My glory, My testimony, the vitality I bestowed on them, the breath and the life I blew into them, all My glory in the human world, and all the heart’s blood I have expended on mankind. Mankind is no longer in the light, and has lost everything I have bestowed on them, discarding the glory I have bestowed. How can they acknowledge that I am the Lord of all created beings? How can they continue to believe in My existence in heaven? How can they discover the manifestations of My glory upon the earth? How can these grandsons and granddaughters take the God their own ancestors revered as the Lord who created them? These pitiful grandsons and granddaughters have generously “presented” to the evil one the glory, the image, as well as the testimony that I bestowed on Adam and Eve, as well as the life I bestowed on mankind and on which they depend in order to exist, and, without minding in the slightest the evil one’s presence, have given all My glory to it. Is this not the origin of the appellation of “scum”? How can such a mankind, such evil demons, such walking corpses, such figures of Satan, and such enemies of Mine be possessed of My glory? I will repossess My glory, repossess My testimony that exists among men, and all that once belonged to Me and that I gave to mankind long ago—I will completely conquer mankind. However, you should know, the humans I created were holy men who bore My image and My glory. They did not belong to Satan, nor were they subject to its trampling, but were purely a manifestation of Mine, free of the slightest trace of Satan’s poison. And so, I let humanity know that I want only that which is created by My hand, the holy ones that I love and that belong to no other entity. Furthermore, I will take pleasure in them and consider them as My glory. However, what I want is not the mankind that has been corrupted by Satan, that belongs to Satan today, and that is no longer My original creation. Because I intend to repossess My glory that exists in the human world, I will gain complete conquest over the remaining survivors among mankind, as proof of My glory in defeating Satan. I take only My testimony as a crystallization of My self, as the object of My enjoyment. This is My will.

from “What It Means to Be a Real Man” in The Word Appears in the Flesh

When the Lord Jesus lived with mankind, He saw farmers tending their fields, He knew what tares were and what leavening was; He understood that humans like treasure, so He used the metaphors of both the treasure and the pearl; He frequently saw fishermen casting their nets; and so on. The Lord Jesus saw these activities in mankind’s lives, and He also experienced that type of life. He was the same as every other normal person, experiencing humans’ three meals a day and daily routines. He personally experienced the life of an average person, and He witnessed the lives of others. When He witnessed and personally experienced all of this, what He thought of wasn’t how to have a good life or how He could live more freely, more comfortably. When He was experiencing an authentic human life, the Lord Jesus saw the hardship in people’s lives, He saw the hardship, the wretchedness, and the sadness of people under the corruption of Satan, living under the domain of Satan, and living in sin. While He was personally experiencing human life, He also experienced how helpless people were who were living amongst corruption, and He saw and experienced the misery of those who lived in sin, who were lost in the torture by Satan, by evil. … Even though He Himself knew that the responsibility He needed to take on in the flesh was so immense, and how cruel the pain He would face would be, when He saw mankind helpless in sin, when He saw the wretchedness of their lives and their feeble struggles under the law, He felt more and more grief, and became more and more anxious to save mankind from sin. No matter what kind of difficulties He would face or what kind of pain He would suffer, He became more and more resolute to redeem mankind living in sin. During this process, you could say that the Lord Jesus began to understand more and more clearly the work He needed to do and what He had been entrusted with. He also became increasingly eager to complete the work He was to take on—to take on all of mankind’s sins, to atone for mankind so that they no longer lived in sin and God would be able to forget man’s sins because of the sin offering, allowing Him to further His work of saving mankind. It could be said that in the Lord Jesus’ heart, He was willing to offer Himself up for mankind, to sacrifice Himself. He was also willing to act as a sin offering, to be nailed to the cross, and He was eager to complete this work. When He saw the miserable conditions of human’s lives, He wanted even more to fulfill His mission as quickly as possible, without the delay of a single minute or second. When He had such a feeling of urgency, He was not thinking of how great His own pain would be, nor did He think any longer of how much humiliation He would have to endure—He held just one conviction in His heart: As long as He offered up Himself, as long as He was nailed to the cross as a sin offering, God’s will would be carried out and He would be able to commence new work. Mankind’s lives in sin, their state of existing in sin would be completely changed. His conviction and what He was determined to do were related to saving man, and He had only one objective: to do God’s will, so that He could successfully begin the next stage in His work. This was what was in the Lord Jesus’ mind at the time.

from “God’s Work, God’s Disposition, and God Himself III” in The Word Appears in the Flesh

Once the work of conquest has been completed, man will be brought into a beautiful world. This life will, of course, still be on earth, but it will be totally unlike man’s life today. It is the life that mankind will have after the whole of mankind has been conquered, it will be a new beginning for man on earth, and for mankind to have such a life will be proof that mankind has entered a new and beautiful realm. It will be the beginning of the life of man and God on earth. The premise of such a beautiful life must be that, after man has been purified and conquered, he submits before the Creator. And so, the work of conquest is the last stage of God’s work before mankind enters the wonderful destination. Such a life is man’s future life on earth, it is the most beautiful life on earth, the kind of life that man longs for, the kind that man has never before achieved in the history of the world. It is the final outcome of the 6,000 years of work of management, it is what mankind yearns for most, and it is also God’s promise to man. But this promise cannot come to pass immediately: Man will enter the future destination only once the work of the last days has been completed and he has been completely conquered, that is, once Satan has been utterly defeated. Man will be without a sinful nature after he has been refined, because God will have defeated Satan, which means that there will be no encroachment by hostile forces, and no hostile forces that can attack the flesh of man. And so man will be free, and holy—he will have entered eternity. Only if the hostile forces of darkness are bound will man be free wherever he goes, and without rebelliousness or opposition. Satan has but to be bound for man to be okay; today, he is not okay because[a] Satan still stirs up trouble everywhere on earth, and because the entire work of God’s management has yet to reach its end. Once Satan has been defeated, man will be completely liberated; when man gains God and comes out from under the domain of Satan, he will behold the Sun of righteousness. … In this way, once there is no disturbance by Satan, God Himself will control mankind, and He will command and control the entire life of man; only this will count as the defeat of Satan. Man’s life today is mostly a life of filth, and still a life of suffering and affliction. This could not be called the defeat of Satan; man has yet to escape from the sea of affliction, has yet to escape from the hardship of the life of man, or the influence of Satan, and he still has but an infinitesimal knowledge of God. All of man’s hardship was created by Satan, it was Satan that brought the sufferings into the life of man, and only after Satan is bound will man be able to completely escape from the sea of affliction. Yet the bondage of Satan is achieved through the conquest and gain of the heart of man, by making man the spoils of the battle with Satan. … At that time, man will have gained a life illuminated by God, a life under the care and protection of God, and a life together with God. Mankind will lead a normal life on earth, and the whole of mankind will enter onto the right track. The 6,000-year management plan will have utterly defeated Satan, which means that God will have recovered the original image of man following his creation, and as such, the original intention of God will have been fulfilled.

from “Restoring the Normal Life of Man and Taking Him to a Wonderful Destination” in The Word Appears in the Flesh

Footnotes:

a. The original text reads “today, it is because.”

from :Listen to the Voice of God Behold the Appearance of God

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