C. Despising God’s Holiness and Uniqueness

Antichrists do not acknowledge or believe in the least in the righteousness and almightiness in God’s disposition essence, much less have any knowledge of them. It’s harder still, of course, for them to believe in, acknowledge, and know God’s holiness and uniqueness. So, when God mentions that He’d have people be honest, that He’d have them be down-to-earth created beings that can keep to their stations, ideas arise in antichrists, and an attitude and feeling come to them. They say: “Is god not exalted? Is he not supreme? If so, the requirements he makes of man should be grand and exalted. I thought god was so mysterious; I wouldn’t have thought he’d make such trifling demands of man. Can those be thought of as the truth? They’re too simple! It would be right for god’s requirements to be elevated: One should be a super-person, a great person, an able person—that’s what god should require man to do. He’d have one be an honest person—is that really god’s work? Is it not counterfeit?” In the depths of their heart, antichrists don’t just resist the truth—as they do, blasphemy comes to them, too. Is that not them despising the truth? They’re rife with contempt and disdain for God’s demands; they define and treat them with an attitude of scorn, disregard, sarcasm, and ridicule. Evidently, antichrists are odious in their disposition essence; they’re unable to accept things or words that are true, beautiful, and practical. God’s essence is true and practical, and His requirements of people are in line with what people need. “Grand and exalted,” as the antichrists bring up—what is that? It’s false, empty, and hollow; it corrupts people and misleads them; it makes them fall, and takes them far from God. The truths God expresses and His life, on the other hand, are faithful, lovely, and practical. Once one has experienced and been through God’s words for a while, they’ll discover that God’s life alone is what’s most lovely, that it’s His words alone that can change people and be their lives, and are what people need—while those grand, exalted opinions and sayings put forth by Satan and antichrists are diametrically opposed to the trueness and practicality of God’s demands of man. Therefore, on the basis of antichrists’ essence of this sort, they’re entirely unable to accept God’s holiness and uniqueness. There’s absolutely no way that they’ll acknowledge those things. And as for the various facets of people’s corrupt disposition and corrupt essence that are exposed by God—their intransigence and arrogance, their dispositions of deceitfulness, wickedness, of being averse to the truth, and of viciousness—antichrists don’t accept them at all. And as for God’s judgment of people and His stern rebuking of them, antichrists aren’t merely unable to know God’s holiness and loveliness in those—to the contrary, they are at heart averse to those words God speaks, and resist them. Each time they read God’s words that chastise, judge, and expose man’s corrupt disposition, they hate them and want to swear. If someone says they’re an arrogant person, an intransigent person, a wicked person who’s averse to the truth, they’ll argue with that person and swear about their forebears; and if someone exposes their corrupt essence and condemns them, it’s as if that person meant to kill them—they absolutely won’t accept it. It’s because antichrists have such an essence and reveal such things that they’re identified, without their knowing it, and unwittingly isolated and revealed, in God’s house and the church. Their ambition and desire often goes unfulfilled, and so their hatred mounts for the words God speaks, for His existence, and for the phrase “the truth reigns in God’s house.” If you say that phrase to them, they’ll want to battle you to the death, to torment and punish you to death. Does this not show on its own that antichrists are inimical to God? It does, indeed! If someone said, “God is unique; man may worship no person, apart from Him, nor any idol,” would an antichrist be willing to hear it? (No.) Why not? These words condemn them, do they not? Don’t they deprive them of their right to be god? Would they be happy without the right to be god, with that hope extinguished? (No.) That’s why if you were to expose them, to leave them ruined in standing and reputation, with no one worshiping them, to leave them unable to win people over, without status, they’ll reach out for you with their malicious, demonic claws, to torment you. When things happen in a church, and someone means to report them to the Above, will the leader of the church, if he’s an antichrist, allow them to make the report? They won’t get that past him. He’ll say, “If you make that report, the consequences will be on your head! If the above prunes us and clears out people in our church, I’ll see to it that you’re sorry—I’ll get everyone to abandon you. Then you’ll get a taste of what it feels like to be cleared out!” Doesn’t this frighten and threaten the person who’d have made a report? The antichrist says, “God’s unique, isn’t he? Fine; I’ll be unique, too. What I say goes in our church. Whatever you want to do, you have to go through me—and you’re not getting past me. You want to get past me? You’ll have to do it over my dead body! I reign in our church; what I say goes here. I’m the truth—I’m the unique one!” Is this not a devil made manifest? It is—its devilish countenance exposed, its devilish words spoken.

Regarding how antichrists treat God’s essence, they go from disbelief and doubts to biding their time and testing, and ultimately on to judgment and blasphemy. This leads them step by step into a quagmire, a bottomless abyss, and it leads them toward the path of resisting God and being His enemy, at complete odds with Him, and clamoring against Him to the end, from which there’s no return. They don’t merely fail to acknowledge the existence of God’s essence—instead, all sorts of notions and imaginings about each aspect of God’s essence arise in them, with which they mislead the people around them and the people they come into contact with. Their goal is to make more people the same as they are, doubting God’s existence and the existence of His essence. When they die, they’d even drag others down with them. It’s not enough for them to do bad things on their own—they want to find others to accompany them, to do bad things with them, to resist God and disturb the work of His house with them, to doubt and deny God with them. Antichrists are filled with notions and imaginings about every aspect of God’s essence. Not only are they unable to know God’s essence from everything He does—they’ll also rigorously analyze, study, test, and pass judgment on God’s essence, and even secretly contend with God, saying: “Aren’t you unique? Aren’t you the god who holds sovereignty over mankind’s fate? How could you let such things happen to people who believe in you? If you are the unique god, you shouldn’t allow any enemy force at all to trespass in your workplace.” What sort of talk is that? Whenever anything happens in the church, antichrists will be the first to stand up and say undermining things, negative and judgmental words. They’ll be the first to stand up and argue with God, to confront Him, demanding that He do this thing and that. It’s at those times in particular when God’s house is faced with difficulties or thorny problems that antichrists are overjoyed. Those are the times when they’re happiest and most pleased, when they jump highest for joy. They’re not just unable to uphold the interests of God’s house—no, they stand on the sidelines, watching and laughing, waiting eagerly for insurrection to crop up in God’s house, for all His chosen people to be apprehended and disbanded, and the work of His house unable to progress further. They’d be as happy then as they are on New Year’s Eve. And every time something that happens in God’s house is settled and resolved, when the brothers and sisters have taken a lesson from it, that’s when the antichrists’ “sentence” will be passed down. It’s also when antichrists are most despondent, sad, and despairing. They can’t bear to see the brothers and sisters doing well, or followers of God having faith, and brimming with confidence as they follow Him; they can’t bear to see the brothers and sisters being changed in their dispositions under the guidance of God’s words, and doing their duties loyally, and the work growing better and better. They can’t bear to see the church flourishing, or God’s management plan developing by degrees in a good direction—and more still do they hate it when people are always preaching God’s words, bearing witness for Him, and praising His loveliness and His righteous disposition. And more than that, they loathe it when people seek God, pray to Him, and seek His words no matter what happens to them, submitting to Him and abiding by His orchestration. Even as antichrists eat from God’s house, enjoy God’s words, and enjoy all the benefits of His house, they’re often wishing to have a chance to laugh at God’s house. They’re eagerly waiting for all the believers in God to be dispersed, and for God’s work to be left unable to progress further. Therefore, when something happens to God’s house, instead of defending it, or thinking of ways to resolve the issue, or protecting the brothers and sisters with all their might, or joining up with them to take care of the issue in unison, jointly coming before God and submitting to His sovereignty, antichrists will stand on the sidelines, laughing, offering bum advice, destroying and disturbing. At a critical moment, they’ll even offer a hand to outsiders at the expense of God’s house, thus acting as Satan’s minion, deliberately disturbing and breaking things. Is such a person not an enemy of God? The more critical the moment, the more clearly their devilish likeness is exposed; the more critical the moment, the more eventful it is, the more their devilish likeness, in its greatest detail and to its fullest extent, is exposed; the more critical the moment, the more help they’ll give outsiders at the expense of God’s house. What sort of thing are they? Are such people brothers and sisters? They’re people who do destructive, abominable things; they’re God’s enemies; they’re devils, they’re Satans; they’re evil people, antichrists. They’re not brothers and sisters, and they’re not candidates for salvation. If they really were brothers and sisters, people of God’s house, then with any problem that came up in His house, they’d unite heart and mind with their brothers and sisters to face it and handle it in unison. They wouldn’t be bystanders, much less look on and laugh. Only such people as antichrists would stand on the sidelines, and laugh, and eagerly await bad things to come to God’s house.

The essence of antichrists may be exposed in any and every matter. It’s quite unconcealable. Whatever they’re doing, whatever the issue, all the views and dispositions they reveal are abhorrent to man and to God. Not only do they cause destruction, disruption, and disturbance in all sorts of things that come up, laughing from the sidelines—they also often face off with God and test Him. What does that mean, to test God? (At heart, they don’t believe in God, and they say some things or employ some tricks to test His thoughts, trying to figure out what it is.) You see that happen a lot. In the matter of Job, how did Satan test God? (The first time Satan spoke, it said that if God struck Job of his household and possessions, he would not worship God anymore; the second time, it said that if God struck Job’s flesh and bones, he would deny God. Satan wanted to test God by having disasters befall Job.) Is that a test? Is that an accurate definition of the term? (No.) Strictly speaking, those passages refer to an indictment. What Satan meant in saying those things was, “Didn’t you say that Job’s a perfect person? With all the good things you’ve given him, how could he not worship you? If you strike him of those good things, do you think he’d still worship you then?” That’s an indictment. What sort of thing is a test, then? Satan had bandits rob and plunder Job’s possessions. For Job, that was a test. How is that a test? Like so: “Don’t you believe in god? Once I strike you of these things, let’s see if you still believe in him then!” Yet how did Job understand it? Believing it to be a trial from God, he didn’t struggle or fight, nor did he say anything—he submitted, and accepted it from God. There are also the things that befell the Lord Jesus: Satan having Him turn stones into food, and showing the Lord Jesus all the glory and riches of the world, having Him bow down in worship to it. Those were temptations. Now, what things do antichrists do as tests of God? (Antichrists don’t have God-fearing hearts. They do evil, even when they know it to be so; they want to test God to see whether His punishment will befall them. As they don’t believe in God’s righteous disposition, when they do evil, they’re unaware of it.) That’s a test. They’re going into it with a let’s-try-it-and-see mindset; they want to see just what God will do: “Isn’t god majestic and wrathful? Well, I’m tyrannizing the church, and I’ve done so many bad things behind god’s back and man’s—does god know about it, or not? If there’s no sadness inside me and I suffer no fleshly punishment, that means god doesn’t know.” They make little sallies to test whether or not God’s almighty, to test whether He observes people’s innermost hearts. That’s what tests are. They want to confirm the veracity of the matter, to test whether God will really take action and whether He really exists. That’s what tests are.

There was once an antichrist in mainland China who misled a group of people. He saw God’s house organizing choirs and singing hymns overseas, and thought, “If you can have choirs overseas, we can do it here, too.” So, he brought people from various places together to sing in a choir. He gathered a big audience for them, too; it was quite a scene. Why did he do this? In one sense, he was establishing an independent kingdom, which needs no elaboration. In another sense, what he meant was, “The god we believe in is the true god, and we have the work of the holy spirit. We may be in a hostile environment, with the great red dragon persecuting us and keeping us under close and strict watch, but let’s show people whether god is protecting us or not. Let’s see if anything can happen to us; let’s see if we can be arrested.” What sort of mindset is that? (One of testing.) It is testing—it’s flying such banners and using such catchphrases as believing that God is almighty and omnipresent in order to examine what God will actually do, make a wager with Him, and contend with Him. That’s called “testing.” For some people, when others say to them, “You can’t eat this; it’ll give you an upset stomach,” they say, “I don’t believe you, I’m going to eat it! Let’s see if God gives me an upset stomach or not.” So, they eat it, and indeed, it upsets their stomach. They think to themselves, “Why didn’t God protect me? It upset other people’s stomachs, but that’s because they don’t believe in God. I believe in God; why did it upset my stomach like everyone else’s?” What sort of behavior is this? (Testing.) It’s a result of them not knowing God. But with antichrists, there’s something extra: They don’t acknowledge the existence of God’s essence at all, so they do things by their own efforts and their own imaginings, and they don’t do them by faith. Instead, they’re testing God. They’re using their behavior and their momentary thoughts and impulses to investigate whether God exists, and whether His almightiness is real, and whether He can actually protect them. If their experiment is a success, then their faith will continue on that basis; if it fails, if God disappoints them, what will they do? They’ll say, “I won’t believe in god anymore. It’s not like he cares for people. Everyone says that god is man’s refuge—as I see it, that’s not necessarily how it is. In regard to these words, people need to make some backup plans for themselves in the future; they can’t be that dumb about things. People need to resolve their affairs by themselves—they can’t rely on god for everything.” That’s the result they’ve inferred from their test. What do you make of this result? Will this be the result for people if they pursue the truth? (No.) Why not? If people pursue the truth, they’ll ultimately come to a good, positive achievement and reward. That is to say, no matter what things people do, God has His ways and principles as to how He acts in response and how He regards these things, and people have their obligations to perform and their own instincts. God bestows their instincts on them; He has already given them principles, so people should act according to those principles under the guidance of God’s words. With some things, on the surface it seems as though God should protect man, but does that “should” come from man or from God? (From man.) It’s imagined in the mind of man. That “should” isn’t the truth; it’s not God’s responsibility. So, what exactly will God do, then? God has His ways of acting, and He has His principles. At times, by not protecting you, He’s revealing you, seeing what path you choose. At times, by means of a hostile environment, He’s perfecting your knowledge in some area, letting you gain an aspect of the truth and change in some regard. He’s strengthening you and making you grow. In brief, however God acts, He has His principles and reasons as well as His goals and objectives. If you take as the truth the idea that “God should protect me, and He should act in such-and-such a way,” and uphold it as such, making demands of God with it, then when God doesn’t act in that way, a conflict will arise between you and God. When this conflict arises, God won’t be at fault. Who will be? (Man.) It begins with a problem in people’s views, in their taking the wrong stance, occupying the wrong position. When you ask God to act in a certain way, you’ll feel quite justified. But to take a step back, when you can submit and accept, you’ll feel then that your justifications don’t hold water, and that these are your corrupt dispositions and unreasonable demands. When you can accept, God will bestow on you the measure of truth and of knowledge that you should gain. As He sees it, that is the element of the truth that you most ought to gain, not some trifling grace or blessing. God alone knows what’s most important for you, and He’ll bestow it on you when it’s time and in doses. Antichrists, on the other hand, don’t acknowledge the truth or the work of the Holy Spirit. Whoever may fellowship about the truth and testify to God’s love and salvation, an antichrist won’t just refuse to accept it, they’ll be repulsed by and resistant to it. This is the difference between antichrists and ordinary corrupt people.

We’ll conclude our fellowship here on antichrists’ feature of denying God’s identity and His essence of uniqueness. Do you have any more questions? (God, I have a question. I encounter a lot of believers in the Lord when I’m spreading the gospel, and they’re all bent on upholding that view of Paul’s that goes, “To me to live is christ.” They think that if they can meet the standard of Paul’s words, they can become god. Is this another manifestation of antichrists, and also a denial of God’s essence of uniqueness?) More or less. That antichrists deny the uniqueness of God is chiefly because they wish to be god. The words of Paul are their particular favorite: “For me, to live is christ, to live is god, with the life of god I am god.” They believe that, if this view holds true, they have hope of becoming god, of reigning as king, and of wielding control over people; if it does not, then their hopes of reigning as king and becoming god are dashed. In short, Satan always wants to be on an equal footing with God—and so do the antichrists: They, too, possess this essence. For example, among those who follow God, there are people who constantly exalt God and testify to Him, bear witness to His work and to the effect that the judgment and chastisement of His words have in man. They praise all of the work God does to save man, and they also praise the price paid by God. Do antichrists also wish to enjoy all of this, or do they not? They wish to enjoy support, flattery, exaltation—praise, even, from people. And what other shameful ideas do they come up with? They want people to believe in them, to depend on them in all things; it’s all right for people to rely on God, too—but if, at the same time that they depend on God, it is more realistic and genuine for them to depend on the antichrists, then the antichrists will be exceedingly pleased. If, at the same time that you praise God and count the graces God has given you, you also tot up all the meritorious achievements of the antichrists, and sing their praises among your brothers and sisters, broadcasting far and wide everything they do, then in their hearts they will be wonderfully gratified, and they will feel content. Thus, speaking from the point of view of the nature essence of antichrists, when you say God is possessed of authority, that He is righteous, and that He is able to save people, when you say that only God possesses such essence, that only God can do this kind of work, and no one can stand in His stead or represent Him in doing these things, nor could anyone possess this essence and do these things: when you say this, the antichrists, in their hearts, do not accept these words, and refuse to acknowledge them. Why do they not accept them? Because they have ambitions—that’s one side of the issue. The other side is that they do not believe, nor do they acknowledge, the incarnate flesh to be God. Whenever anyone says that God is unique, that only God is righteous, they take exception in their hearts and will inwardly resist it, saying: “Wrong—I’m righteous too!” When you say that only God is holy, they will say: “Wrong—I am holy too!” Paul is an example of this: When people spread the word of the Lord Jesus Christ, saying that the Lord Jesus Christ gave His precious blood for mankind, that He served as a sin offering, and saved all mankind, and redeemed all mankind from sin—how did Paul feel on hearing this? Did he acknowledge that all this was God’s work? Did he acknowledge that the One who was able to do all this was Christ, and that only Christ could have done it all? And did he acknowledge that only the One who was able to do all this could represent God? He did not. He said: “If Jesus could be crucified, then people can be crucified, too! If he could give his precious blood, then people can, as well! In addition to which, I can preach, too, and I’m more knowledgeable than him, and I can endure suffering! If you say that he is christ, then shouldn’t I, too, be called christ? If you spread his holy name, then shouldn’t you also spread mine? If he is fit to be called christ, if he can represent god, and if he is the son of god, then are not we, too? We who are able to suffer and pay a price, and who can toil and work for god—can’t we also be called christ? How is being approved of by god and being called christ any different from christ?” In short, antichrists have failed to grasp the aspect of God’s essence that is His uniqueness, and they do not understand what the uniqueness of God actually is. They believe, “Being christ or being god is something that one works toward on the strength of skill and capability, just as one gains power through fighting. You do not get to be called christ by having the essence of god. Being christ is the hard-earned result of one’s own skill; it is just like how things are in the world—whoever is more skilled and more capable is the one who can be a big-time official and can have the final say.” This is their logic. Antichrists do not acknowledge God’s word to be the truth. The essence and disposition of God that are spoken of in God’s words are incomprehensible to them; they are laymen and outsiders, and they are clueless, so their talk consists entirely of the words of outsiders, words without spiritual understanding. If they’ve worked for a few years and think that they are capable of suffering and paying a price, that they can blow a lot of hot air while preaching doctrines, that they’ve learned how to play the hypocrite and can mislead others and have won the approbation of some, then they believe, as a matter of course, that they are capable of becoming christ and becoming god.