God’s Righteous Disposition

Now that you have heard the previous fellowship about God’s authority, I am confident that you are mentally equipped with a good many words on the matter. How much you can accept, grasp and understand all depends on how much effort you apply to it. It is My hope that you can approach this matter earnestly; by no means should you engage with it perfunctorily! Now, is knowing God’s authority equal to knowing God’s entirety? One can say that knowing God’s authority is the beginning of knowing God Himself, the unique, and one could also say that knowing God’s authority means that one has already stepped through the gate of knowing the essence of God Himself, the unique. This understanding is one part of knowing God. So, what is the other part? This is the subject that I would like to fellowship about today—God’s righteous disposition.

I have selected two sections from the Bible with which to fellowship about today’s topic: The first concerns God’s destruction of Sodom, which can be found in Genesis 19:1–11 and Genesis 19:24–25; the second concerns God’s salvation of Nineveh, which can be found in Jonah 1:1–2, in addition to the third and fourth chapters of the book of Jonah. I suspect that you are all waiting to hear what I have to say about these two sections. What I say naturally cannot stray beyond the scope of knowing God Himself and knowing His essence, but what will be the focus of today’s fellowship? Do any of you know? Which parts of My fellowship on God’s authority caught your attention? Why did I say that only the One who possesses such authority and power is God Himself? What did I wish to elucidate by saying that? What did I wish for you to learn from it? Are God’s authority and power one aspect of how His essence is manifested? Are they a part of His essence, a part that proves His identity and status? Judging from these questions, can you tell what I am going to say? What do I want you to understand? Think this over carefully.

For Stubbornly Antagonizing God, Mankind Is Destroyed by God’s Wrath

First, let us look at several passages of the Scriptures which describe God’s destruction of Sodom.

Genesis 19:1–11 And there came two angels to Sodom at even; and Lot sat in the gate of Sodom: and Lot seeing them rose up to meet them; and he bowed himself with his face toward the ground; And he said, Behold now, my lords, turn in, I pray you, into your servant’s house, and tarry all night, and wash your feet, and you shall rise up early, and go on your ways. And they said, No; but we will abide in the street all night. And he pressed on them greatly; and they turned in to him, and entered into his house; and he made them a feast, and did bake unleavened bread, and they did eat. But before they lay down, the men of the city, even the men of Sodom, compassed the house round, both old and young, all the people from every quarter: And they called to Lot, and said to him, Where are the men which came in to you this night? bring them out to us, that we may know them. And Lot went out at the door to them, and shut the door after him, And said, I pray you, brothers, do not so wickedly. Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known man; let me, I pray you, bring them out to you, and do you to them as is good in your eyes: only to these men do nothing; for therefore came they under the shadow of my roof. And they said, Stand back. And they said again, This one fellow came in to sojourn, and he will needs be a judge: now will we deal worse with you, than with them. And they pressed sore on the man, even Lot, and came near to break the door. But the men put forth their hand, and pulled Lot into the house to them, and shut to the door. And they smote the men that were at the door of the house with blindness, both small and great: so that they wearied themselves to find the door.

Genesis 19:24–25 Then Jehovah rained on Sodom and on Gomorrah brimstone and fire from Jehovah out of heaven; And He overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew on the ground.

From these passages, it is not difficult to see that Sodom’s wickedness and corruption had already reached a degree outrageous to both man and God, and that in the eyes of God the city therefore deserved to be destroyed. But what happened inside the city before it was destroyed? What inspiration can people draw from these events? What does God’s attitude toward these events show people about His disposition? In order to understand the whole story, let us carefully read what was recorded in the Scripture …

Sodom’s Corruption: Infuriating to Man, Enraging to God

On that night, Lot received two messengers from God and prepared a feast for them. After they had eaten, before they had lain down, people from all over the city surrounded Lot’s residence and called out to him. The Scriptures record them as saying, “Where are the men which came in to you this night? bring them out to us, that we may know them.” Who said these words? To whom were they spoken? These were the words of the people of Sodom, yelled outside Lot’s residence and meant for Lot to hear. How does it feel to hear these words? Are you furious? Do these words sicken you? Are you simmering with indignation? Do these people’s words not reek of Satan’s deeds? Through them, can you sense the wickedness and darkness in this city? Can you sense the brutality and barbarity of these people’s behavior through their words? Can you sense the depth of their corruption through their behavior? Through the content of their speech, it is not difficult to see that their nature is wicked and their disposition savage, to the point that they could not control themselves. Save for Lot, every last person in this city was no different from Satan; the mere sight of another person made these people want to harm and devour them…. These things not only give one a sense of the city’s ghastly and terrifying nature, as well as the aura of death around it, but they also give one a sense of its wickedness and bloodiness.

As he found himself face-to-face with a gang of inhuman thugs, people who were filled with the wild desire to devour human souls, how did Lot respond? According to the Scriptures: “I pray you, do not so wickedly. Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known man; let me, I pray you, bring them out to you, and do you to them as is good in your eyes: only to these men do nothing; for therefore came they under the shadow of my roof.” What Lot meant by these words was this: He was willing to give up his two daughters in order to protect the messengers. Both reason and emotion would dictate that these people should have conceded to Lot’s conditions and left the two messengers alone; after all, the messengers were perfect strangers to them, people who had absolutely nothing to do with them and had never harmed their interests. However, motivated by their wicked nature, they did not let the matter rest, but rather intensified their efforts. Here, another one of their exchanges cannot but give people further insight into these people’s malicious true colors, while at the same time it also enables people to understand and comprehend the reason why God wished to destroy this city.

So what did they say next? As the Bible reads: “Stand back. And they said again, This one fellow came in to sojourn, and he will needs be a judge: now will we deal worse with you, than with them. And they pressed sore on the man, even Lot, and came near to break the door.” Why did they want to break down Lot’s door? The reason is that they were anxious to inflict harm on those two messengers. What brought these messengers to Sodom? Their purpose in coming there was to save Lot and his family, but the people of the city mistakenly thought that they had come to assume official posts. Without asking the messengers’ purpose, with only conjecture to go off of, the people of the city wished to savagely harm these two messengers; they wished to harm two people who had nothing whatsoever to do with them. It is clear that the people of this city had utterly lost their humanity and reason. The degree of their insanity and running rampant was already no different from Satan’s malicious nature that harms and devours people.

When they demanded that Lot hand over these people, what did Lot do? From the text we know that Lot did not hand them over. Did Lot know these two messengers of God? Of course not! Yet why was he able to save these two people? Did he know what they had come to do? Although he was unaware of their reason for coming, he did know that they were God’s servants, and so he took them into his house. That he could call these servants of God by the title “lord” shows that Lot was a habitual follower of God, unlike the other people of Sodom. Therefore, when God’s messengers came to him, he was able to risk his own life to take these two servants into his house; furthermore, he also offered up his two daughters in exchange in order to protect these two servants. This was Lot’s righteous deed; it was a tangible expression of Lot’s nature essence, and it was also the reason God sent His servants to save Lot. When faced with peril, Lot protected these two servants without regard for anything else; he even attempted to trade his two daughters in exchange for the servants’ safety. Other than Lot, was there anyone else inside the city who would have done something like this? As the facts prove—no, there was not! Therefore everyone inside Sodom, save for Lot, was a target for destruction, and rightly so; this goes without saying.

Sodom Is Annihilated Without a Trace for Offending God’s Wrath

When the people of Sodom saw these two servants, they did not ask their reason for coming, nor did anyone ask whether they had come to convey God’s will. On the contrary, they formed a mob and, without giving them any chance to explain themselves, came like wild dogs or vicious wolves to seize these two servants. Did God not watch these things as they happened? What was God thinking in His heart about this kind of human behavior, this kind of event? God made up His mind to destroy this city; He would not hesitate or wait, nor would He show any more patience. His day had come, and so He set about the work He wished to do. Thus, Genesis 19:24–25 says, “Then Jehovah rained on Sodom and on Gomorrah brimstone and fire from Jehovah out of heaven; And He overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew on the ground.” These two verses tell of the method by which God destroyed this city as well as the things God destroyed. First, the Bible recounts that it was with fire that God burned the city, and that the extent of this fire was enough to destroy all the people and all that which grew on the ground. That is to say, the fire, which descended from heaven, not only destroyed the city, it also destroyed all the people and living things inside it, until not a single trace remained. After the city was destroyed, the land was left bereft of living things; there was no more life, nor any signs of life at all. The city had become a wasteland, an empty place filled with deathly silence. There would be no more evil deeds committed against God in this place, no more slaughter or blood spilled.

Why did God want to burn this city so thoroughly? What can you see here? Could God really bear to watch mankind, whom He had created, and all things He had created be destroyed like this? If you can discern Jehovah God’s anger from the fire that was cast down from heaven, then it is not difficult to see how great His anger was, judging by the targets of His destruction and the degree to which this city was annihilated. When God hates a city, He will deliver His punishment upon it. When God is disgusted with a city, He will issue repeated warnings to inform people of His anger. However, when God decides to put an end to and destroy a city—that is, when His wrath and majesty have been offended—He will deliver no further punishments or warnings. Instead, He will directly destroy it. He will make it utterly disappear. This is God’s righteous disposition.

After Sodom’s Persistent Hostility and Opposition Toward Him, God Utterly Cuts It Off

Now that we have a general understanding of God’s righteous disposition, we may return our attention to the city of Sodom—a place that God saw as a city of sin. By understanding the essence of this city, we can understand why God wanted to destroy it and why He would destroy it so completely. From this, we can come to know God’s righteous disposition.

From a human perspective, Sodom was a city that could fully satisfy man’s desire and man’s wickedness. Alluring and bewitching, with music and dancing night after night, its prosperity drove people to fascination and madness. Its wickedness corroded people’s hearts and bewitched them into depravity. This was a city where unclean spirits and evil spirits ran amok; it brimmed with sin and slaughter, and the air was thick with a bloody, putrid stench. It was a city that made people’s blood run cold, a city from which one would shrink away in horror. No one in this city—neither man nor woman, young nor old—sought the true way; no one yearned for the light or longed to walk away from sin. They lived under Satan’s control, lived beneath Satan’s corruption, and lived as Satan’s fools. They had lost their humanity, they had lost their reason, and they had lost man’s original goal of existence. They committed countless evil deeds of resistance against God; they refused His guidance and opposed His will. It was their evil deeds that carried them, the city, and every living thing inside it, step by step, down the path of destruction.

Although these two passages do not record the details regarding the extent of the corruption of the people of Sodom, instead recording their conduct toward God’s two servants following the latter’s arrival in the city, just one simple fact reveals the extent to which the people of Sodom were corrupt, wicked and resisted God. With this, the true face and essence of the city’s people are also exposed. These people not only refused to accept God’s warnings, but they also did not fear His punishment. On the contrary, they scorned God’s anger. They just persistently opposed God. No matter what He did or how He did it, their malicious nature only intensified, and they persistently antagonized God. The people of Sodom were hostile toward God’s existence, His coming, His punishment, and even more so, His warnings. There was none they did not look down on. They would devour and harm anyone they could, and God’s servants were no exception. The people of Sodom harming God’s servants was but the tip of the iceberg of all their evil deeds, and their wicked nature that was thus revealed actually amounted to no more than a drop in a vast sea. Therefore, God chose to destroy them with fire. God did not use a flood, nor did He use a hurricane, an earthquake, or a tsunami, and He certainly did not use some other method to destroy the city. He destroyed the city with fire. What did this mean? Using fire meant the city’s total destruction; it meant that the city vanished entirely from the earth and ceased to exist. Here, “destruction” not only refers to the vanishing of physical forms or outer appearance; it also means that the souls of all the people inside the city ceased to exist, having been utterly eradicated. In sum, all people, events, and things associated with the city were destroyed, with no next life or reincarnation for the people of that city; God had cut them off from created mankind once and for all. The use of fire signified that sin had here been curbed, that it had ended here, and that it would cease to exist and could not propagate itself. It meant that Satan’s wickedness had lost the soil to grow from as well as the graveyard that granted it a place to stay and to live. It is the brand of His victory with which Satan is marked in the war between God and Satan. Sodom’s destruction is a great setback in Satan’s ambition to oppose God by corrupting and devouring man, and it is likewise a shameful mark in mankind’s development when mankind rejected God’s guidance and abandoned themselves to vice. Furthermore, it is a factual record of a true revelation of God’s righteous disposition.

When the fire sent by God from heaven had reduced Sodom to nothing more than ashes, it meant that the city named “Sodom” thereafter ceased to exist, as did everything within the city. It was destroyed by God’s anger, vanishing within God’s wrath and majesty. Because of God’s righteous disposition, Sodom received its just punishment and its rightful end. Sodom ceased to exist due to its wickedness, and due to God’s desire to never again look upon this city or any of the people who had lived in it or any life that had grown within the city. God’s “desire to never again look upon them” is His wrath, as well as His majesty. God burned the city because its wickedness and sin caused Him to feel anger, hatred and loathing toward it and to wish never to see it or any of the people or living things inside it ever again. Once the city had finished burning, leaving only ashes behind, it had truly ceased to exist in God’s eyes; even His memory of it was gone, erased. This means that the fire sent from heaven did not only burn away the entire city of Sodom, nor did it only burn away the people inside the city who were so filled with sin, nor did it only burn away all things inside the city that had been tainted by sin; more importantly, what the fire burned away was the memory left behind by mankind’s wickedness and resistance against God. This was God’s purpose in burning the city down.

This humanity had become corrupt in the extreme. These people did not know who God was or where they themselves had come from. If you mentioned God, they would attack, slander, and blaspheme. Worse still, when God’s servants came to relay His warning, these corrupt people not only showed no signs of repentance and did not abandon their evil conduct, but on the contrary, they wantonly harmed God’s servants. What they expressed and revealed was their nature essence of extreme hatred toward God. We can see that these corrupt people’s resistance against God was more than a revelation of their corrupt dispositions, just as it was more than an instance of slandering or mocking which stemmed from a lack of understanding of the facts. Foolishness and ignorance didn’t cause their evil deeds; they acted in this way not because they had been hoodwinked, and it was certainly not because they had been misled. Their conduct had reached the level of being antagonistic and opposed to God, and clamoring against Him, in a flagrant, wanton manner. Without a doubt, this kind of human behavior would anger God, and it would anger His disposition—a disposition that tolerates no offense. Therefore, God directly and openly unleashed His wrath and His majesty on them; this was a true revelation of His righteous disposition. Faced with this city overflowing with sin, God desired to destroy it in the swiftest manner possible, to exterminate the people within it and the entirety of their sins in the most complete way, so that the people there would cease to exist and the sin there would never again arise. The swiftest and most complete way of doing so was to burn it down with fire. God’s attitude toward the people of Sodom was not one of abandonment or disregard. Rather, He wished to use His wrath, majesty and authority to punish, strike down, and utterly destroy these people. In His attitude toward them God wanted not only to destroy their flesh, but even more so to destroy their souls, to eradicate them eternally. This is what “ceasing to exist” means in God’s eyes.

Although God’s Wrath Is Hidden and Unknown to Man, It Tolerates No Offense

God’s treatment of the whole of humanity, foolish and ignorant as humanity is, is primarily one of mercy and forbearance. His wrath, on the other hand, is kept hidden and is unknown to man for the vast majority of time and in the vast majority of events. As a result, it is difficult for man to see the expression of God’s wrath, and it is also difficult to understand His wrath. As such, man makes light of God’s wrath. When the final part and the final step of God’s work of showing forbearance toward and forgiving people comes upon them—that is, when God’s final instance of mercy and His final warning comes upon people—if people still use the same methods to oppose God and do not repent, make a turnaround, or accept His mercy at all, then God will no longer bestow His forbearance and patience upon them. On the contrary, God will retract His mercy at this time. Following this, He will only send forth His wrath. He can express His wrath in different ways, just as He can use different methods to punish and destroy people.

God used fire to destroy the city of Sodom. In God’s eyes, this is the swiftest method of utterly annihilating a humanity or any other thing. Burning the human beings of Sodom was not just to destroy their physical bodies, but even more to destroy the entirety of their spirits, their souls, and their bodies, ensuring that the human beings inside the city would cease to exist in both the material world and the world that is invisible to man. This is one way in which God reveals and expresses His wrath. This manner of revelation and expression is one aspect of the essence of God’s wrath, just as it is naturally also a revelation of the essence of God’s righteous disposition. When God sends forth His wrath, He ceases to reveal any mercy or lovingkindness, nor does He let out any more of His forbearance or patience; there is no person, thing or reason that can persuade Him to continue to be patient, to extend His mercy again, and to bestow His forbearance once more. In place of these things, without a moment’s delay, God expresses His wrath and majesty, and does what He intends, doing so in a swift and clean manner, and making sure it achieves His desired outcome. This is the way in which God expresses His wrath and majesty, which tolerates no offense, and it is also a manifestation of His righteous disposition. When people see God showing concern and love toward man, they are unable to detect His wrath, see His majesty or feel His intolerance of offense. These things have led people to always mistakenly believe that God’s righteous disposition is one solely of mercy, forbearance and love. However, when people see God destroy a city or see His hatred toward a humanity, His anger in destroying mankind and His majesty allow them to see the other side of His righteous disposition, which is God’s intolerance of offense. God’s disposition that tolerates no offense surpasses the imagination of any created being, and among the non-created beings, none is capable of interfering with it or affecting it; even less can it be feigned or imitated. Thus, this aspect of God’s disposition is the one that humanity most ought to know. Only God Himself has this kind of disposition, and only God Himself is possessed of this kind of disposition. God is possessed of this kind of righteous disposition because He hates wickedness, darkness, rebelliousness, and the various evil deeds Satan has committed in corrupting and devouring mankind, because He hates all acts of sin in opposition to Him, and because of His holy and undefiled essence. It is because of this that He will not tolerate any of the created or non-created beings openly opposing or contending with Him. Even an individual to whom He had once shown mercy or whom He had chosen, need only anger His disposition and commit an offense against His principles of patience and forbearance, and God will let out and reveal His righteous disposition that tolerates no offense without the least bit of mercy or hesitation.

God’s Wrath Is a Safeguard for All the Forces of Justice and All Positive Things

By understanding these examples of God’s speech, thoughts, and actions, are you able to recognize God’s righteous disposition, a disposition that will not tolerate being offended by man? Regardless of how much man can understand of it, this is an aspect of the disposition of God Himself that is unique to Him. God’s intolerance of offense is His unique essence; God’s wrath is His unique disposition; God’s majesty is His unique essence. The principle behind God’s anger represents His identity and status, which only He possesses. It goes without saying that this principle is also a symbol of the essence of the unique God Himself. God’s disposition is His own inherent essence, which does not change at all with the passage of time, and nor does it alter with changes of geographical location. His inherent disposition is His intrinsic essence. Regardless of whom He carries out His work upon, His essence does not change, and neither does His righteous disposition. When one angers God, that which God sends forth is His inherent disposition; at this time the principle behind His anger does not change, nor do His unique identity and status. He does not grow angry because of a change in His essence or because different elements arise in His disposition, but because man’s opposition against Him offends His disposition. Man’s flagrant provocation of God is a severe challenge to God’s own identity and status. In God’s view, when man challenges Him, man is contending with Him and tempting His anger. When man opposes God, when man contends with God, when man continuously tempts God’s anger, that is precisely when sin runs rampant—at such times, God’s wrath will naturally reveal and present itself. Therefore, the unleashing of God’s wrath is a symbol that all evil forces will cease to exist, and it is a symbol that all hostile forces will be destroyed. This is the uniqueness of God’s righteous disposition, and of God’s wrath. When God’s dignity and holiness are challenged, when the forces of justice are obstructed and not seen by man, this is precisely the time when God will unleash His wrath. Because of God’s essence, all those forces on earth which contend with God, are antagonistic to Him, and try to compete with Him, are evil, corrupt, and unjust; they come from and are of Satan. Because God is just, of the light, and holy and unblemished, all things evil, corrupt, and of Satan will vanish when God’s wrath is unleashed.

Although the unleashing of God’s wrath is one aspect of the expression of His righteous disposition, God’s anger is by no means without principle, and nor is it indiscriminate regarding its target. On the contrary, God is not at all quick to anger, and nor does He reveal His wrath and majesty lightly. Moreover, God’s wrath is very measured and proportionate; it is entirely different from man’s outbursts of anger and venting. Many conversations between man and God are recorded in the Bible. Some people spoke in a very shallow and foolish way, like infants, but God did not strike them down, and nor did He condemn them. In particular, during Job’s trial, how did Jehovah God treat Job’s three friends and the others after He heard the words that they spoke to Job? Did He condemn them? Did He get angry at them? He did nothing of the sort! Instead He told Job that if he made supplications on their behalf and prayed for them, God would choose not to remember their faults. These instances all represent the primary attitude with which God treats humanity, corrupt and ignorant as it is. Therefore, the unleashing of God’s wrath is by no means an expression of His emotions, nor is it a way for Him to give vent to His emotions. Contrary to man’s understanding, God’s wrath is not a complete outburst of rage. God does not unleash His wrath because He is unable to control His own emotions or because His anger has reached its boiling point and must be vented. On the contrary, His wrath is an expression and a genuine conveyance of His righteous disposition, and it is a hallmark revelation from Him of His holy essence. God is wrath, and He does not tolerate offense—this is not to say that God becomes angry without regard to the cause or without principle; unprincipled, random outbursts of rage without regard to the cause are the sole preserve of corrupt mankind. Once a person has status, they often find it difficult to control their emotions, and so they like to seize upon opportunities to air out their dissatisfaction and vent their emotions; they often get angry for no reason, so as to show off their abilities and let others know that their status and identity are different from those of other people. Of course, corrupt human beings without any status also often lose control of their emotions. Their anger is frequently caused by damage to their own interests. In order to protect their own status and dignity, they frequently vent their emotions and reveal their arrogant nature. Man flares up in anger and vents his emotions in order to defend the existence of sin, and these actions are the ways in which man expresses his dissatisfaction; they brim with impurities, with schemes and intrigues, with man’s corruption and wickedness, and more than anything else, they brim with man’s ambitions and desires. When justice contends with wickedness, man’s anger will not flare up in the defense of the existence of justice; on the contrary, when the forces of justice are threatened, persecuted and attacked, man’s attitude is one of overlooking, evading or flinching away. However, when facing evil forces, man’s attitude is one of accommodating, of bowing and scraping. Therefore, man’s venting is an outlet for evil forces, a manifestation of the evil deeds of fleshly man running rampant and being difficult to restrain. When God unleashes His wrath, however, all evil forces will be stopped, all sins that grievously harm man will be stopped, all hostile forces that obstruct God’s work will be revealed, separated, and cursed, and all of Satan’s accomplices who are antagonistic to God will be punished and cut off. In the place of all that, God’s work will proceed free of any obstacles, God’s management plan will develop step by step according to schedule, and God’s chosen people will no longer be disturbed and misled by Satan, while those who follow God will enjoy God’s leadership and provision in an environment of tranquility and peace. God’s wrath is the safeguard preventing all evil forces from emerging and running rampant, and it is also the safeguard ensuring that all things that are just and positive can exist, propagate, and never be brought to an end or overthrown.

Can you see the essence of God’s wrath in His destruction of Sodom? Is God’s anger adulterated? Is God’s anger pure? To use the words of man, is God’s wrath nothing but wrath? Are there any schemes behind His wrath? Is there any conspiracy? Are there any unspeakable secrets? I can tell you firmly and sternly: There is no part of God’s wrath that can lead one to doubt. His anger is nothing but anger and harbors no other intentions or purposes. The reasons behind His anger are pure, blameless and above criticism. It is a natural revelation and expression of His holy essence; it is something that none of the created beings possesses. This is a part of God’s unique righteous disposition, and it is also a striking difference between the respective essences of the Creator and created beings.

Whether someone becomes angry in the sight of others or behind their backs, they have different intentions and purposes. Perhaps they are building up their prestige, or maybe they are defending their own interests, or maintaining their image and saving face. Some keep their anger in check, while others do not, and indiscriminately vent their anger whenever they wish, with particular willfulness and not the least bit of restraint. In short, man’s anger derives from his corrupt dispositions. No matter what its purpose, it is of the flesh and is of naturalness, and has nothing to do with justice or injustice, because nothing in man’s nature essence is compatible with the truth. Therefore, corrupt mankind’s temper and God’s wrath should not be mentioned in the same breath. Without exception, the motive of the behavior of a person corrupted by Satan is to uphold corruption; without exception, it is based on corruption; this is why man’s anger cannot be mentioned in the same breath as God’s wrath, no matter how proper his anger may seem in theory. When God sends forth His anger, evil forces are checked and evil things are destroyed, while just and positive things receive God’s care and protection and are allowed to continue. The reason God sends forth His wrath is that unjust, negative, and evil things obstruct, disturb, or destroy the normal activity and development of just and positive things. The purpose of God’s anger is not to safeguard His own status and identity, but to safeguard the existence of just, positive, and beautiful and good things, to safeguard the laws and rules of mankind’s normal existence. This is the root cause of God’s wrath. God’s anger is a very proper, natural, and true revelation of His disposition. There are no ulterior motives in His anger, nor is there cunningness or plotting, let alone the desires, craftiness, maliciousness, violence, wickedness, or any of corrupt mankind’s other shared aspects. Before God sends forth His wrath, He has already perceived the essence of every matter with complete clarity and perfect plainness, and He has already formulated accurate, clear definitions and conclusions regarding every matter. Thus, God’s objective in everything He does is crystal-clear, as is His attitude. He is not muddleheaded, blind, impulsive, or arbitrary, and He is certainly not unprincipled. This is the practical aspect of God’s wrath, and it is because of this practical aspect of God’s wrath that mankind can live normally. Without God’s wrath, mankind would descend into precarious living conditions, and all things just and beautiful and good would be destroyed, and would cease to exist. Without God’s wrath, the laws and rules of existence for created beings would be broken or even utterly subverted. Since the creation of mankind, God has continuously used His righteous disposition to safeguard and sustain mankind’s normal existence. Because His righteous disposition contains wrath and majesty, all evil people, events, and things, and all things that disturb and damage mankind’s normal existence, are punished, controlled, and destroyed as a result of His wrath. Over the past several millennia, God has also continuously used His righteous disposition to strike down and destroy all kinds of unclean spirits and evil spirits which oppose God and act as Satan’s accomplices and servants in God’s work of managing mankind. Thus, God’s work of the salvation of mankind has always advanced according to His plan. This is to say that because of the existence of God’s wrath, the most just cause among mankind has never been destroyed.

Now that you have an understanding of the essence of God’s wrath, you must certainly have gained further discernment of Satan’s wickedness!

Although Satan Appears Humane, Just and Virtuous, Satan’s Essence Is Savage and Wicked

Satan builds its reputation through deceiving the world, and often establishes itself as a vanguard and role model of justice. Under false pretenses of upholding justice, it harms people and devours their souls, and it uses all sorts of means to benumb, mislead and incite people, the purpose of which is to make people approve of and go along with its evil conduct, and join it in opposing God’s authority and opposing His sovereignty. However, when one sees through its schemes and plots and sees through to its hideous face, and when one does not want to continue to be trampled upon or fooled by it or to continue slaving away for it, or to be punished and destroyed alongside it, then Satan changes its previously saint-like face, tears off its false mask, and reveals its savage true self, which is wicked, vicious, and ugly. It would love nothing more than to exterminate all those who refuse to obey it and who oppose its evil forces. At this point Satan can no longer assume a trustworthy, upright appearance; what replaces this is its ugly true self—the evil devil—that was previously hidden beneath that “sheep’s clothing.” Once Satan’s schemes are brought to light and its true self is exposed, it will fly into a rage and unleash its barbarity, and its desire to harm and devour man will intensify. It is enraged by man’s awakening to the truth, and it develops a powerful hatred and vindictiveness toward man for his yearning for freedom and light and his aspiration to break free of its prison. Its rage is intended to defend its wickedness, and it is also a true revelation of its savage nature.

In everything Satan does, it reveals its wicked nature. Out of all the evil deeds that Satan has carried out upon man—from its early efforts to mislead man into following it, to its exploitation of man, in which it causes him to join in its evil deeds, to its vengeance toward man after its true self has been exposed and man has discerned and forsaken it, and so on and so forth—not one fails to expose Satan’s wicked essence, not one fails to prove the fact that Satan has no relation to positive things, and not one fails to prove that Satan is the source of all evil things. All of its actions serve to safeguard its evil, sustain the continuation of its evil deeds, go against just and positive things, and destroy the laws and rules of mankind’s normal existence. All these actions are hostile to God; they are all things God’s wrath is to destroy. Although Satan has its own rage, its rage is just a means of venting its wicked nature. The reasons why Satan is exasperated and flies into a rage are these: Its unspeakable schemes have been exposed; it is unlikely that its plots will succeed; its wild ambition and desire to replace God and pass itself off as God have been struck down and blocked; and its goal of controlling all of humanity has now come to nothing and can never be achieved. What has stopped Satan’s schemes from succeeding and cut short the emergence and rampancy of Satan’s wickedness is the repeated descent of God’s wrath, time after time. For this reason, Satan both hates and fears God’s wrath. Each time God’s wrath descends, it not only unmasks Satan’s true vile self, but also exposes Satan’s wicked desires to the light, and at the same time, the reasons for Satan’s rage against humanity are laid bare. The eruption of Satan’s rage is a true revelation of its wicked nature and an exposure of its schemes. Of course, each time that Satan is enraged heralds the destruction of evil things and the protection and continuation of positive things; it heralds the fact that God’s wrath must not be offended!

One Must Not Rely on Experience and Imaginings to Know God’s Righteous Disposition

When God’s judgment and chastisement comes upon you, will you say that God’s word is adulterated? Will you say that there is a story behind God’s anger, and that it is adulterated? Will you slander God, saying that His disposition is not necessarily entirely righteous? When dealing with each of God’s acts, you must first be certain that God’s righteous disposition is free of any adulteration, that it is holy and flawless, including God’s striking down, punishment, and destruction of human beings. Without exception, every one of God’s acts is expressed exactly in accordance with His inherent disposition and His plan. They include no part of humanity’s knowledge, tradition, and philosophy and are instead entirely expressions of God’s disposition and essence, unrelated to anything that belongs to corrupt humanity. Man has the notion that only God’s love, mercy and forbearance toward him are flawless, unadulterated, and holy, and no one knows that God’s anger and His wrath are likewise unadulterated; furthermore, no one has thought about questions such as why God tolerates no offense or why His anger is so great. On the contrary, some mistake God’s wrath for the bad temper of corrupt mankind, and misunderstand God’s anger to be the same anger as that of corrupt mankind. They even mistakenly assume that God’s anger is just like the natural revelation of man’s corrupt dispositions. They mistakenly believe that the unleashing of God’s wrath is just like the anger of corrupt mankind when they are faced with some unhappy situation, even so far as to wrongly believe that the unleashing of God’s wrath is also an expression of His mood. After this fellowship, I hope that every one of you will no longer have any misconceptions, imaginings or speculation regarding God’s righteous disposition. I hope that after hearing My words you can have a true affirmation in your hearts of the wrath of God’s righteous disposition, that you can let go of any previous fallacious understandings of God’s wrath, and that you can change your own mistaken beliefs and views of the essence of God’s wrath. Furthermore, I hope that you can have an accurate definition of God’s disposition in your hearts, that you will no longer have any doubts as to God’s righteous disposition, and that you will not impose any human reasoning or imagining onto God’s true disposition. God’s righteous disposition is God’s own true essence. It is not something created or written by man. His righteous disposition is His righteous disposition and has no relation or connection to created beings. God Himself is God Himself, and He will never become a created being. Even if He becomes a member of the created beings, His inherent disposition and His essence will not change. Therefore, knowing God is not the same as knowing an object; to know God is not to dissect something, nor is it the same as understanding a person. If you use your concept or method of knowing an object or understanding a person to know God, then you will never be able to attain knowledge of God. Knowing God cannot be reliant on experience or imaginings, and therefore you must never impose your experience or imaginings on God. No matter how rich your experience and imaginings may be, they are still limited. What is more, your imaginings are not in line with the facts, much less with the truth, and are incompatible with God’s true disposition and essence. You will never succeed if you rely on your imaginings to understand God’s essence. The only path is this: Accept all that comes from God, then gradually experience and know it. There will be a day when God will enlighten you to truly understand and know Him because of your cooperation and because of your hunger and thirst for the truth. And with this, let us conclude this portion of our conversation.

Mankind Receives God’s Mercy and Forbearance Through True Repentance

Next, let us read the biblical story of “God’s salvation of Nineveh.”

Jonah 1:1–2 Now the word of Jehovah came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their evils have come up before Me.

Jonah 3 And the word of Jehovah came to Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and preach to it the preaching that I bid you. So Jonah arose, and went to Nineveh, according to the word of Jehovah. Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days’ journey. And Jonah began to enter into the city a day’s journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. So the people of Nineveh believed God and submitted to God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them. For word came to the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water: But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and make earnest entreaties to God: yes, let everyone turn from their evil way, and abandon the violence that is in their hands. Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from His fierce anger, that we perish not? And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God relented, and did not bring upon them the calamity that He had said that He would bring upon them.

Jonah 4 But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry. And he prayed to Jehovah, and said, I pray You, O Jehovah, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before to Tarshish: for I knew that You are a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repent You of the evil. Therefore now, O Jehovah, take, I beseech You, my life from me; for it is better for me to die than to live. Then said Jehovah, Do you well to be angry? So Jonah went out of the city, and sat on the east side of the city, and there made him a booth, and sat under it in the shadow, till he might see what would become of the city. And Jehovah God prepared a plant, and made it to come up over Jonah, that it might be a shadow over his head, to deliver him from his grief. So Jonah was exceeding glad of the plant. But God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day, and it smote the plant that it withered. And it came to pass, when the sun did arise, that God prepared a vehement east wind; and the sun beat on the head of Jonah, that he fainted, and wished in himself to die, and said, It is better for me to die than to live. And God said to Jonah, Do you well to be angry for the plant? And he said, I do well to be angry, even to death. Then said Jehovah, You have cherished the plant, for the which you have not labored, neither made it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in a night: And should not I cherish Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than six score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?

Synopsis of the Story of Nineveh

Although the story of “God’s salvation of Nineveh” is brief in length, it allows one to see the other side of God’s righteous disposition. In order to understand exactly what that side consists of, we must return to the Scriptures and review the work which God carried out.

Let us first look at the beginning of this story: “Now the word of Jehovah came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their evils have come up before Me” (Jonah 1:1–2). In this passage from the Scriptures, we know that Jehovah God dispatched Jonah to the city of Nineveh. Why did He send Jonah to this city? The Bible is very clear about this: The evils of the people inside this city had come up before Jehovah God, and therefore He dispatched Jonah to proclaim to them what He intended to do. While there is nothing recorded telling us who Jonah was, this is, of course, unrelated to knowing God, and you therefore need not understand this man, Jonah. You need only know what God ordered Jonah to do and what God’s reasons were for doing such a thing.

Jehovah God’s Warning Reaches the Ninevites

Let us move on to the second passage, the third chapter of the Book of Jonah: “And Jonah began to enter into the city a day’s journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” These are the words that God directly passed on to Jonah to tell the Ninevites. Of course, they are also the words that Jehovah wished to say to the Ninevites. These words tell people that God began to abhor and hate the people of the city because their evils had come before Him, and so He wished to destroy this city. However, before God destroyed the city, He would make an announcement to the Ninevites, and at the same time, give them an opportunity to repent of their evils and start anew. This opportunity would last forty days. In other words, if the people inside the city did not show repentance, if they did not confess their sins and prostrate themselves before Jehovah God within forty days, God would destroy the city as He had destroyed Sodom. This was what Jehovah God wished to tell the people of Nineveh. Clearly, this was no simple proclamation. Not only did it convey Jehovah God’s anger, it also conveyed His attitude toward the Ninevites, while at the same time serving as a stark warning to the people living inside the city. This warning told them that their evil deeds had earned them Jehovah God’s hatred and would soon bring about their own annihilation. The life of every inhabitant of Nineveh was therefore in imminent peril.

The Stark Contrast Between the Ninevites’ and the Sodomites’ Reactions to Jehovah God’s Warning

What does it mean to be overthrown? In colloquial terms, it means gone. But in what way? Who could overthrow an entire city? It would be impossible for man to perform such an act, of course. The people of Nineveh were no fools; as soon as they heard this proclamation, they got the idea. They knew that the proclamation had come from God, they knew that God was going to act, and they knew that their evils had angered Jehovah God and brought His anger down upon them, so that they would soon be destroyed along with their city. How did the people of the city behave after hearing Jehovah God’s warning? The Bible describes in detail a series of specific behaviors of the people of Nineveh, from the king down to the commoners. The following words were recorded in the Scriptures: “So the people of Nineveh believed God and submitted to God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them. For word came to the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water: But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and make earnest entreaties to God: yes, let everyone turn from their evil way, and abandon the violence that is in their hands. …” (Jonah 3:5–9).

After hearing Jehovah God’s proclamation, the people of Nineveh displayed an attitude utterly opposite to that of the people of Sodom—whereas the people of Sodom openly opposed God, proceeding from evil to evil, the Ninevites, after hearing these words, did not ignore the matter, nor did they engage in opposition. Instead, they believed God and submitted to Him, and proclaimed a fast. What do the words, “believed and submitted,” mean here? The words literally mean to accept something as true and to have submission. If we use the Ninevites’ actual behavior to explain these words, it means that they believed God could and would do as He said, and that they were willing to repent. Did the people of Nineveh feel dread in the face of imminent disaster? It was precisely because they believed God and submitted to God in their hearts that dread arose in them. So, what can we use to prove the Ninevites’ belief, submission, and dread? It is as the Bible says: “… proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them.” This is to say that the Ninevites truly believed and submitted, and that from this belief and submission came dread, which then led them to fast and don sackcloth. This was a manifestation of them beginning to repent. In utter contrast to the people of Sodom, not only did the Ninevites not oppose God, but they also displayed tangible behavior and actions of repentance. Of course, it was not only the common people of Nineveh who did this—the king was no exception.

The Repentance of Nineveh’s King Receives Jehovah God’s Approval

When the king of Nineveh heard this news, he arose from his throne, took off his robe, dressed himself in sackcloth, and sat in ashes. He then proclaimed that no one in the city would be allowed to taste anything, and that no sheep, oxen, or any other livestock would be allowed to graze or drink water. Man and livestock alike were to don sackcloth, and the people were to make earnest entreaties to God. The king also proclaimed that every person should turn from their evil ways and abandon the violence in their hands. Judging from this series of actions, the king of Nineveh had repentance in the depths of his heart. Arising from his throne, taking off his king’s robe, wearing sackcloth, and sitting in ashes—this series of actions he took tells people that the king of Nineveh was laying aside his royal status and donning sackcloth alongside the common people. This is to say that the king of Nineveh did not occupy his royal post to continue his evil way or the violence in his hands after hearing the proclamation from Jehovah God; rather, he laid aside the authority he held and repented before Jehovah God. At this moment the king of Nineveh was not repenting as a king; he had come before God to repent and confess his sins as an ordinary subject of God. Moreover, he also told the entire city to repent and confess their sins before Jehovah God just like him, and he laid out specific arrangements for how to do so, such as the following: “Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water … and make earnest entreaties to God: yes, let everyone turn from their evil way, and abandon the violence that is in their hands.” As its ruler, the king of Nineveh possessed supreme status and power within the city, and could do anything he wished to. When faced with Jehovah God’s proclamation, he could have ignored the matter or simply repented and confessed his sins alone; as for how the people in the city chose, and whether or not they repented, he could have completely ignored the matter. However, the king of Nineveh did not do this at all. Not only did he arise from his throne, wear sackcloth and ashes, and repent and confess his sins before Jehovah God, but he also ordered all people and livestock within the city to do the same. He even ordered the people to “make earnest entreaties to God.” Through this series of actions, the king of Nineveh truly accomplished that which a ruler should. His series of actions is one that was difficult for any king in human history to achieve, and indeed, no other king achieved these things. These actions can be called unprecedented in human history, and they are worthy of being both remembered and emulated by mankind. Throughout human history, every king has led his subjects to resist and oppose God. No one has ever led his subjects to entreat God to make up for their evil deeds, receive Jehovah God’s pardon, and avoid punishment. The king of Nineveh, however, was able to lead his subjects to turn to God, to turn from their respective evil ways, and to abandon the violence in their hands. Furthermore, he was also able to put aside his throne in return for Jehovah God changing His mind and relenting, withdrawing His wrath, so that the people of the city would survive and not be destroyed. It must be said that the king’s actions were a rare miracle in human history, and can truly be regarded as a model example of corrupt humans repenting and confessing their sins to God.

God Sees the True Repentance Deep in the Ninevites’ Hearts

After hearing God’s proclamation, the king of Nineveh and his subjects performed a series of actions. What was the nature of these actions and of their behavior? In other words, what was the essence of their conduct in its entirety? Why did they do what they did? In God’s eyes they had truly repented, because not only had they made earnest entreaties to God and confessed their sins before Him, but they had also abandoned their evil deeds. They acted in this way because after hearing God’s words, they were incredibly frightened and believed that He would do as He said. By fasting, wearing sackcloth and sitting in ashes, they wished to express their willingness to reform their ways and refrain from committing evil deeds, and they supplicated Jehovah God, asking Him to not unleash His anger, and entreated Him to withdraw His decision and the catastrophe that He intended to bring down upon them. If we examine all of their behavior, we can see that they already understood that their previous evil acts were detestable to Jehovah God, and that they understood the reason why they would soon be destroyed. This is why they all wished to make a full repentance, to turn away from their evil ways and abandon the violence in their hands. In other words, once they became aware of Jehovah God’s proclamation, each and every one of them felt dread in their hearts; they ceased their evil conduct and no longer committed those acts that were loathsome to Jehovah God. Additionally, they entreated Jehovah God to forgive their past sins and to not treat them according to their past actions. They were willing to never again engage in evil deeds and to act according to Jehovah God’s instructions, if only it were possible to never again anger Jehovah God. Their repentance was true and thorough. It came from deep within their hearts and was not feigned or temporary.

After all of the people of Nineveh, from the king to the commoners, learned that Jehovah God was angry with them, every single one of their subsequent actions and their behavior in its entirety, as well as the decisions and choices that each of them made, were clearly and plainly visible to God. God’s heart changed according to their behavior. What was God’s frame of mind at that very moment? If you read what’s recorded in the Bible, you’ll find the answer. The following words were recorded in the Scriptures: “And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God relented, and did not bring upon them the calamity that He had said that He would bring upon them” (Jonah 3:10). Although God changed His frame of mind, there was nothing complicated about it at that very moment. He simply went from expressing His anger to calming His anger, and then decided not to bring catastrophe upon the city of Nineveh. The reason why God’s decision—to spare the Ninevites from said catastrophe—was so swift is that God observed the heart of every person of Nineveh. What God saw was the Ninevites’ true repentance and confession for their sins deep within their hearts. What He saw was that they truly believed Him and truly submitted to Him deep within their hearts. What He saw was their profound sense, deep within their hearts, of how their evil deeds had angered His disposition, and resulting dread, deep within their hearts, of Jehovah God’s impending punishment. At the same time, Jehovah God also heard their supplications, which came from deep within their hearts, entreating Him to no longer be angry at them, so that they might avoid this catastrophe. When God observed all these facts, little by little His anger faded away. Regardless of how great His anger had previously been, His heart was touched when He saw the true repentance deep within these people’s hearts, and so He could not bear to bring catastrophe upon them, and He ceased to be angry at them. Instead, He continued to grant them His mercy and forbearance, and continued to guide and provide for them.

If You Truly Believe God and Truly Submit to Him, You Will Receive His Care Often

God’s changing of His intention toward the people of Nineveh involved no hesitation or anything that was ambiguous or vague. Rather, it was a transformation from undiluted anger to undiluted forbearance. This is a true revelation of God’s essence. God is never irresolute or hesitant in His actions; the principles and purposes behind His actions are all clear and transparent, pure and flawless, with absolutely no ruses or schemes intermingled within. In other words, God’s essence contains no darkness or wickedness. God became angry with the Ninevites because their evil deeds had come before His eyes; at that time His anger was derived from His essence. However, when God’s anger dissipated and He granted the people of Nineveh His forbearance once more, everything that He revealed was still His own essence. The entirety of this change was due to a change in man’s attitude toward God. During this entire period of time, God’s disposition that tolerates no offense did not change, God’s essence of being forbearing toward man did not change, and God’s essence of loving man and being merciful toward man did not change. When people commit evil deeds and offend God, He will unleash His anger on them. When people truly repent, God’s heart will change, and His anger will cease. When people continue to oppose God in a stiff-necked manner, His anger will be unceasing, and His wrath will press in on them bit by bit until they are destroyed. This is the essence of God’s disposition. What God’s disposition reveals and expresses—whether wrath or mercy and lovingkindness—is based upon people’s manifestations and behavior, as well as their attitude toward God deep within their hearts. If God continuously unleashes His anger on one person, this person’s heart is undoubtedly hostile to God. Because this person has never truly repented, “bowed their head” before God, or truly believed God and truly submitted to God, they have never received God’s mercy and forbearance. If someone often receives God’s care, His mercy, and His forbearance, then without a doubt this person truly believes God and truly submits to God in their heart, and their heart is not hostile to God. This person often truly repents before God; therefore, even if God’s discipline often descends upon this person, His wrath will not.

This brief account allows people to see God’s heart, to see the realness of His essence, and to see that God’s anger and the changes of His intention are not without cause. Despite the stark contrast between Him sending forth His wrath and Him changing His heart at that moment, which makes people believe there seems to be a large gap or contrast between these two aspects of God’s essence—His anger and His forbearance—God’s attitude toward the repentance of the Ninevites once again allows people to see another side of God’s true disposition. God’s change of heart truly allows mankind to once again see the genuineness of God’s mercy and lovingkindness, and to see the true revelation of God’s essence, giving mankind no choice but to acknowledge that God’s mercy and lovingkindness are not myths or tall tales, because God’s feeling at that moment was true, and God’s change of heart was true—God indeed granted mankind His mercy and forbearance once more.

The True Repentance in the Ninevites’ Hearts Wins Them God’s Mercy and Changes Their Own Outcomes

Was there any contradiction between God’s change of heart and His wrath? Of course not! This is because God’s forbearance at that particular time had its reason. What is this reason? It is the one given in the Bible: “let everyone turn from their evil way” and “abandon the violence that is in their hands.”

This “evil way” does not refer to a handful of evil acts, but to the evil source from which people’s behavior springs. “Turning from their evil way” means never committing these actions again, in other words, never again behaving in this evil way—that is, changing the method, source, motive, intent, and principle of their actions, and in their hearts never again treating those methods and principles as a source of enjoyment or happiness. The “abandon” in “abandon the violence that is in their hands” means to lay down or to cast aside, to fully break with the past and to never turn back. When the people of Nineveh abandoned the violence in their hands, this proved and represented their true repentance. God looks at people’s outward appearances and also observes their hearts. When God had indeed observed the genuine repentance in the Ninevites’ hearts, and had also seen that they had turned from their evil ways and abandoned the violence in their hands, only then did He change His heart. This is to say that these people’s conduct and behavior and various ways of doing things, as well as their attitude of true confession and repentance of sins in their hearts, caused God to change His heart, to change His mind, to retract His decision and not to punish or destroy them. Thus, the Ninevites’ outcome was changed. They redeemed their own lives and at the same time once again won God’s mercy and forbearance, at which point God also retracted His anger.

God’s Mercy and Forbearance Are Not Hard to Gain—It Is Man’s True Repentance That Is Hard to Come By

Regardless of how angry God had been with the Ninevites, as soon as they proclaimed a fast and donned sackcloth and ashes, His heart began to gradually soften, and He began to change His heart. The moment before He proclaimed to them that He would destroy their city—the moment prior to their confession and repentance for their sins—God was still angry with them. Once they had carried out a series of repentant acts, God’s anger toward the people of Nineveh gradually turned to forbearance and mercy toward them. There is nothing contradictory about the revelation of these two aspects of God’s disposition in the same event. So, how should one understand and know this lack of contradiction? God manifested and revealed each of these two vastly different essences before and after the people of Nineveh repented, allowing people to see that God’s essence is real and tolerates no offense. God used His attitude to tell people the following: It is not that God does not show forbearance to people, or that He does not want to show mercy to them; rather, people rarely truly repent to God, and rarely truly turn from their evil ways and abandon the violence in their hands. In other words, when God is angry with man, He hopes that man can truly repent, and He hopes to see man’s true repentance, in which case He will then liberally continue to grant man His mercy and forbearance. This is to say that man’s evil deeds incur God’s wrath, whereas God’s mercy and forbearance are bestowed upon those who heed God’s words and truly repent before Him, upon those who can turn away from their evil ways and abandon the violence in their hands. God’s attitude was very clearly revealed in His treatment of the Ninevites: God’s mercy and forbearance are not difficult to obtain, and what He requires is one’s true repentance. As long as people turn away from their evil ways and abandon their violence, God will change His heart and His attitude toward them.

The Creator’s Righteous Disposition Is Vital and Alive

When God had a change of heart toward the people of Nineveh, were His mercy and forbearance a false front? Of course not! Then what has been shown by the transition between these two aspects of God’s disposition within this one situation? God’s disposition is a complete whole—it is not at all divided. Regardless of whether He is showing anger or mercy and forbearance toward man, these are all expressions of His righteous disposition. God’s disposition is vital and alive, and He changes His thoughts and attitudes according to the way things develop. The transformation of His attitude toward the Ninevites tells mankind that He has His own thoughts and ideas, that He is not a robot or a clay figure, but the living God Himself—He could be angry with the people of Nineveh, and He could also forgive their past because of their attitude; He could decide to bring calamity upon the Ninevites, and He could also change His decision because of their repentance. Man likes to rigidly apply regulations, and to use regulations to delimit and define God, and he also likes to use formulas to attempt to know God’s disposition. Therefore, as far as the domain of man’s thought is concerned, God does not think, nor does He have any ideas of substance. But in reality, God’s thoughts are in a state of constant transformation according to changes in things and in environments. While His thoughts are transforming, different aspects are revealed from God’s essence. During this process of transformation, at the precise moment when God has a change of heart, what He shows to mankind is the real existence of His life, and that His righteous disposition is vital and alive. At the same time, God uses His own true revelations to prove to mankind the truth of the existence of His wrath, His mercy and lovingkindness, and His forbearance. His essence will be revealed from Him at any time and any place in accordance with how things develop. He possesses a lion’s wrath and a mother’s mercy and forbearance. His righteous disposition tolerates no questioning, violation, change, or distortion by any person. Among all events and things, God’s righteous disposition—that is, God’s wrath and God’s mercy—can be revealed from Him at any time and any place. He gives living expression to His righteous disposition in every corner of all creation, and He implements His righteous disposition with vitality in every passing moment. God’s righteous disposition is not limited by time or space; in other words, God’s righteous disposition is not mechanically expressed or revealed from Him according to the constraints of time or space, but rather with perfect ease and at any time and place. When you see God have a change of heart, cease to express His wrath, and refrain from destroying the city of Nineveh, can you say that God is only merciful and loving? Can you say that God’s wrath consists of empty words? When God unleashes His wrath and withdraws His mercy, can you say that He has no true love toward mankind? God unleashes His wrath in response to man’s evil deeds; His wrath is not flawed. God’s heart is moved in response to man’s repentance, and He has a change of heart because of it. God feeling moved, God having a change of heart, and God showing His mercy and forbearance toward man, are all utterly without flaw; they are clean, undiluted, pure, and unadulterated. God’s forbearance is simply forbearance, and His mercy is simply mercy. His disposition reveals wrath and expresses mercy and forbearance in accordance with man’s repentance and his various manifestations. No matter what He reveals and expresses, it is all pure and direct; it is distinct from the essence of any created being. Within the principles of action that God expresses, His thoughts and ideas, as well as every decision He makes and every action He takes—there are no flaws or blemishes whatsoever. Since God has thus decided and since He has thus acted, that is what He accomplishes, and this result is correct and faultless, as its source is flawless and unblemished. God’s wrath is flawless. Likewise, God’s mercy and forbearance are not possessed by created beings, are holy and flawless, and stand up to scrutiny and firsthand experience.

Having learned about the story of Nineveh, do you now see the other side of the essence of God’s righteous disposition? Do you see the other side of God’s unique righteous disposition? Does anyone among humanity possess this kind of disposition? Does anyone possess this kind of wrath, the wrath of God? Does anyone possess mercy and forbearance such as that which is possessed by God? Who among the created beings can unleash such wrath and decide to destroy or bring calamity upon mankind? And who is qualified to grant mercy and forbearance to mankind, pardon mankind, and thereby change their decision to destroy mankind? The Creator expresses His righteous disposition through His own unique methods and principles, and He is not subject to the control or restrictions imposed by any people, events or things. Within His unique disposition, no one is able to change His thoughts and ideas, nor is anyone able to persuade Him and change any of His decisions. All of the behaviors and thoughts of created beings exist under the adjudication of His righteous disposition. No one can control whether He unleashes wrath or grants mercy; only the essence of the Creator—or in other words, the Creator’s righteous disposition—can decide this. Such is the unique nature of the Creator’s righteous disposition!

Through interpreting the transformation of God’s attitude toward the people of Nineveh, are you able to use the word “unique” to describe the mercy found within God’s righteous disposition? We previously said that God’s wrath is one aspect of the essence of His unique righteous disposition. Now I shall define two aspects—God’s wrath and God’s mercy—as His righteous disposition. God’s righteous disposition is holy; it does not tolerate offense, nor does it tolerate being questioned by anyone; it is something possessed by none among created or non-created beings. It is both unique and exclusive to God. This is to say, God’s wrath is holy and does not tolerate offense. In the same way, the other aspect of God’s righteous disposition—God’s mercy—is also holy and tolerates no offense. None of the created or non-created beings can replace or represent God in doing what He intends to do, nor could any of them have replaced or represented Him in the destruction of Sodom or the salvation of Nineveh. This is the true expression of God’s unique righteous disposition.

The Creator’s True Affection Toward Mankind

People often say that it is not an easy thing to know God. However, I say that knowing God is not a difficult matter. This is because God frequently displays His deeds for man to see, He has never ceased His dialogue with mankind, He has never been concealed from mankind, nor has He hidden Himself, and His thoughts, His ideas, His words, and His deeds are all open to mankind. Therefore, so long as mankind wishes to know God, they can come to understand and know Him through all sorts of means and methods. The reason why mankind persistently thinks that God has intentionally avoided them, that God has intentionally hidden Himself from them, that God has no intention of allowing man to understand and know Him, is that mankind does not know who God is, and does not wish to understand God. Even more than that, mankind does not concern themselves with what the Creator is thinking, or what the Creator has said and done…. Truthfully speaking, if man just uses his spare time to take note of and understand the Creator’s words or deeds, and if he pays just a little attention to the Creator’s thoughts and the voice of His heart, it will not be difficult for man to realize that the Creator’s thoughts, words, and deeds are all open and transparent. Likewise, it will take little effort to realize that the Creator is among mankind at all times, that He is always in conversation with all things and mankind, and that He is performing new deeds every day. His essence and disposition are expressed in His dialogue with mankind; His thoughts and ideas are revealed completely in His deeds. He accompanies and watches mankind at all times. He uses His silent words to quietly tell all things and mankind: “I am in the heavens, and I am among all things. I am watching over you; I am waiting; I am at your side….” His hands are warm and strong; His footsteps are light; His voice is soft and graceful; His form moves to and fro and circles endlessly, enveloping all of mankind; His countenance is beautiful and gentle. He has never left, never vanished. Day and night, He is mankind’s constant companion, never to leave their side. His devoted care and special affection for mankind, as well as His true concern and love for mankind, were displayed bit by bit as He saved the city of Nineveh. In particular, the Creator’s tenderness for the mankind He Himself created was fully revealed from the exchange of a few words between Jehovah God and Jonah. Through those words, you can deeply appreciate God’s true affection toward mankind …

The following passage was recorded in the Book of Jonah 4:10–11: “Then said Jehovah, You have cherished the plant, for the which you have not labored, neither made it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in a night: And should not I cherish Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than six score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?” These are the actual words of Jehovah God, from a conversation between God and Jonah. Though this exchange is brief, it brims with the Creator’s reluctance to give mankind up and His care for mankind. These words express the true attitude and feelings that God holds within His heart for His created beings. They also express God’s true intentions toward mankind in clear language—something mankind rarely has the opportunity to hear. This exchange represents an attitude God held toward the people of Nineveh—but what kind of attitude is it? It is the attitude He held toward the people of Nineveh before and after their repentance. This attitude is also that with which He treats mankind. Within these words are His thoughts and His disposition.

What thoughts of God are revealed in these words? If you read them carefully, it will not be difficult to notice that here, God used the word “cherish.” He used this word to show His true attitude toward mankind.

On the level of literal meaning, people interpret the word “cherish” in different ways: First, it means “to love and protect, to feel tenderness toward something”; second, it means “to love dearly”; and furthermore, it means “to be unwilling to hurt something and to be unable to bear doing so.” In short, this word expresses tender affection and tender love, as well as the difficulty of giving up someone or something, which indicates God’s mercy and forbearance toward mankind. Though God used this word, which is commonly spoken by man, when He said it, the voice of His heart and His attitude toward mankind were completely laid bare.

Although all the people of Nineveh were just as corrupt, wicked, and full of violence as those of Sodom, their repentance caused God to have a change of heart and decide not to destroy them. Because the way they treated God’s words and instructions demonstrated an attitude that starkly contrasted with that of the people of Sodom, and because of their genuine submission to God and true repentance, as well as their true and earnest manifestations in all regards, God’s cherishment of them came forth from the bottom of His heart once again, and He bestowed it upon them. No one can bestow things upon mankind and cherish them as God does, and no person possesses God’s mercy, His forbearance, or His true affection toward mankind. Is there anyone whom you deem a great person, or a superhuman, who could, from on high, from the perspective of a great person, or from the highest point, make this kind of statement to mankind or to created beings? Who among mankind can know the state of human existence like the palm of their hand? Who has a sense of burden and responsibility for humanity’s existence? Who is qualified to declare the destruction of a city? And who is qualified to pardon a city? Who can say that they cherish their own creation? Only the Creator! Only the Creator feels tender love for this mankind. Only the Creator shows this mankind tender affection. Only the Creator holds a true affection for this mankind that’s difficult to cleave. It is also only the Creator who can grant this mankind His mercy, and only He cherishes all of His created beings. Every one of mankind’s actions stirs His heart: He is angered, worried, and saddened by mankind’s wickedness and corruption; He feels pleased and joyful and has a change of heart and rejoices over mankind’s repentance, and over their belief and submission; every single one of His thoughts and ideas exists for and revolves around mankind; what He is and has is expressed entirely for mankind’s sake; the entirety of His emotions is intertwined with mankind’s existence. For mankind’s sake, He travels and rushes about; He silently gives every bit of His life; He dedicates every minute and every second of His life…. He has never known how to treasure His own life, yet He has always cherished the mankind He Himself created…. He gives His everything to this mankind…. He grants His mercy and forbearance unconditionally and without asking anything in return. He does this only so that mankind can continue to survive before His eyes and under His provision of life. He does this only so that mankind may one day surrender before Him and recognize that He is the One who nourishes mankind’s existence and supplies all creation with life.

The Creator’s Expression of His True Feelings for Humanity

This conversation between Jehovah God and Jonah is without a doubt an expression of the Creator’s true feelings for humanity. In one respect, it informs people of the Creator’s understanding of all creation under His sovereignty; as Jehovah God said, “And should not I cherish Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than six score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?” In other words, God did not have merely a general understanding of Nineveh. He not only knew the number of living things within the city (including people and livestock), but He also knew how many could not discern between their right and left hands, in other words, how many children or minors were present. This is concrete proof of God’s comprehensive understanding of mankind. In another respect, this conversation informs people of the Creator’s attitude toward humanity, which is to say, the weight of humanity in the Creator’s heart. It is just as Jehovah God said: “You have cherished the plant, for the which you have not labored, neither made it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in a night: And should not I cherish Nineveh, that great city…?” These are Jehovah God’s words of reproach toward Jonah, but they are all true.

Although Jonah was entrusted with proclaiming Jehovah God’s words to the people of Nineveh, he did not understand Jehovah God’s intention, nor did he understand His concern and expectations for the people of the city. With this reproach, God meant to tell him that humanity was created by God’s own hands; that He had expended His heart’s blood on each and every person; that He had placed His expectations on each and every person; that each and every person was enjoying God’s provision of life; and that each and every person had been paid for with God’s heart’s blood. This reprimand also told Jonah that God cherished humanity, which was created by His own hands, just as Jonah himself cherished the plant, and that until the last possible moment, God would by no means abandon mankind lightly, especially since there were so many children and innocent livestock inside the city. When God was dealing with these created humans who could not even distinguish their right hands from their left, and were still at an age of ignorance, it was even less possible for Him to end their lives and determine their outcomes so casually. God hoped to watch them grow up; He hoped that they would not walk the same paths as their forebears, that they would not hear Jehovah God’s warning again, and that they would bear witness to Nineveh’s past. Even more so, God hoped to see a Nineveh that had repented, to see the future of a Nineveh that had repented, and more importantly, to see a Nineveh that once again lived under God’s mercy. Therefore, in God’s eyes, those created humans who could not distinguish between their right and left hands were Nineveh’s future. They would shoulder Nineveh’s despicable past, just as they would shoulder the important duty of bearing witness to both Nineveh’s past and its future under Jehovah God’s guidance. In this expression of His true feelings, Jehovah God presented the Creator’s mercy for humanity in its entirety. It showed to mankind that “the Creator’s mercy” is not an empty phrase, nor is it a hollow promise; it has concrete principles, methods, and objectives, and even more so, it is true and real, with no falsehood or disguise. In this way, His mercy is endlessly granted to mankind in every time and age. However, to this very day, the Creator’s exchange with Jonah is His sole, exclusive verbal statement of why He shows mercy to mankind, how He shows mercy to mankind, how much forbearance He shows mankind, and His true affection for mankind. Jehovah God’s succinct words during this conversation express His full thoughts about mankind; they are a true expression of His attitude toward mankind in His heart, and they are also concrete proof of His bestowal of abundant mercy upon mankind. His mercy is not only bestowed upon mankind’s earlier generations, but is also granted to the later generations of mankind, just as it has always been, from one generation to the next. Although God’s wrath frequently comes down upon certain corners and certain eras of mankind, God’s mercy has never ceased. With His mercy, He leads and guides one generation of created human beings after the next, and provides for and nourishes one generation of created human beings after the next, because His true affection for mankind will never change. Just as Jehovah God said: “And should not I cherish…?” He has always cherished all things which He created with His own hands. This is the mercy of the Creator’s righteous disposition, and it is also the absolute uniqueness of the Creator!

Five Types of People

For the time being, I will leave our fellowship about God’s righteous disposition here. Moving on, I will classify God’s followers into several categories according to their knowledge of God and their knowledge and experience of His righteous disposition, so that you may know the stage you are in currently, as well as your current stature. In terms of people’s knowledge of God and firsthand understanding of His righteous disposition, the different stages people occupy and their statures at different stages can generally be separated into five types. This topic is predicated on the basis of knowing the unique God and His righteous disposition. Therefore, as you read the following content, you should carefully ponder exactly how much firsthand understanding and exactly how much knowledge you have regarding God’s uniqueness and His righteous disposition, and then you should use the result to judge which stage you truly belong in, how large your stature truly is, and which type of person you truly are.

Type One: The Stage of the Infant Wrapped in Swaddling Clothes

What is meant by “an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes”? An infant wrapped in swaddling clothes is an infant who has just come into this world, a newborn. It is when people are at their most immature.

People in this stage essentially possess no awareness or consciousness of anything to do with belief in God. They are ignorant and bewildered about everything. These people may have believed in God for a long time or perhaps not a very long time at all, but their ignorant and bewildered state and their true stature place them within the stage of the infant wrapped in swaddling clothes. The precise definition of the state of a person within the stage of the infant wrapped in swaddling clothes is as such: No matter how long this kind of person has believed in God, they are always muddle-headed, foggy, and aimless and dazed; they do not know why they believe in God, nor do they know who God is or who is God. Although they follow God, there is no accurate definition of God in their heart, and they cannot determine whether the One they follow is God, let alone whether they truly should believe in God and follow Him. This is the true state of this type of person. This kind of person’s thoughts are clouded and, in sum, their belief is muddled. They always exist in a state of ignorance and blankness. Their state can be summed up as being muddle-headed, foggy, and aimless and dazed. They have never seen nor felt God’s existence, and therefore, talking to them about knowing God is the same as making them read a book written in hieroglyphics—they can neither understand nor accept it. For them, knowing God is the same as telling a legendary story. While their thoughts may be clouded, they actually firmly believe that knowing God is a waste of mental effort, a futile and fruitless endeavor. This is the first type of person: the infant wrapped in swaddling clothes.

Type Two: The Stage of the Suckling Infant

Compared to an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes, this type of person has made some progress. Regrettably, they still have no knowledge of God whatsoever. They still lack a clear knowledge of God and insight into God, and they are not very clear as to why they should believe in God, yet in their hearts they have their firm decisions and little calculations. They do not concern themselves with whether it is right to believe in God. The objective and purpose they pursue through belief in God is to enjoy His grace, to have joy and peace, to live comfortable lives, to enjoy God’s care and protection, and to live under God’s blessings. They are not concerned with the degree to which they know God; they have no desire to pursue a knowledge of God, nor are they concerned with what God is doing or what He wishes to do. They only seek persistently to enjoy His grace and obtain more of His blessings; they seek to gain a hundredfold in this life, and eternal life in the world to come. What they think, what they expend and invest of themselves, as well as their suffering, all share the same objective: to obtain God’s grace and blessings. They have no concern for anything else. This type of person is certain only that God can keep people safe and bestow His grace upon them. When it comes to why God wishes to save man, and the results God wishes to obtain with His words and work, it can be said that they are not interested in or very clear about any of this. They have never made any effort to know God’s essence and righteous disposition, nor can they muster the interest to do so. They lack the inclination to pay attention to these things, nor do they wish to be aware of them. They do not wish to ask about God’s work, God’s requirements of man, God’s intentions, or anything else related to God, and they too lack the inclination to ask about these things. This is because they believe these matters are unrelated to their enjoyment of God’s grace. They are only concerned with a god who is related to their own interests, and who can bestow grace upon man. They have no interest whatsoever in anything else. Therefore, they cannot enter the truth reality, regardless of how many years they have believed in God. Without anyone to frequently water or feed them, it is difficult for them to continue down the path of belief in God. If they cannot enjoy their previous joy and peace or God’s grace, then they are quite liable to fall away. This is the second type of person: the person who exists in the stage of the suckling infant.

Type Three: The Stage of the Weaning Infant, or the Stage of the Young Child

This group of people possesses a certain amount of clear awareness. They are aware that enjoying God’s grace does not mean that they themselves possess true experience, and they are aware that if they always tirelessly pursue joy and peace and pursue grace, or if they are able to bear witness by sharing their experiences of enjoying God’s grace or by praising God for the blessings He has bestowed upon them, this does not mean that they possess life, nor does it mean that they possess the reality of the truth. Within their mind, they begin to cease entertaining wild hopes that they will only be accompanied by God’s grace; rather, as they enjoy God’s grace, they simultaneously wish to do something for God. They are willing to do their duty, to endure a bit of hardship and fatigue, and to engage in some degree of cooperation with God. However, because their pursuit in their belief in God is too adulterated, because the individual intentions and desires they harbor are too strong, because their disposition is too arrogant, it is very difficult for them to satisfy God’s intentions or to be loyal to God. Therefore, they frequently cannot realize their individual wishes or honor their promises to God. They often find themselves in contradictory states: They very much wish to satisfy God to the greatest possible degree, yet they use all their might to oppose Him; they often make vows to God but then quickly break their oaths. Even more often they find themselves in other contradictory states: They sincerely believe in God, yet they always deny Him and everything that comes from Him; they anxiously hope that God will enlighten them, guide them, supply them, and help them, yet they still seek their own way out. They wish to understand and to know God, yet they are unwilling to draw close to Him. Instead, they always avoid God, and their heart is closed to Him. While they have a superficial knowledge and experience of the literal meaning of God’s words and of the truth, and a superficial concept of God and truth, subconsciously they still cannot confirm or determine whether God is the truth, nor confirm whether God is truly righteous. They also cannot determine the realness of God’s disposition and essence, let alone His true existence. Their belief in God always contains doubts and misconceptions, and it also contains imaginings and notions. As they enjoy God’s grace, they also reluctantly experience or practice a few truths that they consider feasible in order to enrich their belief, to augment their experience in believing in God, to verify their understanding of believing in God, and to satisfy their vanity by walking upon the life path that they themselves established and accomplishing the just cause of mankind. At the same time, they also do these things in order to satisfy their own desire to gain blessings, to place a bet on them being able to receive the greater blessings given to mankind, and to accomplish their ambitious aspiration and lifelong desire of not resting until they have gained God. These people are seldom able to obtain God’s enlightenment, for their desire and their intention to gain blessings are too important to them. They have no desire to let go of these things, and they could not bear to do so. They fear that without the desire to gain blessings, without the long-cherished ambition of not resting until they have gained God, they will lose the motivation to believe in God. Therefore, they do not wish to face reality. They do not wish to face God’s words or God’s work. They do not wish to face up to God’s disposition or essence, let alone mention the subject of knowing God. This is because once God, His essence, and His righteous disposition replace their imaginings, their dreams will go up in smoke, and their so-called pure belief and the “merits” they have accumulated through years of arduous work will vanish and come to nothing. Likewise, their “territory” that they have conquered with their sweat and blood over the years will face collapse. All of this will signify that their hard work and what they have invested over many years have been futile, and that they must begin all over again from nothing. This is the hardest pain for them to bear in their hearts, and it is the result that they least desire to see, which is why they are always locked in this kind of stalemate, refusing to turn back. This is the third type of person: the person who exists in the stage of the weaning infant.

The three types of people described above—meaning the people who exist in these three stages—do not possess any true belief in God’s identity and status or in His righteous disposition, and nor do they have any clear, accurate recognition or affirmation of these things. Therefore, it is very difficult for these three types of people to enter the reality of the truth, and it is also difficult for them to receive God’s mercy, enlightenment or illumination, because the manner in which they believe in God and their mistaken attitude toward God make it impossible for Him to perform work within their hearts. Their doubts, misconceptions, and imaginings about God exceed their belief and knowledge of God. These are three types of people who are very much at risk, and three very dangerous stages. When one maintains an attitude of doubt toward God, God’s essence, God’s identity, the matter of whether God is the truth, and the realness of His existence, and when one cannot be sure of these things, how can one accept everything that comes from God? How can one accept the fact that God is the truth, the way, and the life? How can one accept God’s chastisement and judgment? How can one accept God’s salvation? How can this kind of person obtain God’s true guidance and provision? Those who are in these three stages can oppose God at any time, and they can pass judgment on God, blaspheme God, or betray God at any time. They can abandon the true way and forsake God at any time. One can say that people in these three stages exist in a critical period, for they have not entered the right track of believing in God.

Type Four: The Stage of the Child’s Development, or Childhood

After a person has been weaned—that is, after they have enjoyed an ample amount of grace—they begin to explore the significance of believing in God, they begin to wish to understand different questions, such as why man lives, how man should live, and why God performs His work upon man. After they develop this confusion and puzzlement, they continuously receive watering, and are also able to do their duty, while carrying this confusion and puzzlement with them. During this period, they no longer have any doubts as to the realness of God’s existence, and they have an accurate grasp of the significance of believing in God. Upon this foundation they gain a gradual knowledge of God, and they gradually obtain some answers to some of their confusion and puzzlement regarding God’s disposition and essence. In terms of their changes in disposition as well as their knowledge of God, people in this stage begin to embark upon the right track, and they enter a transition period. It is within this stage that man begins to have life. The concrete manifestations of possessing life are the gradual solving of the various questions related to knowing God that people have in their hearts—such as misconceptions, imaginings, notions, and fanciful definitions of God—and that not only do they come to really believe and recognize the realness of God’s existence, but they also come to possess in their hearts an accurate definition of God and accurate positioning of Him, and truly following God replaces their fanciful faith. During this stage, people gradually come to know their misconceptions of God and their fallacious pursuits and ways of belief. They begin to thirst after the truth, thirst after experiencing God’s judgment, chastening, and discipline, and thirst after a change in their disposition. They gradually let go of all sorts of notions and imaginings about God during this stage, and at the same time they change and rectify their incorrect knowledge of God and obtain some pure and fundamental knowledge of God. Although a portion of the knowledge possessed by people at this stage is not very specific or accurate, at the very least they gradually begin to let go of their notions, fallacious knowledge, and misconceptions of God; they no longer maintain their own notions and imaginings about God. They begin to learn how to abandon—to abandon things found among their own notions, things from knowledge, and things from Satan; they begin to be willing to submit to correct and positive things, even to things that come from God’s words and which accord with the truth. They also begin to attempt to experience God’s words, to personally know and carry out His words, and to accept His words as the principles for their actions and as the basis for changing their disposition. During this period, people unconsciously accept God’s judgment and chastisement, and unconsciously accept God’s words as their life. While they accept God’s judgment, chastisement, and words, they become increasingly aware and able to sense that the God they believe in within their hearts truly exists. In God’s words, in their experiences and their lives, they increasingly feel that God has always held sovereignty over man’s fate and has always led and provided for man. Through their association with God, they gradually confirm God’s existence. Therefore, before they realize it, they have already subconsciously approved of and come to firmly believe in God’s work, and they have approved of God’s words. Once people approve of God’s words and work, they unceasingly deny themselves, deny their own notions, deny their own knowledge, deny their own imaginings, and at the same time also unceasingly seek what the truth is and what God’s intentions are. People’s knowledge of God is quite superficial during this period of development—they are even unable to clearly express this knowledge in words, nor can they express it concretely—and they only have a feeling-based understanding; however, when juxtaposed with the preceding three stages, because they have received watering and the supply of God’s words, the immature lives of people have already begun to sprout in this period. Their lives are like a seed buried in the ground; after obtaining moisture and nutrients, it breaks through the soil, and its sprouting represents the birth of a new life. This birth allows one to see the signs of life. When people have life, they grow. Therefore, upon these foundations—gradually making their way onto the right track of believing in God, letting go of their own notions, and obtaining God’s guidance—people’s lives will inevitably grow little by little. Upon what basis is this growth measured? It is measured according to the person’s experience with God’s words and their true experiential understanding of God’s righteous disposition. Although they find it very difficult to use their own words to accurately describe their knowledge of God and His essence during this period of growth, in terms of their subjective wishes, this group of people is no longer willing to seek to take the enjoyment of God’s grace as their pleasure, or to seek to take obtaining God’s grace as their purpose in their belief in God, but is willing to seek to live by God’s word and to become the subjects of God’s salvation. Moreover, they are confident and ready to accept God’s judgment and chastisement. This is the mark of a person in the stage of development.

Although people in this stage have some knowledge of God’s righteous disposition, it is very hazy and not concrete. While they cannot clearly express this knowledge, they feel they have already gained something internally, for they have obtained some measure of knowledge and firsthand understanding of God’s righteous disposition through God’s chastisement and judgment. It’s just that it is all rather superficial, and it is still at an elementary stage. This group of people has a specific point of view with which they treat God’s grace, which is expressed in the changes to the objectives they pursue and their methods of pursuit. They have already seen in God’s words and work, in all kinds of His requirements of man, and in His exposures of man, that if they still do not pursue the truth, if they still do not seek to enter reality, if they still do not seek to satisfy and know God as they experience His words, then they will lose the meaning of believing in God. They see that no matter how much of God’s grace they enjoy, they cannot change their disposition, satisfy God, or know God, and that if man continuously lives under God’s grace then he will never achieve growth, gain life, or be able to attain salvation. In summary, if a person is unable to have true experiences of God’s words and unable to know God through His words, then they will forever remain at the stage of the infant and never make a single step forward in the growth of their life. If you forever exist in the stage of the infant, if you are never able to enter the reality of God’s word, if you are never able to have God’s word as your life, and if you are never able to possess true belief and knowledge of God, then is there any hope of you being made complete by God? Therefore, all those who enter the reality of God’s word, all those who accept God’s word as their lives, all those who begin to accept God’s chastisement and judgment, all those whose corrupt dispositions begin to change, who have hearts that thirst for the truth, and who have a desire to know God and a desire to accept God’s salvation—only these people are the ones who truly possess life. Only they are truly the fourth type of person—that is, the type who is in the stage of the child’s development, the stage of childhood.

Type Five: The Stage of Life’s Maturation, or the Adult Stage

After experiencing the stage of toddling childhood, a stage of development full of repetition, people’s lives become stabilized, their forward paces no longer pause, and nobody is able to obstruct them. Although the path ahead is still rough and rugged, they are no longer weak or fearful, and they no longer grope their way forward or lose their bearings. Their foundations are rooted deep within the real experience of God’s word, and their hearts have been drawn in by God’s nobility and greatness. They yearn to follow God’s footsteps, to know God’s essence, and to know everything about God.

People in this stage already know clearly who they believe in, and they know clearly why they should believe in God and the meaning of their own lives, and they know clearly that everything God expresses is the truth. In their many years of experience, they realize that without God’s judgment and chastisement, a person will never be able to satisfy or know God and will never be able to truly come before God. Within these people’s hearts is a strong desire for God’s trials to descend on them, so that they may see God’s righteous disposition amid God’s trials, so that they may attain a purer love, and at the same time be able to more truly understand and know God. People in this stage have already entirely bid farewell to the infant stage, and the stage of enjoying God’s grace and eating their fill of loaves. They no longer place extravagant hopes on God showing mercy and forbearance toward them; rather, they are confident to accept and hope for God’s unceasing chastisement and judgment, so as to cast off their corrupt dispositions and satisfy God. Their knowledge of God and their pursuits, or the final goals of their pursuits, are all very clear in their hearts. Therefore, people in the adult stage have already completely bid farewell to the stage of fanciful faith, to the stage in which they rely on grace for salvation, to the stage of immature life that cannot withstand trials, to the stage of haziness, to the stage of groping their way forward, to the stage of frequently having no path to walk, to the unstable period of running hot and cold, and to the stage where they follow God with their eyes covered. People of this type frequently receive God’s enlightenment and illumination, and frequently engage in true association and communication with God. One can say that people living in this stage have already grasped part of God’s intentions, that they are able to find the principles of the truth in what they do, and that they know how to satisfy God’s intentions. Furthermore, they have also found the path to knowing God and have begun to bear witness to their knowledge of God. During the process of gradual growth, they gradually gain firsthand understanding and knowledge of God’s intentions, His intention in creating mankind, and His intention in managing mankind. They also gradually gain substantive firsthand understanding and knowledge of God’s righteous disposition. No human notion or imagining can replace this knowledge. While the life of a person in the fifth stage cannot be said to be completely mature, and they cannot be called a righteous person or a perfect person, this kind of person has nonetheless already taken a step toward the stage of maturity in life and is already able to come before God and stand face to face with God’s word and with God. Because this kind of person has experienced so much of God’s word, experienced innumerable trials, and experienced innumerable instances of discipline and judgment and chastisement from God, their submission to God is not relative but absolute. Their knowledge of God has transformed from subconscious to clear and accurate knowledge, from superficial to deep, from blurry and hazy to meticulous and concrete. They have moved on from laboriously groping their way forward and passively seeking to coming to know with ease and actively bearing witness. It can be said that people in this stage possess the truth reality of God’s word, that they have stepped onto the same path to being perfected as Peter. This is the fifth type of person, the type of person who lives in the stage of life’s maturation, or the adult stage.

December 14, 2013