By Li Min, China

In August 2012, a relative preached Almighty God’s work of the last days to me. I saw that the words of Almighty God are all the truth, and recognized that Almighty God is the Lord Jesus returned. I was very excited. I hadn’t thought that I would be able to welcome the return of the Lord Jesus in my lifetime. This really was God’s grace; God was raising me up! My husband and I had been married for many years, and we had a loving marriage. I had to tell the good news of God coming to save mankind to my husband, so that he would have the opportunity to be saved by God. It would be great if we could believe in God and enter the kingdom together! When I preached the gospel to my husband, he said he was busy at work and didn’t have time, but he didn’t oppose me believing in God. As God’s gospel of the kingdom spread rapidly throughout Mainland China, the CCP began to wantonly fabricate rumors and libels, planting evidence to blacken The Church of Almighty God. My husband read many negative rumors on his phone. When he found out that I could be arrested and sentenced by the government for believing in God, and it might even affect our child’s future education and employment, he started to persecute me to stop me believing in God.

One afternoon in March 2013, my husband, who was working away from home, made a special trip and drove back home. With a solemn face, he told me, “The police went to the mine to arrest a colleague of mine for believing in Almighty God. If he hadn’t run fast, they would have caught him. Now my heart is on tenterhooks all day long because you believe in God. If you were arrested one day, what would become of us? Our child is so young—who would take care of him? The government now does not allow you to believe in Almighty God. If you do believe, they’ll arrest you. Why don’t you wait until the state permits it and then believe? When the time comes, I’ll take our whole family, several dozen people, along to believe in God with you.” I said, “The CCP is an atheist party. It simply doesn’t believe that there is a God. How will it permit people to believe in God? Whether you let me believe or not, I will never betray God.” Seeing that I wasn’t going to do as he said, my husband didn’t say anything further. After he left, I remembered that he had said that if I were arrested for believing in God, there would be nobody to look after our eight-year-old son. I felt deeply pained. I was 40 when I gave birth to our son, and nearly died while giving birth to him. I brought him up myself ever since he was a baby. I treasured him deeply—I felt like if he was in my mouth, I worried that he might melt; if he was in my hands, I worried that I’d drop him. If I were arrested, who would look after him? My heart was in anguish when I thought about this, and I wanted to find a place with nobody around to have a big cry. I didn’t feel like praying, or eating and drinking the words of God. I lived in a negative state.

At a gathering, a sister read me a passage of God’s words: “Who can truly and completely expend themselves for Me and offer up their all for My sake? You are all half-hearted; your thoughts go around and around, thinking of home, of the outside world, of food and clothing. Despite the fact that you are here before Me, doing things for Me, deep down you are still thinking of your wife, children, and parents at home. Are all these things your property? Why do you not entrust them into My hands? Do you not have sufficient faith in Me? Or is it that you are afraid I will make inappropriate arrangements for you? Why do you always worry about the family of your flesh and pine for your loved ones? Do I have a certain place in your heart? You still talk about allowing Me to have dominion within you and occupy your entire being—these are all deceptive lies! How many of you are wholeheartedly committed to the church? And who among you think not of yourselves, but are acting for the sake of the kingdom of today?” (The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. Utterances of Christ in the Beginning, Chapter 59). From God’s words, I understood that everything is held in God’s hands. God arranges the heavens and earth and all things in perfect order, to say nothing of a child’s destiny. Whether I am arrested and whether my child will suffer is all up to God. I remember when I didn’t believe in God, my son, who was 3, broke his arm. When he was 6, a car ran into him and he was covered in injuries. When he was 8, he broke a finger when it got trapped in a car door. Even though I was by his side, carefully looking after him, it was unavoidable that he had experienced some disasters. Ever since I believed in God and started doing my duty in the church, although I wasn’t by my son’s side every day, my son grew safely and healthily under God’s protection. He was better looked after than when I was at home. This shows that people’s destinies are held in God’s hands. When I thought this, I stopped worrying about my son and my heart felt much more liberated. I continued doing my duty.

Later, my husband repeatedly tried to persuade me to abandon my belief in God. When he saw that he really couldn’t persuade me, he began to persecute me and stop me. In July, my husband took three months’ leave. He shadowed my every move all day long, and proclaimed, “I will report any believers in God that I find and send them to jail!” I didn’t dare to attend gatherings, afraid to put my brothers and sisters in potential danger. At home, my husband scowled at me, and cursed me viciously all day long, saying whatever was nastiest and would vent his rage. He also turned the house upside down. If he found books of the words of God, he’d rip them up. If he discovered an MP5 player, he’d smash it. During that time, I was in extreme anguish. It was an impossible dream to calm my heart down and pray to God or read the words of God. Every day, I had to put up with my husband’s verbal abuse and persecution. I felt that it was just too hard to follow God’s new work. My husband didn’t persecute me when I believed in Jesus in the church, so maybe it was better to go back to the church and believe in Jesus. But you simply cannot hear God’s expressions of truth in the last days in the church. You are not watered and supplied by God’s words, so however many years you attend the church, it will all be in vain; you will not be saved and enter the kingdom. I thought back to all those years of believing in Jesus, of hoping and waiting, before finally seeing God’s appearance, and welcoming the return of the Lord; to how I had the opportunity to accept God’s last days’ judgment and purification, and to how because of my husband’s persecution and obstruction, I nearly abandoned my belief in Almighty God. I was so unwilling that it felt as if I had ten thousand hearts, all screaming, “No!” In anguish, I prayed to God, “Almighty God, My husband spends every day using despicable methods to obstruct and verbally abuse me. He also follows me. I have no chance to read Your words, and do not dare approach my brothers and sisters. I feel like I am living in a crevice. I am in such anguish and torment! Dear God, it was a difficult wait for Your return, and I am not willing to leave You. Please listen to my prayer and open up a road for me.”

Later, I read the words of God: “When you face suffering, you must be able to lay aside concern for the flesh and to not make complaints against God. When God hides Himself from you, you must be able to have the faith to follow Him, to maintain your previous love without allowing it to falter or dissipate. No matter what God does, you must let Him orchestrate as He wishes and be willing to curse your own flesh rather than make complaints against Him. When you are faced with trials, you must be willing to endure the pain of giving up what you love, and be willing to weep bitterly, to satisfy God. Only this is true love and faith. No matter what your actual stature is, you must first possess both the will to suffer hardship and true faith, and you must also have the will to rebel against the flesh. You should be willing to personally endure hardships and to suffer losses to your personal interests in order to satisfy God’s intentions. You must also be capable of feeling regret about yourself in your heart: In the past, you were unable to satisfy God, and now, you can regret yourself. You must not be lacking in any of these regards—it is through these things that God will perfect you. If you cannot meet these criteria, then you cannot be perfected” (The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. Those Who Are to Be Made Perfect Must Undergo Refinement). After reading the words of God, I understood that my husband’s persecution and obstruction were permitted by God. God had done this to perfect my faith and my will to suffer hardship. When I first started to believe in God, and saw His grace and blessings, and everything was smooth, I was happy, and had faith to follow God. However, when I was persecuted and verbally abused by my husband, and I had to suffer hardship, I lost my faith in God and even thought about returning to the Three-Self Church. I was a weakling, without any will to suffer hardship at all. I had to pray earnestly to God and ask God to give me faith and the will to suffer hardship. I remembered a passage of God’s words I had read at a gathering: “Man’s heart and spirit are held in the hand of God, everything of his life is beheld in the eyes of God. Regardless of whether or not you believe this, any and all things, whether living or dead, will shift, change, renew, and disappear in accordance with God’s thoughts. Such is the way in which God presides over all things” (The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. God Is the Source of Man’s Life). I understood that everything, living or not, is held in God’s hands, and that my husband’s thoughts and ideas were also held in God’s hands. I had to have faith in God and rely on God as I experienced this situation. Next, God opened up a road for me. For a time, my husband took his quilt into another room to sleep, and I was able to calm down my heart and pray to God. Sometimes, my husband had to go out, and I would use the short time he was out to find my brothers and sisters and download the latest videos from the house of God. As soon as I had the chance, I would read the words of God and watch the videos sent by the house of God. Gradually, my relationship with God became much more normal, and my heart felt less tormented. After three months, my husband’s leave was at an end and he went back to work. I was able to attend church life normally again.

However, these good times did not last for long. After two months, there was a major mining accident, resulting in major casualties. The government forced all mines to stop work, so my husband had another two months of leave. As before, he stayed at home, following me and monitoring me. He wouldn’t let me go to gatherings or read the words of God. One evening, I saw my husband surfing the internet on his computer. I took this opportunity to go to the bedroom, hide under the covers, and listen to sermons and fellowship about life entry. After half an hour, my husband came into the bedroom. Instinctively, I hid my MP5 player, but my husband discovered it and snatched at it as if he were crazy. He said viciously, “Do you want me to kill you!? You still dare believe! How dare you listen! How dare you believe!” As he spoke, he grabbed the MP5 player and smashed it violently on the floor. It shattered, and I hurriedly went to pick it up. My husband then punched and kicked me, relentlessly slapping my face and kicking me. Not long after, I had been beaten so badly that my face was all bruised and swollen, and my nose and mouth were bleeding. Our son was standing to one side, trembling with fright, and crying out through his tears in a trembling voice, “Dad, stop hitting Mom! Don’t hit Mom!” Only then did my husband stop. Viciously, he said, “If it wasn’t for our child, I’d have beaten you to death tonight! I’d have broken your legs to see if you still dared to continue believing in God!” I was chilled to my heart at being treated like this by my husband. I thought of how we’d been together for so many years as I put all my heart into looking after this family. But then, because of my belief in God, he beat me up and wanted to see me dead. If it hadn’t been for my son begging him to stop, I don’t know what state he would have left me in. He really was a devil revealing itself. Later, my husband called his younger brothers and sisters. They came and saw me lying on the bed. Without saying a single word, they dragged and shoved me from the bed to the living room. I sat on the sofa, completely out of strength. His second sister-in-law said viciously, “Don’t you have better things to do? What were you thinking, setting a good life to one side and insisting on believing in some God instead?!” His fourth sister-in-law said, “You know that the government is arresting people who believe in Almighty God, yet you still believe. You deserved the beating my brother gave you!” His brother-in-law was on the sidelines, fanning the flames, “I see my big brother is too gentle when he beats you. My aunt has the same belief as you. Each time she goes out, my uncle beats her. Every time, he beats her halfway to death.” My niece, just over ten years old, also pointed at me and said viciously, “Auntie, you’re such a fool. There are several dozen people in our family, and none of us believe this. It’s just you!” Looking at them all lining up to attack me, the words pouring from their mouths, I felt unbearably sad, “I haven’t broken the law by believing in God, and I haven’t done anything wrong. Yet they’re treating me like an enemy! I can live with the adults attacking me, but here is my niece pointing at me and criticizing me!” I felt utterly ashamed, and my dignity had been deeply humiliated. I was in anguish, and prayed silently, “Dear God, I do not know how to cope with this situation. I ask You, please enlighten and guide me.” After I prayed, I remembered a hymn of the words of God “God Loves Man With Wounds”: “God in the flesh endures ridicule, insult, judgment, and condemnation from all kinds of people as well as being pursued by demons and rejection and hostility from the religious world, creating wounds in the soul which no one could make up for. He saves corrupt humanity with immense patience, He loves people despite His wounds, and this is deeply painful work. Humanity’s vicious resistance, condemnation and slander, false accusations, persecution, and their pursuit and killing makes God’s flesh do this work at a great risk to Himself. Who could understand Him as He suffers these pains, and who could comfort Him?” (The Word, Vol. 3. The Discourses of Christ of the Last Days. The Essence of Christ Is Love). God’s words warmed my heart, like a warm current. God is innocent, and became flesh on earth to save humanity. God is subjected to arrests and baseless rumors by the governing party, condemnation and rejection by the religious community, and curses and blasphemies by the people of the world. God endures this much suffering, yet still expresses the truth and does His work to save humanity. He’s never abandoned His salvation of us in the slightest. In contrast, I am a profoundly corrupt person. Because I was rejected, beaten, and cursed by my family for believing in God, and my face and status were damaged somewhat, I couldn’t bear it. I thought that I didn’t have any way forward. I was so weak and incapable! Thinking about it, I was humiliated for believing in God. This is being persecuted for righteousness. It is glorious. It is not disgraceful or shameful at all. Also, it was precisely their persecution and obstruction that helped me gain some discernment of their essence, which hated God and hated the truth. By believing in God and doing my duty, I am walking the correct path in my life. What I am doing is the most just thing among humankind. No matter how they obstructed or persecuted me, I must follow God to the end. Seeing that I was not making a peep, his second younger brother deployed more sinister methods. He said to my husband, “Bro, my sister-in-law just isn’t listening no matter what we say. Believing in God won’t just get her arrested by the government. It’ll also impact on your son getting into university or finding a job. There’s no point in us saying anything more to her. Bring a pen and paper over and get her to write a letter of guarantee that she will not believe in God.” I thought to myself, “People are created by God. For people to believe in God and worship God is perfectly natural and justified. You don’t believe in God, and you even follow the CCP and force me to write a letter of guarantee stating I won’t believe in God. Impossible!” I silently prayed to God, “Dear God, No matter how these people persecute me, I would rather die than write this. I will stand firm in my testimony to You and humiliate Satan. I ask You, please give me more faith and strength.” By that time it was already past midnight, but they showed absolutely no sign of letting up. I wisely said, “In the future, I’ll do my believing at home. I won’t go out.” Only then did they let up. I never expected that several months later, I would be persecuted, surrounded, and attacked by my side of the family.

One day in February 2014, I was preparing to go out and do my duty. I was about to go out when my husband grabbed my collar and threw me to the floor. He said viciously, “Today you’re not going anywhere. We’re going to the Civil Affairs Bureau to get divorced!” When I heard my husband say he wanted a divorce, I thought to myself, “From when I started believing in God to now, I have constantly been persecuted and obstructed by you. Not only am I unable to live church life, I can’t do my duty. I don’t even have any opportunities for devotionals or eating and drinking the words of God. If we don’t get divorced, I won’t be able to believe in God and follow God properly.” So I said, “If you want a divorce, let’s get divorced. Let’s go to the Civil Affairs Bureau.” We then arrived at the Civil Affairs Bureau, but we didn’t manage to get divorced because we needed to exchange our household registration booklet. In the afternoon, my husband called some of my brothers and sisters from my side of the family and got them to come over. He said, “I want to divorce her today because her belief in God is opposed by the state. Not only is she at risk of being arrested, but I and our children might be dragged in as well. No matter what I said, she wouldn’t listen; she just wants to believe. Today, I got you here so you could try and persuade her not to believe in God anymore and have a nice normal life at home. I’m giving her two options: First, give up her belief in God and have a nice normal life at home. I will let bygones be bygones, and will go out and earn money as normal. Second, if she continues to believe in God, we will get divorced and I will take custody of our children. The house will be our children’s, and everything in the house will be our children’s. She will be out of the family with nothing to her name.” When my older brother heard this, he screamed at me, “Our parents have passed away, and an older brother should be obeyed as a father. Whatever I say, you have to do! However good your belief in God is, if state policy does not permit it then you mustn’t believe. Wait until the state permits it and then believe!” My third younger brother said, “Sis, you know that the government arrests those who believe in God, and yet you still believe. Are you not sticking your head in a lion’s mouth?” I resolutely said, “I am set on walking the path of believing in God. Whatever you say is useless! I believed in Jesus for so many years, finally seeing the Lord’s return after a long and difficult wait. It is impossible for you to make me betray God!” My husband, in a towering rage, said, “Since nobody can convince you, let’s go and get divorced!” My brothers and sisters, seeing that my husband was about to divorce me, got anxious. My younger sister, crying to one side, said, “This was once a harmonious family and now it’s about to be shattered. What’s the sense in you believing in God?” My other relatives, all talking a mile a minute, tried to persuade me to live a nice normal life at home. When I heard them, I felt troubled at heart. I silently called on God, “Dear God, I am faced with all these relatives obstructing me, and my heart has been disturbed. I don’t know what to do. God, may You enlighten and guide me.” I remembered the words of God: “In every step of work that God does on people, externally it appears to be interactions between people, as if born of human arrangements or from human disturbance. But behind the scenes, every step of work, and everything that happens, is a wager made by Satan before God, and requires people to stand firm in their testimony to God. Take when Job was tried, for example: Behind the scenes, Satan was making a wager with God, and what happened to Job was the deeds of men and the disturbance of men” (The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. Only Loving God Is Truly Believing in God). The words of God brought about a sudden enlightenment in me. Satan’s schemes were behind the way my husband and family were persecuting and obstructing my belief in God. I thought of when Satan abused Job. On the outside, it appeared that all of Job’s possessions had been robbed, and his children had died in the collapse of the house. But this was actually Satan accusing Job before God. Although Job didn’t know the inside story at the time, he didn’t complain about God. He even said, “Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: Jehovah gave, and Jehovah has taken away; blessed be the name of Jehovah” (Job 1:21). When Job stood firm in his testimony to God, Satan was utterly humiliated and left. God’s heart also gained consolation. Now, I understood that as a created being, when Satan’s disturbances and attacks come upon me, I should stand firm in my testimony to God and humiliate Satan. This family would not let me believe in God, and if I stayed here any longer, I would only lose my chance to gain the truth and be saved. When I thought about this, I said to them, “We’re getting divorced!” I finished speaking and was about to stand up when my third younger brother gave me a vicious slap in the face and kicked me. Crying, he said, “Sis, you’ve really gone crazy! All of us are trying to persuade you, and you haven’t listened to a word!” My younger daughter, crying, said, “Mom, don’t divorce Dad. What will you do after divorcing? What are we going to do?” When I heard this, I knew it was one of Satan’s schemes, and that Satan was once again using affections to tempt me. I thought for a while, and then said calmly, “Don’t worry about me. I chose my own path.” Then I said to my daughters, “Your father will look after your little brother. The two of you are all grown up and have families of your own: you’re able to look after yourselves.” When I finished speaking, I went downstairs.

On the way to the Civil Affairs Bureau, my husband took out the divorce agreement and asked me to sign. He also asked me what I wanted. I said I didn’t want anything, and signed the agreement. The moment I finished signing, my heart felt extremely liberated. The car hadn’t quite arrived at the Civil Affairs Bureau when I saw the whole family, who had just been pressuring me, standing outside the door. After we got out of the car, they rushed up to block us. My elder daughter said that she wanted to take me to my sister’s house for a change of scenery. My son-in-law said he was going to take my husband out drinking. The crisis of the divorce just ended like this. Afterward, my husband never mentioned the divorce again, and never again asked me to write a letter of guarantee stating I wouldn’t believe in God. I saw that when I relied on God with my true heart and stood firm in my testimony, Satan was humiliated and failed.

Once, during my devotional, I read God’s words, which helped me better discern my husband. Almighty God says: “Why does a husband love his wife? Why does a wife love her husband? Why are children dutiful to their parents? Why do parents dote on their children? What sorts of intentions do people actually harbor? Is their intent not to satisfy their own plans and selfish desires? Do they truly mean to act for the sake of God’s management plan? Are they really acting for the sake of God’s work? Is their intent to fulfill the duties of a created being?… There is no relationship between a believing husband and a nonbelieving wife, and there is no relationship between believing children and nonbelieving parents; these two types of people are completely incompatible. Prior to entering into rest, one has physical relatives, but once one has entered into rest, one will no longer have any physical relatives to speak of” (The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. God and Man Will Enter Into Rest Together). I thought back to how, before I accepted God’s new work, my husband treated me well so I would look after the children and the house for him, so he wouldn’t have any worries at home. When I believed in God despite the government not permitting it, he worried that if I was arrested one day, his pride and interests would suffer, while there would be nobody to look after our son. Therefore, he used all kinds of tricks and schemes to persecute me and try to stop me from believing in God. First, he used honeyed words to persuade and tempt me. When this didn’t work, he switched to curses and beatings. He seemed eager to beat me to death. He even colluded with his relatives to force me to write a letter of guarantee in betrayal of God, and said if I didn’t write it he would divorce me. My husband spared no effort and racked his brain to obstruct my belief in God. As God exposed, there are no familial feelings between people at all, only relationships of interest. My husband was not genuinely treating me well. Only God gives people genuine love and selfless salvation. I now had more faith and a greater will to follow Almighty God.

Afterward, I was no longer constrained by my husband when going out to gatherings or doing my duty. My husband saw that he really could not obstruct me, and so he stopped interfering. My relatives also stopped mentioning anything to do with believing in God. It was the words of Almighty God that guided me to leave behind the dark influence of my family. I am no longer obstructed and disturbed by my husband, and can do my duty normally. Thank God!