Now, when it comes to the form in which God performs His work in the last days, despite the fact that some people produce certain imaginings and notions about it, these imaginings and notions are largely incapable of obstructing their faith in God, and people will not casually say that they don’t believe in God or deny God. What is this phenomenon? This is the result achieved by God’s words. People have been conquered by God’s words and work, and can basically accept Christ as their God. In this sense, people have basically laid down a foundation on the true way, and they are certain about it and sure about it. When this result is achieved, are people’s misunderstandings about God then resolved? (No, they’re not.) That their misunderstandings are not resolved proves that they still have many imaginings, requirements, and notions about God’s incarnate flesh and about Christ. These notions can guide your thoughts, guide the direction and goals of your pursuit, and they can also frequently influence your state. When the matters you encounter do not touch upon your notions, you are still able to eat and drink God’s words and perform your duty normally. The moment something clashes with your notions, goes beyond your notions, and contradictions arise, how do you resolve this? Do you give free rein to your notions, or do you prune them, restrain them, and rebel against them? Some people have notions when things happen to them, and not only do they not let their notions go, but they also go and spread their notions to others and find opportunities to vent them, so that others come to have notions too. Some people also argue, saying, “You say everything God does is meaningful, but I don’t think this particular occurrence has any meaning.” Is this appropriate to say? (No.) What is the correct path to take? When some people have notions about God, they can realize that their relationship with God isn’t normal, that they have formed misunderstandings about God, and that it will become very dangerous if they don’t resolve them, that they will be likely to conflict with God, question God, and even betray God. They then pray to God and relinquish their notions. First, they deny their own incorrect perspective, then they seek the truth to resolve it. By doing this, they can easily come to submit to God. If someone forms notions, but still believes that they are right, and if they are ultimately unable to completely let go of or resolve their notions, then over time these notions will exert an influence on their life entry. In severe cases, they can even rebel against God and resist Him, and the consequence of this does not bear thinking about. If it is someone who pursues the truth, who already understands some truths and who occasionally forms notions about things, this is not such a big problem, and their notions will not have a great influence on them. Because they have the truth within them, directing their thoughts and behavior, and guiding them in the performance of their duty, their notions will have no impact on them following God. Perhaps one day they will listen to a sermon or some fellowship and they will understand, and their notions will be resolved. Some people form notions about God’s orchestrations and arrangements, and afterward they don’t feel like doing their duties, and they don’t put effort into performing them, they’re always in a negative state, and their hearts harbor conflict, dissatisfaction, and resentment—is this behavior right? Is this an easy thing to resolve? For example, suppose that you think yourself clever, but I say that you are a fool and that you don’t have spiritual understanding. Upon hearing this, you become angry and conflict with it, and you say to yourself in your heart, “No one has ever dared to say I don’t have spiritual understanding. Today is the first time I’ve heard this and I cannot accept it. Could I lead the church if I didn’t have spiritual understanding? Could I do this much work?” A contradiction has arisen, right? What should you do? Is it easy for people to reflect on themselves when this happens to them? What kind of person can reflect on themselves? Someone who accepts the truth and seeks the truth can reflect on themselves. If you are someone who possesses reason, you should first deny yourself when this happens to you; denying oneself means acknowledging that one does not possess the truth. Even if you have some ideas and perspectives, they are not necessarily accurate. Therefore, to practice denying yourself in such circumstances is the correct thing to do, it is not debasing yourself. After you’ve denied yourself, you will feel at peace in your heart, you will be much more well-behaved, and your attitude will be corrected. When you hear God say that you are a fool and that you don’t have spiritual understanding, you should quiet yourself before God and accept His words with a submissive mindset. Even though you don’t yet have any consciousness or understanding of God’s words, and you don’t know whether they are right or not, within your belief you should acknowledge that: “God is truth, so how could God say something wrong?” Even though what God said differs from what you think, you must accept God’s words based on faith; even if you don’t understand them, you must accept them as the truth. Doing this is guaranteed to be correct. If people don’t accept God’s words as the truth when they don’t understand them, that is so lacking in reason, and those people must be shamed in this matter. So, submitting to God can never be wrong. This isn’t doctrine, this is practical, and these words come from experience. Then, when you are able to take God’s words as the truth and accept them, you must begin to reflect on yourself. Through performing duty and interacting with others, you will discover that not only do you not have spiritual understanding, you are also incredibly foolish, and have many faults and deficiencies, and you will discover that you have a serious problem. Won’t that mean that you’ll be able to understand and accept what God has said? You must accept these words, first as a regulation, a definition, or a concept, and then in real life you must think of a way to compare yourself to His words, and to understand and experience them. After a while doing this, you will come to possess an accurate assessment of yourself. When that happens, will you still have misunderstandings about God? Will you still refuse to accept God’s assessment of you if there is no disagreement between you and God on this matter? (No.) You will be able to accept it and will no longer be rebellious. When you can accept the truth and thoroughly understand these things, you will then be able to take a step forward and make progress. If you don’t accept the truth, then you will always be standing in one place and will not make any progress. Is it important to accept the truth? (Yes, it is.) People must relinquish their notions about God, and they mustn’t harbor any hostility toward or conflict with the things God says—only this is an attitude of accepting the truth. Some people become negative and weak because they are replaced. They don’t want to perform their duties and are always passive and slacking off work. From the outside, it looks as though it’s because they have no status and they cherish status too much, but this is not in fact the case. They feel weak and negative simply because God’s assessment of them, or the assessment the brothers and sisters have of them, doesn’t match with their own assessment of themselves, because it is poorer than how they assess and understand themselves. That’s why they feel unconvinced and aggrieved, and ultimately, they decide to be negative and antagonistic, and to write themselves off as hopeless, thinking, “Didn’t You say that I’m not good enough? Then I’ll show You, I’m not going to do anything at all.” The result of this is that they cause delays to their duties, they offend God, and their own life entry grinds to a halt—this is a significant loss.

Some people say, “I can’t accept it when Christ says I’m bad. I’d accept it if the God in heaven said there was something bad about me. The incarnate God has normal humanity, His judgments can be wrong, and the things He does cannot be 100 percent correct. There are some questions over whether He could be mistaken in His assessment and condemnation of people, or in how He handles and makes arrangements for them. So I’m not afraid of what Christ—the God on earth—says about me, for He cannot condemn me or determine my outcome.” Do such people exist? They certainly do. When I prune them, they say, “The God in heaven is righteous!” When I handle them, they say, “I believe in God, not some person!” They use these words to rebuff Me. And what are these words? (They are a denial of God.) That’s right, they are a denial and a betrayal of God. What they mean is, “This is not up to You, but the God of heaven.” In their notions and in their understanding of God, these people will never realize what the relationship is between the incarnate Christ and the God in heaven, that is, what the relationship is between the flesh and the Spirit in heaven. In their eyes, this insignificant person on earth will always be just a person, and no matter how many truths this person expresses, how many sermons He preaches, He is still a human; even if He makes some people complete, and brings them salvation, He will still be on earth, He will still be a person, and incapable of transcending the God in heaven. Thus, these people believe that faith in God must be the faith in the God in heaven; to them, only belief in the God in heaven is the true belief in God. People like this believe however they wish. They believe in whatever way makes them happy, and they imagine God to be whatever they wish Him to be. They follow their own imagination when it comes to the incarnate Christ, too: “If this God on earth were a little nicer to me, if He made sure that things went well for me, then I would respect Him, and love Him. If He isn’t good to me, if He has a problem with me, if He has a bad attitude toward me, and always prunes me, then He is not my God; I choose to believe in the God in heaven.” People with this attitude are not in the minority. They include you, too, for I have already encountered such people. When all is well, they are pretty nice to Me, and wait on Me attentively, but as soon as I replace them, they turn against Me. So, when they were being good to God, did they really believe that this was God, and Christ? No: What they are eyeing up is the identity and status of God, their every move is nothing more than fawning over the status and identity of God. At all times, they only identify the vague God in heaven as the true God; no matter how many truths this God on earth expresses, or how edifying and beneficial He is to man, the mere fact that He lives in His normal humanity and is of a fleshly body means that He cannot possibly be the God in heaven, and regardless of how these people flatter, serve, and respect this God on earth, in their hearts these people still believe that the God in heaven is the only true God. What do you think of this view? It is fair to say that such a view exists deep in many people’s hearts, that it is buried deep in their subconscious. At the same time as accepting the provision and shepherding of Christ, they are also observing, studying, and questioning Christ—whilst also looking forward to when the righteous God in heaven comes to pass judgment on all they have done. And why do they wish the God in heaven to pass judgment on them? Because they want to go with their preferences, notions and imaginings to give free rein to their desire that the God in heaven—the God of their imagination—shall behave toward them as they wish, whereas the God on earth will not do that; the God on earth only expresses the truth and speaks the truth principles. And they think, “The God in heaven’s love of man is selfless, unconditional, and without limit, whereas as soon as you say or do something wrong and the God on earth finds out, He uses you as a negative example in His sermons and begins dissecting you—so people must be more careful, they must keep themselves more hidden, and they can’t let Him know when something’s up.” Tell Me, am I not able to dissect the things you try to keep from Me? I don’t need to dissect the things you do; I’ll dissect your dispositions and your states. I don’t need to take these things you do as examples; I can still fellowship on the truth and give sermons to solve problems just the same, and I can still enable people to understand the truth. In the hearts of the nonbelievers, they believe that this flesh, this God, cannot know the things which His eyes do not see, much less know anything to do with the spiritual realm or the truth. They believe that He can’t even see the things people are capable of doing when they’re being dominated by their corrupt dispositions, and that He can’t possibly totally understand man’s corrupt essence—this is the logic and reasoning of nonbelievers. They are always approaching Christ with a studying, questioning, and even nonbelieving attitude, and they also use the criteria for measuring man as well as the knowledge they understand and the things they imagine to measure Christ. For example, when talking to others, some people believe that other people don’t know what they think in their hearts or what kind of dispositions they have, and they speak to Me in this way too, treating Me in this way just as they would treat an ordinary person, thinking that I know nothing—isn’t this them not knowing God? They lie to other people and other people don’t mind, and they also lie to Me like that, giggling and treating Me as an equal, always wanting to treat Me like their buddy. They believe they can act that way because they’re familiar with Me, and they think that I may not know anything. Is this not a human notion? This is a human notion, this is human ignorance, and within this ignorance there lurks a satanic wicked disposition; it is this wicked disposition that leads people to form notions. Tell Me, do I need to live with someone, and spend every minute observing their thoughts and views, and totally comprehend their background, in order to expose or see through their nature? (No.) No, I don’t, but you wouldn’t be able to achieve this. Even though you associate with people and live with them every day, you still aren’t able to see through their nature essence. No matter what happens to you, you are only able to see through the surface of things and not their essence. You could only have a little discernment of someone if God were to completely reveal them, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to see through them even if you associated with them for several years. I can be in contact with someone for a day or two, and they do some things, say some things, and express some views, and then I basically know what kind of person they are. However, there are some people who haven’t done anything yet, who I haven’t interacted with or handled anything with, yet I draw a question mark over them, and the moment they encounter an issue and express some view, their nature essence is exposed right away. Many people say, “Can You see through them as soon as their nature essence is exposed? What do You base this insight on? How come we can’t see through them?” If you don’t understand the truth then you won’t be able to take people’s measure, and you will never have the necessary criteria to do so. If you don’t have those criteria, you won’t be able to see through people. I, however, have those criteria. In one respect, I understand the truth, so I’m more perceptive and quicker when it comes to taking someone’s measure, and in another respect, God’s Spirit is at work. Some people think, “When people have lived in this world for a long time, they are able to see through things and people.” That’s not real insight; what is it they see through? The types of scams that exist in this society, such as political scams, business scams, financial scams, or scams related to pornography. These things can be avoided by people who have experienced and heard about them more. People who’ve undergone and experienced these things less are often deceived, but once they’ve been duped more, they gain experience, and they are able to see through them. This is how they see through things. However, when it comes to man’s corruption, nature, and man’s essence that has been corrupted by Satan, if people don’t possess the truth, then they will never have the wisdom to see through these things, and they will never be able to see through the dispositions that various kinds of people reveal behind a matter, or the source of the problem. If you can’t see through these things, then you won’t know how to handle the matter or the related people, events, and things—you will have no way to handle it and you won’t have the wisdom to handle it. That’s why when you encounter such a matter, you feel very flustered and agitated, and you find it difficult to deal with. If you understand the truth clearly, then you’ll be able to see through people’s corrupt dispositions and the essence of their corrupt dispositions. Through seeing the corrupt dispositions they reveal, you’ll come to know their essence, and then you’ll know what kind of thing they are, what kind of person they are, you’ll know how to guard against them, how to discern them, and you’ll know how to cope with this matter. Isn’t this the source of wisdom? (It is.) So, Christ can see through man and supply man—what is the source of all this? To say it in doctrinal terms, it all comes from the Spirit of God. To say it in more practical terms, it’s because Christ possesses the truth that comes from God. This is how it is. When one day you come to possess the truth reality as your life, you will then have wisdom and you will be able to see through people.

There is another aspect to human notions, and that is the notions people form about God’s work. How do people’s notions about God’s work come about? Some come from people’s previous comprehension of faith, and some come from their own imaginings about the work of God. For example, people used to imagine God’s work of judgment as there being a big white throne in the sky, with God upon the throne judging all peoples. Today, you all know that such imaginings are unrealistic—such things are impossible. Whatever the case, people have many imaginings about God’s work, management, and treatment of man, and most of these imaginings come from human predilections. Why do I say this? Because people do not want to suffer. They always want to follow God to the very end with ease, enjoy ample grace, inherit His blessings, and then enter the kingdom of heaven. What a wonderful thought! The most common and extravagant idea that corrupt mankind has about the work of God is breezing into the kingdom of heaven upon a sedan chair. Moreover, when people encounter the work of God, most of the time they are incapable of understanding it; they do not know the truth it contains, or what God’s aim is in doing this work, and why God behaves toward man thus. For example, I have previously described God’s love using the words “vast” and “immense,” but I think it likely you have never understood just what I meant by these two words. What was My aim in using these two words? It was to get everyone’s attention, so that you would go and reflect on them. Superficially, these words seem empty. They do have a certain meaning, but no matter how much thought people give them, all they can come up with is, “Vast—it means as boundless as the sky; it is saying that God’s heart is boundless, there is no limit to His love for mankind!” God’s love is not the kind of love that can be imagined by the mind of man. People are incapable of imagining this love, they must not use learning and knowledge to interpret this word, but must use another method to appreciate and experience it. Ultimately, you come to sense truly that the love of God is different from the love spoken of by people, that the true love of God is unlike any other kind of love, unlike the love understood by all mankind. So what exactly is this love of God? How should you understand God’s love? First you must not approach it with the notions and imaginings of man. Take a mother’s love, for example: A mother’s love toward her children is unconditional, it is extremely protective and warm. Right now, does the love of God for man that you feel have the same level of sensation and meaning as a mother’s love? (Yes.) Then this is a problem—it is wrong. You must distinguish God’s love from the love of parents, of a husband, wife, or children, of your kin, from the concern of friends, and come to know the love of God anew. Just what is the love of God? The love of God is without fleshly feelings and is unaffected by relationships of blood. It is love pure and simple. So how should people understand the love of God? Why have we come to discuss the love of God? The love of God is embodied in the work of God, so that people acknowledge it, accept it, and experience it, and ultimately realize that this is the love of God, and acknowledge that this is the truth, that God’s love is not empty words, nor some form of behavior on the part of God, but the truth. When you accept it as the truth, you will be able to recognize this aspect of God’s essence from it. If you treat it as some form of behavior, you will have difficulty recognizing it. What is meant by “behavior”? Take mothers, for example: They give their youth, their blood, their sweat and tears to bring up their children, and they give them whatever they want. Regardless of whether her child has done right or wrong, or what path they take, a mother gives selflessly, meets her child’s needs, never teaching, helping or guiding her child how to follow the right path, just constantly caring for, loving and protecting them, to the extent that ultimately, the child cannot tell right from wrong. This is the love of a mother or any kind of love born of the flesh, feelings, and fleshly relationships of man. The love of God, meanwhile, is exactly the opposite: If God loves you, He expresses this by often chastening, disciplining, and pruning you. Although your days may pass uncomfortably, amid chastening and discipline, once you have experienced this, you will discover that you have learned much, that you have discernment and are wise when it comes to interacting with other people, and also that you have come to understand some truths. If the love of God were like the love of a mother or father, as you imagine it to be, if He were so scrupulous in His care, and invariably indulgent, could you gain these things? You could not. And so, the love of God people can comprehend is different from the true love of God they can experience in His work; people must approach it according to God’s words and seek the truth in His words in order to know what true love is. If they do not seek the truth, how could someone who is corrupt conjure, out of thin air, an understanding of what God’s love is, what the aim of His work in man is, and where His painstaking intentions lie? People would never understand these things. This is the most likely misunderstanding people have about God’s work, and it is the aspect of God’s essence that people find most difficult to understand. People must experience it profoundly and personally and practically engage with it and appreciate it in order to be able to understand it. Ordinarily, when people say “love” they mean giving someone what they like, not giving them something bitter when they want something sweet, or even if sometimes they are given something bitter, it is in order to treat an illness; in brief, it involves the selfishness, the feelings, and the flesh of man; it involves aims and motivations. But no matter what God does in you, no matter how He judges and chastises you, chastens and disciplines you, or how He prunes you, even if you misunderstand Him, and even complain about Him in your heart, God shall, with unflagging patience, continue to work in you. What is God’s ultimate aim in doing this? He uses this method to awaken you, so that one day you can understand God’s will. But when God sees this outcome, what has He gained? He has actually gained nothing. And why do I say this? Because your all comes from God. God does not need to gain anything. All He needs is for people to properly follow and enter in accordance with what He requires while He performs His work, to ultimately be able to live out the truth reality, to live with the likeness of man, and no longer be misled, beguiled, and tempted by Satan, to be able to rebel against Satan, to submit to and worship God, and then God is well pleased, and His great work is done. What does God gain? God gains you and you can praise God. But what does your praise mean to God? Would God not be God if you did not praise Him? Would God not be almighty if you did not praise Him? Would you not praising God change His essence or His status? (No.) No. This can only be said to be the love and work of God. Is there this meaning to your understanding of God’s love as vast and immense? (No.) Your understanding has not reached that point. Even when someone breaks God’s heart, and others think there is no way God could save them, what is God’s attitude when they reflect on themselves, realize the error of their ways and repent, and put aside the evil in their hands and accept His salvation? God accepts them all the same. As long as people take the right path, God will not hold people’s transgressions to account. This is the love of God. What notion of man is to be remedied here? It is the notion regarding the way God loves. People should leave their various notions and imaginings behind; they must seek the truth and understand the truth in order to be able to let their notions go. It is easy to leave one’s notions behind, but thoroughly changing one’s notions is not easy. If you are to encounter a similar issue in the future and your notion forms again, what kind of problem is that? It would prove that this notion is deeply embedded within you. Even though with some matters you can let notions go by fellowshipping on the truth, with some other matters you will not be able to let them go. It may be easy to let a notion go with one matter, but to get people to utterly resolve their notions is not easy. One must understand many truths before being able to utterly resolve the problem of one’s notions. This requires people to seek the truth in the matters they encounter, practically experience and appreciate God’s love, and it requires God to perform many deeds so that people can know Him. Only when people know God can the problem of their harboring notions and imaginings about God be thoroughly removed.

What you need to dissect now are notions about God’s work and what these notions are, and mainly summarize your various imaginings, conflicts, and requirements about God’s work, God’s sovereignty and arrangements, and the way God works. These things can hinder you from submitting to God’s orchestrations and arrangements and can cause you to misunderstand and feel conflictive toward everything God has done with you. Such notions are very serious and are worth dissecting. For instance, some people read God’s words which judge and condemn people and they form notions and say, “God says He doesn’t love people like me, so perhaps He won’t save me.” Is this not a notion? What will the consequence be of this notion? No matter what corruption you have or what kind of person you are, you know that God doesn’t like people who rebel against Him, so why don’t you repent? If you accept the truth, cast off your corruption and completely submit to God, won’t God then like you? Why do you delimit God, saying that He won’t save you? These negative thoughts you have will hinder you from following God and experiencing His work, they will cause you to remain at a standstill and abandon yourself to despair and will even cause you to reject God. Antichrists and evil people appear in some churches and create disturbances, and in doing so they mislead some people—is this a good thing or a bad thing? Is this God’s love, or is it God playing with people and revealing them? You can’t understand this, can you? God brings all things into His service to perfect and save those He wishes to save, and what those who genuinely seek the truth and practice the truth ultimately gain is the truth. Some who don’t seek the truth, however, complain, saying, “It isn’t right for God to work this way. It causes me to suffer so much! I almost fell in with antichrists. If this really is arranged by God, how can He allow people to fall in with antichrists?” What’s going on here? You not following antichrists proves that you have God’s protection; if you fall in with antichrists, then that is a betrayal of God and God no longer wants you. So, is it a good thing or a bad thing that these antichrists and evil people cause disturbances in the church? From the outside, it appears to be a bad thing, but when these antichrists and evil people are revealed, you then grow in discernment, they are cleansed away, and you grow in stature. When you encounter such people again in the future, you will have discernment of them even before they’ve shown their true colors, and you will reject them. This will allow you to learn lessons and be benefited; you will know how to discern antichrists and will no longer be misled by Satan. So, tell Me, is it not a good thing to have antichrists disturbing and misleading people? Only when they have experienced to this stage can people see that God has not acted in line with their notions and imaginings, and that God permits the great red dragon to frenziedly create disturbances and permits antichrists to mislead God’s chosen people so that He can use Satan in His service in order to perfect His chosen people, and only then do people understand God’s painstaking intentions. Some people say, “I’ve been misled by antichrists twice and I still can’t discern them. If a yet more cunning antichrist comes along, I’ll just be misled again.” Then let it happen again so that you can experience it and learn the lesson—God must do things this way so that He can save mankind from Satan’s influence. Two phrases can be used here to describe the way God works, and they are that the various ways in which God works are extraordinary and beyond the imagination of ordinary people. Why do I define God’s work using these two phrases of “extraordinary” and “beyond the imagination”? It’s because corrupt mankind can’t understand these things and they don’t understand the truth, the way God works, or the wisdom of God in His fight against Satan—all of mankind draws a blank with these things. So how can people still harbor ideas and notions? It’s because they learn a little knowledge, understand some doctrine, and have their own preferences, and so they form certain notions and imaginings. When it comes to matters of the spiritual realm and the work God performs, however, they don’t understand these things at all. In the last days, the Creator directly faces all of mankind and utters His words. This is the first time this has ever happened since the creation of the world. That is, He faces all of mankind and openly performs deeds in this way, publicizes His management plan and then implements it and carries it out among mankind—this is the first time this has ever happened. People draw a blank with and are strangers to this realm of God’s thought, God’s essence, and the way God works, therefore it is normal for people to harbor notions about these things, but this does not mean that they accord with the truth. No matter how normal people’s notions are, they still go against the truth, they do not conform with God’s words, and they conflict with God’s will. If these notions are not resolved in a timely manner, then they will be a huge obstruction to people experiencing God’s work and to their own life entry. Therefore, when it comes to human notions, no matter how much they accord with people’s imaginings and ideas, as long as they do not conform with the truth and with God’s words, then they all run contrary to the truth and are in opposition to God, and they are not compatible with God. No matter how in line with people’s imaginings their notions may be, people should always try to discern them; they should absolutely not blindly accept their notions. What should mankind accept? Mankind should accept God’s words, the truth, and all positive things that come from God. As for the things that pertain to Satan, regardless of how good or how in line with their own imaginings people think these things are, they must not accept them, but instead must reject them. Only in this way can people achieve submission to God and meet the Creator’s requirements.

People’s notions can only be resolved through God’s words and by using the truth; they cannot be put aside through preaching doctrine and by giving exhortation—it is not that easy. People have no commitment to righteous matters, but are liable to cling to various notions or wicked, distorted things, which they find hard to put aside. What is the cause of this? It is because they have corrupt dispositions. Whether people’s notions are large or small, serious or not, if they do not have corrupt dispositions, these notions are easy to solve. Notions, at the end of the day, are just a way of thinking. But because of people’s corrupt dispositions, such as arrogance, intransigence, and even wickedness, notions become a fuse which causes people to conflict with, misinterpret, and even pass judgment on God. Who can still submit to and praise God when they harbor notions about Him? No one. Harboring notions, people are just conflictive toward God, they complain about Him, they judge Him, and they even condemn Him. This is sufficient to show that notions arise from within corrupt dispositions, the appearance of notions is the revelation of corrupt dispositions, and all corrupt dispositions that are revealed are rebellious against and resistant to God. Some people say, “I have notions, but I don’t resist God.” This is deceptive talk. Even if they don’t say anything, in their hearts they are still conflictive, and their behavior is conflictive. Can such people still submit to the truth when they’re like this? It’s impossible. Governed by a corrupt disposition, they cling to their notions—this is caused by their corrupt dispositions. And so, as notions are solved, so too are people’s corrupt dispositions. If people’s corrupt dispositions are solved, then many of their immature, childish thoughts, and even the things that have already become notions, are not an issue for them; they are just thoughts, and do not affect the performance of your duty, or your submission to God. Notions and corrupt dispositions are connected. Sometimes a notion is in your heart, but it does not direct your actions. When it does not infringe upon your immediate interests, you ignore it. Ignoring it, however, does not mean there is not a corrupt disposition within your notion, and when something happens that is in conflict with your notion, you cling to it with a certain attitude, an attitude dominated by your disposition. This disposition could be intransigence, it could be arrogance, and it could be viciousness; it causes you to shoot your mouth off to God, saying, “My point of view has been academically ratified many times. People have held it for thousands of years, so why can’t I? The things You say that are at odds with human notions are wrong, so how can You still say they are the truth, that they are above all else? My perspective is the highest of all mankind!” One notion can lead to you behaving like this, to such bluster. What causes this? (Corrupt dispositions.) That’s right, it is caused by corrupt dispositions. There is a direct relationship between notions and people’s corrupt dispositions, and their notions must be resolved. Once people’s notions about faith in God have been addressed, it becomes easy for them to submit to the work arrangements of the house of God, and so they more smoothly perform their duty well, they are not taking circuitous paths, they do not disrupt or disturb, and they do not do anything that brings shame upon God. If people’s notions and imaginings are not addressed, it becomes easy for them to do things that cause disruptions and disturbances. In more serious cases, people’s notions can produce in them all manner of conflict to the incarnation of God. Speaking of notions, they are certainly wrong views that are at odds with the truth, they are entirely opposed to the truth, and they can cause all kinds of conflictive feelings to God to arise in people. This conflict makes you question Christ and become unable to accept or submit to Him, whilst also affecting your acceptance of the truth and entry into the truth reality. In even more serious cases, people’s various notions about the work of God cause them to deny the work of God, the ways in which God works, and the sovereignty and arrangements of God—in which case they have no hope of salvation whatsoever. No matter which aspect of God people have notions about, behind these notions lurk their corrupt dispositions, which can cause these corrupt dispositions to become worse, giving people even more of a pretext to approach the work of God, God Himself, and the disposition of God using their own corrupt dispositions. And does this not encourage them to resist God with their corrupt dispositions? This is the consequence of notions for man.

Although we’ve previously often talked about human notions, we’ve never fellowshipped systematically and in detail on what aspects and matters people harbor notions about, and the kind of notions they form. By fellowshipping and dissecting point by point in this way today, I’ve given you a clear line to follow so that you know what kind of notions you have, and so you can then have a path to resolve them one by one. If people can resolve these notions one by one, all aspects of the truth will become increasingly clear to them. In this way, their onward path will also become increasingly clear, and the path they walk in their faith in God will become increasingly solid and bright the farther they go.

September 20, 2018