Part Five

People’s Fates Are Decided by Their Attitudes Toward God

God is a living God, and just as people behave differently in different situations, His attitude toward these behaviors differs because He is neither a puppet nor is He a bunch of empty air. Getting to know God’s attitude is a worthy pursuit for humankind. People should learn how, by knowing God’s attitude, they can little by little attain knowledge of God’s disposition and come to understand His heart. When you gradually come to understand God’s heart, you will not feel that fearing Him and shunning evil is such a difficult thing to accomplish. Moreover, when you do understand God, you will not be as likely to draw conclusions about Him. Once you have stopped drawing conclusions about God, you will be less likely to offend Him, and without your realizing it, God will lead you to gain knowledge of Him; this will fill your heart with reverence for Him. You will then stop defining God by way of the doctrines, letters, and theories you have mastered. Instead, by constantly seeking out God’s intentions in all things, you will unconsciously become a person who is after God’s heart.

God’s work is unseen and untouchable by humans, but as far as He is concerned, the actions of each and every person—along with their attitude toward Him—are not merely perceptible by God, but visible to Him as well. This is something that everyone should recognize and be very clear about. You might always be asking yourself, “Does God know what I’m doing here? Does He know what I’m thinking about right now? Maybe He does, and maybe He doesn’t.” If you adopt this sort of viewpoint, following and believing in God yet doubting His work and His existence, then sooner or later there will come a day when you will arouse His anger, for you are already teetering on the edge of a dangerous precipice. I have seen people who have believed in God for many years, yet who still have not gained the reality of the truth, much less understood God’s will. These people make no progress in their lives and statures, adhering only to the shallowest of doctrines. This is because such people have never taken God’s word to be life itself, and they have never faced up to and accepted His existence. Do you think that upon seeing such people, God is filled with enjoyment? Do they comfort Him? Thus, it is how people believe in God that decides their fate. Concerning how people seek and how people approach God, people’s attitudes are of primary importance. Do not neglect God like He is just a bunch of empty air floating around in the back of your head; always think of the God you believe in as a living God, a real God. He is not sitting around up there in the third heaven with nothing to do. Rather, He is constantly looking into everyone’s heart, observing what you are up to, watching your every little word and every little deed, watching how you behave and seeing what your attitude toward Him is. Whether you are willing to give yourself to God or not, all of your behavior and your innermost thoughts and ideas are laid bare before Him and being looked upon by Him. Due to your behavior, due to your deeds, and due to your attitude toward Him, God’s opinion of you and His attitude toward you are constantly changing. I would like to offer some advice to some people: Do not place yourselves like infants in the hands of God, as if He should dote on you, as if He could never leave you, and as if His attitude toward you were fixed and could never change, and I advise you to quit dreaming! God is righteous in His treatment of each and every person, and He is earnest in His approach to the work of conquering and saving people. This is His management. He treats every single person seriously, and not like a pet to play with. God’s love for humans is not the pampering or spoiling kind, nor are His mercy and tolerance toward humankind indulgent or unmindful. On the contrary, God’s love for humans involves cherishing, pitying, and respecting life; His mercy and tolerance convey His expectations of them, and are what humanity needs to survive. God is alive, and God actually exists; His attitude toward humankind is principled, not at all a pack of dogmatic rules, and it can change. His intentions for humanity are gradually changing and transforming with time, depending on circumstances as they arise, and along with the attitude of each and every person. Therefore, you should know in your heart with absolute clarity that the essence of God is immutable, and that His disposition will issue forth at different times and in different contexts. You might not think that this is a serious matter, and you might use your own personal notions to imagine how God should do things. However, there are times when the polar opposite of your viewpoint is true, and by using your own personal notions to attempt to gauge God, you have already angered Him. This is because God does not operate the way you think He does, nor will He treat this matter like you say He will. Thus, I remind you to be careful and prudent in your approach to everything around you, and learn how to follow the principle of walking in God’s way in all things, which is to fear God and shun evil. You must develop a firm understanding with regard to the matters of God’s will and God’s attitude, you must find enlightened people to communicate these matters to you, and you must seek in earnest. Do not view the God of your belief as a puppet—judging Him at will, arriving at arbitrary conclusions about Him, and not treating Him with the respect He deserves. While God is bringing you salvation and determining your outcome, He may grant you mercy, or tolerance, or judgment and chastisement, but in any case, His attitude toward you is not fixed. It is dependent on your own attitude toward Him, as well as your understanding of Him. Do not allow one passing aspect of your knowledge or understanding of God to define Him in perpetuity. Do not believe in a dead God; believe in the living One. Remember this! Though I have discussed some truths here—truths you needed to hear—in light of your present state and present stature, I will not make any greater demands of you for now, so as not to sap your enthusiasm. Doing so could fill your hearts with too much bleakness and make you feel too much disappointment toward God. Instead, I hope you can use the love for God you have in your hearts and employ a respectful attitude toward God when walking the path that lies ahead. Do not muddle through this matter of how to believe in God; treat it as one of the biggest issues there is. Place it in your heart, put it into practice, and connect it with real life; do not just pay it lip service—for this is a matter of life and death, and one that will determine your destiny. Do not treat it like a joke or child’s play! After sharing these words with you today, I wonder how much understanding your minds have harvested. Are there any questions you wish to ask about what I have said here today?

Although these topics are a bit new, and a bit removed from your views, from your usual pursuits, and what you tend to pay attention to, I think that once they have been fellowshiped by you for a period of time, you will develop a common understanding of everything I have said here. These topics are all very new, and ones that you have never considered before, so I hope that they will not add to your burden in any way. I am not speaking these words today to frighten you, nor am I using them as a way to deal with you; rather, My aim is to help you to understand actual facts about the truth. Because a gulf exists between humankind and God, though people believe in God, they have never understood Him or known His attitude. Humans have also never been very enthusiastic in their concern for God’s attitude. Rather, they have believed and proceeded blindly, and been careless in their knowledge and understanding of God. I therefore feel compelled to clear these issues up for you, and help you to understand just what kind of God this God you believe in is, as well as what He is thinking, what His attitude is in His treatment of various sorts of people, how far you are from fulfilling His requirements, and how great the disparity is between your actions and the standard He demands. The goal in informing you of these things is to give you a yardstick by which to measure yourselves, and so that you will know what kind of harvest the road you are on has led to, what you have not obtained along this road, and in what areas you simply have not gotten involved. While communicating amongst yourselves, you usually speak on a few commonly-discussed topics that are very narrow in scope and shallow in content. There is a distance, a gap, between that which you discuss and God’s intentions, as well as between your discussions and the scope and standard of God’s demands. Proceeding like this over time will result in your deviating ever farther from God’s way. You are just taking God’s current utterances and turning them into objects of worship, and seeing them as rituals and regulations. That is all you are doing! In actual fact, God simply has no place in your hearts, and He has never really obtained your hearts. Some people think that to know God is very difficult, and this is the truth. It is difficult! If people are made to do their duties and get things done outwardly, and work hard, then they will think that believing in God is very easy, because all those things fall within the scope of human capability. However, the moment the topic shifts over to God’s intentions and His attitude toward humanity, then from everyone’s point of view, things really do get a bit more difficult. That is because this involves people’s understanding of the truth and their entry into reality, so of course there will be a degree of difficulty! Nevertheless, once you get through the first door and begin to attain entry, things gradually get easier.

The Starting Point for Fearing God Is to Treat Him Like God

A little while ago, someone raised a question: How is it that even though we know more of God than Job did, we still cannot revere Him? We touched upon this matter a little bit previously, did we not? We actually have discussed the essence of this question before, too, which is the fact that although Job did not know God back then, he still treated Him like God and regarded Him as the Master of the heavens and earth and all things. Job did not consider God to be an enemy; rather, he worshiped Him as the Creator of all things. Why is it that people nowadays resist God so much? Why are they unable to revere Him? One reason is that they have been deeply corrupted by Satan, and with such a deeply-ingrained satanic nature, they have become enemies of God. Thus, even though they believe in God and acknowledge God, they are still able to resist Him and place themselves in opposition to Him. This is determined by human nature. The other reason is that despite their belief in God, people simply do not treat Him as God. Instead, they consider Him to be opposed to humanity, regarding Him as their enemy, and feel that they are irreconcilable with God. It is just that simple. Was this matter not broached in our previous session? Think about it: Is that not the reason? You might possess a bit of knowledge of God, but just what does this knowledge entail? Is this not what everyone is talking about? Is it not what God told you? You are only familiar with the theoretical and doctrinal aspects of it—but have you ever appreciated the true face of God? Do you have subjective knowledge? Do you have practical knowledge and experience? If God had not told you, could you know? Your theoretical knowledge does not represent real knowledge. In short, no matter how much you know or how you came to know it, until you attain a real understanding of God, He will be your enemy, and until you actually begin to treat God as God, He will oppose you, for you are an embodiment of Satan.

When you are together with Christ, perhaps you can serve Him three meals a day, or perhaps serve Him tea and attend to His life’s needs; you will seem to have treated Christ as God. Whenever something happens, people’s viewpoints always run contrary to God’s; people always fail to understand and accept God’s point of view. Though people might get along with God on the surface, this does not mean that they are compatible with Him. As soon as something happens, the truth of humanity’s disobedience emerges, thus confirming the hostility that exists between humans and God. This hostility is not one of God’s opposing humans or of God’s wanting to be hostile to them, nor is it that He places them in opposition to Himself and then treats them as such. Rather, it is a case of this contrary essence toward God that lurks in humans’ subjective will and in their subconscious minds. Since people regard all that which comes from God as objects for their research, their response toward what comes from God and toward everything involving God is, above all, to guess, to doubt, and then to quickly adopt an attitude that conflicts with and opposes God. Soon thereafter, they carry a negative mood into disputes or contests with God, going so far as to doubt even whether such a God is worth following. Despite the fact that their rationality tells them that they should not proceed in this manner, they will still choose to do so in spite of themselves, such that they will continue without hesitation to the very end. For example, what is the first reaction some people have when they hear rumors or slanderous talk about God? Their first reaction is to wonder whether these rumors are true or not and whether these rumors exist or not, and then to adopt a wait-and-see attitude. Then they start to think, “There’s no way to verify this. Did that really happen? Is this rumor true or not?” Though people like this do not show it on the surface, in their hearts they have already begun to doubt, and already started to deny God. What is the essence of this kind of attitude and of such a viewpoint? Is it not betrayal? Until they are faced with this matter, you cannot see what these people’s viewpoints are; it seems like they are not in conflict with God, and as though they do not regard Him as an enemy. However, as soon as they are faced with a problem, they immediately stand with Satan and oppose God. What does this suggest? It suggests that humans and God are opposed! It is not that God regards humanity as the enemy, but that the very essence of humanity itself is hostile toward God. No matter how long someone has followed Him or how big a price they have paid, and regardless of how they praise God, how they might keep themselves from resisting Him, and even how strenuously they urge themselves to love God, they can never manage to treat God as God. Is this not determined by people’s essence? If you treat Him as God and genuinely believe that He is God, can you still have any doubts toward Him? Can your heart still harbor any question marks about Him? There cannot anymore, right? The trends of this world are so evil, and this human race is, too; so, how could you not have any notions on them? You yourself are so wicked, so how is it that you do not have a notion about that? And yet, just a few rumors and some slander can give rise to such enormous notions about God, and lead to your imagining so many things, which shows just how immature your stature is! Just the “buzzing” of a few mosquitos and a few repulsive flies—is that all it takes to deceive you? What kind of person is this? Do you know what God thinks about such people? God’s attitude is actually very clear regarding how He treats them. It is only that God’s treatment of these people is to give them the cold shoulder—His attitude is to not pay them any attention, and to not take these ignorant people seriously. Why is that? It is because in God’s heart, He never planned on obtaining those people who have pledged to be hostile toward Him to the very end and who have never planned on seeking out a way of being compatible with Him. Perhaps these words I have spoken might hurt a few people. Well, are you willing to always let Me hurt you like this? Whether you are or not, everything I say is the truth! If I always hurt you and expose your scars like this, will it affect the lofty image of God you harbor in your hearts? (It won’t.) I agree that it will not, for there simply is no God in your hearts. The lofty God that inhabits your hearts—the one you strongly defend and protect—is simply not God. Rather, he is a figment of human imagination; he simply does not exist. Therefore, it is all the better that I expose the answer to this riddle; does this not lay the entire truth bare? The real God is not what humans imagine Him to be. I hope you can all face this reality, and it will help in your knowledge of God.

Those People Who Are Not Acknowledged by God

There are some people whose faith has never been acknowledged within God’s heart. In other words, God does not recognize that they are His followers, because He does not praise their beliefs. For these people, regardless of how many years they have followed God, their ideas and views have never changed; they are like the unbelievers, adhering to the unbelievers’ principles and ways of doing things and to the unbelievers’ laws of survival and faith. They have never accepted the word of God as their life, never believed that God’s word is truth, never intended on accepting God’s salvation, and never recognized God as their God. They see believing in God as some kind of amateur hobby, treating Him as mere spiritual sustenance; as such, they do not think it is worth it to try and understand God’s disposition or essence. It can be said that all that corresponds to the true God has nothing to do with these people; they are not interested, nor can they be bothered to pay heed. This is because deep in their hearts, there is an intense voice that is always telling them, “God is invisible and untouchable, and does not exist.” They believe that trying to understand this sort of God would not be worth their efforts, and that in doing so they would be fooling themselves. They believe that by merely acknowledging God with words without taking any real stand or investing themselves in any real actions, they are being pretty clever. How does God look upon such people? He views them as unbelievers. Some people ask, “Can unbelievers read God’s words? Can they fulfill their duties? Can they say the words, ‘I’ll live for God’?” What humans often see are the displays people exhibit on the surface; they do not see people’s essences. However, God does not look at these superficial displays; He only sees their inner essences. Thus, this is the kind of attitude and definition God has toward these people. These people say, “Why does God do this? Why does God do that? I can’t understand this; I can’t understand that; this doesn’t conform to human notions; You must explain that to me….” In answer to this, I ask: Is it really necessary to explain these matters to you? Do these matters actually have anything to do with you? Who do you think you are? Where did you come from? Are you really qualified to give God pointers? Do you believe in Him? Does He acknowledge your faith? Since your faith has nothing to do with God, what business of yours are His doings? You do not know where you stand in God’s heart, so how can you be qualified to engage in dialogue with Him?

Words of Admonishment

Are you not uncomfortable after hearing these remarks? Though you may be either unwilling to listen to them or unwilling to accept them, they are all facts. Because this stage of the work is for God to perform, if you are not concerned with His intentions, have no care about His attitude, and do not understand His essence and disposition, then in the end, you will be the one who will lose out. Do not blame My words for being difficult to hear, and do not blame them for dampening your enthusiasm. I speak the truth; it is not My intention to discourage you. No matter what I ask of you, and no matter how you are required to do it, I hope that you walk the correct path and follow God’s way, and that you never deviate from the correct path. If you do not proceed in accordance with God’s word or follow His way, then there can be no doubt that you are rebelling against God and have strayed from the correct path. Thus, I feel there are some matters that I must clarify for you, and that I must make you believe unequivocally, clearly, and without a shred of uncertainty, and help you to have a clear understanding of God’s attitude, His intentions, how He perfects humans, and in what manner He determines people’s outcomes. Should there come a day when you are unable to embark upon this path, then I bear no responsibility, for these words have already been spoken to you very clearly. As for how you deal with your own outcome, this is a matter that is entirely up to you. Regarding the outcomes of various types of people, God has different attitudes, He has His own ways of weighing them, as well as His own standard of requirement for them. His standard of weighing people’s outcomes is one that is fair to everyone—there is no doubt about that! Therefore, the fears of some are unnecessary. Are you relieved now? That is all for today. Goodbye!

October 17, 2013