God does much more besides guaranteeing people’s safety, guaranteeing that they will not be devoured by Satan. He also does a great deal of preparatory work before choosing and saving someone. Firstly, God makes meticulous preparations regarding what kind of character you will have, what kind of family you will be born into, who your parents will be, how many brothers and sisters you will have, and what the situation, economic status, and conditions of the family you are born into will be. Do you know what kind of family the majority of God’s chosen people are born into? Are they prominent families? We cannot say for sure that there are none who are born into prominent families. There may be some, but they are very few. Are they born into families of exceptional wealth, families of billionaires or multimillionaires? No, they are almost never born into this kind of family. So what kind of family does God arrange for most of these people? (Ordinary families.) So which families may be considered “ordinary families?” They include working families—that is, ones that depend on wages to survive, can afford the basic necessities, and are not overly well-off; they also include farming families. Farmers depend on planting crops for their food, have grain to eat and clothes to wear, and do not go hungry or freeze. Then there are some families that run small businesses, and some where the parents are intellectuals, and these can also be counted as ordinary families. There are also some parents who are office workers or minor government officials, who also cannot be counted as belonging to prominent families. Most are born into ordinary families, and this is all arranged by God. That is to say, first of all, this environment that you live in is not the family of substantial means that people might imagine, and this is a family decided for you by God, and the majority of people will live within the limits of this kind of family. So what about social status? The economic conditions of the majority of parents are average and they do not have high social status—for them it is good just to have a job. Do they include governors? Or national presidents? (No.) At most they are people such as small business managers or owners of small businesses. Their social status is middling, and their economic conditions are average. Another factor is the family’s living environment. First of all, there are no parents among these families who would clearly influence their children into walking the path of divination and fortune telling; these are very few who engage in such things. Most parents are quite normal. At the same time that God chooses people, He sets up this kind of environment for them, which is greatly beneficial to His work of saving people. On the surface, it looks like God has done nothing particularly earthshaking for man; He just quietly and secretly proceeds to do all of the things that He does, humbly and in silence. But in fact, all that God does, He does in order to lay a foundation for your salvation, to prepare the road ahead and all the necessary conditions for your salvation. Next, God brings every person back before Him, each at a specified time: It is then that you hear God’s voice; it is then that you come before Him. By the time that this happens, some people have already become parents themselves, whilst others are still somebody’s child. In other words, some people have gotten married and had children whilst some are still single, not yet having started their own families. But regardless of one’s situation, God has already set the times when you will be chosen and when His gospel and words will reach you. God has set the circumstances, decided on a certain person or a certain context through which the gospel will be passed onto you, so that you may hear the words of God. God has already prepared for you all the necessary conditions. In this way, though man is unaware that it is happening, man comes before Him and returns to God’s family. Man also unknowingly follows God and enters into each step of His work, entering into each step of God’s way of work which He has prepared for man. What ways does God use when He does things for man at this time? First, the bare minimum is the care and protection that man enjoys. Apart from this, God sets out various people, events, and things so that through them man may see His existence and His deeds. For example, there are some people who believe in God because someone in their family is sick. When others preach the gospel to them, they start to believe in God, and this belief in God comes about because of the situation. So who arranged this situation? (God.) By means of this illness, there are some families where everybody is a believer, while there are others where only a few people in the family believe. On the surface, it may seem that someone in your family has an illness, but it is in fact a condition bestowed on you so that you may come before God—this is God’s kindness. Because family life is hard for some people and they can find no peace, a chance opportunity may present itself—someone passes on the gospel and says, “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will have peace.” Thus, unaware, they come to believe in God under very natural circumstances, so is this not a type of condition? And is the fact that their family is not at peace a grace granted them by God? There are also some who come to believe in God for other reasons. There are different reasons and different ways of belief, but no matter what reason brings you to believe in Him, it is all actually arranged and guided by God. At first, God employs various ways to choose you and to bring you into His family. This is the grace that God bestows on every single person.

—The Word, Vol. 2. On Knowing God. God Himself, the Unique VI