At our last gathering, we fellowshipped on item ten of the responsibilities of leaders and workers: “Properly safeguard and sensibly allocate the various material items of the house of God (books, various equipment, grain, and so on), and carry out regular inspections, maintenance, and repair to minimize damage and waste; also, prevent evil people from taking possession of them.” Item ten’s fellowship was on the work leaders and workers should do and the responsibilities they should fulfill with regard to the various material items of God’s house, and at the same time, it exposed by comparison the various manifestations of false leaders. If leaders and workers fulfill the responsibilities they should and can in each item of the work of God’s house, then they’re up to standard as leaders and workers; if they don’t fulfill their responsibilities and don’t do any real work, then it’s quite clear that they are false leaders. With regard to item ten, false leaders of course don’t do a great job at the work of safeguarding and sensibly allocating the various material items of God’s house—those items aren’t safeguarded well, or may even not be safeguarded at all, and the false leaders make a mess of their allocation. They may not even take this work seriously at all. Though it’s general affairs work, it’s still a responsibility that leaders and workers should fulfill and work they should do. Regardless of whether they do the work themselves, or whether they arrange for suitable people to do it, and also carry out supervision, inspections, follow-ups, and so forth, in any case, this work is inseparable from the responsibilities of leaders and workers—they’re directly related. Therefore, when it comes to this work, if leaders and workers don’t properly safeguard and sensibly allocate the various material items of the house of God, they aren’t fulfilling their responsibilities, and they aren’t doing their work well. This is one manifestation of false leaders. At our last gathering, we conducted a simple exposure and dissection of the manifestations that false leaders display while handling this item of general affairs work, and we gave a few examples. If someone’s a false leader, then they absolutely have not fulfilled their responsibilities in this work, and the work they do isn’t up to standard. This is because false leaders never put effort into actual work—once it’s been arranged, they’re through with it, and they never follow up or participate in the work. Another main reason is that false leaders don’t understand the principles of any work they do. Even if they’re not being idle in their work, what they do is inconsistent with the principles and rules required by the house of God, or even entirely out of line with the principles. What does it mean to be out of line with the principles? Its implication is that they are acting recklessly, acting wildly based on their imaginings, will, and feelings, and so on. So, no matter what, there are two primary manifestations of false leaders when it comes to this item of the responsibilities of leaders and workers: The first is that they don’t do actual work, and the second is that they can’t grasp the principles, so they can’t do actual work. These are the basic manifestations. At our last gathering, we fellowshipped and exposed how the humanity of false leaders manifests in their handling of this sort of general affairs work. Even with this simple, single piece of work, false leaders can’t fulfill their responsibilities. They have the ability to do this work, but they don’t do it. This has to do with the character and humanity of people of this sort. What’s the problem with their humanity? Their hearts aren’t in the right place, and their character is low. We’ve basically finished our fellowship on the responsibilities of leaders and workers, the general principles, and the various manifestations of false leaders under item ten. Today, we’ll go on to fellowship about item eleven of the responsibilities of leaders and workers.

Item Eleven: Choose Dependable People Whose Humanity Is Up to Standard Especially for the Task of Systematically Registering, Tallying, and Safeguarding Offerings; Regularly Review and Check Incomings and Outgoings So That Cases of Squandering or Waste, As Well As Unreasonable Expenditures, Can Be Identified Promptly—Put a Stop to Such Things and Demand Reasonable Compensation; Additionally, Prevent, by Any Means, Offerings Falling Into the Hands of Evil People and Being Taken Into Their Possession

What Offerings Are

The content of item eleven of the responsibilities of leaders and workers is: “Choose dependable people whose humanity is up to standard especially for the task of systematically registering, tallying, and safeguarding offerings; regularly review and check incomings and outgoings so that cases of squandering or waste, as well as unreasonable expenditures, can be identified promptly—put a stop to such things and demand reasonable compensation; additionally, prevent, by any means, offerings falling into the hands of evil people and being taken into their possession.” What are the responsibilities of leaders and workers in this work? What’s the main work they’re to do? (Safeguarding offerings properly.) Item ten was about safeguarding and sensibly allocating the various material items of the house of God; this one is about safeguarding offerings properly. The various material items of God’s house and its offerings are somewhat similar—but are they the same? (No.) What’s the difference? (Offerings mainly refer to money.) Money is one aspect of it. How are the various material items of God’s house and offerings different in nature? Are books of God’s words offerings? Are the various machines used for work offerings? Are the various daily necessities God’s house buys offerings? (No.) So, what are these, then? In the house of God, all the books of God’s words, and all of the different sorts of devices required for its work that it purchases with money offered by God’s chosen people, including a variety of items such as cameras, audio recorders, computers, and cell phones—all of these are the material items of the house of God. Beyond these, tables, chairs, benches, food, and other such daily necessities are also the material items of the house of God. Some of these items are purchased by brothers and sisters, and others, God’s house buys with offerings; they’re all classified as the material items of the house of God. We fellowshipped on this topic at our last gathering. We’ll go on now to look at something important which we will fellowship on under item eleven: offerings. What are offerings, exactly? How is their scope prescribed? Before we fellowship on the responsibilities of leaders and workers, it is necessary to clear up the question of what offerings are. Although most people believed in Jesus in the past and have accepted this stage of work for several years, their concept of offerings remains fuzzy. They’re unclear as to what offerings really are. Some will say that offerings are money and material items that are offered to God, while others will say that offerings mainly refer to money. Which of these statements is accurate? (So long as something is offered to God, regardless of whether it’s money or any item, big or small, it’s an offering.) That’s a relatively accurate summary. Now that the scope and limits of offerings are clear, let’s accurately define what offerings are exactly, so that everyone may be clear on the concept.

On the subject of offerings, the Bible records that originally God asked man to offer the tithe to God—this is an offering. No matter if the amount offered was big or small, and regardless of what was offered—be it money or material items—as long as it was one-tenth of a person’s income that should be offered up, it was definitely an offering. This was what God asked of man, it was what believers in God were supposed to offer to God. This tithe is one aspect of offerings. Some people ask, “Does that one tenth only refer to money?” Not necessarily. For example, if a person harvests ten acres of grain, then regardless of how much grain there is, one acre’s worth of this grain ought to ultimately be offered to God—this one tenth is what people should offer up. Thus, the concept of “one tenth” does not just refer to money—it doesn’t just mean that when a person earns a thousand dollars, they must offer God a hundred—instead it refers to everything people obtain, which covers much more, including material things and money. This is what the Bible talks about. Of course, nowadays the house of God does not go by the Bible in so strictly requiring that people give one-tenth of everything they obtain. Here I am merely fellowshipping and disseminating the concept and definition of the “one tenth,” so that people know that the tithe is one aspect of offerings. I am not calling upon people to offer one tenth; how much people offer depends on their personal comprehension and willingness, and the house of God does not have any additional requirements with regard to this matter.

Another aspect of offerings is the things that people offer to God. Broadly speaking, this of course also includes the tithe; specifically speaking, apart from the tithe, anything that people offer to God falls into the category of offerings. A large scope is encompassed by things that are offered to God, for example, food, appliances, daily necessities, health supplements, as well as the cows, sheep, and so on that were offered on the altar during the Old Testament times. These are all offerings. Whether something is an offering depends on the intent of the offerer; if the offerer says this thing is offered to God, then regardless of whether it is given directly to God or placed in the house of God for safeguarding, it falls into the category of offerings, and cannot be arbitrarily touched by people. By way of example: When someone buys a high-end computer and offers it to God, it becomes an offering; when someone buys God a car, it becomes an offering; when someone buys two bottles of health supplements and offers them to God, those bottles then become offerings. There’s no specific, definite definition of what the material items offered to God are. In sum, it’s a very broad scope—it’s the things that are offered to God by those who follow Him. Some may say, “God is now incarnate on earth, and things offered to Him belong to Him—but what if He weren’t on earth? When God’s in heaven, are the things offered to Him then not offerings?” Is this correct? (No.) This isn’t based on whether God’s in a period of incarnation. In any case, so long as something is offered to God, it’s an offering. Others may say, “There are so many things that are offered to God. Can He make use of them? Can He use them all?” (That has nothing to do with man.) That’s a correct and incisive way to put it. These things are offered to God by humans; how He uses them and whether He can use them all, and how He allocates and handles them, have nothing to do with man. There’s no need to fret or worry yourself about that. In brief, as soon as someone offers something to God, that thing falls under the scope of offerings. It’s God’s, and it has nothing to do with any person. Some may say, “The way You’re saying it, it sounds as if God is forcibly claiming ownership of that thing.” Is that what’s happening? (No.) That thing is God’s, so it’s called an offering. People can’t touch it or allocate it at will. Some may ask, “Isn’t that a waste?” Even if it is, that’s none of your business. Others may say, “When God is in heaven and not incarnate, He can’t enjoy or make use of the things people offer to Him. What’s to be done then?” That’s easily taken care of: God’s house and the church are there to handle these things according to the principles; there’s no need for you to fret about it or worry yourself about it. In sum, regardless of how a thing is handled, as soon as it falls within the category of offerings, as soon as it’s classified as an offering, it has nothing to do with man. And because that thing belongs to God, people can’t do with it as they will—there are consequences to doing so. In the age of the Old Testament, at harvest-time in the fall, people offered up all sorts of things at altars. Some offered grains, fruits, and various other crops, while others offered cows and sheep. Did God enjoy them? Does He eat those things? (No.) How do you know He doesn’t? Did you see it? That is your notion. You say God doesn’t eat them—well, if He took a bite, how would that make you feel? Would that be out of line with your notions and imaginings? Don’t some people believe that since God doesn’t eat or enjoy those things, there’s no need to offer them? How can you be so sure? Do you say “God doesn’t eat them” because you think that He is a spiritual body and can’t eat, or because you think that God has His identity as God, He’s not fleshly and mortal, and He shouldn’t enjoy these things? Is it shameful of God to enjoy the offerings people make to Him? (No.) Is it out of line with people’s notions, then, or is it out of line with God’s identity? Which is it exactly? (People shouldn’t discuss this.) That’s right—it isn’t something people should concern themselves with. You don’t need to decide that God must enjoy them, or that He shouldn’t enjoy them either. Do what you should, fulfill your duty and your responsibilities, and fulfill your obligations—that will suffice. You will then have completed your job. As for how God will handle those things, that’s His business. Whether God shares them with people, or leaves them to spoil, or whether He enjoys a bit of them, or takes a look at them, this is not open to criticism, and it is legitimate. God has His freedom when it comes to how He handles these matters. It’s not something people should concern themselves with, nor is it something they should pass judgment on. People shouldn’t go arbitrarily imagining about these matters, much less arbitrarily pass judgments or verdicts on them. Do you understand now? How should God handle the offerings people make to Him? (He’ll handle them however He wants to.) That’s right. People who understand this in that way possess normal reason. God will handle these things however He wants to. He may glance at them, or simply not look at them or take any notice of them at all. Concern yourself only with making offerings when the time comes for that, and making offerings when you wish to, according to God’s requirements, and with fulfilling man’s responsibility. Don’t concern yourself with how God handles and treats such matters. In brief, it’s enough if what you do is within the scope of God’s requirements, in line with the standard of conscience, and in line with the duty, obligation, and responsibility of mankind. As for how God handles and treats these items, that’s His own affair, and people absolutely must not pass judgments or verdicts on this. You made a big mistake within just a few seconds. I asked you whether God enjoys or eats these things, and you said He doesn’t eat or enjoy them. What was your mistake? (Passing judgment on God.) It was making rash delimitations and passing rash judgments, and this proves that people still have demands of God inside them. To them, it’s wrong for God to enjoy these things, and it’s wrong for Him not to. If He does, they’ll say, “You’re a spiritual body, not a fleshly, mortal one. Why would you enjoy these things? It’s so unthinkable!” And if God pays no mind to these things, people will then say, “We’ve labored painstakingly to offer up our hearts to You, only for You to not even glance at the items we’ve offered. Do You have any regard for us at all?” Here, too, people have something to say. This is lacking in reason. In summary, what’s the attitude with which people should regard this matter? (People are to offer what they should to God, and as for how God will handle these things, people should have no notions or imaginings about this at all, nor should they pass judgment on it.) Yes—that’s the reason that people should possess. This has to do with items that are offered to God, which are also one aspect of offerings. The material items offered to God include a broad range of things. This is because people live in a material world, and in addition to money, gold, silver, and jewels, there are many more things that they consider to be quite good and valuable, and when some people think of God or they think about God’s love, they are willing to offer that which they consider precious and valuable to God. When these things are offered to God, they fall within the scope of offerings; they become offerings. And at the same time as they become offerings, it becomes up to God to handle them—people then can’t touch them, they are not under the control of people, and they do not belong to people. Once you have offered something to God, it belongs to God, it’s not up to you to handle it, and you can no longer interfere in this matter. Regardless of how God handles or treats that thing, it has nothing to do with man. Material items that are offered to God are also an aspect of offerings. Some people ask, “Can only money and precious gold, silver, and jewels be offerings? Say someone offered a pair of shoes, a pair of socks, or a pair of insoles to God—do they count as offerings?” If we go by the definition of offerings, no matter how big or small, or how precious or cheap something is—even if it is a pen or a piece of paper—as long as it was offered to God, it is an offering.

There is another aspect of offerings: material items which are offered to the house of God and the church. These things also fall into the category of offerings. What do such material items include? Say, for example, someone bought a car, and after driving it for a while, they felt it had gotten a little old, and they then bought a new one, and offered the old one to the house of God, so that the house of God could use it in its work. This car then belongs to God’s house. Things that belong to the house of God should be classed as offerings—this is right. Of course, devices and equipment aren’t the only things that are offered to the church and the house of God, there are some other things, too; this scope is fairly large. Some people say, “The one tenth that people offer of all they obtain is an offering, as are the money and material items offered to God; we have no objection to these being classed as offerings, there’s nothing questionable about this. But why do the material items offered to the church and the house of God also fall into the category of offerings? That doesn’t make much sense.” Tell Me, does it make sense for them to be classed as offerings? (Yes.) And why do you say that? (The church only exists because God exists, and so anything that’s offered to the church is also an offering.) Well said. The church and the house of God belong to God, and they only exist because God exists; there is only a place for the brothers and sisters to gather and live because the church exists, and all the problems of the brothers and sisters only have somewhere to be solved, and the brothers and sisters only have a true home, because there is the house of God. All of this only exists on the foundation of God’s existence. People don’t offer things to the church and to the house of God because the people in the church believe in God and are members of the house of God—that is not the correct reason. It is because of God that people offer things to the church and to the house of God. What is the implication of this? Who would offer things to the church lightly if not because of God? Without God, the church would not exist. When people have things that they don’t need or that are surplus to requirements, they could throw them away or let them go unused; some items could be sold, too. All these methods could be used to deal with these things, right? So why don’t people deal with them in these ways—why do they offer them to the church instead? Is it not because of God? (Yes.) It is precisely because God exists that people offer things to the church. Therefore, anything that is offered to the church or the house of God should be classed as an offering. Some people say, “I offer this thing of mine to the church.” Offering that thing to the church is equivalent to offering it to God, and the church and the house of God have full authority over the handling of such things. When you offer something to the church, it loses any connection to you. The house of God and the church will sensibly allocate, use, and handle these material items according to the principles stipulated by the house of God. So, where do these principles come from? From God. Basically, the principle for the use of these things is that they should be used for God’s management plan, and for spreading God’s gospel work. They are not for the exclusive use of any individual, much less any group of people, but are to be used for the work of spreading the gospel and for the various items of work of the house of God. Therefore, no one has the privilege to use these things; the only principle and basis for their use and allocation is to do so according to the principles required by the house of God. This is reasonable and proper.

These are the three parts of the definition of offerings, each of which is the definition of one aspect of offerings, and one aspect of their scope. You’re all clear on what offerings are now, right? (Yes.) There were previously some who said, “This thing isn’t money, and the person who offered it didn’t say it was for God. They just said they were offering it. So, it can’t be for the use of God’s house, and much less can it be given to God.” And so, they kept no record of it, and they used that thing in secret as they pleased. Is that reasonable? (No.) What they said is itself unreasonable; they also said, “Offerings to the church and to God’s house are common property—anyone can use them,” which is clearly unreasonable. It’s precisely because most people are fuzzy and unclear about the definition and concept of offerings that some base villains and some people with covetous hearts and improper aspirations take advantage of the situation and think about seizing those things. Now that you’re clear on the accurate definition and concept of offerings, you’ll have discernment when you encounter such events and people in the future.

The Responsibilities of Leaders and Workers With Regard to Safeguarding Offerings

I. Properly Safeguarding Offerings

Next, we’ll go on to look at exactly what responsibilities leaders and workers should fulfill when it comes to safeguarding offerings. With offerings, leaders and workers must first understand what offerings are. When people offer one-tenth of what they take in, that’s an offering; when they clearly state that they’re offering money or items to God, those are offerings; when they clearly state that they’re offering an item to the church and God’s house, that’s an offering. Once they’ve understood the definition and concept of offerings, leaders and workers must have a definitive grasp of and manage the offerings people make, and carry out proper vetting in this regard. First, they’re to find dependable people whose humanity is up to standard to act as custodians to systematically keep records of offerings and safeguard offerings. This is the first task in the work that leaders and workers must do. These custodians of offerings may be of average caliber and incapable of being leaders or workers, but they will be reliable, and they won’t embezzle anything, while in their possession, the offerings won’t go missing or get mixed up, and they’ll be safeguarded properly. There are rules in the work arrangements for this. Nothing less than a dependable person whose humanity is up to standard will do. When people of poor humanity see something nice, they covet it, and they’re always looking for chances to take it for themselves. Whatever happens, they’re always seeking to take advantage. Such people cannot be used. A person whose humanity is up to standard must at least be an honest person, someone whom people trust. If tasked with safeguarding offerings or managing the church’s assets, they’ll do it well, meticulously, diligently, and with great care. They have a God-fearing heart and won’t misappropriate these things, lend them out, and so forth. In brief, you can rest assured when you’ve put the offerings in their hands that not a cent will go missing and not a single item will be lost. A person like this must be found. Furthermore, God’s house has a rule that not just one such person is to be found; two or three is best—with some of them keeping records and some doing the safeguarding. Once these people have been found, the offerings are to be categorized, and systematic records are to be made of who’s safeguarding what category of thing, and how much they’re safeguarding. Once suitable people have been found and things have been safeguarded and registered in categories, is that the end of the story? (No.) What should be done next, then? The accounts of incomings and outgoings must be checked every three to five months to see if they’re correct—that is, if the record keeper has been accurate with their recordings, if anything was omitted when it was registered, if the total amount is consistent with the accounts of incomings and outgoings, and so forth. Such accounting work must be done meticulously. Leaders and workers who aren’t very well versed in such work should arrange for someone who’s relatively adept at it to carry it out, and then conduct regular inspections and listen to their reports. In sum, whether or not they themselves understand the work of accounting and overall planning, they cannot leave the work of safeguarding offerings unattended, nor can they ignore it and simply not ask after it. Instead, they must conduct regular inspections, asking how the accounts that have been checked are and whether they match up, and then spot-checking some records of expenditures to see what the recent spending situation has been, whether there’s been any wastage, what condition the bookkeeping is in, and whether the incomings match up with the outgoings. Leaders and workers should have a firm handle on all these circumstances. This is one task involved in safeguarding offerings. Would you say this task is easy? Is there a degree of challenge to it? Some leaders and workers say, “I don’t like numbers; I get a headache when I see them.” Well, find a suitable person to help you with the inspections and supervision then; have them help you vet these things. You may not like or be good at this work, but if you know how to use people and do so correctly, you’ll still be able to do this work well. Use suitable people to do it and you can just listen to their reports. That also works. Hold to this principle: Regularly check and tally all the safeguarded assets with the person in charge of that work, and then ask a few questions about important expenditures—can you achieve this? (Yes.) Why must leaders and workers do this work? Because it’s protecting offerings—it’s your responsibility.

The offerings people make to God are for God to enjoy, but does He use them? Does God have use for this money and these items? Are these offerings to God not meant to be used to spread the gospel work? Are they not meant for all the expenses of the work of God’s house? Since they relate to the work of God’s house, both the management and expenditure of offerings alike involve the responsibilities of leaders and workers. No matter who offers this money or where these items come from, so long as they belong to God’s house, you should manage them well, and you should follow up on this work, inspect it, and care about it. If the offerings made to God can’t be properly spent to spread God’s gospel work, but are instead wantonly squandered and wasted, or even seized or taken possession of by evil people, is that appropriate? Is that not a dereliction of duty on the part of leaders and workers? (It is.) It is a dereliction of duty on their part. So, leaders and workers must do this work. It’s incumbent on them. Managing offerings well, enabling them to be used correctly in spreading the gospel work and in any work related to God’s management, is a responsibility of leaders and workers, and it shouldn’t be overlooked. The brothers and sisters painstakingly manage to save a bit of money to offer to God. Suppose that, due to leaders and workers being negligent and remiss in their duties, this money falls into the hands of evil people—it’s all recklessly squandered and wasted by evil people, or even seized by them. Consequently, the leaders and workers do not have enough money for travel expenses or for living expenses, and there’s not even enough money when it comes time to print books of God’s words or to buy necessary devices and tools. Is this not delaying the work? When the money offered by brothers and sisters is taken into the possession of evil people rather than being put to proper use, and money needs to be spent for the work of God’s house, but there isn’t enough, has the work not then been hindered? Haven’t the leaders and workers failed to fulfill their responsibility? (Yes.) Because the leaders and workers have failed to fulfill their responsibility and not managed the offerings well, and they haven’t been good stewards or put their hearts into fulfilling their responsibility with regard to this work, losses have been incurred to the offerings and some church work has been plunged into a state of paralysis or brought to a halt for a time. Don’t the leaders and workers bear a great responsibility for this? This is iniquity. You may not have seized, squandered, or wasted these offerings, and you may not have put them in your own pocket, but this situation has come about due to your negligence and dereliction of duty. Shouldn’t you bear the responsibility for this? (Yes.) This is a very great responsibility to bear!

II. Checking the Accounts

In their work, aside from implementing various work arrangements properly and being able to fellowship the truth to resolve problems, leaders and workers are to safeguard offerings well. They are to find suitable people, according to the requirements of God’s house, to conduct the systematic management of offerings, and from time to time, they’re to check the accounts. Some ask, “How can I check them when circumstances don’t allow it?” “Circumstances don’t allow it”—is that a reason to not check the accounts? You can check them even when circumstances don’t allow it; if you can’t go yourself, you must send a reliable, suitable person to carry out supervision, and see whether the custodian is safeguarding the offerings in a fitting manner, whether there are any discrepancies in the accounts, whether the custodian is reliable, how their states have been recently and whether they’ve been negative, whether they felt afraid when they faced certain situations, and whether betrayal is a possibility. Suppose you hear that money has been tight for their family—is it possible that they might misappropriate the offerings? Through fellowship and looking into the situation, you may see that the custodian is quite reliable, that they know offerings aren’t to be touched, and that no matter how tight money has been for their family, they haven’t laid a hand on the offerings, and through a long period of observation, it may be proved that the custodian is entirely reliable. Furthermore, it must be checked whether the surrounding environment of the house where the offerings are being kept is dangerous, whether any brothers and sisters have been arrested by the great red dragon there, whether the custodian of the offerings has faced any danger, whether the offerings are stored in a suitable place, and whether or not they should be transferred. The environment and circumstances of custodians’ homes must be inspected frequently, so that appropriate responses and plans may be made at any time. As you do this, you are also to make inquiries from time to time about which teams have acquired new devices recently, and how those devices were obtained. If they were bought, you must ask whether anyone reviewed the applications and signed off on them before they were purchased, whether they were bought at a high price or a reasonable market price, whether unnecessary money has been spent, and so forth. Say that, no issues are found with the books through checking and reviewing the accounts, but it is discovered that some buyers have been frequently squandering offerings in an extravagant manner. No matter how expensive something is, they’ll buy it; moreover, when they know full well that a product will go on sale, that its price will fall, they don’t wait, and instead they will buy it immediately, and they’ll buy the good stuff, the high-end stuff, the latest models. These buyers spend money without principles and in an extravagant manner, and they spend offerings to buy things for God’s house as if they were doing things for their enemy. They never buy practical things in accordance with the principles, but just find any store and buy things outright no matter their cost and quality. Once the items have been brought back, they break within a few days of being used, and these buyers don’t get them fixed when they’re broken—they buy new ones. In the event that when checking the accounts and reviewing the financial expenditures, it’s found that some people have been seriously squandering and wasting offerings, how is this to be handled? Should those people be issued a disciplinary warning, or should they be made to pay compensation? Both are necessary, of course. If it’s found that their hearts aren’t in the right place, that they’re simply nonbelievers, disbelievers, that they’re devils, then the issue can’t be resolved by just giving them a disciplinary warning or pruning them. No matter how the truth is fellowshipped, they won’t accept it; no matter how they are pruned, they won’t take it seriously. If they’re asked to pay compensation, they’ll do it, but they’ll keep acting in the same way in the future, and they won’t change. They certainly won’t act in accordance with the requirements of God’s house; instead, they will act in a willful, reckless, and unprincipled manner. How is this kind of person to be handled? Can they be used going forward? They shouldn’t be; if they are, then the leaders and workers are big dummies—they’re just too foolish! When such disbelievers are discovered, they should be dismissed, eliminated, and cleansed away from the church at once. They’re not even qualified to render service—they’re unfit to do so!

When leaders and workers are checking the accounts and expenditures, they may not just find cases of squandering and waste or some unreasonable expenditures—they may also find that some of the people doing this work are of low character, that they’re base and selfish, and that they have caused losses to the church work. If you discover this kind of situation, how should you take care of it? It’s easy to take care of: You must handle and resolve it on the spot—dismiss those people, then choose suitable people to do the work. Suitable people means those whose humanity is up to standard, who possess conscience and reason, and who are able to handle things according to the principles of God’s house. When they shop for God’s house, they’ll buy economical things that are also relatively practical and durable, things that are essential to buy. They aren’t necessarily bent on buying cheap things, but they don’t feel the need to buy the most expensive things, either; within a group of similar products they will choose those with fairly good reviews and reputations, as well as suitable price-tags, and of course, if their warranty is on the longer side, that’s even better. This is the sort of person you must find to do the shopping for God’s house. They must be right at heart, and they must consider God’s house in their actions, and think things through; they must also handle things according to the requirements of God’s house, acting and comporting themselves in a well-behaved manner, without equivocation and with clarity. Once you’ve found such a person, have them handle a few things for God’s house and observe them. If they seem relatively suitable, they may be used. But it’s not the end of the story once that’s been arranged—going forward, you must meet with them, fellowship with them, and inspect their work. Some ask, “Is that because they’re not to be trusted?” It’s not entirely down to a lack of trust—sometimes, even if they’re to be trusted, inspections still must be made. And what’s to be inspected? See if there have been deviations in their practice in situations when they haven’t understood the principles or if they’ve harbored distorted comprehension. It’s necessary to help them by carrying out vetting. For example, suppose that they say there’s a very popular item on the market, but they don’t know whether God’s house has use for it, and they’re worried that if they don’t buy it now it may not be sold anymore in the future. They ask you how to handle this. If you don’t know, then you should have them go ask someone who’s involved in that professional work. That professional then says that the item is a novelty that won’t be of use most of the time, and that there’s no need to spend money on it. With the professional’s opinion as a reference, it’s decided that there’s no need to buy the item, that to buy it would be a waste, and to not buy it now would be no loss. Leaders and workers must do their work to this extent. No matter how important or trivial something is, if they can see it, think of it, or find out about it, then they must uniformly follow up on and inspect it, and do this in the prescribed manner according to the requirements of God’s house. This is what it means to fulfill one’s responsibility.

Some people often apply to purchase some items, asking God’s house to buy these products, and through careful review and checks, it’s usually found that only one of five things requested needs to be bought, and there’s no need to buy the other four. What’s to be done in such cases? The items they apply for must be reviewed and considered in a strict manner, they’re not to be bought in a hurry. They’re not to be bought just because those people say the work requires them—those people are not to be allowed to arbitrarily apply for things at will under the guise of it being for their work. No matter what guise these people adopt, and no matter their urgency, leaders and workers or people in charge of managing offerings absolutely must be steady at heart. They must conscientiously inspect and check these things; there can’t be the slightest error. Things that absolutely must be purchased must be researched and given the green light by leaders, and if buying them is optional, they’re to be denied, not approved. If leaders and workers do this work meticulously, concretely, and in-depth, it will reduce instances of offerings being squandered and wasted, and even more so, of course, it will reduce unreasonable expenditures. Doing this work isn’t just a matter of looking carefully at what the recorded incomings and outgoings on the books are, at what the numbers are. That’s secondary. The most important point is that your heart must be in the right place, and that you treat every expenditure and every entry as if it were an entry in your own bank account. Then you’ll look at them in detail, and you’ll be able to remember them, and you’ll be able to understand them—and if there’s a slip-up or a problem, you’ll be able to tell. If you view them as someone else’s accounts or public ones, you’re sure to be blind of eye and mind, unable to discover any problems. Some people save a bit of money in the bank, and every month, they read their statement and take a look at the interest, then they check the accounts—they check how much they spend each month, how many withdrawals they make, and how much they deposit. Each entry is recorded in their minds, they know every number as well as they do their own address, and they’re clear on them in their minds. If a problem arises somewhere, they can spot it at a glance, and they don’t overlook even the slightest error. People can be so careful with their own money, but do they show the same concern toward God’s offerings? In My opinion, 99.9% of people don’t, so when God’s offerings are handed over to people for safeguarding, there are often cases of squandering and waste and various kinds of unreasonable expenditures, and yet no one feels it’s a problem, and the people responsible for this work never feel pangs of conscience, either. To say nothing of losing a hundred dollars—even if they lose a thousand, ten thousand, they feel no rebuke, indebtedness, or accusation at heart. Why are people so muddled when it comes to this matter? Doesn’t this indicate that most people’s hearts aren’t in the right place? How is it that you’re so clear about how much money you’ve got saved at the bank? When the money of God’s house is temporarily deposited in your account, for you to safeguard, you don’t take it seriously or care about it. What mentality is this? You’re not even loyal when it comes to safeguarding God’s offerings, so are you still a believer in God? People’s attitude toward offerings is proof of their attitude toward God—their attitude toward offerings is very telling. People are indifferent about offerings and they don’t concern themselves with them. It doesn’t sadden them if offerings are lost; they don’t take responsibility, and they don’t care. So, don’t they have the same attitude toward God? (Yes.) Does anyone say, “God’s offerings are His. As long as I do not covet or seize them, everything’s fine. Whoever seizes them will be punished—that’s their business, and they deserve it. It has nothing to do with me. I have no obligation to concern myself with it”? Is this statement right? It clearly is not. Where does it go wrong, then? (Their heart’s not right; they don’t defend the work of God’s house, and they don’t protect the offerings.) What is the humanity of this sort of person like? (It’s selfish and base. They care very much about their own things and protect them very well, but they don’t care about or ask after God’s offerings. The humanity of people like that is of such a low quality.) Primarily, it’s selfish and base. Are people of this sort not cold-blooded? They’re selfish and base, cold-blooded, and lacking in human feeling. Can such people love God? Can they submit to Him? Can they have a God-fearing heart? (No.) What do such people follow God for, then? (To gain blessings.) Is this not being dead to shame? How a person treats God’s offerings is most revealing of what their nature is. People aren’t actually able to do anything for God. Even if they are able to do a bit of a duty, that is very limited. If you can’t even treat offerings—which belong to God—correctly, or safeguard them well, if you harbor that kind of view and attitude, then aren’t you someone who is most lacking in humanity? Isn’t it false for you to say you love God? Isn’t it deceptive? It’s so deceptive! There’s no humanity at all in this kind of person—would God save such scum?

III. Following Up on, Looking Into, and Inspecting Expenditures of All Sorts, Carrying Out Strict Vetting

For leaders and workers to be good stewards of God’s house, the first work they’re to do well is to manage the offerings properly. Beyond safeguarding the offerings properly, they should carry out strict vetting with regard to expenditures of offerings. What does it mean to carry out strict vetting? Primarily, it means to absolutely eliminate unreasonable expenditures, and to strive to make every expenditure of offerings reasonable and effective, rather than the offerings being squandered and wasted. If cases of waste or squandering are discovered, leaders and workers are not only to put a prompt stop to them, but also to hold them accountable, and to also identify suitable people to do the work. Leaders and workers should know exactly where each expenditure goes and what each expenditure is for within their scope of management—they should review these things in a strict manner. For example, if a room is short of a fan, they should give parameters for who’s to buy it, how much is to be spent on it, and what functions it would be most appropriate for it to have. Some leaders and workers say, “We’re busy; we can’t make time to go along to buy it.” You are not being asked to go and buy it yourselves. You should get a good person, a person of caliber to handle this task. Don’t get a bad person who is a blockhead and whose heart is in the wrong place to buy it. People of normal humanity know that they have to buy things with appropriate functions and an appropriate price-tag—excessive functions are useless, and they cost considerably more. Pleasure-seekers whose hearts aren’t in the right place, by contrast, buy impractical things that have a jumble of various kinds of functions, which costs more money. Buyers must possess reason; they must understand the principles. Purchased items must be practical without costing a lot, and be deemed suitable by everyone. If you get an irresponsible person who loves indiscriminately spending and squandering money to make this purchase, they’ll just pay a high price for a top-of-the-line air conditioner, for ten times what it would cost to buy a fan. They believe that though it costs a bit more money, the people must be our first priority—that air conditioner not only filters the air, it can also adjust the humidity and temperature, and it has various timers and settings. Is that not a waste? This is wastefulness and squandering. That person is out to enjoy themselves, and they’re spending money for kicks, to show off, not to buy practical things. Such people have their hearts in the wrong place. If they shop for themselves, they find ways to save money, look for discounted items, and try to bargain. They save money if they can—the cheaper the better. Yet when they shop for God’s house, no matter how much money they spend, they don’t care. They don’t even bother to look at cheap things; they just want to buy expensive, high-end, state-of-the-art stuff. This means their hearts aren’t in the right place. Can people whose hearts are in the wrong place be used? (No.) When handling tasks for God’s house, people whose hearts are in the wrong place only do absurd and worthless things. They don’t spend money on the right things; they just waste and squander offerings, and every one of their expenditures is unreasonable.

Some other people have a poverty mindset and they believe they must buy the cheapest things when they shop for God’s house, the cheaper the better. They think this is saving God’s house money, so they exclusively buy obsolete, cut-rate things. As a result, they purchase the cheapest machines that are shoddy. These machines break as soon as they are used, and they are beyond repair and unusable. Then it’s necessary to buy other ones that are of adequate quality, and that can be used normally, and so another sum is spent. Is this not foolish? Such people are to be called stingy, and possessed of a poverty mindset. They always want to save God’s house money, and what comes of all their scrimping and saving? It turns into waste, into the squandering of money. They even make excuses for themselves: “I didn’t do it on purpose. I had good intentions—I was just trying to save God’s house money—I didn’t want to spend money indiscriminately.” Is them not wanting to do that of any use? In fact, they are spending money indiscriminately, they do cause wastage, and this does consume money and manpower. Such people can’t be used, either—they’re blockheads, they’re not savvy enough. In brief, people with their hearts in the wrong place aren’t to be used to shop for God’s house, and neither are blockheads. Those who should be used are savvy people who have a certain amount of shopping experience and a certain caliber, and who view everything in an undistorted manner. Whatever’s being bought, it must be practical, and its price must be reasonable, and even if it breaks, it must be easy to fix, and it must be easy to buy parts for it. That’s reasonable. After some people buy something, they see that it has a one-month return window and rush to try it out, and they get their results within the month. If it’s a bit faulty and doesn’t work well, they return it right away, and pick something else, reducing losses. These people have relatively good humanity. People without humanity buy something, then toss it aside. They don’t try it out to see if there’s anything wrong with it or if it’s durable, nor do they look at how long its warranty is or how long they have to return it—they don’t care about any of this. When one day they take a sudden interest in that item, they take it and try it out, only then to find that it’s broken. They check the receipt and see that the return window has passed, and the item can’t be returned anymore. They then say, “Let’s buy another then.” Is that not a waste? “Let’s buy another”—with that phrase, God’s house has to fork over another sum of money. Applying to buy another seems on its surface to be for the sake of the church work, and a reasonable expense, when in fact, beneath it all, it is due to them being remiss in their duties by not promptly checking the item after they’d bought it. One sum of offerings is wasted, and another is paid, and the new item still has no one good to safeguard it, so it, too, is only used for a short time before it breaks. It’s surprising that there’s no one to oversee these things, no one to handle the problems that arise—what are the leaders and workers doing? They’ve been entirely derelict in their duties with regard to this work—they haven’t performed their function of supervising, inspecting, and carrying out vetting, and so offerings are squandered and wasted like this. If the buyers are responsible people, they’ll promptly return an item they’ve purchased when they see it isn’t practical. This reduces loss and waste. If they’re irresponsible people with their hearts in the wrong place, they’ll buy shoddy things, thus wasting offerings. So, who exactly should this loss of money be attributed to? Don’t the buyer and the leaders and workers all bear responsibility for this? If the leaders and workers had handled this matter conscientiously, concretely, and meticulously, wouldn’t these problems have been discovered? Wouldn’t these flaws have been made up for? (They would have.) If leaders and workers often go to the churches in various places to inspect the status of the expenditure of offerings, they will be able to find problems, and eliminate this sort of squandering and waste. If leaders and workers are lazy and irresponsible, these cases of unreasonable expenditures and of squandering and waste will arise repeatedly—they’ll continue to proliferate. What causes this proliferation? Doesn’t it have something to do with leaders and workers not doing real work, and instead situating themselves above others and acting like ineffective officials? (Yes.) Such leaders and workers have no conscience or reason, and they have no humanity. Because all the money the church spends belongs to God’s house, and it’s all God’s offerings, and they believe it has nothing to do with them, they neither care nor ask about it, and they ignore it. Most people believe that the money of God’s house ought to be spent, that it’s fine to spend it in any manner, that so long as they don’t pocket or embezzle it, it doesn’t matter if it’s wasted, and that it’s just people buying experience and broadening their horizons. Leaders and workers just turn a blind eye to it: “Anybody can spend that money however they want to, and buy whatever they want to. It doesn’t matter how much is wasted—whoever wastes the money is responsible for it, and they will face retribution and punishment in the future—this has nothing to do with me. I’m not the one spending it, after all, and it’s not my money being spent.” Is this not the same view and attitude that nonbelievers harbor toward the spending of public funds? It’s just as if they were spending their enemies’ money. When nonbelievers work in a factory, if the management is lax, communal items will always be stolen and taken back to people’s homes or casually ruined, and if something breaks, they will ask the factory to buy a new one. When they shop for the factory, they will exclusively buy good, expensive things. In any case, the money will be spent arbitrarily, and without any upper limit. If believers in God also have such a mentality toward offerings, can they be saved? Will God work upon such a group of people? (No.) If people have an attitude like this toward God’s offerings, then you should know without Me telling you what sort of attitude God has toward those people.

The most direct way in which a person’s attitude toward God manifests is in their attitude toward offerings. Whatever your attitude is toward offerings, that’s your attitude toward God. If you treat offerings as you do the entries in your own bank account—meticulously, carefully, cautiously, rigorously, responsibly, and attentively—then your attitude toward God is more or less the same as this. If your attitude toward offerings is like your attitude toward public property, toward vegetables at a market—casually buying a few of whatever you need and not even looking at any of the vegetables you don’t like, ignoring them no matter where they’re stacked, not caring if anyone takes them and uses them, pretending not to see when they’ve fallen on the ground and someone steps on them, believing all this has nothing to do with you—then that spells trouble for you. If that’s the sort of attitude you have toward offerings, are you a responsible person? Can a person like you do a duty well? It’s obvious what sort of humanity you have. In brief, in the work of managing offerings, the main responsibility of leaders and workers, beyond safeguarding them well, is that they must follow up on the subsequent work—most importantly, they are to regularly check the accounts, as well as follow up on, look into, and inspect expenditures of all sorts, and to carry out strict vetting. They’re absolutely to eliminate unreasonable expenditures before they result in squandering and waste; and if the unreasonable expenditures have already led to those things, they must hold the culprits accountable, give them a warning, and have them pay compensation. If you can’t even do this work well, hurry up and resign—don’t occupy the position of a leader or worker, because you can’t do the work of one. If you can’t even take charge of this work and you can’t do it well, what work can you do? Tell Me systematically: How many tasks are there, in total, that leaders and workers must do with regard to offerings? (The first is safeguarding them. The second is checking the accounts. The third is following up on, looking into, and inspecting expenditures of all sorts, and carrying out strict vetting; unreasonable expenditures must be eliminated, and no matter who causes squandering or waste, they must be held accountable and made to pay compensation.) Is it easy to work according to these steps? (Yes.) This is a clearly delineated way to work. If you can’t even do such simple work, then what is it you can do as a leader or worker—as a steward of God’s house? There are instances of offerings being wasted and squandered at every turn, and if, as a leader or worker, you have no awareness of it and don’t feel bad about it at all, then is God even in your heart—is there even a place for Him there? This is questionable. You say that your God-loving heart is great and that you really do have a God-fearing heart, yet when His offerings are squandered and wasted like this, you somehow have no awareness of it and don’t feel bad about it at all—does that not call your love and fear of God into question? (It does.) Even your faith is questionable, let alone your love and fear of God. Your love and fear of God doesn’t hold up—it’s not tenable! Safeguarding offerings well is an obligation leaders and workers should fulfill, and it’s also their unshirkable responsibility. If the offerings are not safeguarded well, that’s a dereliction of duty on their part—it can be said that all who safeguard offerings poorly are false leaders and false workers.

IV. Promptly Finding Out About the Whereabouts of Offerings, As Well As the Various Circumstances of Their Custodians

Beyond inspecting the state of the expenditure of offerings and resolving unreasonable expenditures, leaders and workers have another most important task: They’re to promptly find out about the whereabouts of offerings, as well as the various circumstances of their custodians. The aim of this is to keep evil people, people who harbor shady schemes, and people with covetous hearts from exploiting oversights to seize offerings. Some people see that God’s house has so many things, and that some don’t have anyone watching over them or keeping records of them, and so they’re always thinking about when they’ll make those things their own private property, and have them for their own use. There are people like this everywhere. Some people seem outwardly not to take advantage of others and not to have a great desire for material things or money, but that’s because the situation and conditions aren’t right—if offerings really were put into their hands for safeguarding, they may well seize them. Some ask, “But they were such a good person before: They weren’t covetous, and they were of alright character—so why did just putting a few offerings in their hands reveal them?” This comes from you not having spent a lot of time with these people, not having come to a deep understanding of them, not seeing through to their nature essence. If you’d realized early on that this was the sort of person they are, the offerings would have been spared the misfortune of being taken into the possession of evil people. So, in order to prevent offerings from falling into the hands of evil people, leaders and workers have another, more important task: promptly finding out about and keeping abreast of the whereabouts of offerings and the various circumstances of their custodians. Say someone has a few hundred or a few thousand dollars in their possession to manage, if they have a bit of conscience, they won’t embezzle it—but if it were tens or hundreds of thousands, most people couldn’t be relied on, this would be dangerous, and their hearts might then change. How might their hearts change? A few hundred or thousand aren’t liable to sway a person’s heart, but with tens or hundreds of thousands, their heart may easily be swayed. “I couldn’t make this much in several lifetimes, and now it’s in my hands—how much better off I would be if it were mine!” They mull it over: “I don’t feel guilty about these thoughts—so is there actually a God or not? Where is God? Isn’t it the case that no one knows I’m having these thoughts? No one knows, and I don’t feel guilty or bad—does this mean there’s no God? Then if I take this money for myself, will I not face any punishment or retribution? Will there be no consequences?” Is this person’s heart not in the process of changing? Are the offerings in their hands not in danger? (They are.) In addition, some people who manage offerings are quite good, they have a foundation in their belief in God and they are loyal in their actions, and even if you have them safeguard a few tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, they’ll be able to do it well, and they are guaranteed not to embezzle it. But there are a few nonbelievers in their families, and when those people see money, their eyes go red, like when a wolf spies its prey. Forget about tens or hundreds of thousands—they’d stuff a thousand dollars in their pockets, if they saw it. They don’t care whose it is; they believe that it belongs to whoever manages to pocket it, whoever snatches it first. If there are evil wolves like this around a person who is safeguarding offerings, are the offerings not then in danger of being taken possession of anywhere, at any time? Could such a situation happen? (It could.) Isn’t it dangerous if leaders and workers are careless and have no sense of responsibility, and don’t even notice it or go make inquiries about it and look into it when offerings are in such a dangerous situation? Something could go wrong anywhere, at any time. There’s another sort of situation: Some custodians safeguard both money and various items in their homes, and they also host brothers and sisters and leaders and workers there. This may be relatively safe on a temporary basis, but is it appropriate to keep offerings there in the long run? (No.) Even if the person safeguarding them is suitable, the environment and conditions absolutely aren’t. Either the people they’re hosting are to be removed, or the offerings are to be taken away. If leaders and workers neither look into this work nor fulfill their responsibility with regard to it, something may go wrong anywhere, at any time; the offerings may suffer losses and fall into the hands of demons anywhere, at any time. There’s another sort of situation: Some churches are in hostile environments in which people are often arrested, and because of this, it’s very easy for the houses where offerings are safeguarded to be sold out, and to be raided and searched by the great red dragon—the offerings may be plundered by demons at any time. Are such places appropriate for storing offerings? (No.) So, if they’ve already been put there, what’s to be done? Move them right away. Some leaders and workers don’t fulfill their responsibility and don’t do real work. They aren’t able to anticipate or think of these things, they have no awareness of them, and only when something goes wrong and the offerings are snatched away by demons, do they think, “We should have moved them back then,” and just feel a bit of regret like this. But if nothing goes wrong, another ten more years can go by, and they still won’t move the offerings. They can’t see what serious consequences may arise due to this issue, and they are not able to prioritize things based on importance and urgency. Leaders and workers should have a clear understanding of this situation when they encounter it: “One of the places where offerings are being stored isn’t suitable. The environment’s too dangerous, and quite a few brothers and sisters have been arrested, tailed, or put under surveillance in the vicinity. We need to think of a way to get the offerings out of there. Getting them to a relatively safe place would be a better move than leaving them where they are and waiting for them to get snatched.” When a situation has just arisen and they foresee that the offerings are in danger, they should move them promptly, to keep them from being taken possession of and devoured by the great red dragon demon. This is the only way to ensure the safety of the offerings, and to avoid any pitfalls or slip-ups occurring. This is work leaders and workers should do. As soon as there’s the slightest sign of danger, as soon as someone is arrested, as soon as a situation arises, leaders’ and workers’ first thought should be whether the offerings are safe, whether they might fall into the hands of evil people, or be taken into their possession, or be snatched away by demons, and whether the offerings have suffered any losses. They should promptly take measures to protect the offerings. This is the responsibility of leaders and workers. Some leaders and workers may say, “Doing these things requires us to take risks. Can we not do them? Isn’t it the case that people are our first priority, which means that there’s no need to put the offerings first and people should be put first?” What do you think of their question? Do these people have humanity? (No.) Safeguarding offerings well, managing them well, and watching over them well—these are responsibilities that a good steward should fulfill. In more serious terms, even if you have to sacrifice your life, it’s worth it and it’s what you ought to do. It’s your responsibility. People are always shouting, “To die for God is a worthy death.” Are people truly willing to die for God? You’re not being asked now to die for God; you’re just being required to take on a bit of risk to securely safeguard the offerings. Are you willing to do that? You should happily say, “I am!” Why? Because this is God’s commission and requirement of man, it’s your unshirkable responsibility, and you shouldn’t try to get out of it. Given that you claim you’d die for God, why then can’t you pay a bit of a price, and take on a bit of risk to safeguard the offerings? Isn’t it what you ought to do? If you don’t do anything real, but you’re always shouting about dying for God, aren’t these words hollow? Leaders and workers should have a pure understanding of the work of safeguarding offerings, and they should shoulder this responsibility. They shouldn’t evade it or avoid it, and they should not shrink from their responsibility. Since you’re a leader or worker, this work is an onus that’s incumbent upon you. It’s important work—are you willing to do it, even if you’re taking on some risk, even if your life is at stake? Should you do it? (Yes.) You should be willing to do it; you must not disown this responsibility. This is God’s requirement of man and the commission He gives man. God has told you His most minimal requirement and commission—if you’re not even willing to carry it out, then what are you able to do?

Leaders and workers should do the work of safeguarding and spending offerings as meticulously and concretely as possible. They shouldn’t be sloppy with it, much less treat it like someone else’s business and disown the responsibility. Leaders and workers should personally carry out vetting, get involved, and make inquiries concerning these things, and even handle them personally, to keep evil people and people of poor humanity from exploiting oversights and causing destruction. The more meticulously you do this work, the less opportunity evil people and bad people will have to exploit oversights; the more detailed your inquiries and the stricter your management, the fewer instances there will be of unreasonable expenditures, squandering, and waste. Some say, “Is doing this about saving money for God’s house? Is God’s house short on funds? If it is, I’ll offer up some more.” Is that what’s going on? (No.) This is the responsibility of leaders and workers, it’s God’s requirement of man, and it’s a principle that leaders and workers are to abide by in doing this work. As a believer in God, as someone who has taken on the role of a steward in God’s house, your attitude toward offerings should be one of responsibility and of carrying out strict vetting; otherwise, you’re not qualified to do this work. If you were an ordinary believer who lacked a sense of responsibility and didn’t pursue the truth, you wouldn’t be required to do these things. You are a leader or worker; if you don’t have this sense of responsibility, you’re unfit to be one, and even if you do serve as one, you are an irresponsible false leader or false worker, and you will be eliminated, sooner or later. All those who completely lack a sense of responsibility are people who don’t defend the work of God’s house at all—they’re all lacking the least shred of conscience and reason. How could such people possibly do duties? They’re all thoughtless trash—they should leave God’s house at once, and get back to the world where they belong!

If we didn’t fellowship like this on common knowledge about offerings, as well as the truths involved in the safeguarding of offerings and the principles people should practice, wouldn’t you be unclear on these things? (We would.) When people are unclear about the precise principles, can they fulfill some of their responsibility? Have they been fulfilling their responsibility? Haven’t most people been going off the shallowest theory and principle of: “At any rate, I don’t covet God’s offerings, I don’t embezzle or misappropriate them, and I keep a good watch over them and do not let people spend them arbitrarily—that’s enough”? Is this the practice of the truth? Is this fulfilling one’s responsibility? (No.) If most people’s knowledge goes no further than this standard, then this topic really merits fellowship. Through this fellowship, do you now comprehend and understand a bit more about how to safeguard offerings and the attitude and knowledge you should have in safeguarding them? (Yes.) We’ll wrap up our fellowship here on truths that touch on offerings and on principles that relate to how to treat and manage offerings.

The Attitude and Manifestations of False Leaders With Regard to Offerings

I. Treating Offerings as Common Property

Next, we’ll carry out a simple exposure and dissection of false leaders with regard to item eleven of the responsibilities of leaders and workers. We’ll look at what manifestations false leaders have in their attitude toward offerings and in their safeguarding and management of offerings. The first manifestation is that false leaders lack accurate knowledge about offerings. They believe, “Offerings are nominally made to God, but really, they’re made to the church. We don’t know where God is, and He can’t use so much stuff, anyway. These offerings are only being made to God in name; really, they’re being made to the church, and to God’s house, and they’re not explicitly offered to any given person. The church and God’s house are bywords for all their people, and the implication of this is that the offerings are everyone’s, and what’s everyone’s is common property. So, offerings are common property that belongs to all the brothers and sisters.” Is this understanding accurate? It’s quite clearly not. Is there not a problem with the humanity of people who have such an understanding? Aren’t they people who covet offerings? People who have covetous hearts and a desire to seize offerings employ this method and this view when it comes to the offerings. Clearly, they’re eyeing the offerings and would like to appropriate them for their own enjoyment. What sort of creatures are these? Aren’t they of an ilk with Judas? So, this kind of leader or worker takes God’s offerings to be the church’s common property. They harbor this kind of attitude at heart—they don’t earnestly safeguard the offerings, or manage them reasonably and responsibly, instead, they use the offerings at will, brazenly, and in a completely unbridled way, lacking principles. They allow anyone to use them, and whoever’s “official post” is grander, whoever’s status is higher, whoever is prestigious among the brothers and sisters, gets priority of possession and use. It’s the same as in the companies and factories of society, where the company cars and good, high-end things are for the use of managers, factory directors, and chairmen. They believe that this is how it should be with God’s offerings, too, that whoever’s a leader or worker has priority in enjoying the high-end things of God’s house, in enjoying the offerings made to God. So, all those who use being a leader and a worker as a pretext to buy high-end computers and cell phones, as well as all those leaders and workers who take offerings for themselves, believe that offerings are common property, and that the offerings should be used and squandered as they please. When some brothers and sisters offer up gold and silver jewelry, bags, clothes, and shoes, they don’t specify that they’re offering them to God, and so some false leaders believe, “Since they didn’t specify that these items are being offered up to God, they should be for the church’s use. Whatever is given to the church is common property, and leaders and workers should have priority in enjoying common property.” And so, they take these things for themselves as a matter of course. The things left after they’ve picked through them may be used by whoever wants to and taken by whoever wants to—everyone divvies them up. These leaders and workers call this sharing the wealth; in following them, people can eat and drink well, and really enjoy themselves. Everyone’s happy, and they say, “Thanks be to God—would we be able to enjoy these things if we didn’t believe in Him? These are offerings, and we’re not worthy of enjoying them!” They say they’re not worthy, yet they clutch those things and won’t let go. Such leaders and workers don’t just seize offerings and divvy them up, and personally enjoy them without getting anyone’s approval—as they do this, they uniformly pay no mind to the management, expenditure, and use of offerings, nor do they choose suitable people to manage and keep records of them, and less still do they check the accounts, or rigorously review the state of expenditures. False leaders’ indifference to the management of offerings leads to chaos, and some offerings are lost and squandered. What stands out most in the work of false leaders is that everyone acts on their own will. What the supervisor of any team says, goes, and when any team needs to buy something, they may decide to do so themselves, without needing to submit a request for approval. As long as something is needed for the work, they can buy it, without worrying about how much it costs, whether they can make use of it, or whether it’s necessary or not—at any rate, they’re spending offerings, not any person’s money. False leaders don’t supervise this or carry out vetting, much less fellowship about the principles. When something’s been bought, false leaders uniformly pay no mind to whether there’s anyone to safeguard it, whether something may go wrong with it, or whether it’s worth the money spent. Why do they pay these things no mind? It’s because the money isn’t theirs—they think that anyone can spend it, as either way it’s not their money that’s being spent. There’s chaos in every aspect of the management of offerings. How chaotic is it? It’s the same as in the big, state-owned factories of socialist countries, where everyone gets an equal share no matter how much work they do. Everyone takes things home, eats the factory’s food and earns factory money, and embezzles the factory’s things. It’s utter chaos. False leaders make no rules for expenditures in purchasing any devices or equipment. God’s house makes rules, but they don’t rigorously review, check, follow up on, or inspect expenditures. They don’t do any of this work. The work of false leaders is utterly chaotic, there’s no order to anything, and there are flaws everywhere. At every turn, evil people and those whose hearts are in the wrong place are allowed to exploit oversights and take advantage. God’s offerings are squandered and wasted with abandon by those people, and yet they aren’t punished or sanctioned in any way—they’re not even given a warning. What sort of leaders and workers are these? Are they not biting the hand that feeds them? Are they stewards of God’s house? They’re thieving traitors of God’s house!

How should these leaders and workers who don’t take responsibility when it comes to safeguarding offerings be viewed? Aren’t they of low character and devoid of conscience and reason? These false leaders consider the things offered by brothers and sisters to God and the church to be the property of God’s house, and say that they should be managed by the brothers and sisters as a group. And so, when problems have been uncovered, and the Above is holding people accountable, they do their utmost to defend themselves, and do not acknowledge how serious in nature it is that they stole and seized God’s offerings after becoming leaders and gaining status. Are these not people of low character? They’re simply shameless! They don’t know why the brothers and sisters offer up money and items, nor whom they offer them up to. If there were no God, who would offer up things that they like lightly? This is such a simple logic, and yet these so-called “leaders” don’t know or understand it. These false leaders have a pet phrase: “the offerings of God’s house.” Isn’t this expression in need of correction? What should the correct expression be? “Offerings” or “God’s offerings.” If you’re going to add a qualifier, you should add “God”—offerings belong to God alone. If you don’t add a qualifier, it’s simply just “offerings”—people should still know that the owner of offerings is the Creator, God, and not man. Man isn’t worthy of possessing offerings, and even priests can’t say that the offerings are theirs—they may enjoy offerings with God’s permission, but they don’t belong to them. The qualifier for “offerings” will never be any person—it can only be God, and no one else. It’s quite evident, then, that the expression “offerings of God’s house” often spoken by false leaders is erroneous, and should be corrected. There shouldn’t be any such saying as “the offerings of God’s house” or “the offerings of the church.” There are some people who even say “our offerings” and “the offerings of our house of God.” All these expressions are wrong. Offerings are made to God by created mankind, by those who follow God. God alone has the exclusive right to be their owner, user, and enjoyer. Offerings aren’t common property; they don’t belong to man, much less to the church and God’s house, instead, they belong to God. God permits the church and God’s house to use them—this is His commission. Therefore, all such expressions as “the offerings of God’s house,” “the offerings of the church,” and “our offerings” are imprecise, and more than that, they’re the expressions of people with ulterior motives, they’re meant to mislead people and make them numb, and even more so, to misguide people. These people categorize offerings into common property belonging to the church, or to God’s house, or to all the brothers and sisters. All of this is problematic and erroneous and should be corrected. This is a manifestation of one sort of false leader. Such people take offerings to be common property and use them as they please; or, they believe that as leaders, they have the right to allocate these things, and so they allocate them to people they like or to everyone equally. What sort of scenario are they trying to create? One where everyone is equal, where everyone may enjoy God’s grace, where everyone shares. They’d like to buy people’s favor by being generous with the resources of God’s house. Isn’t that disgusting? It’s vile, shameless behavior! How are such people to be characterized? Such false leaders covet offerings, and in order to keep people from supervising, exposing, and discerning them, they allocate the leftover items they don’t use to the brothers and sisters, buying their favor and attaining a scenario where everyone is equal, and enabling everyone to benefit from association with them, so that no one will expose them. If you came across this sort of false leader, who could allow you to derive some benefits and with whom you could enjoy some “common property”—if you had this right and took this kind of advantage, would you be happy with that? Would you be able to refuse it? (We would.) If you’re covetous, don’t have a God-fearing heart, and aren’t afraid of God, you won’t be able to. Anyone with a bit of integrity, a bit of reason, and a bit of a God-fearing heart will reject it, and they’ll also rise up to reproach that leader, to prune them, to stop them, saying: “The first thing you should be doing as a leader is managing the offerings well, not embezzling them, much less deciding without authorization to allocate them to everyone based on your own will. You don’t have that right; that’s not God’s commission of you. Offerings are God’s to use, and there are principles to the church’s usage of them—no one has the final say over them. You may be a leader, but you don’t have that privilege. God didn’t bestow it on you. You don’t have the right to use God’s things—God didn’t commission you with that work. So, hurry up and take off the gold and silver jewelry that the brothers and sisters offered to God, and take off the clothes that they offered to Him. Hurry up and pay compensation for the things you’ve eaten that you shouldn’t have. If you’re still a human and have some shame, do this right away. Furthermore, no matter who you’ve sent these offerings to in order to court their favor, or who you’ve let seize them and enjoy them, retrieve those offerings at once. If you don’t, we’ll notify all the brothers and sisters and handle you as a Judas!” Would you dare do this? (Yes.) Everyone has this responsibility when it comes to offerings, and they should treat them with this conscience and this sort of attitude. Of course, they also have this obligation to supervise how others treat offerings, whether they’re safeguarding them well, and whether they’re managing them according to the principles. Don’t think that this has nothing to do with you, and then not be responsible, saying, “In any case, I’m not a leader or a worker, this isn’t my responsibility. Even if I discover it, I don’t have to bother with it or say something about it—that’s a matter for leaders and workers. Whoever spends money arbitrarily and embezzles offerings, they’re a Judas, and God will punish them when the time comes. Whoever causes a consequence, they’re responsible for it. There’s no need for me to bother with this. What good would me speaking out of turn about it do?” What do you make of this kind of person? (They have no conscience.) If you discover that, in some areas that the leaders and workers don’t look into, there are people squandering and seizing offerings, you should personally give the people involved a warning, and also promptly report it to leaders and workers. You should say, “Our team head and our leader often take offerings for themselves. They also arbitrarily spend offerings, and they don’t engage in discussions with others and just decide by themselves to buy this and that. Most of their expenditures are not in line with the principles. Can God’s house handle this?” It is the responsibility of God’s chosen people to report and inform about the problems they find. Our preceding fellowship has been about the manifestation of one sort of false leader—their attitude toward offerings is to treat them as common property.

II. Not Caring or Asking About Expenditures of Offerings

Another manifestation of false leaders with regard to safeguarding offerings is that they don’t know how to manage offerings. They know only that the offerings aren’t to be touched, that they’re not to be misappropriated arbitrarily or embezzled, that they’re sacred, set apart as holy, and that one can’t have improper thoughts about them. But when it comes to how, exactly, to manage the offerings well, how to be a good steward in safeguarding them, they have no path, no principles, no specific plans or steps for this work. So, in matters such as registering, tallying, and safeguarding offerings, as well as checking accounts of incomings and outgoings and checking expenditures, these false leaders are quite passive. When someone submits something for approval, they sign off on it. When someone applies for reimbursement, they give it to them. When someone applies for money for some purpose, they hand it out to them. They don’t know where the various machines and equipment are being safeguarded. They also don’t know whether their custodian is suitable, nor how to tell if they are; they can’t see through to people’s hearts, and they can’t see through to people’s essences. So, though there are records of all outgoing offerings under the scope of these people’s management, looking at the details of the expenditures in those accounts, many of the expenditures are unreasonable and unnecessary—many of them are excessive and wasteful. The offerings are lost under the signatures of these leaders and workers. By appearances, they seem to be doing specific work, but in fact, there are no principles at all to what they’re doing. They’re not carrying out vetting—they’re going through the motions, adhering to rules and regulations, nothing more. This doesn’t meet the standards for managing offerings at all, much less its principles. So, during the period when false leaders are at work, there are too many unreasonable expenditures. If there’s someone there to supervise and manage things, how do these unreasonable expenditures come about? It’s because these leaders and workers don’t take responsibility in their work. They go through the motions and deal with things in a perfunctory manner, and they don’t act according to the principles. They don’t offend others, they act like people pleasers, and they don’t carry out proper vetting. There even may not be one truly responsible person among those who manage offerings, not one who can truly carry out vetting. False leaders pay no heed to whether the people safeguarding offerings are suitable, or to whether there are any dangerous situations at those people’s churches. To them, so long as they themselves are safe, then everything’s fine. When danger arises, the first thing they think of is where they can run to and whether their own money will be raided, whereas they neither look into nor ask about the whereabouts of offerings or whether they’re in danger. A few months or even half a year after the incident, they may ask out of conscience, and when they learn that some offerings have been taken into the great red dragon’s possession, that some have been squandered by evil people, and that the whereabouts of some are unknown, they’ll feel bad for a while—they’ll pray a bit, admit to their mistake, and that’ll be the end of it. What sort of creatures are these people? Isn’t there a problem with working like this? How will God treat someone who harbors such an attitude toward offerings? Will He regard them as a true believer? (No.) What will He regard them as, then? (As a nonbeliever.) When God regards someone as a nonbeliever, does that person get a feeling? They get numb and dull-witted in their spirit, and when they act, they don’t have God’s enlightenment or guidance, or any light. They don’t have God protecting them when things happen to them, and they’re often negative and weak, living in darkness. Though they listen to sermons often, and can suffer and pay a price in their work, they simply don’t make any progress, and they cut a pathetic figure. Those are their “results.” Is this not even harder to bear than punishment? Tell Me, if this is the result of someone’s belief in God, is that a cause for joy and celebration or for grief and lamentation? It’s not a good sign, in My opinion.

False leaders never take the work of managing offerings seriously. Although they say, “People must not touch God’s offerings; God’s offerings shouldn’t be embezzled by anyone, and they shouldn’t fall into the hands of bad people,” and they shout these slogans quite well, and their words sound very moral and decent, but they don’t act like humans. Though they don’t embezzle offerings, and they don’t have improper thoughts about them, or any intent to seize them, and some of them never even use the money of God’s house or touch God’s offerings for any expense they may have, and instead spend their own money, as leaders and workers, they do no real work at all when it comes to the management of offerings. They don’t even do such simple things as asking about the state of the expenditure of offerings or vetting expenditures of offerings. These, clearly, are false leaders. Their attitude toward offerings is this: “I don’t spend them and I don’t embezzle them, and I also don’t concern myself with how others spend them or whether others embezzle them.” I say to these false leaders that this lukewarm attitude of yours is very troublesome. Not spending them and not embezzling them is what people should do, but as a leader or worker, what you should do even more is manage offerings well, and yet you have failed to do this. That’s called a dereliction of duty. This is a manifestation of a false leader. You may not have spent a cent or embezzled a single offering, but because you don’t do actual work, and you don’t do any specific management work concerning the offerings, you’re characterized as a false leader, and doing so is justified and reasonable. Some leaders never take or use any offerings at all—even if all the other leaders and workers use them, they don’t, and when God’s house arranges to give them something, they refuse it. They seem quite clean and free of covetousness, but when they are arranged to manage offerings, they won’t do any specific work at all. No matter who is spending offerings, they’ll sign off on it—they don’t even make any inquiries, and they don’t say a word more about it. Though these people do not embezzle one cent of the offerings, under the scope of their management, offerings are taken into the possession of evil people, and because of their irresponsibility and dereliction of duty, offerings may be squandered and wasted by anyone. Isn’t this squandering and waste related to their mismanagement? Isn’t it caused by their dereliction of duty? (It is.) Do they not have a share in these people’s evil deeds? Don’t they bear responsibility for them? This is a great responsibility to bear, and they cannot shirk it! They just stick to their line: “In any case, I’m not embezzling God’s offerings, and I don’t wish to or plan to. No matter who spends God’s offerings, I don’t spend them; no matter who takes and uses them, I don’t; no matter who enjoys them, I don’t. This is my attitude toward offerings—you can do whatever you want!” Are there such people? (Yes.) Antichrists spend offerings on high-end clothes, luxury goods, and even cars. Tell Me, can this sort of false leader perceive this problem? They do not embezzle the offerings themselves, they have this attitude, so don’t they believe that it’s bad to embezzle them? (They do.) So, when antichrists do such great evil, why do they ignore it and not put a stop to it? Why don’t they take it seriously? (They don’t want to cause offense.) Is that not an evil deed? (It is.) This is not fulfilling the responsibility that a steward ought to. If, during your management, offerings are taken into the possession of evil people, if they’re squandered, wasted, and spent in an unreasonable manner, if they slip away like this, and yet you don’t do any work or even say a word, is that not a dereliction of duty? Is that not the manifestation of a false leader? If you don’t say what you should, don’t do the work you should, don’t fulfill the responsibility you should, and though you understand every doctrine, you just don’t do actual work, then you’re definitely a false leader. You believe, “In any case, I’m not embezzling the offerings; if others do, that’s their business.” Are you not a false leader, then? Not embezzling the offerings is your personal business, but have you safeguarded the offerings well? Have you fulfilled your responsibility with regard to the offerings? If you haven’t, you’re a false leader. Don’t find excuses for yourself, saying: “In any case, I don’t embezzle the offerings, so I’m not a false leader!” Not embezzling offerings doesn’t qualify as a criterion for measuring whether a leader or worker is up to standard; the true criterion for whether they’re up to standard is if they fulfill their responsibility, carry out what a person should do, and fulfill the obligation a person should fulfill, in the things entrusted to them by God—that’s what’s most important. So, in the management of offerings, what is your obligation and responsibility? Have you carried out all of it? It’s quite clear that you haven’t. You’re just going through the motions; you’re afraid of offending people, but you’re not afraid of offending God. You disregard the offerings because you’re afraid of offending people, of damaging your good image in their eyes—if you have this manifestation, you’re definitely a false leader. This isn’t slapping a label on you. The facts are laid out for all to see: You can’t even fulfill your obligation and responsibility—you’re so selfish! You manage your own things, your personal property, quite well, conscientiously, and carefully. You don’t let those things get exposed to the elements; you don’t let anyone carry them off, and you don’t let anyone take advantage of you. But with the offerings, you have no sense of responsibility at all—you don’t even carry out one-tenth of the responsibility that you do when it comes to managing your own things. How can you be considered a good steward? How can you be considered a leader or worker? You’re evidently a false leader. This is a manifestation of one kind of false leader.

III. Restricting Reasonable Expenditures

There’s another sort of false leader, and they’re also quite loathsome. After people like this become leaders, they see that the person who’s been safeguarding the offerings has been spending money extravagantly and very wastefully, so they dismiss them. They then wish to find a person who is able to plan meticulously and budget carefully, who really pinches pennies, and who knows how to run a home economically. They think that’s the sort of person who’d be a good steward, and it turns out that they don’t think anyone’s suitable, and they wind up safeguarding the offerings themselves. When the brothers and sisters say that some copies of books of God’s words need to be printed for preaching the gospel, these leaders don’t allow this to be done, thinking that it costs quite a lot to print books; they don’t care if it’s urgently needed for the work—for them, it’s fine as long as they save money. They simply don’t know where using God’s offerings would be most in line with His intentions; all they know to do is to protect God’s offerings and to not let them be touched at all. They don’t spend what should be spent—they’re carrying out vetting really “well,” alright! How can the work proceed like this? Do these leaders have principles to their actions? (No.) They don’t allow work to be done that should be done, or allow books to be printed that should be printed, or allow money to be spent that has to be spent—they don’t permit any reasonable expenditure. Is that management? (No.) What is it? It’s a lack of understanding of the principles. People who lack understanding of the principles don’t know how to manage the offerings when they work. They believe that they must keep watch over the money and not let it be diminished by a single cent, and that, no matter what the expenditure, the money is not to be touched. Is this in line with God’s intentions? (No, it isn’t.) Regulating things and carrying out vetting without principles isn’t management. Wanton spending, waste, and squandering isn’t management, but not letting a cent be spent and restricting reasonable expenditures due to vetting isn’t management, either. Neither is in line with the principles. Because some people don’t understand the principles for using, allocating, and managing offerings, all sorts of farces and all sorts of chaos come about. These leaders seem from the outside to be quite responsible and dedicated, but how’s the work they’re doing? (It’s unprincipled.) And because it’s unprincipled, the gospel work in their area meets with hindrance and restriction, and some professional work is restricted, as well, due to their overly strict vetting of the usage of offerings. On the surface, they appear very conscientious and responsible in their safeguarding of the offerings. But in fact, because they don’t have spiritual understanding, and just act based on their notions and imaginings, and they even carry out vetting for God’s house under the guise of being frugal for the church’s sake, they severely impact the progress of the various items of the church’s work without even knowing it. Can such people be characterized as false leaders? (Yes.) This qualifies them as false leaders. To a certain extent, they have already caused disturbances and disruptions to the gospel work and to the work of the church. These disturbances and disruptions are caused by their lack of understanding of the principles, as well as them working recklessly based on their own preferences and notions, and not seeking the truth principles, or discussing things or cooperating with others. Offerings will not be wasted or squandered when they’re with them, but they can’t use offerings reasonably according to the principles, and don’t allow them to be used just for the sake of protecting them, and consequently the work of spreading the gospel is delayed, and the normal operation of the work of God’s house is impacted. So, based on this manifestation, it’s not excessive at all to characterize them as false leaders. Why are such people also characterized as false leaders? They don’t know how to do work, and their comprehension of how to treat offerings and ways of treating them are so distorted, so can they do other work well? Certainly not. Is there not a problem with these people’s comprehension? (There is.) Their comprehension is distorted, they adhere to regulations, they engage in pretense, and they’re pseudo-spiritual. They don’t consider the work of God’s house, and they don’t act according to the principles—they can’t find the principles for acting, and they just go by their own petty cleverness and their own will and abide by regulations. That’s why their work results in disturbances and disruptions. Their way of working is stupid and clumsy—it’s disgusting. Such people are obviously false leaders. Is there anyone who says, “I safeguard the offerings so well, I do this work so attentively, and still, I’m characterized as a false leader. I won’t manage them anymore, then! Whoever wants to spend them can; whoever wants to use them can; whoever wants to take them can!” Is there anyone who has that thought? What, then, is our purpose in exposing the different states and manifestations of the various sorts of false leaders? (To get people to grasp the principles and avoid walking the path of false leaders.) That’s right. It’s to get people to grasp the principles, to be able to do their work well and fulfill their responsibility in accordance with the principles, to not go off imaginings and notions, to not harbor human will or impetuousness, to not let a theory they’ve imagined stand in for the truth principles, to not pretend to be spiritual, and to not use what they believe to be spirituality as a counterfeit or replacement for the principles. Such people do exist among leaders and workers, and it’s worth taking them as a warning.

IV. Seizing and Enjoying Offerings

There’s another sort of false leader, and the work they do when it comes to managing offerings is even more of a mess. They believe that as a leader or worker, they can’t always have their eyes fixed on the offerings, or be so attentive when it comes to the offerings. They think they just need to do the church’s administrative work well, and perform the work of church life and of the life entry of God’s chosen people well, and in addition to that, ensure that the various kinds of professional work are done well. They believe that offerings are money and items that God provides to the church, and that this money and these items are there to meet the needs of leaders and workers in their lives and work. The implication here is that offerings are prepared for leaders and workers, and that once someone has been chosen as a leader or worker, God permits them to enjoy these offerings, and that leaders and workers get priority in allocating them, enjoying them, and spending them—and so, once a person becomes a leader or worker, they become the master of the offerings, the manager and owner of the offerings. When people of this sort come into contact with offerings in their work, they don’t register them, tally them, or safeguard them, nor do they check the accounts of incoming and outgoing offerings, much less do they inspect the status of their expenditure and allocation. Instead, they look into and get a grasp on what offerings there are and whether there are any that leaders and workers can enjoy. This is the sort of attitude these leaders and workers have toward offerings. In their view, offerings don’t need to be registered, tallied, safeguarded, or to have their incomings and outgoings or the state of their expenditure inspected—such things have nothing to do with them—they just need to allocate the offerings to leaders and workers, giving them priority when it comes to enjoying the offerings. In their view, what leaders and workers say is the principle—it’s their decision how to spend and allocate the offerings. They believe that being chosen as a leader or worker means that someone has already been made perfect, and that, like a priest, they have the privilege to enjoy offerings, as well as the final say, right of usage, and right of allocation when it comes to the offerings. In some churches, before things that the brothers and sisters offer up can be registered, tallied, and put into storage by the proper personnel, leaders and workers have already looked, sifted, and filtered through them, keeping whatever they can use, eating whatever they can eat, putting on whatever they can wear, and allocating whatever they don’t need directly to whoever has need of it, thereby calling the shots in place of God. This is their principle. What’s going on here? Do they truly think they’re priests? Isn’t this extremely lacking in reason? (It is.) There are other leaders and workers who see that one family is short of two chairs, that another is missing a stove, and that somebody’s in poor health and needs to take health supplements, and then use the money of God’s house to buy all these things. The allocation, consumption, expenditure, and right of usage of all offerings belong to these leaders and workers—does this make sense? Is this approach not caused by something going wrong with their cognition? On what basis are they calling the shots? Do leaders and workers have the right to control the offerings? (No.) The offerings are for them to manage, not for them to control and use. They do not have the privilege to enjoy them. Are leaders and workers equivalent to priests? To people who have been made perfect? Are they the owners of the offerings? (No.) Then why do they decide to use offerings to buy things for this and that family without authorization—why do they have that right? Who gave that right to them? Do the work arrangements stipulate: “The first thing leaders and workers should do after taking up their position is to assume total control over the finances of God’s house”? (No.) Why is there a portion of leaders and workers who believe this, then? What’s the problem there? When a brother or sister offers up an expensive garment and there’s a leader or worker wearing it the next day, what is going on? Why do offerings made by brothers and sisters fall into an individual’s hands? “Individual” here means no one other than the leader or worker. They don’t just fail to manage the offerings well—instead, they lead the way in seizing them and personally enjoying them. What’s the problem here? If we look at this leader or worker in light of them not doing actual work when it comes to the management of offerings, they may then be characterized as a false leader—but if we look at them in terms of them seizing and personally enjoying offerings, they may one hundred percent be characterized as an antichrist. So, what, exactly, is the sensible way to characterize the person in question? (As an antichrist.) They’re both a false leader and an antichrist. In managing offerings, false leaders look through all the offerings, and they commission people to manage them. But before they do that, they seize a portion for themselves and decide without authorization to allocate another portion. As for the things that are left—which they don’t want, or which they don’t recognize but don’t wish to give away—they put these things to the side for the time being. When it comes to the whereabouts of those offerings, whether there’s a suitable person to safeguard them, whether they should be inspected regularly, whether anyone’s stealing them, or whether anyone’s seizing them, false leaders uniformly do not concern themselves with these things. Their principle is this: “I’ve already gotten my hands on the things I should enjoy and the things I need. Whoever wants to take the leftover things that I don’t need can take them; whoever wants to manage them can manage them. They belong to whoever grabs them first—whoever’s hands they fall into takes advantage.” What sort of principle and logic is this? Such people are simply devils and beasts!

Once, a false leader said that there was quite a lot of stuff in the storeroom, and I asked whether they’d registered it. They said, “I don’t even know what some of those things are, so there’s no way to register them.” I said, “That’s nonsense. How could you have no way to register them? There should be records of them from when they were first brought here!” “It was quite a long time ago, there’s no way of knowing.” What sort of talk is this? Are they taking responsibility? (No.) I said, “There are some clothes—see which of the brothers and sisters needs them, and issue the clothes to them.” “Some of them are out of style. No one’s interested.” I said, “Issue out what the brothers and sisters need, and handle what they don’t need appropriately.” They didn’t follow through with this. Were they being conscientious and diligent? When they’re asked to do a piece of work, they keep complaining, saying negative things and pointing out difficulties. What they don’t say is that they’ll handle these things well, according to the principles. They have no intent at all to submit. No matter what requirement someone makes of them, they keep talking about difficulties, as though if they render that person speechless by going on like this, they’ll win and gain the upper hand, and then be done with their work. What kind of creature is this person? You were not made a leader or worker so that you could cause trouble, or so that you could point out difficulties and issues—it was so that you could resolve problems and handle difficulties. If you are truly capable in your work, then after raising issues and difficulties, you’d go on to talk about how you would handle and resolve them according to the principles. False leaders can only shout slogans, preach doctrine, talk big, and speak about objective justifications and excuses—they have no real work capability at all, and with the management of offerings, they’re likewise unable to act according to the principles or fulfill their responsibility. This is how feeble-minded and incapable they are, yet they still feel that now that they’re a leader or worker, they have privileges and status, possess a distinguished identity, and are the owner and user of offerings. This sort of false leader only knows how to enjoy the privilege of spending offerings—they can’t see or discover any cases of unreasonable, indiscriminate expenditure of offerings, and they may even see them yet do nothing to handle them. Why is this? It’s because they only know to enjoy the sense of superiority that comes with being a leader or worker—they have no understanding at all of God’s requirements of leaders and workers or of the principles for doing the work of God’s house. They’re just good-for-nothings, they’re just trash, and they’re just feeble-minded. Is it not sickening that such muddleheaded people still wish to enjoy the benefits of status? What have you understood from our exposure of this sort of false leader? As soon as this sort of person becomes a leader or worker, they want to hatch plots regarding the offerings, and their eyes are fixed on the offerings. With a glance, one can tell that they’ve been hankering for a long time to spend money extravagantly and to squander the offerings. Now, finally, they have their chance; they can spend money arbitrarily in that manner, and use God’s offering as they wish, enjoying things they didn’t work for. Their greedy true colors are thus completely exposed. Do you see such people among the leaders and workers, past and present? They always misinterpret the responsibilities and definition of leaders and workers, and as soon as they become a leader or worker, they take themselves to be the master of God’s house, they list themselves among the ranks of priests, and they think themselves a distinguished person. Isn’t this a bit feeble-minded? Is it the case that once someone becomes a leader or worker, they’re no longer a corrupt human? Is it the case that they immediately turn into a holy person? Once they become a leader, they don’t know who they are anymore, and they think they ought to enjoy the offerings—aren’t such people feeble-minded? Such people are definitely feeble-minded, they don’t have the reason of normal humanity. Even after we’ve fellowshipped like this, they still don’t know what the duties and responsibilities of leaders and workers are. There certainly are such leaders and workers, and such people’s manifestations are quite obvious and prominent.

These are basically the manifestations of the various sorts of false leaders regarding the safeguarding of offerings. Those with more serious problems don’t fall within the category of false leaders—they’re antichrists. So, you need to get a good grasp on this scope. If someone is a false leader, that’s what they are—they cannot be characterized as an antichrist. Antichrists are much nastier than false leaders in terms of humanity, actions, manifestations, and essence. Most false leaders have poor caliber, they’re feeble-minded, they lack work capability, they’re distorted in their comprehension and don’t have spiritual understanding, their character is low, they’re selfish and vile, and their hearts are not in the right place. This causes them to not be able to and not do real work with regard to the safeguarding of offerings, and it impacts the reasonable management and appropriate safeguarding of offerings. A portion of offerings even fall into the hands of evil people because of false leaders being derelict in their duties, not doing real work, and not acting in accordance with the principles and requirements of God’s house—this kind of problem also comes up quite a bit. The various manifestations of false leaders in the safeguarding of offerings are basically exposed thus: Their character is low, they’re selfish and vile, their comprehension is distorted, they lack work capability, their caliber is poor, they don’t seek the truth principles at all, and they’re like dumb and feeble-minded people. Some may say, “We acknowledge all the other manifestations that You exposed, but if they’re dumb and feeble-minded, how could they become leaders?” Do you acknowledge that some leaders and workers are dumb and feeble-minded? Do such people exist? Some may say, “You think too little of us. We’re all modern people, college or high school graduates—we have excellent powers of discernment with regard to this society and mankind. How could we select a feeble-minded person to be our leader? That couldn’t possibly happen!” What’s impossible about that? Most of you are feeble-minded, and of inadequate intelligence too, so it’s all too easy for you to select a feeble-minded person to be a leader. Why do I say most of you are feeble-minded? Because most of you, regardless of how much you’ve experienced, cannot see through to the essence of things and cannot grasp principles. You can persist in just observing regulations for years and years, repeatedly taking the same approach without change, remaining unable to grasp the truth principles no matter how the truth is fellowshipped to you. What’s the problem here? Your caliber is too poor. You cannot see through to the essence or root of problems, and are unable to find the patterns of the development of things, much less to follow the principles that should be possessed in doing things—this is called being feeble-minded. How long does it take you all to grasp the principles for things that relate to your duties? There are some people who’ve been doing text-based work for several years, but even now, the articles and scripts they write are still all hollow words, they still can’t get a grasp on the principles, and don’t know what reality is, or how to say something real. This is having too poor caliber and too low intelligence. With the intelligence you possess, wouldn’t it be all too easy for you to select a feeble-minded person as a leader? And you wouldn’t just select them, you would also set your hearts on them. When they were to be dismissed, you wouldn’t want that to happen. Two years later, when you’d seen through them and gained understanding, that’s when you’d be able to discern that they’re a false leader, but back then, no matter what you were told, you wouldn’t let them be dismissed. Aren’t you even more feeble-minded than they are? Why do I say that some leaders and workers are of insufficient intelligence? It is because they only know how to do the simplest work. When it comes to slightly more complicated work, they don’t know how to do it, when they encounter a little difficulty, they don’t know how to handle it, and when they’ve been given an additional piece of work, they don’t know what to do with themselves. Is this not a problem with their intelligence? Are leaders like this not selected by you? And you prostrate yourselves in admiration of them: “They believe in God without looking for a romantic partner, and they’ve expended for God for more than twenty years. They have the will to suffer, alright, and they’re really serious about their work.” “Do they understand the principles in their work, though?” “If they don’t, then who does?” And it turns out that their work is a total mess when it’s inspected—they’re not able to implement any of the work. They are told the principles for their work, but they never know how to do it. They just keep asking questions, and they don’t know what to do unless they’re told it directly. Telling them the principles is the same as not saying anything; even if the principles are listed out, one by one, they still won’t know how to implement the work. Are there leaders like this? No matter how the principles are told to them, they don’t understand them, and they aren’t able to implement the work. Fellowship with them or instruct them about the same words or thing several times, and still, they won’t understand, and the problem will go entirely unresolved afterward—they will still ask what to do, and it won’t do if a single line is left out. Aren’t they feeble-minded? Aren’t these feeble-minded leaders selected by you? (They are.) You can’t deny that, can you? There absolutely are such leaders.

The various manifestations of false leaders that we’ve been fellowshipping on today mainly relate to the work of managing offerings. Through our exposure of the various manifestations of false leaders, people should know that managing offerings is an important piece of work for leaders and workers, and that they should not overlook it. Though this piece of general affairs work is different from other work, it’s related to the normal operations of the other work of God’s house. So, managing offerings is a very important, crucial piece of work. How is it important? The things safeguarded in the work of managing offerings belong to God—to put it somewhat inappropriately, those things are God’s personal property, so leaders and workers should all the more so be wholehearted, conscientious, and diligent with regard to this work. If we’re looking at this work in terms of its nature, I don’t think it’s an overstatement to list it under administrative work. The reason why we’re listing it under the category of administrative work is that doing this work relates to people’s attitude toward God and toward His assets. So, it is necessary for people to have the correct attitude and to grasp the correct principles in doing this work. The reason we’re putting it within the category of administrative work is to get leaders and workers to understand that it’s very important to do this piece of work, and that this work is a very weighty assignment and a very heavy burden. It’s to get them to understand that they shouldn’t approach it as if it were regular general affairs work—that they must have accurate, deep knowledge of the importance of this work, and then come to be wholehearted, conscientious, and diligent with regard to it. People can be inattentive toward other people—even if mistakes occur, it’s not a big problem. But I urge people not to be muddled, not to be perfunctory, and not to be all talk and no action in how they approach God. Doing the work of managing offerings well is an important commission for leaders and workers from God.

May 8, 2021