Right now, each day you live through is crucial, and it is of the utmost importance to your destination and your fate, so you must cherish everything you have today, and treasure each minute that passes. You must carve out as much time as you can to give yourselves the greatest gains so that you will not have lived this life in vain. You may feel confused about why I speak such words. To be frank, I am not at all pleased by the behavior of any of you, for the hopes I had of you were not as you are today. Thus, I can say this: Each one of you is on the brink of danger, and your erstwhile cries for help and former aspirations to pursue the truth and seek the light are approaching their end. This is your final display of recompense, and it is something I never expected. I do not wish to speak contrary to the facts, for you have greatly disappointed Me. Perhaps you do not wish to take this lying down, do not wish to face reality—yet I must ask you this seriously: In all these years, what exactly have your hearts been filled with? To whom are they loyal? Do not say that these questions came out of nowhere, and do not ask Me why I asked such things. Know this: It is because I know you too well, care for you too much, and have invested too much of My heart in your conduct and deeds that I have called you to account without cease and borne bitter hardship. Yet you repay Me with nothing more than indifference and unbearable resignation. You have been so remiss toward Me; could it be possible that I know nothing of it? If this is what you believe, it further proves the fact that you do not truly treat Me with kindness. And so I say that you are burying your heads in the sand. You are all so clever that you do not even know what you are doing—so what will you use to give an account to Me?

The question of most concern to Me is exactly to whom your hearts are loyal. I hope, too, that each of you will try to marshal your thoughts, and ask yourself to whom you are loyal and for whom you live. Perhaps you have never given careful consideration to these questions, so how about I reveal the answers to you?

Anyone with a memory will acknowledge this fact: Man lives for himself and is loyal to himself. I do not believe your answers to be entirely correct, for you each exist in your respective lives and each are struggling with your own suffering. As such, you are loyal to the people you love and the things that please you; you are not entirely loyal to yourselves. Because you are each influenced by the people, occurrences, and objects around you, you are not truly loyal to yourselves. I speak these words not to endorse being loyal to yourselves, but to expose your loyalty to any one thing, for over the course of so many years, I have never received loyalty from any of you. You have followed Me all these years, yet have never given Me one iota of loyalty. Instead, you have revolved around the people you love and the things that please you—so much so that at all times, and wherever you go, you keep them close to your hearts and have never abandoned them. Whenever you become eager or passionate about any one thing that you love, it happens while you are following Me, or even while you are listening to My words. Therefore, I say you are using the loyalty that I ask of you to instead be loyal to and cherish your “pets.” Though you may sacrifice a thing or two for Me, it does not represent your all, and does not show that it is Me to whom you are truly loyal. You involve yourselves in undertakings about which you are passionate: Some people are loyal to sons and daughters, others to husbands, wives, riches, work, superiors, status, or women. You never feel weary or annoyed toward the things you are loyal to; instead, you grow ever more eager to possess these things in greater quantity, and higher quality, and you never give up. I and My words are always pushed back behind the things you are passionate about. And you have no choice but to rank them last. There are even those who leave this last place for things they are loyal to that they have yet to discover. Never has there been the slightest trace of Me in their hearts. You may think that I ask too much of you or am wrongfully accusing you—but have you ever given any thought to the fact that while you are happily spending time with your family, you have never once been loyal to Me? At times like this, does it not pain you? When your hearts are filled with joy, and you are rewarded for your labors, do you not feel disheartened at not having furnished yourselves with sufficient truth? When have you wept for not having received My approval? You rack your brains and take great pains for the sake of your sons and daughters, yet still you are not satisfied; still you believe that you have not been diligent on their behalf, that you have not done everything you can for them. Toward Me, however, you have always been remiss and careless; I am only in your memories, but I do not endure in your hearts. My devotion and efforts forever go unfelt by you, and you have never had any appreciation of them. You merely engage in brief reflection and believe that this will suffice. Such “loyalty” is not what I have long yearned for, but that which I have long despised. Nevertheless, no matter what I say, you continue to admit only one or two things; you cannot fully accept this, for you are all very “confident,” and you always pick and choose what to accept from the words I have spoken. If you are still like this today, I do have some methods for dealing with your self-confidence—and, what’s more, I shall make you acknowledge that all My words are true, and that none of them distort the facts.

If I were to place some money in front of you right now and give you the freedom to choose—and if I did not condemn you for your choice—then most of you would choose the money and forsake the truth. The better among you would give up the money and choose the truth reluctantly, while those in-between would seize the money in one hand and the truth in the other. Would your true colors thus not become self-evident? When choosing between the truth and anything to which you are loyal, you would all make this choice, and your attitude would remain the same. Is that not so? Are there not many among you who have seesawed between right and wrong? In contests between positive and negative, black and white, you are surely aware of the choices that you have made between family and God, children and God, peace and disruption, riches and poverty, status and ordinariness, being supported and being cast aside, and so on. Between a peaceful family and a broken one, you chose the former, and you did so without any hesitation; between riches and duty, you again chose the former, even lacking the will to return to shore;^[a] between luxury and poverty, you chose the former; when choosing between your sons, daughters, wives and husbands, and Me, you chose the former; and between notion and truth, you once again chose the former. Faced with all manner of your evil deeds, I have simply lost faith in you. It simply astounds Me that your hearts are so resistant to being softened. Many years of dedication and effort have apparently brought Me nothing more than your abandonment and despair, but My hopes for you grow with each passing day, for My day has been completely laid bare before everyone. Yet you persist in seeking dark and evil things, and refuse to loosen your grip on them. What, then, will be your outcome? Have you ever given careful consideration to this? If you were asked to choose again, what then would be your position? Would it still be the former? Would you still bring Me disappointment and wretched sorrow? Would your hearts still possess the sole modicum of warmth? Would you still be unaware of what to do to comfort My heart? At this moment, what do you choose? Will you submit to My words or be weary of them? My day has been laid out before your very eyes, and what you face is a new life and a new starting point. However, I must tell you that this starting point is not the beginning of past new work, but the conclusion of the old. That is, this is the final act. I think you can all understand what is unusual about this starting point. One day soon, however, you will understand the true meaning of this starting point, so let us move past it together and welcome the finale to come! However, what continues to worry Me about you is that, when faced with injustice and justice, you always choose the former. That, though, is all in your past. I, too, hope to forget everything of your past, though this is very difficult to do. Nevertheless, I have a very good way of doing it: Let the future replace the past, and allow the shadows of your past to be dispelled in exchange for your true self of today. Thus must I trouble you to make the choice once more: To whom exactly are you loyal?

Footnotes:

a. Return to shore: a Chinese idiom, meaning “turn from one’s evil ways.”