Bible Verses for Reference:

“So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and to them that look for Him shall He appear the second time without sin to salvation” (Hebrews 9:28).

“In the beginning was the Way, and the Way was with God, and the Way was God” (John 1:1).

Relevant Words of God:

The first incarnation was to redeem man from sin, to redeem him by means of the fleshly body of Jesus, that is, He saved man from the cross, but the satanic corrupt dispositions still remained within man. The second incarnation is no longer to serve as a sin offering but rather to save fully those who were redeemed from sin. This is done so that those whose sins have been forgiven may be free from sin and fully purified, and attain dispositional change, and thus break free of Satan’s influence of darkness and return before the throne of God. Only in this way can man be fully sanctified. After the Age of Law had come to an end, and beginning with the Age of Grace, God commenced the work of salvation, which continues into the last days, when God performs the work of judging and chastising the human race for their rebelliousness, thereby completely purifying mankind. Only after this will God conclude His work of salvation and enter into rest. Therefore, in the three stages of work, only twice has God become flesh to carry out His work among man Himself. That is because only one in the three stages of work is to guide people in leading their lives, while the other two consist of the work of salvation. Only by becoming flesh can God live alongside man, experience the suffering of the world, and live in a normal body of flesh. Only in this way can He supply people with the practical Way that they need as created beings. It is through the incarnation of God that man receives the full saving grace from God, not directly from heaven through his own supplication. Man is of flesh and blood, he has no way of seeing the Spirit of God, much less of approaching His Spirit, so all that he can come into contact with is God’s incarnate flesh. Only by means of this is man able to grasp all of the Way and all the truths and receive the full saving grace. The second incarnation is sufficient to rid man of his sins and to fully purify him. Hence, with the second incarnation, the entirety of God’s work in the flesh will be brought to a close and the significance of God’s incarnation be made complete.

—The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. The Mystery of the Incarnation (4)

At the time that Jesus was doing His work, man’s knowledge of Him was still nebulous and unclear. Man always believed Him to be the son of David, and said He was a great prophet, the benevolent Lord who redeemed man’s sins. Some, on the strength of their faith, were healed just from touching the edge of His garment; the blind could see and even the dead could be restored to life. However, man was unable to discover the satanic corrupt dispositions deeply rooted within himself, neither did he know how to cast them off. Man received much grace, such as the peace and happiness of the flesh, the faith of one member bringing blessing on an entire family, the healing of sickness, and so on. The rest were the good deeds of man and his godly appearance; if someone could live on the basis of these, they were considered an up-to-standard believer. Only believers of this kind could enter heaven after death, which meant that they were redeemed. But, in their lifetime, these people did not understand at all the way of life. All they did was to commit sins and then confess their sins in a constant cycle without any path to change their disposition: Such was the condition of man in the Age of Grace. Has man received complete salvation? No! Therefore, after that stage of work was finished, there still remained the work of judgment and chastisement. This stage is to purify man by means of the word, and thereby give him a path to follow. This stage would not be fruitful or meaningful if it continued with the casting out of demons, for it would fail to cast off man’s sinful nature, and man would come to a standstill at the forgiveness of his sins. Through the sin offering, man has been forgiven his sins, for the work of the crucifixion has already come to an end and God has prevailed over Satan. But the corrupt dispositions of man still remain within him, man can still sin and resist God, and God has not gained mankind. That is why in this stage of work God uses the word to expose the corrupt dispositions of man, and to make him practice in accordance with the proper path. The work of this stage is more meaningful than the previous one, as well as more fruitful, for now it is the word that directly provides for man’s life and enables the disposition of man to be completely renewed; it is a much more thorough stage of work. Therefore, the incarnation in the last days has completed the significance of God’s incarnation and completely finished God’s management plan for man’s salvation.

—The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. The Mystery of the Incarnation (4)

God in His first incarnation did not complete the work of the incarnation; He only completed the first step of the work that God in the flesh was supposed to perform. So, in order to complete the work of the incarnation, God has returned to the flesh once again, living out all the normality and practicality of the flesh, that is, making God’s Way manifest in a flesh which is as normal and ordinary as can be, thereby concluding the work that He has yet to complete in the flesh. The second incarnate flesh has the same essence as the first, but He is even more practical, even more normal than the first. As a consequence, the suffering the second incarnate flesh endures is greater than that of the first, but this suffering is a result of His ministry in the flesh, which is unlike the suffering of corrupted man. It also stems from the normality and practicality of His flesh. Because He performs His ministry in flesh which is of the utmost normality and practicality, the flesh must endure a great deal of suffering. The more normal and practical this flesh is, the more He will suffer in the performance of His ministry. God’s work is expressed in a very common flesh, without any supernaturalness at all. Because His flesh is normal and must also shoulder the work of saving man, He suffers in even greater measure than a supernatural flesh would—and all this suffering stems from the practicality and normality of His flesh. From the suffering that the two incarnate fleshes have undergone while performing Their ministries, one can see the essence of the incarnate flesh. The more normal the flesh, the greater the suffering He must endure while undertaking the work; the more practical the flesh that undertakes the work, the stronger people’s notions become, and the greater the risk He takes. And yet, the more practical the flesh is, and the more the flesh possesses the needs and complete reason of a normal human being, the more capable He is of shouldering God’s work in the flesh. Jesus was nailed to the cross by means of the flesh, and He served as a sin offering by means of the flesh, that is, it was through a flesh with normal humanity that He defeated Satan and completely saved man from the cross. It is by means of a complete flesh that the second God incarnate performs the work of conquest and defeats Satan. Only a flesh that is completely normal and practical can perform the work of conquest in its fullest sense and bear a powerful testimony. That is to say, the conquest of man achieves its effect through the practicality and normality of God in the flesh, not through supernatural miracles and revelations. The ministry performed by this incarnate God is to speak, and it is through speaking that He conquers and perfects man; in other words, the work of the Spirit realized in the flesh is to speak and the flesh’s job is to speak, thereby achieving the purpose of completely conquering, revealing, perfecting, and eliminating people. And so, it is in the work of conquest that God’s work in the flesh will be accomplished in full. The work of atoning for man’s sins that was performed the first time was only the beginning of the work of the incarnation; only the flesh that performs the work of conquest completes the entire work of the incarnation. … In this stage of the work, God does not perform signs and wonders, so that the work will achieve its results by means of words. The reason for this, moreover, is that the work of God incarnate this time is not to heal the sick and cast out demons, but to conquer man by speaking, which is to say that the instinctive abilities possessed by this incarnate flesh of God are to speak words and to conquer man, not to heal the sick and cast out demons. His work in normal humanity is not to perform signs, not to heal the sick and cast out demons, but to speak, and so the second incarnate flesh seems to people much more normal than the first. The way people see it, God has indeed become flesh. However, this incarnate God is different from Jesus incarnate, and though They are both God incarnate, They are not completely the same. Jesus possessed normal humanity, ordinary humanity, but He was accompanied by many signs and wonders. In this incarnate God, human eyes will see no signs or wonders, neither healing the sick nor driving out demons, nor walking on the sea, nor fasting for forty days…. He does not do the same work that Jesus did, not because, in essence, His flesh is any different from Jesus’, but because it is not His ministry to heal the sick and cast out demons. He does not tear down His own work, does not disturb His own work. Since He conquers man through His practical words, there is no need to subdue him with signs, and so this stage is to complete the work of the incarnation.

—The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. The Essence of the Flesh Inhabited by God

Why do I say that the meaning of incarnation was not completed in Jesus’ work? Because the Way did not entirely become flesh. What Jesus did was only one part of God’s work in the flesh; He only did the work of redemption, and did not do the work of completely gaining man. For this reason, God has become flesh once again in the last days. This stage of the work is also done in an ordinary flesh; it is performed by an utterly normal human being, one whose humanity is not in the least bit transcendent. In other words, God has become a complete human being; He is a person whose identity is that of God, a complete human being, a complete flesh, who is performing the work. Human eyes see a fleshly body that is not transcendent at all, a very ordinary person who can speak the language of heaven, who shows no signs, works no miracles, much less exposes the real story behind religion in great assembly halls. To people, the work of the second incarnate flesh seems utterly unlike that of the first, and the two even seem to have nothing in common—nothing of the first’s work can be seen this time. Though the work of the second incarnate flesh is different from the first, that does not prove that Their source is not one and the same. Whether Their source is the same depends on the nature of the work done by the fleshes, and not on Their outer shells. During the three stages of His work, God has been incarnated twice, and both times the work of God incarnate inaugurates a new age, ushers in a new work; the incarnations complement each other. It is impossible for human eyes to tell that the two fleshes actually come from the same source. Of course, this is beyond the capacity of the human eye or the human mind. But in Their essence, They are the same, for Their work originates from the same Spirit. Whether the two incarnate fleshes arise from the same source cannot be judged by the era and the place in which They were born, or other such factors, but by the divine work expressed by Them. The second incarnate flesh does not perform any of the work that Jesus did, for God’s work does not adhere to convention, but opens up a new path each time. The second incarnate flesh does not aim to deepen or solidify the impression of the first flesh in people’s minds, but to complement and improve on the image of the first flesh in their minds, to deepen man’s knowledge of God, to break all the regulations that exist in people’s hearts, and to wipe out the fallacious images of god in their hearts. It can be said that no individual stage of God’s own work can give man a complete knowledge of Him; each gives only a part, not the whole. Though God has expressed His disposition in full, because of man’s limited comprehension ability, his knowledge of God still remains incomplete. It is impossible, using human language, to fully explain the entirety of God’s disposition. How much less so, then, could a single stage of His work fully express God? He works in the flesh under the cover of His normal humanity, and one can only know Him by the expressions of His divinity, not by His bodily shell. God comes in the flesh to allow man to know Him by means of His various work, and no two stages of His work are alike. Only in this way can man have a full knowledge of God’s work in the flesh, and not delimit it to a certain scope.

—The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. The Essence of the Flesh Inhabited by God

The stage of work which Jesus performed only fulfilled the essence of “the Way was with God”: The truth of God was with God, and the Spirit of God was with the flesh and was inseparable from that flesh. That is, the flesh of God incarnate was with the Spirit of God, which is greater proof that Jesus incarnate was the first incarnation of God. This stage of work precisely fulfills the inner meaning of “the Word becomes flesh,” lends deeper meaning to “the Way was with God, and the Way was God,” and allows you to firmly believe the words “In the beginning was the Way.” Which is to say, at the time of creation God was possessed of words, His words were with Him and inseparable from Him, and in the final age, He reveals the might and authority of His words even more clearly, and allows man to see all of His Way—to hear all of His words. Such is the work of the final age. You must come to understand these things through and through. It is not a question of knowing the flesh, but of how you understand the flesh and the Word, and the flesh and the Way. This is the testimony that you must bear, that which everyone must know. For this is the work of the second incarnation—and the last time that God becomes flesh; in other words, it completes the significance of the incarnation, thoroughly carries out and issues forth all of God’s work in the flesh, and brings to an end the era of God’s being in the flesh.

—The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. Practice (4)