If people wish to be saved when they believe in God, what’s key is whether or not they have God-fearing hearts, whether or not God has a place in their hearts, whether or not they are able to live before God and maintain a normal relationship with God. What’s crucial is whether or not people are able to practice the truth, and attain submission to God. Such are the path and conditions for being saved. If your heart is not able to live before God, if you do not often pray to God and fellowship with God, and lose the normal relationship with God, you will never be saved, for you have blockaded the path to salvation. If you do not have any relationship with God, you have reached the end of the line. If God is not in your heart, then it’s useless to claim you have faith, to only nominally believe in God. It doesn’t matter how many words and doctrines you are able to speak, how much you have suffered for your belief in God, or how gifted you are; if God is absent from your heart, and you do not fear God, then it doesn’t matter how you believe in God. God will say, “Depart from Me, you evildoer.” You will be classed as an evildoer. You will be unconnected to God; He will not be your Lord or your God. Even though you acknowledge that God holds sovereignty over all, and acknowledge that He is the Creator, you do not worship Him, and do not submit to His sovereignty. You follow Satan and devils; only Satan and devils are your lords. If, in all things, you trust in yourself, and follow your own will, if you trust that your fate is in your own hands, then what you believe in is yourself. Even though you claim to believe in and acknowledge God, God does not acknowledge you. You have no relationship with God, and so you are destined to ultimately be spurned by Him, punished by Him, and eliminated by Him; God does not save people like you. People who truly believe in God are those who accept Him as the Savior, who accept that He is the truth, the way, and the life. They are able to sincerely expend themselves for Him and perform the duty of a created being; they experience the work of God, they practice His words and the truth, and they walk the path of pursuing the truth. They are people who submit to the sovereignty and arrangements of God, and who follow His will. Only when people have such faith in God can they be saved; if not, they will be condemned. Is it acceptable for people to engage in wishful thinking when they believe in God? In their faith in God, can people gain the truth when they always cling to their own notions and vague, abstract imaginings? Absolutely not. When people believe in God, they must accept the truth, believe in Him as He asks, and submit to His orchestrations and arrangements; only then can they attain salvation. There is no other way apart from this—whatever you do, you must not engage in any wishful thinking. Fellowshipping this topic is very important for people, is it not? This is a wake-up call for you.

Now that you have heard these messages, you should understand the truth and be clear about what salvation entails. What people like, what they strive for, what they are passionate about—none of this is important. What’s most important is accepting the truth. In the final analysis, being able to gain the truth is what’s most important, and that which can allow you to attain the fear of God and the shunning of evil is the correct path. If you have believed in God for several years and have always focused on the pursuit of things that bear no relation to the truth, then your faith has nothing to do with the truth, and nothing to do with God. You may claim to believe in and acknowledge God, but God is not your Lord, He is not your God, you do not accept that God holds sovereignty over your fate, you do not submit to all that God arranges for you, you do not acknowledge the fact of God being the truth—in which case your hopes of salvation have been shattered; if you cannot walk the path of pursuing the truth, you walk the path of destruction. If everything you pursue, focus on, pray about, and appeal for is based on the words of God, and upon what God asks, and if you have an increasing sense that you submit to the Creator, and worship the Creator, and feel that God is your Lord, your God, if you are increasingly glad to submit to all that God orchestrates and arranges for you, and your relationship with God grows ever closer, and ever more normal, and if your love of God is ever more pure and true, then your complaints and misunderstandings about God, and your extravagant desires toward God, will grow ever fewer, and you will have wholly attained the fear of God and shunning of evil, which means that you will have already set foot on the path of salvation. Although walking the path of salvation comes with the discipline, pruning, judgment, and chastisement of God, and these cause you to suffer much pain, this is the love of God coming upon you. If, when you believe in God, you only pursue being blessed, and only pursue status, fame, and gain, and are never disciplined, or pruned, or judged and chastised, then although you may have an easy life, your heart will grow ever more distant from God, you will lose the normal relationship with God, and you will also be unwilling to accept the scrutiny of God; you will want to be your own boss—which all proves that the path you walk is not the right path. If you have experienced the work of God for a while and have an increasing sense of how humankind is so profoundly corrupt, and so prone to resisting God, and if you are anxious that a day may come when you do something that resists God, and are afraid that you are likely to offend God and be abandoned by Him, and thus feel that nothing is more frightful than opposing God, then you will have a God-fearing heart. You will feel that when people believe in God, they must not stray from God; if they stray from God, if they stray from God’s discipline, and from the judgment and chastisement of God, then this is equivalent to losing the protection and care of God, to losing the blessings of God, and it is all over for people; they can only become ever more depraved, they will be like the people of religion, and will still be liable to oppose God while they believe in God—and in this, they will have become antichrists. If you can realize this, then you will pray to God, “Oh God! Please judge me and chastise me. In everything I do, I beg that You scrutinize me. If I do something that violates the truth and goes against Your intentions, may You severely judge me and chastise me—I cannot be without Your judgment and chastisement.” This is the correct path that people should walk in their faith in God. So measure according to this standard: Do you dare say that you have set foot upon the path of salvation? You dare not, because you have yet to become one of those who pursue the truth, in many things, you do not seek the truth, and you are not able to accept and submit to being pruned—which proves that you are a long way off walking the path of salvation. Is it easy to set foot on the path of salvation if you are not someone who pursues the truth? Actually, it is not. If people have not experienced the judgment and chastisement of God, if they have not experienced the discipline, chastening, and pruning of God, then it is not easy for them to become someone who pursues the truth, and as a result it is very difficult for them to set foot on the path to salvation. If, after hearing this message, you know it is the truth, yet you have yet to set foot on the path of pursuing the truth and achieving salvation, and you do not see this as something serious, feeling that sooner or later, the day will come when you will get on with it—no rush—then what kind of view is this? When you have such a view, you’re in trouble, and you will have a hard time setting foot on the path to salvation. So how should you resolve to be able to set foot on this path? You should say, “Ah! Right now I have yet to set foot on the path to salvation—this is pretty dangerous! God says that people must live before Him at all times, and must pray more, and that their hearts must be at peace, and not impulsive—so I should start putting all this into practice right now.” To practice in this way is to enter onto the right track of faith in God; it’s that simple. What kind of people are those who hear God’s words and then go and put them into practice? Are they good people? They are—they are people who love the truth. What kind of person are they if, after hearing the words of God, they remain numb, indifferent, unyielding—if they treat God’s words lightly, and turn a deaf ear and a blind eye to them? Are they not muddleheaded? People always ask if there are any shortcuts to being saved when they believe in God. I tell you there are not, and then I tell you of this simple path, but after hearing it you do not put it into practice—which is a case of not knowing a good thing when you hear it. Can such people be saved? Even if there is some hope for them, it is not great; salvation will be very difficult. There may be a day when they wake up from sleep, when they think to themselves: “I’m not young anymore, and I have not been attending to my proper duties while believing in God for all these years. God requires that people live before Him at all times, and I have not lived before God. I must hurry up and pray.” If they come to their senses in their hearts and begin to attend to their proper duties, then it’s not too late! But don’t leave it too late; if you wait until you are in your seventies or eighties, and your body is failing, and you no longer have any energy, will it not be too late to pursue the truth? If you spend the best years of your life on meaningless things, and end up putting off or missing out on the pursuit of the truth, which is the most important thing of all, is this not extremely foolish? Is there anything more stupid? Many people are well aware of the true way and yet wait until the future to accept and pursue it—they are all fools. They do not know that pursuing the truth takes decades of effort before they can gain life. It will be too late for regret if they squander the best time for being saved!

—The Word, Vol. 3. The Discourses of Christ of the Last Days. Only With Fear of God Can One Tread Upon the Path of Salvation