Who Determines People’s Outcomes?

There is another matter of the utmost importance to discuss, and that is your attitude toward God. This attitude is extremely important! It determines whether you will ultimately walk toward destruction or into the beautiful destination that God has prepared for you. In the Age of Kingdom, God has already worked for more than twenty years, and perhaps, over the course of these two decades, deep down you have been a bit unsure of how you have performed. However, in God’s heart, He has made a real and truthful record of each of you. From the time that each person started following Him and listening to His sermons, gradually understanding more and more of the truth, and until the time each person began to fulfill their duties, God has kept a record of all manner of behaviors attributable to each person. While fulfilling their duties and being faced with all manner of environments and trials, what are people’s attitudes? How do they perform? How do they feel toward God in their hearts? … God has an account of all of this; He has a record of all of it. Perhaps, from your point of view, these issues are confusing. However, from where God stands, they are all clear as crystal, and there is not even the slightest hint of sloppiness. This is an issue that involves the outcome of each person, and touches upon each person’s fate and future prospects as well, and more than that, this is where God expends all of His painstaking efforts; therefore, God would never neglect it one bit, nor does He tolerate any carelessness. God is making a record of this account of humankind, making note of the entire course of humans in their following of God, from the beginning right up to the end. Your attitude toward Him during this period has determined your fate. Is this not true? Now, do you believe that God is righteous? Are His actions appropriate? Do you still have any other imaginings about God in your heads? (No.) Then would you say that people’s outcomes are for God to determine, or for people to determine themselves? (They are for God to determine.) Who is it that determines them? (God.) You are not sure, are you? Brothers and sisters from Hong Kong, speak up—who determines them? (People themselves determine them.) Do people themselves determine them? Would that not then mean that people’s outcomes have nothing to do with God? Brothers and sisters from South Korea, speak up. (God determines people’s outcomes based on all of their actions and deeds, and in accordance with what path they are on.) This is a very objective response. There is a fact here of which I must inform you all: Over the course of God’s salvation work, He has set a standard for humans. This standard is that they must listen to the word of God and walk in God’s way. It is this standard that is used to weigh people’s outcomes. If you practice in accordance with this standard of God, then you can obtain a good outcome; if you do not, then you cannot obtain a good outcome. Who, then, would you say determines this outcome? It is not God alone who determines it, but rather God and humans together. Is this correct? (Yes.) Why is that? It is because it is God who actively wishes to engage in the work of humankind’s salvation and prepare a beautiful destination for humanity; humans are the objects of God’s work, and this outcome, this destination, is what God prepares for them. If there were no objects for Him to work on, then He would not need to do this work; if He were not doing this work, then humans would not have an opportunity to gain salvation. Humans are the ones to be saved, and although being saved is the passive part of this process, it is the attitude of the ones playing this part that determines whether or not God will be successful in His work to save humankind. If not for the guidance that God gives you, you would not know His standard, nor would you have an objective. If you have this standard, this objective, yet you still do not cooperate, put it into practice, or pay the price, then you will not obtain this outcome. For this reason, I say that one’s outcome cannot be separated from God, and it also cannot be separated from the person. Now, then, you know who determines people’s outcomes.

—The Word, Vol. 2. On Knowing God. How to Know God’s Disposition and the Results His Work Shall Achieve