When, in the Age of Grace, God returned to the third heaven, God’s work of redeeming all of mankind had actually already moved into its final part. All that remained on earth were the cross that Jesus bore on His back, the fine linen that Jesus was wrapped in, and the crown of thorns and scarlet robe that Jesus wore (these were objects with which the Jews mocked Him). That is, after the work of Jesus’ crucifixion caused a great sensation, things settled down again. From then on, Jesus’ disciples began to carry on His work, shepherding and watering in the churches everywhere. The content of their work was as follows: They asked all people to repent, confess their sins, and be baptized; and the apostles all went forth to spread the inside story, the unvarnished account, of Jesus’ crucifixion, and so everyone could not help but fall prostrate before Jesus to confess their sins; and furthermore, the apostles went everywhere transmitting the words Jesus spoke. From that point began the building of churches in the Age of Grace. What Jesus did during that age was also to talk about man’s life and the heavenly Father’s will, only, because it was a different age, many of those sayings and practices differed greatly from those of today. However, in substance they are the same: They are both the work of God’s Spirit in the flesh, precisely and exactly so. This kind of work and utterance has continued all the way down to this day, and so this sort of thing is still shared among the religious institutions of today, and it is utterly unchanged. When Jesus’ work was concluded and the churches had already got onto the right track of Jesus Christ, God nevertheless initiated His plan for another stage of His work, which was the matter of His coming into the flesh in the last days. As man sees it, God’s crucifixion had already concluded the work of God’s incarnation, redeemed all of mankind, and allowed Him to seize the key to Hades. Everyone thinks God’s work has been fully accomplished. In fact, from God’s perspective, only a small part of His work had been accomplished. All He had done was to redeem mankind; He had not conquered mankind, let alone changed man’s satanic countenance. That is why God says, “Although My incarnate flesh went through the pain of death, that was not the whole goal of My incarnation. Jesus is My beloved Son and was nailed to the cross for Me, but He did not exhaustively conclude My work. He only did a portion of it.” Thus God initiated the second round of plans to continue the work of the incarnation. God’s ultimate intention was to perfect and to gain all of the people rescued from Satan’s clutches, which was why God prepared, once again, to brave the danger of coming into the flesh. What is meant by “incarnation” refers to the One who does not bring glory (because God’s work is not yet finished), but who appears in the identity of the beloved Son, and is the Christ, in whom God is well pleased. That is why this is said to be “braving danger.” The incarnate flesh is of diminutive power and must exercise great caution, and His power stands poles apart from the authority of the Father in heaven; He only fulfills the ministry of the flesh, completing God the Father’s work and His commission without becoming involved in other work, and He only completes one part of the work. This is why God was named “the Christ” as soon as He came to earth—that is the embedded meaning of the name. The reason it is said that the coming is accompanied by temptations is because only one piece of work is being completed. Furthermore, the reason God the Father only calls Him “Christ” and “beloved Son,” but has not given Him all of the glory is precisely because the incarnate flesh comes to do one piece of work, not to represent the Father in heaven, but rather to fulfill the beloved Son’s ministry. When the beloved Son completes the entire commission He has accepted onto His shoulders, the Father will then give Him full glory along with the identity of Father. One can say that this is “the code of heaven.” Because the One who has come into the flesh and the Father in heaven are in two different realms, the two only gaze toward each other in Spirit, the Father keeping an eye on the beloved Son but the Son unable to see the Father from afar. It is because the functions of which the flesh is capable are too minuscule and He can potentially be killed at any moment, that one can say this coming is fraught with the greatest danger. This is tantamount to God once again relinquishing His beloved Son into the tiger’s maw, where His life is in danger, putting Him in a place where Satan is most concentrated. Even in these dire circumstances, God still handed His beloved Son over to the people of a place filled with filthiness and licentiousness for them to “bring Him up into adulthood.” This is because to do so is the only way to make God’s work seem fitting and natural, and it is the only way to fulfill all the wishes of God the Father and complete the last part of His work among mankind. Jesus did no more than accomplish one stage of God the Father’s work. Because of the barrier imposed by the incarnate flesh and the differences in the work to be completed, Jesus Himself did not know that there would be a second return to the flesh. Therefore, no Bible expositor or prophet dared to clearly prophesy that God would be incarnated again in the last days, that is, He would come into the flesh again to do the second part of His work in the flesh. Therefore, no one realized that God had already long since hidden Himself in the flesh. Small wonder, as it was only after Jesus was resurrected and rose to heaven that He accepted this commission, therefore there is no clear prophecy about God’s second incarnation, and it is imponderable to the human mind. In all the many books of prophecy in the Bible, there are no words that mention this clearly. But when Jesus came to work, there had already been a clear prophecy which said that a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, meaning that He was conceived through the Holy Spirit. Even so, God still said this happened at risk of death, so how much the more so would it be the case today? No wonder God says this incarnation is at the risk of dangers thousands of times greater than those incurred during the Age of Grace. In many places, God has prophesied that He will be gaining a group of overcomers in the land of Sinim. Since it is in the world’s East that overcomers are to be gained, so the place where God sets foot in His second incarnation is without a doubt the land of Sinim, the exact spot where the great red dragon lies coiled. There, God will gain the descendants of the great red dragon so that it is thoroughly defeated and shamed. God is going to awaken these people, heavily burdened with suffering, to rouse them till they are fully awake, and to make them walk out of the fog and reject the great red dragon. They will wake from their dream, recognize the great red dragon for what it really is, become able to give their whole heart to God, rise up from the oppression of the dark forces, stand up in the East of the world, and become proof of God’s victory. Only in this way will God gain glory. For this reason alone, God brought the work that came to an end in Israel to the land where the great red dragon lies coiled and, nearly two thousand years after departing, has come once again into the flesh to continue the work of the Age of Grace. To man’s naked eye, God is launching new work in the flesh. But in God’s view, He is continuing the work of the Age of Grace, but only after an interregnum of a few thousand years, and only with a change in the location and the program of His work. Although the image that the body of the flesh has taken in today’s work appears to be completely different from Jesus, They derive from the same substance and root, and They come from the same source. Maybe They have many differences on the outside, but the inner truths of Their work are completely identical. The ages, after all, are as different as night and day. So how can God’s work follow an unchanging pattern? Or how can different stages of His work get in each other’s way?

—The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. Work and Entry (6)