The work that God comes to do on this earth is only to guide the age, to open up a new age and bring the old one to an end. He has not come to live out the course of a man’s life on earth, to experience for Himself the joys and sorrows of life of the human world, or to perfect a certain person by His hand or personally watch a certain person as he grows. This is not His work; His work is merely to begin the new age and bring an end to the old. That is, He will in person begin an age, in person bring the other to an end, and defeat Satan by carrying out His work in person. Each time He carries out His work in person, it is as if He is putting a foot onto the battleground. First, He vanquishes the world and prevails over Satan while in the flesh; He takes possession of all glory and raises the curtain on the entirety of the work of the two thousand years, making it so that all people on earth have the right path to tread and a life of peace and joy to live. However, God cannot live with man on earth for long, for God is God, and unlike man after all. He cannot live the lifetime of a normal person, that is, He cannot reside on earth as a person who is nothing out of the ordinary, for He has only a minimal part of the normal humanity of a normal person to sustain His human life. In other words, how could God start a family, have a career, and raise children on earth? Would this not be a disgrace to Him? That He is endowed with normal humanity is only for the purpose of carrying out work in a normal manner, not to enable Him to have a family and career as a normal person would. His normal sense, normal mind, and the normal feeding and clothing of His flesh are sufficient to prove that He has a normal humanity; there is no need for Him to have a family or a career in order to prove that He is furnished with a normal humanity. This would be completely unnecessary! God’s coming to earth is the Word becoming flesh; He is simply allowing man to understand His word and to see His word, that is, allowing man to see the work carried out by the flesh. His intention is not for people to treat His flesh in a certain way, but only for man to be obedient to the end, that is, to obey all words that issue forth from His mouth, and to submit to all the work that He does. He is merely working in the flesh; He is not intentionally asking for man to exalt the greatness and holiness of His flesh, but is instead showing man the wisdom of His work and all the authority He wields. Therefore, even though He has an outstanding humanity, He makes no announcements, and focuses only on the work that He should do. You should know why it is that God became flesh and yet does not publicize or testify to His normal humanity, but instead simply carries out the work that He wishes to do. Therefore, all that you can see from the incarnate God is what He divinely is; this is because He never proclaims what He humanly is for man to emulate. Only when man leads people does he speak of what he humanly is, the better to gain their admiration and submission and thereby attain leadership of others. In contrast, God conquers man through His work alone (that is, work unattainable to man); there is no question of His being admired by man, or making man adore Him. All He does is to instill in man a feeling of reverence for Him or a sense of His unfathomability. God has no need of impressing man; all He needs is for you to revere Him once you have witnessed His disposition. The work God does is His own; it cannot be done by man in His stead, nor can it be attained by man. Only God Himself can do His own work and usher in a new age to lead man into new lives. The work He does is to enable man to come into possession of a new life and enter into a new age. The rest of the work is handed over to those with normal humanity who are admired by others. Therefore, in the Age of Grace, He completed the work of two thousand years in just three and a half years out of His thirty-three years in the flesh. When God comes to earth to carry out His work, He always completes the work of two thousand years or of an entire age within the shortest span of a few years. He does not delay, and He does not stall; He simply condenses the work of many years so that it is completed within just a few short years. This is because the work He does in person is wholly for the sake of opening up a new way out and leading a new age.

—The Word, Vol. 1. The Appearance and Work of God. The Mystery of the Incarnation (2)