I believed in
Jesus from childhood with my mother. In the days of my following the
Lord Jesus, I was often moved by the Lord’s love, feeling that the Lord Jesus loved us so much that he was crucified and shed his last drop of blood for the sake of redeeming us…. At that time, the brothers and sisters all loved and sustained one another. We enjoyed the Lord’s love, but at the same time, we were persecuted and suppressed by the CCP government. The police labeled our house churches as having “illegal meetings.” They often raided our meeting places and ordered that we couldn’t have meetings unless we got the relevant license approved by the government. Otherwise, we would be arrested to be fined or sentenced. Once, my mother and another five or six brothers and sisters were arrested and interrogated by the police for a whole day. In the end, the police released them after confirming through investigation that they were all ordinary believers. From then on, in order to escape the government’s raids, we had to have meetings secretly. Even so, our faith wasn’t diminished. But later, I found that I got less and less enjoyment in the meetings. The preachers and believers formed cliques and intrigued against one another. Many believers grew cold in faith and loved the world and money, and they only cared about making money but were unwilling to attend meetings. The several believers who came to have meetings and listen to messages chatted to one another or dozed off. Seeing that
the church became desolate day by day and the believers were scattered and went away, I was very sad but couldn’t do anything. In the second half of 1998, one of my relatives preached to me the end-time
gospel of
Almighty God, the returned Jesus. After hearing it, I was so excited that I shed tears for meeting with the Lord in my life. Since then, I eagerly read God’s word every day and understood many truths and mysteries from that. My thirsty heart received the watering and supply which I had never received before. Moreover, from God’s word, I knew the reason why the church was desolate. I read these words of God, “
God’s work in all the other places will stop, and all people will be forced to search for the true way. It will be like the case of Joseph. Everyone went to him for things to eat and bowed down to him, because he had food to eat. In order to escape the disaster of starvation, all people will have to seek the true way. The entire religious world will suffer a severe famine. Only the God of today is the spring of living water and has the ever-flowing spring for people to enjoy. All people will turn to him.” (from “The Millennial Kingdom Has Come” in The Word Appears in the Flesh) So God has already done a new work, no longer working in the churches of the Age of the Grace. Only if we keep up with God’s new work can we have the leading of the
Holy Spirit and the abundant supply of life. If one fails to keep up with the pace of God’s working, he won’t have the working of the Holy Spirit. Naturally his faith and love grow cold, and he is insensible even when committing sins and doing evil. It’s just like in the later phase of the Age of the Law. When the Lord Jesus started the new work, there was no working of the Holy Spirit in the temple where people worshiped God, and the temple naturally fell into darkness and became a place of buying and selling. Knowing the truths and mysteries we had never heard before and enjoying the pleasure brought by the Holy Spirit’s greatly working, my husband and I were both immersed in the happiness and joy of meeting with the Lord again. We often learned to sing
hymns, danced to praise God, and had meetings fellowshipping about God’s word with the brothers and sisters. We became fresh and lively in spirit, as if seeing the beautiful scene of everyone being glad and joyful when the kingdom is realized. Unexpectedly, just when we followed God to walk the right way of human life with full confidence, the CCP government persecuted us cruelly….