Pictures of the Church of Almighty God

Only the Perfected Can Live a Meaningful Life

In truth, the work being done now is to have people forsake Satan, forsake their old ancestor. All judgments by the word aim to expose humanity’s corrupt disposition and to enable people to understand the essence of life. These repeated judgments all pierce people’s hearts. Every judgment directly impacts their fate and is meant to wound their hearts so that they can let go of all those things and thereby come to know life, know this filthy world, and also know God’s wisdom and almightiness and know this Satan-corrupted mankind. The more of this kind of chastisement and judgment, the more man’s heart can be wounded and the more his spirit can be awakened. Awakening the spirits of these extremely corrupted and most deeply deceived of people is the goal of this kind of judgment. Man has no spirit, that is, his spirit died long ago and he knows not that there is a heaven, knows not that there is a God, and certainly knows not that he is struggling in the abyss of death; how would he possibly be able to know that he is living in this evil hell on earth? How would he possibly be able to know that this putrid corpse of his has, through Satan’s corruption, fallen into Hades of death? How would he possibly be able to know that everything on earth has long been ruined beyond repair by mankind? And how would he possibly be able to know that the Creator has come to the earth today and is searching for a group of corrupt people whom He can save? Even after man experiences every possible refinement and judgment, his dull consciousness still barely stirs and is virtually unresponsive. Humanity is so degenerate! Although this kind of judgment is like the cruel hail that falls from the sky, it is of the greatest benefit to man. If not for judging people like this, there would be no result and it would be absolutely impossible to save people from the abyss of misery. If not for this work, it would be very difficult for people to emerge from Hades because their hearts have long ago died and their spirits long ago trampled by Satan. Saving you who have sunk to the deepest depths of degeneration requires calling out to you strenuously, judging you strenuously, and only then will that ice-cold heart of yours be awakened. Your flesh, your extravagant desires, your greed, and your lust are too deeply rooted in you. These things are so constantly controlling your hearts that you are powerless to cast off the yoke of those feudal and degenerate thoughts. You neither yearn to change your present situation, nor to escape the influence of darkness. You are simply bound by those things. Even if you know that such a life is too painful and such a world too dark, still, utterly not a single one of you has the courage to change a life of this sort. You only long to escape this kind of real life, release your souls from purgatory, and live in a peaceful, happy, heaven-like environment. You are unwilling to endure hardships to change your current life; neither are you willing to search within this judgment and chastisement for the life that you should enter into. Rather, you dream entirely unrealistic dreams about that beautiful world beyond the flesh. The life you long for is one you can effortlessly obtain without suffering any pain. That is completely unrealistic! Because what you hope for is not to live out a meaningful lifetime in the flesh and to gain the truth in the course of a lifetime, that is, to live for the truth and to stand up for justice. This is not what you would consider a radiant, dazzling life. You feel that this would not be a glamorous or meaningful life. To you, living such a life would truly be selling yourselves short! Even though you accept this chastisement today, nonetheless what you are pursuing is not to gain the truth or to live the truth in the present, but rather to be able to enter a happy life beyond the flesh later. You are not seeking for the truth, neither are you standing up for the truth, and you certainly are not existing for the truth. You are not pursuing entry today, but are constantly thinking there will come a day when you look at the blue sky and shed bitter tears, expecting to be taken to heaven. Do you not know such thinking of yours is already out of touch with reality? You keep thinking that the Savior of infinite kindness and compassion will no doubt come one day to take you with Him, you who have endured hardship and suffering in this world, and that He will no doubt exact revenge for you who have been victimized and oppressed. Are you not full of sin? Are you the only one who has suffered in this world? You have fallen into Satan’s domain yourself and suffered, and yet you still need God to avenge you? Those who are unable to satisfy God’s demands—are they not all God’s enemies? Those who do not believe in God incarnate—are they not the antichrist? What do your good deeds count for? Can they take the place of a heart that worships God? You cannot receive God’s blessing simply by doing some good deeds, and God will not avenge the wrongs against you just because you have been victimized and oppressed. Those who believe in God yet do not know God, but who do good deeds—are they all not also chastised? You merely believe in God, merely want God to redress and revenge the wrongs against you, and want God to provide you an escape from your misery. But you refuse to pay attention to the truth; nor do you thirst to live out the truth. Much less are you able to escape this hard, empty life. Instead, while living your life in the flesh and your life of sin, you look expectantly to God to right your grievances and part the fog of your existence. How is this possible? If you possess the truth, you can follow God. If you have living out, you can be a manifestation of God’s word. If you have the life, you can enjoy God’s blessing. Those who possess the truth can enjoy God’s blessing. God ensures redress for those who love Him wholeheartedly as well as enduring hardships and sufferings, not for those who only love themselves and have fallen prey to Satan’s deceptions. How can there be goodness in those who do not love the truth? How can there be righteousness in those who only love the flesh? Are not righteousness and goodness all in reference to the truth? Are they not reserved for those who wholeheartedly love God? Those who do not love the truth and who are but putrid corpses—do not all these people harbor evil? Those unable to live the truth—are they not all enemies of the truth? And what about you?

If you can escape these influences of darkness and divorce yourself from those unclean things, if you can become holy, it means that you possess the truth. It is not that your nature is changed, but only that you are able to put the truth into practice and are able to forsake the flesh. This is what those who have been cleansed have. The main goal of the work of conquering is to cleanse humanity so that man can possess the truth, because man now possesses too little truth! To do conquering work on these people is of the deepest significance. You have all fallen under the influence of darkness and been deeply harmed. The goal of this work, then, is to enable you to know human nature and thereby live the truth. To be perfected is something that all created beings should accept. If the work of this stage involves only perfecting people, then it could be done in England, or America, or Israel; it could be done on the people of any nation. But the work of conquering is selective. The first step of conquering work is short-term; moreover, it will be used to humiliate Satan and conquer the entire universe. This is the initial work of conquering. One can say that any creature who believes in God can be perfected because to be perfected is something one can achieve only after a long-term change. But to be conquered is different. The specimen for conquest must be the one lagging the farthest behind, living in the deepest dark, also the most degraded, most unwilling to accept God, and the most disobedient of God. This is the kind of person who can testify to being conquered. The main goal of the work of conquering is to defeat Satan. The main goal of perfecting people, on the other hand, is to gain people. It is to enable people to have testimony after being conquered that this conquering work has been placed here, on people like you. The aim is to have people bear testimony after being conquered. These conquered people will be used to achieve the goal of humiliating Satan. So, what is the main method of conquest? Chastisement, judgment, casting curses, and revealing—using the righteous disposition to conquer people so that they are utterly convinced, being filled with conviction in their hearts and mouths because of God’s righteous disposition. To use the reality of the word and to use the authority of the word to conquer people and convince them fully—this is what it means to be conquered. Those who have been perfected are not just able to achieve obedience after being conquered, but they are also able to have knowledge and change their disposition. They know God, experience the path of loving God, and are filled with the truth. They know how to experience God’s work, are able to suffer for God, and have their own wills. The perfected are those who have an actual understanding of the truth thanks to having experienced the truth. The conquered are those who know of the truth but have not accepted the real meaning of the truth. After being conquered, they obey, but their obedience is all the result of the judgment they received. They have absolutely no understanding of the real meaning of many truths. They acknowledge the truth verbally, but they have not entered the truth; they comprehend the truth, but they have not experienced the truth. The work being done to those being perfected includes chastisements and judgments, along with the provision of life. A person who values entering the truth is a person to be perfected. The difference between those to be perfected and the conquered lies in whether they enter the truth. Those who comprehend the truth, have entered the truth, and are living the truth are the perfected; those who do not comprehend the truth, do not enter the truth, that is, those who are not living the truth, are people who cannot be perfected. If such people are able to now obey completely, then they are conquered. If the conquered do not seek the truth—if they follow but do not live the truth, if they catch sight of and hear of the truth but do not value living the truth—they cannot be perfected. Those to be perfected practice the truth according to the path of perfection, that is, they practice the truth founded on the path of perfection. Through this, they fulfill God’s will, and they are perfected. Anyone who follows to the end before the conquering work concludes is a conquered one, but he cannot be said to be a perfected one. The perfected refers to those who, after the conquering work ends, are able to pursue the truth and be gained by God. It refers to those who, after the conquering work ends, stand firm in tribulation and live out the truth. What distinguish being conquered from being perfected are differences in the working steps and differences in the degree to which the truth is held. All those who have not embarked on the path to perfection, meaning those who do not possess the truth, will ultimately still be eliminated. Only those who possess the truth and who live the truth can be completely gained by God. That is, those who live out Peter’s image are the perfected, while all others are the conquered. The work being done to all those being conquered consists simply of the laying of curses, chastising, and the showing of wrath, and what come to them are simply righteousness and curses. To work on such a person is to bluntly reveal—to reveal the corrupt disposition inside him so that he recognizes it himself and is fully convinced. Once man becomes completely obedient, the conquering work ends. Even if most people are still not seeking to understand the truth, the conquest work will have ended.

There are criteria to be met if you are to be perfected. Through your resolve, your perseverance, and your conscience, and through your pursuit, you will be able to experience life and fulfill God’s will. These are your entry, and what are required on the path to perfection. The work of perfection can be done on all people. Anyone who pursues God can be perfected and has the opportunity and qualifications to be perfected. There is no hard and fast rule here. Whether one can be perfected mainly depends on what one pursues. People who love the truth and are able to live the truth are certainly able to be perfected. And people who do not love the truth and are not commended by God do not possess a life that God demands. These people are unable to be perfected. The perfection work is only for the sake of gaining people, not a step in battling Satan; the conquest work is only for the sake of battling Satan, which means using the conquest of man to defeat Satan. This latter is the main work, the newest work that has never been done in all the ages. One can say that the goal of this stage of work is mainly to conquer all people so as to defeat Satan. The work of perfecting people—that is not new work. All the work during the period when God is working in the flesh has as its main goal the conquest of people. This is like in the Age of Grace. The redemption of all mankind through the crucifixion was the main work. “Gaining people” was additional to the work in the flesh and was done only after the crucifixion. When Jesus came and did His work, His goal was mainly to use His crucifixion to triumph over the bondage of death and Hades, to triumph over Satan’s influence, meaning to defeat Satan. It was only after Jesus was crucified that Peter embarked one step at a time on the path to perfection. Of course he was among those who followed Jesus while Jesus was working, but he was not perfected during that time. Rather, it was after Jesus finished His work that Peter gradually understood the truth and then became perfected. God incarnate comes to earth only to complete a key, crucial stage of work in a short period of time, not to live long-term among people on earth and intentionally perfect them. He does not do that work. He does not wait until such time as when man is completely perfected to conclude His work. That is not the goal and significance of His incarnation. He comes only to do the short-term work of saving humanity, not to do the very long-term work of perfecting humanity. The work of saving humanity is representative, capable of launching a new age and can be finished in a short period of time. But perfecting humanity requires bringing man up to a certain level and is work that takes a long time. This work has to be done by the Spirit of God, but it is done on the foundation of the truth He speaks during His work in the flesh. Or additionally He raises up the apostles to do long-term shepherding work to achieve His goal of perfecting humanity. God incarnate does not do this work. He only speaks about the way of life so people will understand and only gives humanity the truth, rather than continuously accompanying man in practicing the truth, because that is not within His ministry. So He will not be accompanying man until the day man completely understands the truth and completely obtains the truth. His work in the flesh concludes when man formally enters the right track of the truth of life, when man steps onto the right track of being perfected. This of course is also when He will have thoroughly defeated Satan and triumphed over the world. He cares not whether man has ultimately entered the truth at that time, nor does He care about whether man’s life is big or small. None of that is what He in the flesh should be managing; none of it is within the ministry of God incarnate. Once He finishes His intended work, He concludes His work in the flesh. So, the work that God incarnate does is only the work that God’s Spirit cannot do directly. Moreover, it is the short-term work of salvation, not long-term work on earth.

Raising your caliber is not within the realm of My work. I ask you to do this only because your caliber is too low. In truth this is not part of the work of perfection; rather, it is extra work being done on you. The work being completed on you today is done according to what you need. It is individualized, not some path that should be entered into by everyone who is being perfected. Because your caliber is lower than anyone who was perfected in the past, this work, when it comes to you, is met with too many obstructions. I am among you doing this extra work because the targets of perfection are different. Normally when God comes to the earth, He stays within narrow bounds to carry out His work, not bothering with too much other business. He does not get involved in family matters or take part in people’s lives. He is utterly unconcerned with such trivia; they are not part of His ministry. But your caliber is so much lower than what I demanded—there is absolutely no comparison—that it poses extreme challenges to the work. Moreover, this work must be done among the people in this land that is China. You are so undereducated that I have no choice but to demand that you get educated. I have told you that this is extra work, but it is also something you must have, something that benefits your becoming perfected. Actually, you should acquire education, basic knowledge about self-conduct, and basic knowledge about life beforehand; I should not have to talk to you about these things. But since you do not have these things, I have no choice but to do the work of adding them to you after the fact. Even if you harbor many conceptions about Me, I still demand this of you, still demand that you raise your caliber. It is not My intention to come and do this work, because My work is just to conquer you, just to obtain your complete conviction by judging you, thereby pointing out the way of life you should enter. Put another way, how educated you are and whether you are knowledgeable about life would have absolutely nothing to do with Me were it not for the fact that I need to conquer you with My word. All this is being added on to ensure results from the conquering work and for the sake of your subsequent perfection. It is not a step of the conquering work. Because you are of low caliber, and you are lazy, and negligent, and foolish, and slow-witted, and wooden, and idiotic—because you are exceedingly abnormal—I require that you first raise your caliber. Anyone who wants to be perfected must meet certain criteria. To be perfected, one must be of clear and sober mind and be willing to live a meaningful life. If you are someone unwilling to live a hollow life, someone who pursues the truth, someone who is earnest in everything he does, and someone of exceptionally normal humanity, then you are qualified to be perfected.

This work among you is being carried out on you according to what work needs to be done. After the conquest of these individuals, a group of people will be perfected. Therefore much of the work of the present is also in preparation for the goal of perfecting you, because there are many hungering for the truth who can be perfected. If the work of conquering is carried out on you and thereafter no further work is done, then is it not the case that some who yearn for the truth will not gain it? The present work aims to open a path for perfecting people later. Although My work is just conquest, the way of life spoken by Me is nonetheless in preparation for perfecting people later. The work that comes after conquest centers on perfecting people, and so the conquering is done to lay a foundation for the perfecting. Man can be perfected only after being conquered. Right now the main task is to conquer; later those who seek and long for the truth will be perfected. To be perfected involves people’s positive aspects of entry: Do you have a God-loving heart? What has been the depth of your experience as you have walked this path? How pure is your love of God? How exact is your practice of the truth? To be perfected, one must have basic knowledge of all aspects of humanity. This is a baseline requirement. All those who cannot be perfected after being conquered become serving objects and will ultimately still be cast into the lake of fire and brimstone and will still fall into the bottomless pit because their disposition has not changed and they still belong to Satan. If a man lacks the qualifications for perfection, then he is useless—he is waste, a tool, something that cannot withstand the trial of fire! How great is your love of God right now? How great is your loathing of yourself? How deeply do you really know Satan? Have you stiffened your resolve? Is your life in humanity well regulated? Has your life changed? Are you living a new life? Has your life outlook changed? If these things have not changed, you cannot be perfected even if you do not retreat; rather, you have only been conquered. When it is time to test you, you are lacking the truth, your humanity is abnormal, and you are as low as a brute. You have only been conquered, have only been one conquered by Me. Just as, once it has experienced the master’s whip, a donkey becomes fearful and afraid to act out every time it sees the master, so too, are you this conquered donkey. If a person lacks those positive aspects and is instead passive and fearful, timid and hesitant with all things, unable to discern anything clearly, unable to accept the truth, still without a path for practice, even more so without a God-loving heart—if a person has no understanding of how to love God, how to live a meaningful life, or how to be a real person—how can such a person bear witness to God? This goes to show that your life has little value and you are but a conquered donkey. You have been conquered, but that merely means you have renounced the great red dragon and refuse to submit to its domain; it means you believe there is a God, want to obey all of God’s plans, and have no complaints. But what about the positive aspects? The ability to live God’s word, the ability to manifest God—you have none of these, which means you have not been gained by God, and you are but a conquered donkey. There is nothing desirable in you, and the Holy Spirit is not at work in you. Your humanity is too lacking and it is impossible for God to use you. You have to be approved of by God and be a hundred times better than the unbelieving beasts and than the walking dead—only those who get to this level are qualified to be perfected. Only if one has humanity and has a conscience is one fit for God’s use. Only when you have been perfected can you be considered human. Only the perfected are people who live meaningful lives. Only such people can testify even more resoundingly to God.

from The Word Appears in the Flesh

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