How to Rely on God and Stand Testimony When Tempted by Satan (Part 2)
By Hu Yang
The CCP’s Lies Are Revealed and I Steadfastly Follow the Path of Belief in God
Through reading God’s words and listening to Sister Feng’s fellowship, I came to have some discernment about the deceitful schemes of Satan that lurked behind my husband’s attempts to stop me from believing in God. Sister Feng then said to me, “Sister, although your husband has promised not to try to force you to give up your belief anymore, this does not mean that he won’t oppose your belief in God again in the future. Because he has no discernment of the essence of these lies, you must help him with love to discern them, make him see the malicious intent behind the CCP’s lies and enable him to see through Satan’s deceitful schemes!”
After some deep thought, I nodded, and said, “Sister, I’m so worried about this now! I know that it is only because God protected me this time that I was not deceived by the CCP’s lies and was not constrained by my husband. But I only know that what the CCP says, that ‘When someone starts believing in Almighty God, they then go out to preach the gospel, and they abandon their family’ is a lie, and I don’t know what truths to use to discern and refute this lie. Sister, can you give me fellowship about this lie and break it down for me?”
Sister Feng then said, “We are able to recognize that the statement, ‘When someone starts believing in Almighty God, they then go out to preach the gospel, and they abandon their family,’ is a lie spread by the CCP about The Church of Almighty God, and it is God who leads us and guides us to this understanding! Thanks be to God! At the same time, it is very important that we seek the truth so that we can see through these lies and understand thoroughly the motives and purposes behind the CCP fabricating these lies about The Church of Almighty God. For if we don’t understand the truth and cannot discern lies, we will be easily deceived, and may even lose our chance to attain God’s true salvation! So, if we want to understand this issue thoroughly, we must first understand that to spread the gospel and to bear testimony for God in our faith is a heavenly law and an earthly principle, and by doing these things we are accomplishing God’s commissions, and they are the most righteous things mankind can do.
“As we all know, in the Age of Grace, the Lord Jesus enjoined His disciples, saying: ‘Go you into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature’ (Mark 16:15). ‘So likewise, whoever he be of you that forsakes not all that he has, he cannot be My disciple’ (Luke 14:33). Christ of the last days, Almighty God also said, ‘As members of the human race and devout Christians, it is the responsibility and obligation of us all to offer up our mind and body for the fulfillment of God’s commission, for our entire being came from God, and it exists thanks to the sovereignty of God. If our minds and bodies are not for God’s commission and not for the righteous cause of mankind, then our souls will be unworthy of those who were martyred for God’s commission, much more unworthy of God, who has provided us with everything’ (‘God Presides Over the Fate of All Mankind’ in The Word Appears in the Flesh). From God’s words, we can see that God created the heavens and earth and all things, and that He created mankind. Even more so, He provides us with everything we need to live, and to believe in God and worship God is a heavenly law and an earthly principle. By spreading and testifying to God’s gospel, we lead more people before God to accept God’s salvation. This is our God-given commission, our bounden duty, the greatest act of goodness and righteousness, and it is most in line with God’s will. Take the disciples and apostles of the Lord Jesus, for example. In order to carry out God’s will, they spread the Lord Jesus’ gospel, they were willing to give up their families, marriages and physical pleasures, endure the slander and mockery of worldly people, and some even became martyrs for this end. But nobody vilified them or condemned them. On the contrary, they were praised and taken as examples to be emulated, and people said that what they did was the most righteous undertaking mankind could perform. Now, the Lord Jesus whom we have longed for for so long has finally returned as the incarnated Almighty God. In order to save us once and for all from the bonds of sin, Almighty God expresses His words and performs the work of judgment beginning in God’s house. He does all this to change and purify our corrupt dispositions, and ultimately to lead mankind into His kingdom. From God’s words, brothers and sisters can understand God’s urgent intention to save man, and we become willing to abandon physical pleasures, to face the danger of being caught and persecuted by the CCP, and to do our utmost to spread and testify to God’s kingdom gospel, so that even more people can accept God’s salvation of the last days and finally attain God’s true salvation and be left over. This is a righteous undertaking, and it is God’s will that is being carried out! The CCP, however, knows the difference between good and evil and yet they still do evil, and they stubbornly insist that Christians who spread the gospel and bear witness to God leave their homes and abandon their families. This is clearly a false account and a distortion of the facts, and it is the CCP spreading deceptive heresies and fallacies!”
As I listened to the sister’s fellowship, I pondered, and I thought of the foreign missionaries of the past. They left their families and gave up physical pleasures in order to preach the Lord Jesus’ gospel to us. If they hadn’t left their homes to preach the gospel in China, how else would we have been able to hear the Lord Jesus’ gospel? I then understood that, as a Christian, to be able to give everything up and to be willing to suffer to preach the gospel is a good deed—it is carrying out of God’s will, and it is something which both accords with God’s will and earns God’s blessing.
Just then, Sister Feng went on with her fellowship, saying, “Preaching the gospel has always been something praised and remembered by God, and it is the greatest act of goodness and righteousness one can do. And yet it incurs the condemnation and slander of the CCP. Why is that? As everyone knows, the CCP is an atheist revolutionary party, and it is a satanic regime that most hates and resists God. So how could it possibly allow the Chinese people to believe in God and follow the right way? Since the CCP took power, it has openly labeled Christianity and Catholicism as cults, it has called the Bible a cultist book, and has misappropriated many copies of the Bible and burned them. It has also labeled many house churches as cult organizations and has persecuted, suppressed and banned them. It has driven many foreign missionaries out of China, and it has wantonly arrested, imprisoned, forcibly reformed and harmed countless Christians and Catholics.
“Since Christ of the last days—Almighty God—appeared and began to perform His work in China in 1991, The Church of Almighty God has grown rapidly. Not only has The Church of Almighty God become established in every province in China, but Almighty God’s kingdom gospel has also spread rapidly overseas. More and more people who yearn for the appearance of God are investigating God’s work of the last days, and The Church of Almighty God is becoming established in many foreign countries, one nation at a time. The CCP, therefore, frantically suppresses and persecutes The Church of Almighty God. If any brother or sister on the Chinese mainland believes in God or preaches the gospel, then they are in danger of being arrested, persecuted and cruelly tortured by the CCP. To this end, many brothers and sisters in mainland China have been forced to flee their homes. Some who are arrested by the CCP are subjected to cruel tortures, some are sentenced and imprisoned, and some have even been crippled or killed as a result of their beatings. Tens of thousands of Christians cannot return home, and their families are scattered and brought to ruin. Not only that, but the CCP also recklessly fabricates rumors to foment discord between Christians and their families. The CCP even threatens and intimidates Christians’ family members and denies them their right to live in order to make them persecute the Christians in their families, and thus many families are destroyed. These facts show that the CCP is the evil ringleader that causes the destruction of Christians’ families!
“The CCP not only arrests and persecutes Christians, but it also uses the internet and media to spread all manner of lies to slander, vilify and besmirch The Church of Almighty God. And what is its aim and its intention for doing this? The CCP wishes to deceive the people of the world, to cheat and fool all who do not understand the truth into resisting, fearing and guarding against The Church of Almighty God in an attempt to stop people from investigating and accepting the true way, and so that people lose their chance to attain God’s true salvation! Moreover, the CCP knows that The Word Appears in the Flesh, expressed by Christ of the last days—Almighty God—contains the truth, and that if anyone reads the words of Almighty God, they will then come to have discernment of its God-resisting, truth-hating evil essence, and they will denounce and reject the CCP. And if that happens, then its wild ambition, its desire to deceive and fool the people of the world and control the whole world will be left in tatters. All the various evil deeds of the CCP show us that its essence is the very embodiment of Satan, and that it is the arch tyrant that sets itself against God and devours man, which precisely fulfills the prophecy in the Bible that says: ‘And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceives the whole world’ (Revelation 12:9). The Devil has spoken lies since the very beginning in order to deceive man and to make man betray God and follow it instead. We must have discernment of the CCP’s essence, for only then will we not be deceived by it!”
The sister’s fellowship allowed me to suddenly see the light. Christians don’t abandon their families after all. Instead, it is the CCP government’s frantic arrests and persecution of Christians that forces them to flee their homes, unable to return. It is the CCP that is the evil ringleader that destroys families, and yet it twists things around and says that it is the Christians who abandon their families. The CCP truly is so devious and evil! I also came to understand that the CCP not only obstructs and persecutes the brothers and sisters on the Chinese mainland for their belief in God and following of God, but it also uses the internet to wantonly disseminate rumors and all kinds of heresies and fallacies so that people in all nations across the world will be deceived, for then no one would dare to seek or investigate the true way. Family members who don’t understand the truth are also incited by the CCP to obstruct Christians from believing in God, and the CCP does this in an attempt to make them shun and betray God and lose their chance to attain God’s true salvation. Only then did I understand that the CCP is the stumbling block and the obstacle on our path of faith in God! I thought of the more than ten years of love and affection between my husband and me, and yet now, because he had been fooled by the CCP’s lies, he had tried to force me to give up my belief in God and had brought strife into our family. If I hadn’t been able to see through to the essence of those lies, then I would have ended up constrained by my husband and would have completely lost the salvation of God! Just then I made a resolution, that no matter how my husband may try to stop me from believing in God in the future, I would always believe in and follow God!
Temptation Comes Once Again and My Husband Threatens Divorce
Afterward, although my husband did not oppose my belief in Almighty God in any obvious way, every now and then he would rebuke me through insinuation. Whenever he saw me attending gatherings in particular, he would be unhappy with me and would give me the silent treatment. He would also find fault with things in order to quarrel with me, and he said that we were understanding each other less and less, and that we seemed increasingly to be speaking different languages. He even said that if I carried on believing in God, then he would divorce me. When I heard him say this, I became very upset. I thought of how our child was still so young, and how my parents were getting on in age and were not in the best of health. If my husband really did divorce me, how would I look after them all by myself? But if we didn’t divorce, then my husband would keep obstructing me and would not let me believe in God. I felt hemmed in on all sides, and my heart became both conflicted and weak.
I had no alternative but to pray to God once again: “O God! My husband now wants to divorce me because of my belief in You. I am of little faith and I am weak, yet I do not wish to do anything that may cause You grief. I ask that You help me, give me faith and strength, and lead me through this situation.” After praying, I thought of when Job encountered the temptations of Satan. All his family wealth and property was taken by thieves, his children’s lives were taken away, his whole body broke out in painful boils, and even his wife attacked him, saying, “Do you still retain your integrity? curse God, and die” (Job 2:9). When Job encountered the temptations of Satan, not only did he not fall foul of Satan’s deceitful schemes, but he also reprimanded his wife, saying, “You speak as one of the foolish women speaks. What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?” (Job 2:10). Although Job lost everything, yet he believed that everything was in God’s hands, and no matter how God tested him, he always stood in the place of a created being and extolled the Creator. He did not lose his faith in God, but bore resounding and beautiful witness, thus causing Satan to be utterly shamed and defeated. The situation I was now in was also a temptation of Satan; Satan was using my husband to threaten me with divorce in order to compel me to give up the true way, and I had fallen into negativity and weakness—had I not precisely fallen foul of Satan’s deceitful schemes? Did I have no true faith in God whatsoever? “God is the Creator and I am a created being,” I thought. “To believe in God and worship God is a heavenly law and an earthly principle, and it is the right path in life. I will follow God no matter what happens!” Thinking this, I decided to emulate Job, and I resolved myself to satisfy God. I then thought of how God administers the heavens and earth and all things and how my entire being is in God’s hands, including my marriage. No matter what became of me in the end, I wished to submit to God’s sovereignty and arrangements, to not be duped by Satan, and to stand testimony for God!
I Resolve Myself to Satisfy God and I Witness God’s Deeds
Once I’d understood God’s will, I found the faith and the courage to stand testimony and satisfy God. If my husband was going to force me to choose between my family and my belief in God, then I would rather we divorced and I keep on following God. Later, I said calmly to my husband, “I love this family, but I cannot give up my faith in God. You want me to give it up, but I can’t do it. If you are determined to divorce me, then I consent to it. Although I really don’t want to divorce, you have been deceived by the CCP’s lies and you can’t tell what is true and what isn’t, and you’re using divorce to force my hand, so I have no choice.” After I’d finished speaking, I felt very calm and peaceful.
The next day, I filled in the divorce papers. To my surprise, my husband dropped his inflexible stance and spoke softly to me. “I never expected you to be so persistent in your faith in Almighty God, so now you’ve really convinced me. You can believe in Almighty God if you want, I won’t oppose you again.” Hearing him say this, I knew that this was God’s deed and I thanked God silently in my heart. I saw that, when I became willing to rely on God and stand testimony, Satan was shamed. And so, I once again testified to my husband of God’s intent to save mankind, and I gave him fellowship on the essence of the CCP’s rumormongering and the consequences of believing in such lies. Unexpectedly, this time my husband did not refute what I was saying, but just listened quietly. After that day, my husband never mentioned divorce to me again, and he no longer sought to quarrel with me when he saw me attending church gatherings.
One day, three months later, as my husband and I were discussing a matter of faith, he suddenly said to me, “Ever since you told me that the statement ‘People who believe in Almighty God abandon their families’ was a lie put about by the CCP, I have been observing your church and I’ve secretly been watching your church’s movies, especially the movies about how the CCP persecutes Christians. Only after I’d watched these movies did I finally understand that it’s not that you believers in Almighty God abandon your families, but is rather that the arrests and persecution the CCP inflicts upon you causes many people in your church to flee their homes in order to escape arrest. And in order to conceal its wicked deeds of persecuting religious belief and denying people their human rights, the CCP insists that it is believers in Almighty God who abandon their families. This is rumormongering and slander, pure and simple! I think I now understand that one simply cannot trust what the Chinese Communist Party says, and I’ve decided to go to The Church of Almighty God and investigate it for myself.” In my husband’s words, I once again witnessed the wondrous deeds of God. My heart was moved to such warmth by God’s love, and I had no words to express how wonderful I felt inside. Afterward, through a period of seeking and investigating, my husband also accepted God’s work of the last days, and he began to attend our gatherings.
Later, I read in the word of God: “In My plan, Satan has ever snapped at the heels of every step, and, as the foil of My wisdom, has always tried to find ways and means to disrupt My original plan. But could I succumb to its deceitful schemes? All in heaven and on earth serves Me—could the deceitful schemes of Satan be any different? This is precisely the intersection of My wisdom, it is precisely that which is wondrous about My deeds, and it is the principle by which My entire management plan is carried out. During the time of the building of the kingdom, still I do not avoid the deceitful schemes of Satan, but continue to do the work I must do. Among all things in the universe, I have chosen the deeds of Satan as My foil. Is this not My wisdom? Is this not precisely that which is wondrous about My work?” (“Chapter 8” of God’s Words to the Entire Universe in The Word Appears in the Flesh).
God’s words touched my heart once more, and they enabled me to understand that the wisdom of God is exercised based on the deceitful schemes of Satan. God uses Satan as a foil, and through the disruption caused by Satan, God enables us to develop discernment, as well as grow in our lives. Thinking back on that time, when my husband tried to stop me from believing in God because he had been deceived by the CCP’s lies, although I had suffered a little through that situation and had experienced weakness and negativity, through fellowshiping on God’s words with my sisters, I came to understand exactly the essence of the CCP; it is a stumbling block on the path we tread as we turn back to God, and even more so it is the fuse wire that ignites family strife, and I cannot help but feel hatred toward it. Throughout this spiritual battle, whenever I felt negative and weak, it was only by calling on God and by the enlightenment and guidance of God’s words that I was able to overcome the temptations of Satan and stand testimony for God. Having survived this battle, I came to appreciate the faithfulness of God, and I truly feel that God is by our side and is our support and backup at need. As long as we rely on and look to God in earnest, then God will be with us. My faith to follow God has thereby grown even greater, and I am even more willing to spend whatever time I have left in life pursuing the truth and following God to the very end! Thanks be to God!
from The Church of Almighty God
