The Necessary Knowledge of God’s Work in the Age of Kingdom

Sermons and Fellowship

After having read the words about the significance of Almighty God’s work in the last days, if you can earnestly ponder them, you will certainly be able to gain some knowledge and understanding of His work in the last days. If you can then read the book, The Word Appears in the Flesh, that is expressed by Almighty God during His work in the last days in its entirety and experience several years of His work in the last days, you will most certainly be able to truly understand that God’s work in the Age of Kingdom is judgment and chastisement in order to completely save mankind. Through this, you can gain salvation and be perfected.

To understand God’s work in the last days, you must first be clear on why He is doing the work of judgment and chastisement in the last days. After the Lord Jesus completed the work of redemption in the Age of Grace, all of God’s chosen people could come in front of the Lord Jesus, admit to their sins and repent, and be forgiven. They could also enjoy a lot of grace bestowed upon them by God, but there wasn’t a single person who was able to cast off the constraints and the shackles of their sinful nature after humanity’s corruption by Satan. Everyone continued to sin even after accepting the Lord Jesus as their Savior and being forgiven of their sins. They lived in the repeated cycle of sinning and acknowledging their sins. That is why, even though all those who had been redeemed by the Lord Jesus had been forgiven of their sins and they enjoyed all of the grace bestowed upon them by God, they were completely unable to cast off the constraints and shackles of the satanic nature that leads mankind to sinfulness. That is why all people cry out in pain: “I truly am miserable! What can I do to finally throw off the constraints of my satanic nature and achieve true salvation?” It is clear that corrupt mankind has no way of resolving their own sinful nature, and no one can free themselves of the control of their own satanic sinful nature. They all cannot help but frequently sin and live within sin, which is why although the sins of corrupt humanity have been forgiven, they are unable to live out normal humanity, so how could they possibly live out a true human life? This is the real experience of all of God’s chosen people who accepted God’s work of redemption in the Age of Grace. So the work of judgment and chastisement God incarnate does personally in the last days is the work of thoroughly saving corrupt humanity from their satanic sinful nature and transforming their life disposition. Almighty God expresses all of the truths of judgment and chastisement to completely save mankind. He not only uses the truth in His words to expose and judge the essence of corrupt humanity’s satanic nature and the truth of their corruption, but He also utilizes the methods of pruning and dealing and trials and refinement to resolve and transform people’s satanic disposition. This allows corrupt humanity to truly recognize their own satanic nature and the truth of their corruption, and to genuinely see that corrupt humanity really is full of satanic dispositions such as selfishness and despicableness, deceit and crookedness, greed and evil, and being fed up with the truth. By being pruned and dealt with, and through trials and refinement, people can understand the truth and know the work of God, which makes their views on issues, outlook on life, and values undergo a fundamental transformation, and that will be followed by a change in their life disposition. All of this is the fruit borne by God’s work of judgment in the last days, and the transformation brought about by this is so much greater than what was brought about by the forgiveness of sin after believing in the Lord Jesus in the Age of Grace. It is enough to prove that it is only God’s judgment and chastisement in the last days that is the work of completely saving mankind. Aside from this there is no other path for corrupt humanity to fully break free from Satan’s dark influence and genuinely turn toward God, obey Him, and be obtained by Him to achieve full salvation.

Deeply corrupted mankind must undergo God’s judgment and chastisement before they can be saved. This is because people are corrupted so deeply and they are completely taken over by the knowledge and the philosophies of Satan and they are full of satanic dispositions. It is only through the method of judgment and chastisement that God is able to purify and save mankind, which is why in developing His work of judgment in the last days, He first expressed the truth to conquer mankind. When God uses the truth to fully conquer corrupt mankind and they are truly convinced, only then will they see His true appearance, and only then will they be able to bow down in front of God and be utterly remorseful. At that time, they will finally see that they truly are people who resist God and because of that they will know their own arrogance and self-conceit, that there is absolutely no place for God in their hearts, they absolutely have not been living out the likeness of a human being, and that they truly have been so deeply, so pitifully corrupted by Satan. It is only after mankind has been conquered by God’s words that they can truly understand the fact and the essential nature of their corruption by Satan, and only then can they genuinely acknowledge that after believing in God within a religion for all those years, they understood no more than some knowledge from the Bible and some letters and doctrines, and that they do not have the reality of the truth at all. They are truly poor, pitiable, blind, and naked. Only at that time can people start to be quiet in front of God, formally accept and obey the judgment and chastisement of His words, and begin to enter the right track of belief in God. This is the first outcome of conquering achieved by God’s judgment and chastisement. It is just like in the Age of Law, when Job was undergoing trials and after hearing the words of God, he was fully conquered. Only if people are conquered by the words of God are they people who acknowledge and accept the truth, and then they can enter the right track of belief in God and be people who are capable of being saved. All those who can still deny and hate the truth and be enemies of God even after hearing many of His words belong to the category of antichrists. There truly is no way for them to be saved, and those people will be the objects of elimination and punishment. Salvation must be built on the foundation of being conquered by God’s words. Just as God has said: “My intent is to completely extinguish and reduce to ruin the evil one of mankind, so that it can no longer rebel against Me, much less have a breath to interrupt or disturb My work. Thus, as far as people are concerned, it means to be conquering?” (“What a Real Man Means” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). “How exactly is mankind to be conquered? It will be done by using this work of words to fully convince man; by using disclosure, judgment, chastisement, and merciless curse to thoroughly subdue him; and by disclosing man’s rebelliousness and judging his resistance so he can know mankind’s unrighteousness and filth, which will be used to highlight God’s righteous disposition. Mainly, it will be the use of these words that conquers man and fully convinces him?” (“The Inside Truth of the Conquering Work (1)” in The Word Appears in the Flesh).

These are the preliminary results achieved by God’s work of judgment and chastisement, that is, the results of His work of conquering. God perfecting people is built on the foundation of conquering them, and if those who are conquered are able to pursue the truth and obey all of God’s work of judgment and chastisement, then they have already stepped onto the path of being saved and perfected. Everyone should be clear that corrupt humanity is this arrogant, self-conceited, lawless, and lacking in reason only because they have never been conquered. They are totally lacking in self-knowledge and they have denied and resisted God to this degree of madness, which is why only by undergoing God’s judgment and chastisement can corrupt humanity gain purification and salvation. This is also the only path for corrupt humanity to be saved and perfected.

God’s judgment and chastisement of corrupt humanity fully reveals His righteous disposition, and it brings them a wonderful opportunity to know God. If they do not undergo His judgment and chastisement, they will never be able to know His righteous disposition. Once they have undergone the judgment and chastisement of His righteousness, majesty, and wrath, it is only then that they can feel the truth that His disposition will not tolerate any offenses, and experience for themselves that God truly is able to search people’s innermost parts and keep watch over all of their hearts, that He is well acquainted with people’s corrupt essences and satanic natures, and also understand God’s almightiness and wisdom. Because they can accept God’s judgment and chastisement, they can achieve true knowledge of God’s disposition and essence, thus gaining His salvation and perfection. It’s clear that the process of corrupt humanity being saved is the process of acknowledging God’s appearance, and it is the process of knowing His righteous disposition.

There is a direct relationship between corrupt humanity gaining salvation and being perfected, and God’s righteous disposition that He has revealed in His work in the last days. It is entirely because of knowing God’s righteous disposition and recognizing God’s almightiness and wisdom that God’s chosen people have come to fear God and shun evil, and it is particularly from knowing God’s disposition and what He has and is that they have understood all of the truths that He has expressed. This is why people’s outlooks on things, outlooks on life, and their values have undergone a fundamental transformation, gradually achieving a change in disposition in their lives. This is a fact that no one can deny, and it is just as God said:

“People have seen His disposition due to His work of chastisement and judgment, and they therefore revere Him in their hearts. God is meant to be revered and obeyed, because His being and His disposition are not the same as those of a created being, and they are above those of a created being. God is a non-created being, and only He is worthy of reverence and submission; man is not qualified for this” (“God’s Work and Man’s Practice” in The Word Appears in the Flesh).

“My righteousness, majesty and judgment will endure forever and ever. At first, I was loving and merciful, but this is not the disposition of My complete divinity; righteousness, majesty and judgment are just the disposition of Me—the complete God Himself” (Utterances and Testimonies of Christ in the Beginning).

“Righteousness is holiness, and is a disposition that is intolerant of offense by man, and all that is filthy and has not changed is the target of God’s disgust. God’s righteous disposition is not law, but administrative decree: It is administrative decree within the kingdom, and this administrative decree is the righteous punishment of anyone who does not possess the truth and has not changed, and there is no margin for salvation” (“The Experiences of Peter: His Knowledge of Chastisement and Judgment” in The Word Appears in the Flesh).

“Through what is God’s perfection of man accomplished? Through His righteous disposition. God’s disposition primarily consists of righteousness, wrath, majesty, judgment, and curse, and His perfection of man is primarily through judgment” (“Only by Experiencing Painful Trials Can You Know the Loveliness of God” in The Word Appears in the Flesh).

“Whether it be righteous judgment or heartless refinement and chastisement, all are for the sake of salvation. Regardless of whether today there is the classification of each according to kind, or the laying bare of the categories of man, all of God’s utterances and work are in order to save those who truly love God. Righteous judgment is in order to purify man, heartless refinement is in order to cleanse man, harsh words or chastening are all in order to purify, and for the sake of salvation” (“You Should Put Aside the Blessings of Status and Understand God’s Will for the Salvation of Man” in The Word Appears in the Flesh).

“God has now officially begun to perfect people. In order to be made complete, people must undergo the revelation, judgment, and chastisement of God’s words, and experience the trials and refinement of His words (such as the trial of service-doers). In addition, people must be able to withstand the trial of death. That is, someone who truly carries out God’s will can emit praise from deep in their heart in the midst of God’s judgment, chastisement, and trials, and is able to fully obey God and forsake themselves, thus loving God with a heart of sincerity, single-mindedness, and purity; such is a complete person, and it is also the work that God wants to do, and is what God wants to accomplish” (“On the Steps of God’s Work” in The Word Appears in the Flesh).

“God of heaven has come to this most filthy land of vice, and has never vented His grievances, or complained about man, but instead quietly accepts the ravages[1] and oppression of man. Never has He hit back at the unreasonable demands of man, never has He made excessive demands of man, and never has He made unreasonable demands of man; He merely does all the work required by man without complaint: teaching, enlightening, reproaching, the refinement of words, reminding, exhorting, consoling, judging, and revealing. Which of His steps has not been for the life of man? Though He has removed the prospects and fate of man, which of the steps carried out by God has not been for the fate of man? Which of them has not been for the sake of man’s survival? Which of them has not been to free man from the suffering and oppression of dark forces that are black as night? Which of them is not for the sake of man? Who can understand God’s heart, which is as a loving mother? Who can comprehend God’s eager heart?” (“Work and Entry (9)” in The Word Appears in the Flesh).

“God’s true love is His entire disposition, and when God’s entire disposition is shown to you, what does this bring to your flesh? When God’s righteous disposition is shown to you, your flesh will inevitably suffer much pain. If you don’t suffer this pain, then you cannot be made perfect by God, nor will you be able to devote true love to God. If God makes you perfect, He will surely show His entire disposition to you” (“Only Loving God Is Truly Believing in God” in The Word Appears in the Flesh).

“Though now you are suffering some pain and refinement because of the judgment, this pain is valuable and meaningful. Although chastisement and judgment are refinements and merciless disclosures to man, meant to punish his sins and punish his flesh, none of this work is intended to condemn and extinguish his flesh. The severe disclosures of the word are all for the purpose of leading you to the right path. You have personally experienced so much of this work and, clearly, it has not led you to an evil path! All of it is to enable you to live out a normal humanity; all of it is something your normal humanity can achieve. Every step of the work is done based on your needs, according to your weaknesses, and according to your actual stature, and no unbearable burden is placed on you. Although you are unable to see this clearly now and you feel as if I am being hard on you, although you keep thinking that the reason I chastise and judge you every day and reproach you every day is because I hate you, and although what you receive is chastisement and judgment, in reality it is all love for you, also a great protection for you” (“The Inside Truth of the Conquering Work (4)” in The Word Appears in the Flesh).

“My righteousness, majesty and judgment show no mercy to Satan. But for you, they are to save you, yet you are just incapable of understanding My disposition, nor do you know the principles behind My actions” (Utterances and Testimonies of Christ in the Beginning).

“In the end, He will burn away all that is unclean and unrighteous within men in the entire universe, to show them that not only is He a God of mercy, lovingkindness, wisdom, wonder and holiness, but even more, He is a God who judges man. To the evil among all mankind, He is burning, judgment and punishment; to those who are to be perfected, He is tribulation, refinement, and trial, as well as comfort, sustenance, supply of words, dealing, and pruning. And to those who are eliminated, He is punishment, as well as retribution” (“The Two Incarnations Complete the Significance of the Incarnation” in The Word Appears in the Flesh).

“Only by God becoming flesh in the most backward and the filthiest place can He reveal the entirety of His holy and righteous disposition. And through what is His righteous disposition revealed? Through judgment of people’s sins, judgment of Satan, disgust toward sins, and hatred of His enemies who rebel against and resist Him” (“How the Second Step of the Work of Conquering Bears Fruit” in The Word Appears in the Flesh).

“I shall chastise everyone born of Me who yet does not know Me to show all My wrath, show My great power, and show My full wisdom. In Me everything is righteous and there is absolutely no unrighteousness, no deceit, and no crookedness; whosoever is crooked and deceitful must be a son of hell—must be born in Hades. In Me everything is overt; whatever I say to accomplish is accomplished and whatever I say to establish is established, and no one can change or emulate these things because I am the one and only God Himself” (Utterances and Testimonies of Christ in the Beginning).

“It is because of these judgments that you have been able to see that God is the righteous God, that God is the holy God. It is because of His holiness and righteousness that He has judged you and visited His wrath upon you. Because He can reveal His righteous disposition when seeing mankind’s rebelliousness, and because He can reveal His holiness when seeing mankind’s filth, this is enough to show that He is God Himself who is holy and without taint, but also lives in a land of filth” (“How the Second Step of the Work of Conquering Bears Fruit” in The Word Appears in the Flesh).

“I am righteous, I am faithful, I am the God who examines the innermost heart of man!” (Utterances and Testimonies of Christ in the Beginning).

“No person and no thing can escape suffering this chastisement and judgment, and no person and no thing can skirt this classifying by kind; everyone will be sorted into classes. That is because the end is near for all things and all the heavens and earth arrive at their conclusion. How can man escape the end of his existence?” (“The Inside Truth of the Conquering Work (1)” in The Word Appears in the Flesh).

“We trust that no country or power can stand in the way of what God wishes to achieve. Those that obstruct God’s work, resist the word of God, disturb and impair the plan of God shall ultimately be punished by God. He who defies the work of God shall be sent to hell; any country that defies the work of God shall be destroyed; any nation that rises up to oppose the work of God shall be wiped from this earth, and shall cease to exist” (“God Presides Over the Fate of All Mankind” in The Word Appears in the Flesh).

“I want each and every man to see that all I have done is right, and that all I have done is an expression of My disposition; it is not man’s doing, least of all nature, that brought forth mankind. On the contrary, it is I who nourish every living being in creation. Without My existence, mankind will only perish and undergo the scourge of calamities. No human being will ever again see the beauteous sun and moon or the green world; mankind shall encounter only the frigid night and the inexorable valley of the shadow of death” (“You Ought to Prepare a Sufficiency of Good Deeds for Your Destination” in The Word Appears in the Flesh).

“The image of God is not made known to man through the incarnate image, but rather through the work carried out by the incarnate God of image and form; and through His (Her) work, His image is shown and His disposition is made known. This is the significance of the work He wishes to do in the flesh” (“The Mystery of the Incarnation (2)” in The Word Appears in the Flesh).

“What He manifests to the multitude is only His righteous disposition and all His deeds, and not the image of His body when He twice became flesh, for the image of God can only be shown through His disposition, and not replaced by the image of His incarnate flesh. … What is shown to the multitude is the righteousness of God and His disposition in its entirety, rather than His image when He twice became flesh. It is neither the single image that is shown to man, nor the two images combined” (“The Mystery of the Incarnation (2)” in The Word Appears in the Flesh).

It is fully evident from God’s working methods of judgment and chastisement to thoroughly save and perfect people in the last days that His salvation and perfection of people is achieved entirely by means of revealing His righteous disposition. Once His disposition of righteousness, majesty, judgment, and wrath has been fully revealed, corrupt humanity will naturally act according to their own kind. All those who love the truth and are able to accept it will be able to accept and obey God’s work of judgment and chastisement, and they will then attain salvation and be perfected. All those who detest the truth, who hate the truth will, as a matter of course, resist, deny, and condemn Christ, and they will reject God’s work of judgment and chastisement in the last days. In particular, the majority of the leaders and pastors from various sects and denominations of the religious world will become antichrist forces who resist and oppose Christ. This is why they will be exposed and eliminated, and in the end they will be subjected to punishment. They will be the objects of God’s judgment in the peak of His fury. God’s work in the last days completely reflects that where corruption exists, judgment must take place, and where there is sin, chastisement must occur. This is the rule of heaven decreed by God and no one can escape it. Corrupt humanity resists and betrays God, and if they do not undergo His judgment and chastisement, it will not be tolerated by God. This is why it is an unalterable principle of heaven and God’s inviolable will that corrupt humanity undergo God’s judgment and chastisement in the last days. Mankind is corrupted to the utmost depth. They are all the offspring of Satan, who betrayed God. If the judgment and chastisement of God’s majesty and wrath did not befall them, then how could they prostrate themselves in front of God in full submission? And how could they attain genuine purification and salvation? This is why God’s disposition of righteousness, judgment, chastisement, and wrath that is revealed in the last days has become the greatest salvation for corrupt humanity, and it is precisely God’s blessing for mankind. God revealing His righteous disposition to mankind is His true love and His complete love for man.

from “Only God’s Three Stages of Work Are His Complete Work for Saving Mankind” in Collection of Sermons—Supply for Life

Footnotes:

1. “Ravages” is used to expose the disobedience of mankind.