God’s Words Rescued Me From Satan’s Sieges I

They Tried to Entice Me to Go Back to the Three-Self Church by Offering to Build a House for Me

I thought I could believe in Almighty God without disturbance after that. But unexpectedly, they came again a few days later, and they even brought Sister Gu, a real estate developer, along with them. When I saw Sister Gu get out of the car and walk in style toward my house, I was astounded, “They bring Sister Gu along with them. What high prestige she usually enjoys! I never expected that she would come to my house.” At the thought, I quickly went out to welcome her. When she met me, she caught me by the hand and said with a smile, “Sister, I come to see you. Sister, where does your husband work? How much money can he get a day?” I told her the truth. Little had I imagined that after hearing what I said, she looked at me with a pitying eye, saying, “Golly! He only gets that little a day. It’s not even adequate to support the family, let alone to build a house.” I blushed at her words, thinking, “We earn so little money, which is nothing in her eyes. What a disgrace!” Then she continued, “Sister, if you can come back to the church to believe in God properly and help to manage the church, the church will provide whatever your family lacks. And I’ll find a good job for your husband; the pay will be much higher than his present wages. Besides, I will use some leftover building materials to build a house for you for free.”

I was surprised and amazed to hear what she said. I thought, “Even some leftover building materials of hers can be used to build a house, while I have got in debt for the purchase of this small house, not to mention having the money to build a big one. I have been dreaming of living in a bright spacious house, but I supposed there was scarcely a hope that we would build a big one in my life. Unexpectedly, such a good thing happens to me today!” At that moment, the big house seemed to be standing before my eyes with my family living in it. I was hesitant and really wanted to promise them to go back. “This is really a stroke of luck. How can I refuse such a good offer! But if I accept it, I will be a betrayer of God!” My heart was pained so much at the thought, and there was a fierce battle in it. I, helpless, could only pray in my heart, “O God! They offer me such great benefits today, and I want very much to agree to go back to the Three-Self church and attend meetings there. But I know that their promise to build a house for me and find a good job for my husband is Satan’s scheme and that their purpose is for me to leave You. However, I almost cannot overcome it. At the thought of the house, I feel so weak within. O God! What should I do? May You guide me!” After the prayer, the devil’s temptation of the Lord Jesus recorded in the Bible came to my mind: “Again, the devil takes him up into an exceeding high mountain, and shows him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; And said to him, All these things will I give you, if you will fall down and worship me. Then said Jesus to him, Get you hence, Satan: for it is written, You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve” (Matthew 4:8-10). The words of the Lord Jesus allowed me to have discernment of Satan’s scheme. I thought, “They all know my family is poor, so they try various means to entice me to abandon the true way. This shows that Satan is really full of cunning tricks, and I cannot be fooled by it.” I just sat there silent, constantly praying in my heart and asking God to keep me. Seeing me hesitant, another sister urged me tenderly, “Sister, this is God’s love! Other people are unworthy to receive this offer even if they ask for it. Only you are qualified, because you have built up a church here for the Lord and managed it so well. You are a person well pleasing to the Lord, and you have rendered great service in His eyes. Be sure to seize this good opportunity! Think it over. The door of the church is opened to you all the time, and we welcome you back anytime. We’ll go now.”

After they left, the more I thought about that, the more I felt distressed. “Even if all the members of my family work, we will not be able to build a big house in our lifetime. Now as long as I go back to the Three-Self church, we can live in a big house without spending a cent. This is indeed a hard-to-come-by opportunity! But I cannot betray God! Hadn’t I believed in God for the sake of waiting for the Lord’s return? If I forsake God for the sake of the house, won’t I be finished?” The more I thought about this, the more distressed and troubled my heart was. I wished I could both get the house and be saved if I went back to the Three-Self church. In the few days that followed, I kept thinking about the matter, whether when I walked or was seated. Whenever I looked at the old house, I was distressed and felt that every part of it was offensive to the eye—the bricks had become dark, the rooms were dim, and the ground was low. The more I looked at it, the more I felt suffocated. I sighed all day long, and couldn’t fall asleep at night, just thinking about the things that had happened in that period. “Oh! Believing in God is too hard!” In weakness, I prayed to God, “O God! I know this is a battle of the spiritual realm in which Satan uses material benefits to entice me, but I have no power to overcome sin. Please guide me! …”

Just when I was hesitating at the crossroads, not knowing which way to choose, Sister Yang came again. After I told her what had happened to me, she said, “Sister, God says: ‘My word is the truth, the life, and the way, is a sharp double-edged sword, and can defeat Satan’ (‘The Twelfth Utterance’ in The Word Appears in the Flesh). Faced with Satan’s attack, we can only overcome it by coming before God and relying on God’s words. God’s word says: ‘Because of God’s incarnation, Satan makes every attempt to accuse and wants to attack God by doing so. However, God does not retreat on that account, and He just speaks among men and works among men, letting men know Him through His incarnate flesh. But Satan becomes irritated, and it also puts in a lot of efforts on God’s people, trying to make them become passive, draw back, and even get lost’ (‘The Interpretation of the Thirteenth Utterance’ in The Word Appears in the Flesh). ‘When you are tempted, you should say: “My heart belongs to God, and God has already gained me. I cannot satisfy you—I must devote my all to satisfying God.” The more you satisfy God, the more God blesses you, and the greater the strength of your love for God; so, too, will you have faith and resolve, and will feel that nothing is more worthy or significant than a life spent loving God’ (‘Only by Experiencing Painful Trials Can You Know the Loveliness of God’ in The Word Appears in the Flesh). This is another temptation from Satan. Satan tries to hinder you from keeping up with the new work of God through the people around you. The work God does this time is the work of concluding the age. Now is the time to decide man’s life and death and his fate and end. One’s success or failure hinges on his choice. If we miss the opportunity, we will regret for a lifetime. Satan also knows that God’s work is drawing to an end. Now it is conducting desperate struggles, exerting itself to the utmost to disturb God’s work. It knows that we have a greedy nature, so it uses some material benefits to disturb us. As we only have a superficial understanding of the truth, we may keep our faith in God when faced with small benefits, but we can hardly overcome it when faced with great ones. If we follow Satan, our life will be ruined. God’s wisdom is exercised based on Satan’s schemes. God makes our faith perfect through Satan’s sieges. If we have true faith in God, we will be able to give up the interests of our flesh to follow God. Although our flesh is weak, when we understand that we will have the hope of being saved if we keep up with God’s new work and that we will live out a life of meaning if we love God, we will be able to overcome the temptation of any material benefits and declare to Satan that we are determined to forsake it, and Satan will naturally draw back.”

Through reading God’s words and hearing Sister Yang’s fellowship, I had the true discernment of the spiritual battle and the schemes of Satan. I thought, “It is really not easy for God to save man! When God saves man, Satan tries to entrap man, and it persistently fights with God for man. Satan wants to pull me into hell through those religious leaders, so it has tried different tactics to disturb me. Outwardly, they were for my interests, but in truth, they tried to entice me to forsake God. Satan is so sinister and malicious. If its sinister intention had not been exposed through the words of God, I wouldn’t have known it!” When I thought of this, it gave me the chills. “If God had not used the sister to water me time and again, I might have been deceived by Satan. That was a near thing! This time I have really gained some insight and discernment. From now on, I will read God’s words seriously and equip myself with the truths of all aspects to bear testimony to God.”

They Tried to Coerce Me Into Betraying God With the Arrest of the CCP

Because I didn’t reject them last time though I didn’t accept their offer, they came to my house again several days later. Upon entering the room, a man who was in charge of the Three-Self church asked me with a smile, “Sister, have you thought it through these days?” I thought, “Do you still want to entice me to go back to your church? I will not be fooled by you this time.” So I straightened up and said, “I have decided that I will follow Almighty God to the end. Since God has come to carry out the new work, I cannot lag behind it. You don’t need to come to persuade me anymore; I have discernment myself. Don’t come again. As for the house, there is no need for you to worry about it.” At my words, he turned hostile all at once. Staring at me, he said ferociously, “I tell you, now the government is trying to arrest the believers in Almighty God everywhere. If the arrested ones don’t come clean, they can beat them to death with impunity. And I also warn you, if you dare to go to our church preaching the gospel again, I will call the police to arrest you!” At the sight of his ferocious look, I felt somewhat afraid, and I thought, “Is that so serious? What if I am arrested by the CCP and beaten to death?” But immediately I realized that there was Satan’s scheme in it and that Satan was trying to use my weakness, the fear of death, to attack me. At the thought, I prayed to God in my heart and asked Him to guide me to overcome Satan’s temptation. Then the words of the Lord Jesus occurred to me: “And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matthew 10:28). And these words of Almighty God also occurred to me: “Man’s life originates from God, the existence of the heaven is because of God, and the existence of the earth stems from the power of God’s life. No object possessed of vitality can transcend the sovereignty of God, and no thing with vigor can break away from the ambit of God’s authority. In this way, regardless of who they are, everyone must submit under the dominion of God, everyone must live under God’s command, and no one can escape from His control” (“Only Christ of the Last Days Can Give Man the Way of Eternal Life” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). The words of the Lord Jesus and Almighty God made me strong in the spirit immediately. “Right! What shall I fear? No matter how ferocious the CCP, it can only kill my body but cannot kill my soul, for man’s life is controlled by the hands of God and the CCP has no right to decide anyone’s life or death. Whether I will be arrested for believing in God or not is also in the hands of God. I cannot bow to Satan. This is the time God tests me and also the time Satan is making a bet with God. I will stand firm in my testimony to God, and will never compromise with Satan!” When I thought of this, I held myself upright and said to them with justice and severity, “The life and death of each person are determined by God. Don’t threaten me with the arrest of the government; I am not afraid of that. No matter what you say, I will still believe in Almighty God and preach the gospel to my brothers and sisters, for that is my duty. No matter what I encounter in the future, it was predestined by God, and I am ready and willing to accept it. If you are not afraid of becoming Judas, the betrayer of the Lord, just go and report!” At my such words, all of them were dumbfounded with anger, and they left in dejection. After that, they never came again. I saw the power of God’s word. God’s word is truly a sharp sword and can defeat Satan!

Later, I devoted myself heart and soul to the gospel preaching. I am grateful to God for saving me. If God had not moved the sister to come again and again to fellowship about His words with me, when faced with Satan’s such frenzied disturbances, I couldn’t have overcome it. May all the glory be to Almighty God!

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I Have Seen Clearly the Truth I

Wu Xia

That year, I escaped from the hand of the evil one. What’s more, it is the most crucial and most memorable turning point in my life. My blind eyes are enlightened by the light. I feel immeasurably excited whenever thinking of the past….

I had been passing so many dark days before I believed in God. My husband argued with me frequently for domestic trivialities. It was often strife-torn and warring at home. My two sons would stay away with fear when they saw us quarrelling. Endless squabble left me hopeless in life, crying all day long. In the depths of great suffering and without direction, Almighty God visited His salvation of the last days upon me. I then accepted God’s new work. At that time, I sang and danced and was gathered in fellowship about God’s words with brothers and sisters. So, I was of great faith and my anguished heart was comforted. However, just as I was immersing myself in happiness, something I had never expected happened one after another.

One day, my younger son who studied in another location gave me a ring, saying, “Mom, I have been absent from school for a couple of days due to my stomach ache.” I asked, “Have you taken some medicine?” He replied, “Yes. And I have had intravenous drip at hospital, but all of these don’t help.” I felt very pain when I knew my son’s illness, thinking, “In a place far away from home, he is so pitiful for no one attends to him during his illness. What should I do?” After the call, I still felt sad for his sickness. Then I had a second thought: He may have some unhygienic food and it may not be a big problem. Gradually I did not feel pained any more. On Sunday afternoon, my elder son came back home from school. When I took the bag over his shoulder after he came inside, I heard him recalling gasping. I immediately asked him, “What’s wrong?” He replied with a smile, “It’s nothing.” Then I saw him holding one of his arms in his embrace. Then I asked again at once, “What’s the matter with your arm?” Only then did he say, “I had a fall while playing soccer with my classmates.” I was so distressed that I was on the verge of bursting into tears. At that moment, my husband said, “Take it easy. He is young and will recover soon. Let’s take him to the hospital for an examination.” After taking an X-ray at hospital, we found out my elder son sustained a fracture. On the way home from the hospital, I thought: What are all these about? Two days ago, I was told that my younger son missed his classes for several days because of stomach pain. Today my elder son fell over and fractured his arm. Nothing bad had happened to my two sons before I believed in God. Why did they suffer misfortune one after the other? The sister told me that man would be blessed once believing in God. Why did these misfortunes take place after I believed in God? Where is the blessing? Do I take the wrong path? I went home with anxiety. At that time, I lost my strength and I wanted neither to read God’s words nor pray to Him. And, I even complained against the sister in my heart about preaching the gospel to me…. I was completely left in darkness.

The second day, my elder son went to school with his bandaged arm. I then called my younger son and he told me that the pain in his stomach persisted. I suddenly felt very bewildered. At that point, my husband got a sudden attack of diarrhoea, trotting to the bathroom time after time. I became more suspicious: It looks like I have taken the wrong way, otherwise how could this happen? At night, his diarrhoea got worse that he stayed in the bathroom for a significantly long time. At that moment, I even more thought that I walked a wrong path, losing all confidence in belief in God. I made up my mind to return the books to the sister when she would come the following day.

The next day, when the sister came for a gathering, I said unhappily, “I don’t want to have a meeting. At the very beginning of accepting God’s work, I felt very good about His words, tasting the feeling of dependability and not feeling miserable. You also told me that God is the God who loves man and that He comes to deliver man from the affliction of Satan. However, in these days, adversities occurred in my family in succession. My younger son got ill; my elder son fractured his arm in a fall; even my husband became ill. I can’t understand why so many mishaps came upon my family after I believed in Almighty God, the true One. Why didn’t He protect my family from misfortunes? Don’t come over here for the next couple of days. I can’t calm down because of these family matters. Let’s put meetings aside for a few days.”

The sister gently said to me, “Sister, we should quiet our hearts first when faced with such things. You will find out the fact after communication. You just mentioned that Almighty God is the true God and people should have lived a peaceful family life after believing in Him. But how come in reality something awful happened to your family? Here two points are involved. Let’s fellowship about them one by one. What you said shows that you believe in God only for the sake of being blessed. Now we get to know that man was created by God and man’s breath is from God. So, man should worship Him as a creature. What’s more, God’s purpose of creating man is to allow man to obey Him, worship Him and manifest His glory. It is heaven’s law and earth’s principle to believe in God and worship Him. This is just as the relationship between parents and children. Parents bear and raise children, so it is right and proper for children to honor their parents. That’s their duty and obligation. If our children honor us just to gain benefits after growing up and if they doubt our love to them or even don’t acknowledge us as their parents when we can’t benefit them, won’t they be the sons of rebellion? Likewise, if we believe in God properly when we gain blessings from Him, but we doubt Him, deny Him, and even give up our faith when we aren’t blessed, aren’t we the same as the sons of disobedience?

At this point, I thought for a second: What the sister said does make sense. God created man, bestowed upon man with sunlight, rain, air and so on. If I believe in God only for the purpose of blessings and without blessings I then doubt God and even will not continue my faith, am I not the same as the son of disobedience? Oh, I don’t understand all such things. I need to listen to her carefully.

She continued her fellowship, “Regarding this aspect, Almighty God makes it very plain. Let’s read His words. Almighty God says, ‘What you pursue is to be able to gain peace after believing in God—for your children to be free from illness, for your husband to have a good job, for your son to find a good wife, for your daughter to find a decent husband, for your oxen and horses to plough the land well, for a year of good weather for your crops. This is what you seek. Your pursuit is only to live in comfort, for no accidents to befall your family, for the winds to pass you by, for your face to be untouched by grit, for your family’s crops to not be flooded, for you to be unaffected by any disaster, to live in God’s embrace, to live in a cozy nest. A coward such as you, who always pursues the flesh—do you have a heart, do you have a spirit?’ (‘The Experiences of Peter: His Knowledge of Chastisement and Judgment’ in The Word Appears in the Flesh). Almighty God’s words have revealed man’s flawed ideas of pursuits. In many people’s conceptions and imaginations, they believe that God is the One who bestows joy and peace upon man; Since man believes in Him, God should keep him and his family safe, make everything go smoothly and allow him to enjoy comfort in the comfy nest with good health and good luck. The reason that man has such an erroneous pursuit is because after man was corrupted by Satan, satanic poisons, ideas and viewpoints and living principles have already permeated man to harm and corrupt his soul and have become his life. Man lives based on these things every moment, becoming more and more selfish and deplorable and doing everything for his own sake. Even in the belief in God, he also wants to gain benefits from Him. If God doesn’t bless, he will become passive, draw back and even doubt God and not continue their belief. It can be seen that Satan has already corrupted man to such degree that he has lost the conscience and sense and even discussed conditions with God in his belief. God’s original purpose of creating man is to make man worship Him and obey His sovereignty. However, after man was corrupted by Satan, he no longer regards himself as a created being, much less think about how to satisfy God’s will, but instead he simply wants God to satisfy him. Whereas, God is forever selfless. To save man from Satan’s domain, God incarnate comes to earth twice, and saves man while enduring mankind’s rebellion and resistance. Even when man has betrayed Him, He still loves man as before. From that we can see that God’s love for mankind is free from transaction or adulteration. We are God’s creations, so it is our bounden duty to believe in God and worship Him and should not depend on conditions. When God blesses us, we believe in Him. When God does not bless us, we draw back. In this way, we have fallen into Satan’s trap.

At that moment, I felt that Almighty God has spoken my thoughts. My goal in believing in God was to be blessed. When I did not receive God’s blessings, I doubted Him and believed that I took the wrong way and even thought of no longer believing in Him. It turned out that the wrong views of belief in God would cause man to betray God and lose His salvation. Thank God for arranging for the sister to fellowship with me today. However, there was another thing I did not understand. After I have accepted God’s work, why did three of the four persons in my family get sick? What’s the reason? I then spoke out my mind.

The sister said, “This is a spiritual struggle. In the spiritual realm, Satan is competing with God for people’s souls. Before we returned to God, we have been controlled and grasped by Satan. Today God wishes to save man. But Satan wants to continue controlling man. So it harms and disturbs man’s return to God by contemptible methods. It causes man to fall into some mishaps. For example, after believing in God, some people or their family member get sick; some people get involved in family quarrels or other misfortunes. Man doesn’t know it’s the battle in the spiritual realm, so he starts to doubt when he is faced with Satan’s disturbance: Is the One I believe in the true God? Do I believe in the wrong way? Let’s discuss Job’s story. In God’s eyes, Job is a righteous man who reveres God and shuns evil. Satan had never believed that someone could be perfect and upright, or that they could fear God and shun evil. It accused Job before God time and time again, employed various means to tempt him. First, it caused Job to lose his great wealth and all his children, and caused sore boils all over his body. Later, Satan attacked Job’s integrity to God, wishing to use his wife’s words to make Job renounce God. But Job praised the name of Jehovah and still walked in the way of fearing God and shunning evil. From then onward, Satan on longer had such license to tempt Job and then Job was set free. Through the example of Job, we see clearly that Satan is evil and cruel. It doesn’t want mankind to lead a safe and secure life under God’s care and protection, let alone obtain God’s salvation and the beautiful destination that God has prepared for man. Thus it does everything possible to hinder man’s return to God and uses various tricks to cause man to become doubtful to God. If we don’t depend on God and seek the truth, we will be easily tricked, give up God’s salvation for us, return to Satan’s domain and continue to be harmed and trampled by it, eventually being dragged into hell by it.”

When the sister discussed it here, I took up the thread of the conversation, “So, do all these bad things that happened to my family come from Satan?”

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Breaking Out of the Cocoon I

Fangfang

My whole family believed in the Lord in the Head Covering Church. I was an ordinary believer, and my father was a junior leader. In February 2004, I accepted Almighty God’s work of the last days, and then I took Sister Zhang of the Church of Almighty God to preach the kingdom gospel to my youngest sister. I had planned to preach it to my father after I equipped myself with enough words of God. But unexpectedly, he soon learned that I had accepted the kingdom gospel, and started to disturb me frantically.

One late afternoon, my father rushed to my house and said to me angrily, “I never expected that you would believe in the Eastern Lightning. You’ve taken the wrong way. … Go to the church quickly and repent before the leader, and ask the Lord Jesus to forgive your sin.” I said, “Dad, I’m not on the wrong way. I have read many of Almighty God’s words and recognized they are truly God’s voice. Almighty God is exactly the returned Lord Jesus. The Age of Grace has passed. Now is the Age of Kingdom, and God has come to do new work. Doesn’t the Bible say, ‘These are they which follow the Lamb wherever he goes’ (Revelation 14:4)? I have kept pace with the Lord’s footsteps….” Whatever I said, however, my father just wouldn’t listen. He insisted on me going to the leader to explain myself, and my husband stood beside him stoking the tension. I thought to myself, “It seems that my father won’t be satisfied until I go to the church.” I prayed in my heart, asking God to protect me. Then my husband drove me together with my father to a meeting place on his instructions. About sixty or seventy people were there, including my youngest sister, who was brought there by her mother-in-law. A senior leader came to my sister and me, spoke many blasphemies against Almighty God and slandered His Church. His words, so horrible, hit me like a ton of bricks and sent a chill down my spine. I got confused and thought, “I haven’t attended meetings for a few years, and I’m certainly ill-informed. Since the leader is a servant of the Lord who shepherds the church, he is unlikely to cheat us. Have I really been deceived?” Finally, my father and my sister’s mother-in-law forced my sister and me to close our eyes and asked the leader to pray for the Lord Jesus to forgive our sin. While the leader was praying, my sister and I didn’t pray and remained silent. …

After I returned home that evening, I considered the words of the leader and recalled the days of my contact with Sister Zhang, who was not at all like what the leader said. I also turned over the words of Almighty God in my mind, feeling that they indeed couldn’t be spoken by man. The positive and negative thoughts kept recurring to me, and I tossed and turned in bed, unable to fall asleep. When I got up next morning, I felt dazed and distressed. I didn’t feel like eating breakfast and had no heart to do anything. Owing to my poor sleep the night before, I got into bed after lunch, and my youngest sister came when I had just lain down. She said, “We’ve been deceived. We are believing in a wrong way. So just back out.” I said, “I have read through The Scroll Opened by the Lamb several times. The word of Almighty God is indeed God’s voice, and Almighty God is really the Lord Jesus we’ve been yearning for. I don’t think we are on the wrong path.” Then my sister left as she couldn’t persuade me. I thought, “It is absolutely true that Almighty God is the returned Lord Jesus. But what explains those things the leader said about the Eastern Lightning?” While I was thinking of this, my husband told me that my father called and asked me to go to meet him at once. I knew he would interfere with me again, so I didn’t want to go, but my husband pushed me into his car forcefully. When I got to my parents’ home, I found my youngest sister and her mother-in-law were also there. Upon seeing me, my father said sulkily, “… Yesterday evening the leader prayed to the Lord Jesus for the forgiveness of your sin, but you haven’t confessed and repented for your own. Today you are invited here to pray and fully repent before the Lord and promise Him that you will no longer believe in Almighty God. Only in this way will the Lord forgive your sin.” I thought to myself, “I’ve kept up with God’s work by accepting Almighty God. What sin have I committed?” I refused to pray and repent. Then my father, my sister’s mother-in-law, and my mother all jumped at me. They also exaggerated those dreadful rumors about the Eastern Lightning and slandered and blasphemed Almighty God. My head was already groggy due to the poor sleep in the night, and their threats left it even more so. I felt tired out, and gradually didn’t know my own mind. I thought, “It seems that if I don’t make a prayer of repentance, they simply won’t give over. Their continuous disturbance is just killing me. Oh! I’d better continue to believe in the Lord Jesus lest I suffer this.” When they saw I still didn’t pray, they assailed me again and even forced my sister and me to close our eyes and pray and repent. Facing their aggressive behavior, I couldn’t restrain my tears any longer. I closed my eyes and prayed to the Lord Jesus in tears, “O Lord Jesus! I know Almighty God is You who have come back, but now I don’t dare to believe in Almighty God. I beg You to pardon me and forgive my sin …” I choked and couldn’t go on. After the prayer, I suddenly felt so weak that I didn’t have any strength or faith within. I said to my sister, “Before I prayed, I still had some strength, but after the prayer, I felt all my strength was gone abruptly, as if the Holy Spirit forsook me. Actually, Almighty God is our longed-for Lord Jesus. We shouldn’t have prayed and repented; that is betraying God.”

Although I had prayed the prayer of repentance, in my heart the struggle never stopped. I thought, “I have read so many words from Almighty God, and I am certain they are the utterances of God and that the Lord Jesus has truly come back. If I reject Almighty God, I will not only miss the salvation but even be condemned by the Lord. But if I insist on believing in Almighty God, the leader and my parents won’t let me go, and I won’t have a peaceful life.” I was also afraid that the rumors my parents and the leader spread about the Eastern Lightning were true. I was terribly upset and in a quandary about what to do, and my head ringing. I really couldn’t bear it and my nerves were almost in shreds. I said to myself, “I might as well return the book of God’s word and the hymn book to Sister Zhang when she comes next time, and then I will be free from such pain and trouble.”

A few days later, Sister Zhang came to water me at my shop. I was nervous, dreading that my husband would see her and tell it to my father. I poured out to her all that had happened to me during those few days, and then quickly took out the book of God’s word and the hymn book from under the goods and gave them to her, saying, “Sister, the disturbance of my parents and husband and the rumors they spread about the Eastern Lightning have torn my hair out and overwhelmed me. It’s better for me to continue my belief in the Lord Jesus. Take away the books, please.” Sister Zhang said to me earnestly, “Sister, each time God carries out His work, the religious leaders use rumors to deceive and control God’s chosen people and oppose God’s work. At that time when the Lord Jesus worked, the Jewish chief priests, the scribes, and the Pharisees used the rumors to deceive people. They said that the Lord Jesus drove out demons by Beelzebub, the prince of the devils, and was a glutton and drunkard. After the Lord Jesus was resurrected, they bought off the soldiers and asked them to spread the word that His body had been stolen by His disciples. Their very purpose was to prevent the Jews from coming before the Lord Jesus. Similarly, today the religious leaders purposely use the rumors to deceive and control people, prevent the believers from receiving God’s salvation, and disturb and impair God’s work. Your parents and husband disturbed you because of the rumors spread by the leader, and they are victims too….” I knew what Sister Zhang said was all true, but I hung back and didn’t dare to keep the books in case my father kicked up turmoil at my home. Seeing me in a dilemma, Sister Zhang gave me a phone number and said, “All right, sister, I’ll take the books away and keep them for you. When you want to read them, call me, and I will bring them back to you right away.” I agreed and walked her to the door. Then my husband came bowling over and pointed at Sister Zhang shouting, “Go away quickly with the books. Never come again, or I won’t be easy on you!” Sister Zhang left with the books reluctantly. Looking at her receding figure, I felt an inexplicable poignancy.

I had imagined that after I returned the books, I could resume my former peaceful life since my father wouldn’t come to disturb me. But, on the contrary, I felt a nameless emptiness inside and didn’t have a clue how to deal with things properly. God’s words and the hymns recurred to me now and then, and the leader’s words and the scenes of my father and others disturbing and besieging me also often flashed in my mind. I struggled in agony, as if I had fallen into an abyss and were unable to climb out of it no matter how hard I tried. I was in a daze all day, my head almost splitting. I had no appetite, slept badly and couldn’t bear the mental stress, so that I wasted away. In agony, I thought of praying. I knelt down and called out to God, “The only true God who created the heavens and earth and all things, I’m suffering terribly in my heart and feel perplexed now. I know Almighty God is the returned Lord Jesus, but my stature is too small, and I am timid and fearful at the thought of my father and others’ disturbance and siege. O God, I am at a crossroads, not knowing what course to take. I ask You to guide and lead me….” During prayer, I unknowingly thought of God’s words: “Do not fear this or that. No matter how many difficulties and dangers there are, you should be stable before Me and not be hindered by anything, letting My will be carried out smoothly. … Remove your fear. I am your rear guard, so who can block the way? Remember! Remember!” (“The Tenth Utterance” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). These words of God gave me strength. “That’s right! With God as my rear guard, what do I have to fear? Since I am certain that this is the true way, I should not be restrained by anyone; I should break through the forces of darkness and follow God unflinchingly.” Thinking of this, I immediately took out Sister Zhang’s phone number from the drawer and called her. She agreed to bring the books to me at a certain place.

After I got the books back, I read God’s words and sang hymns with avidity when my husband was out. The more I read, the more I felt gratified, and the more I sang, the more I felt joyful. I was very happy. My former faith returned to me, and my distress disappeared completely. Three months later, Sister Zhang took me to the meetings of the Church of Almighty God.

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