After that, I started my church life. The environment in The Church of Almighty God was completely different from that of the outside world: The brothers and sisters had simple, straightforward relationships with each other, and treated each other honestly without any sign of pretense, infighting or scheming. During the gatherings, all the brothers and sisters read God’s words; sang
hymns in praise of God; honestly and openly fellowshiped their own experiences, deficiencies and difficulties; and also shared their understanding of God’s words. I felt that every gathering I attended was novel and full of vitality. There was no separation or suspicion between the brothers and sisters; everyone understood each other and knew each other well. I felt an unprecedented sense of relief and freedom there and always felt relaxed and happy in their company. At the same time, God also guided me to understand why I had lived in such suffering over the past few decades. I read these words of Almighty God: “
There is an enormous secret in your heart. You never become aware of it because you have been living in a world without light shining. Your heart and your spirit have been taken away by the evil one. Your eyes are covered by darkness; you cannot see the sun in the sky, nor the twinkling star in the night. Your ears are clogged with deceptive words and you hear not the thunderous voice of Jehovah, nor the sound of the rushing waters from the throne. You have lost everything that should have belonged to you and everything that the Almighty bestowed upon you. You have entered an endless sea of bitterness, with no strength of a rescue, no hope of survival, left only to struggle and to bustle about…. From that moment, you are doomed to be afflicted by the evil one, kept far away from the blessings of the Almighty, out of reach of the provisions of the Almighty, and you embark on a road of no return. … You sleep deeply in the hands of the evil one, who has lured you into the boundless realm, with no direction, with no road signs. Henceforth, you have lost your original purity, innocence, and started to hide from the care of the Almighty. The evil one steers your heart in every matter and becomes your life. You no longer fear him, no longer avoid him, no longer doubt him. Instead, you treat him as the God in your heart. You begin to enshrine him, worship him, be inseparable like a shadow of his, and mutually commit to each other in life and death. You have no idea at all from where you originate, why you exist, or why you die” (“The Sighing of the Almighty” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). “
Satan corrupts people through the education and influence of the national governments and the famous and great. Their nonsense has become man’s life and nature. ‘Everyone for himself and the devil take the hindmost’ is a well-known satanic saying that has been instilled into everyone and become the human life. There are some other words of life philosophy that are also like this. Satan educates people through each nation’s fine traditional culture and causes humanity to fall into and be engulfed in an expansive abyss of destruction, and in the end people are destroyed by God because they serve Satan and resist God” (“How to Know Man’s Nature” in Records of Christ’s Talks). So the reason why I’d exhausted myself and made myself bitter while fumbling around in the darkness the last few decades was because I’d been living by Satan’s rules of life, such as, “One’s destiny is in his own hand,” “Money makes the world go round,” “Everyone for himself and the devil take the hindmost,” “Flattery will get you everywhere,” etc. By living by these satanic philosophies I had no idea of the existence of God, and didn’t know that God rules over and arranges the fate of everyone. I drifted with the tides of this dark world, and had no direction in my life or principles of behavior. I certainly couldn’t see that this dark world is part of Satan’s domain, and that human society is full of Satan’s temptation, ensnarement and deceit. In order to make money in this dark and evil world, I learned how to flatter and toady up to those in charge, and even illegally used shoddy materials in my construction projects. My conscience disappeared bit by bit, and I was left without an iota of integrity. The deeper I slipped into those evil ways the less I felt like a human being. In the end, I didn’t make any money and was left with a pile of debt, and felt so helpless that I almost committed suicide. I thought of that team leader who had killed himself because of his huge debts—wasn’t he a sacrificial offering to Satan? And how many other similar tragedies are being played out every day of every year? At that point I realized that the reason why people get in such a state is because of the harm caused by Satan’s poisons and because of the worldly trends brought on by Satan’s rule. When I thought of all this, a surge of gratitude for God filled my heart and I was so grateful for God’s mercy and salvation. God had saved me from the dark world and brought me back to God’s house where I could enjoy His care and protection.
