1. Although they believe in their heart that there is a God, admit that all people have sin, and often pray and confess their guilt, they do not have true repentance or change.
2. They only stress love to people but have no principle of truth, going so far as to love demons, Satan, and evil spirits. Their love is a confused love.
3. They do not know the true state of their corruption and the substance of their nature, only acknowledging the sin but not clearly seeing the substance; they cannot truly know themselves.
4. They cannot clearly see the substance of the darkness and evil of the age, and even follow the world trend of evil; they have no way to break free of Satan’s influence.
5. They believe in God and worship priests and famous people, they believe in God nominally but actually follow people and are subject to the control of people; they stubbornly and blindly believe in the Bible and walk the path of antichrists.
6. They think that God is only merciful and loving, that no matter how many sins people commit God will forgive them; they do not know that God’s disposition also has righteousness, judgment, and wrath.
7. They only understand the letters and sentences of the Bible, but do not understand God’s will; they love to follow rules, and can also quote words and sentences from the Bible out of context fallaciously.
8. They cannot treat the Bible correctly according to historical fact, they take the apostles’ words as God’s words, causing the rise of separate sects and bringing utter chaos.
9. They do not know the work of the Holy Spirit, even treating the work of evil spirits as the work of the Holy Spirit, so that evil spirits disturb and damage the church and mislead people.
10. They worship the Bible as though it is God, use the Bible to delimit God, judge God, and resist God, do not seek the truth, and even less so seek God’s appearance.
The above ten manifestations are enough to explain that believers in the Lord Jesus who remain in the Age of Grace have long fallen behind the pace of God’s work. They have not the slightest bit of life growth, and remain in the early stages of belief in God. They believe in God yet do not know God, they still resist and betray God, even going so far as to become an enemy of God. They have not at all broken free of Satan’s influence and reached the standard of salvation. This really is a pitiful tragedy! Think about the Age of Grace, when deeply corrupted humankind nailed the Lord Jesus to the cross. What exactly was the nature of their action? To be able to turn the Lord Jesus, who spread the way of the kingdom of heaven, over to the devil, and on top of that to say also that it was necessary to nail the Lord Jesus to the cross, that they would rather free a robber and crucify the Lord Jesus: Was such a corrupt humankind not demonic? Only demons could hate God so much that they are at deadly feud with God. The chief priests, scribes, and so many followers—who at that time shouted in unison that the Lord Jesus must be crucified—could only have been a crowd of demons that hated God, isn’t that so? Now don’t most pastors and leaders in the religious community, along with many believers, also condemn Almighty God with one voice? Are these not demons that are opposing God? Especially now, when the great red dragon madly resists and condemns God’s work, the religious community also takes the side of the great red dragon, and even joins hands together with it to resist God, condemn God, and blaspheme God. The human race is thus witnessing the religious community and the great red dragon are united together in Satan’s camp. The religious community has long turned into an accomplice of Satan, which thoroughly reveals that the essence of the religious community’s “serving God” is, in fact, resisting God, which completely proves the words of the Lord Jesus that revealed and judged the Pharisees. This is precisely the essence of the corruption and evil of the religious community today. The resistance to God of the religious community today equals or surpasses that of the religious community at the time of the Lord Jesus. They are a demonic group opposing Christ that God has rejected and condemned, and they belong completely to the evil forces of Satan. From this it is evident that the corruption of the human race has reached an extreme where it can actually once again crucify Christ, who in the last days is delivering truth and passing judgment. This is enough to show that the human race has been so corrupted by Satan that it has turned into demons. God’s work of judgment and chastisement in the last days is to change these people who have been corrupted by Satan and turned into demons into people; this is such difficult work. Thus God’s utilizing method of judgment and chastisement in the last days to save mankind is truly the most appropriate. Corrupt mankind is suitable only for the salvation of God’s judgment and chastisement. Corrupt mankind is no longer simply rebelling against and resisting God, but rather has already become a hostile force to God, become God’s enemies and Satan’s descendants who resist God. Therefore, corrupt mankind, especially the religious world, can only regard Christ, who expresses the truth to save people, as an absolutely irreconcilable enemy, and cannot wait to again crucify Him, only then being able to vent their hatred. Is having no judgment and chastisement for such corrupt mankind acceptable? It is absolutely not acceptable. Because mankind is so fiendish, and so venomous, it has already become Satan’s descendant and a stubborn, evil force hostile to God. Thus, to say that corrupt mankind is the devil is apt without the slightest bit of exaggeration. In fact, the judgment and chastisement of God in the last days are the work of bringing Satan’s destiny to an end. Is it likely that God will show leniency to these demonic antichrists of the religious community that is at deadly feud with the real God incarnate of the last days? Everyone can wait and see what a sight it will be when the nations and peoples of the world witness the public appearance of God. Why will the peoples wail? Then the truth will be brought into daylight!
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After we experience God’s judgment and chastisement we can see a fact that the source of truth is God, and the source of all things positive is God. Wherever there is the disruption and corruption of Satan and the sin of resisting God, there God’s judgment and chastisement are certain to follow. Wherever there is God’s judgment, there is the appearance of truth and the revelation of God’s disposition. Truth and God’s disposition are revealed during God’s judgment and chastisement. Only where there is truth are there judgment and chastisement; only where there are judgment and chastisement is there the revelation of God’s righteous disposition. Therefore, wherever there are God’s judgment and chastisement there we find the footprints of God’s work, and that is the truest way to seek God’s appearance. Only God has the authority to pass judgment, and only Christ has the power to judge corrupt humankind. This confirms and demonstrates that the Son of man—Christ—is the Lord of judgment. Without God’s judgment and chastisement humans have no means to gain the truth, and judgment and chastisement are what reveal God’s righteous disposition, providing humans with the opportunity to know God. The process by which humans understand the truth is the process by which they know God. The truth for corrupt humankind is judgment, scrutiny, and chastisement. What the truth reveals is precisely God’s righteousness, majesty, and wrath. People who understand the truth can throw off corruption and break free from Satan’s influence. This is completely down to the power and almightiness of God’s words. God saves people and perfects people to let people understand the truth, to gain the truth. The more people understand the truth, the more they also know God. In this way people can eliminate corruption and become holy. When people live out the truth and enter the reality of the truth, they are living in light, living in love, and living before God. This is the result that Christ achieves by delivering the truth and passing judgment. In fact, all words that are God’s are the truth and are judgment of the human race. No matter in what era, the words that God has spoken have the effect of judgment. In the Age of Law Jehovah God’s words were judgment of corrupt humankind. In the Age of Grace, the words spoken by the Lord Jesus were judgment of corrupt humankind. Now in the Age of Kingdom, when in the last days God carries out the work of judgment and chastisement, all that Almighty God says is judgment and chastisement, pruning, dealing, trial and refinement, which in the end will make the human race able to see that Almighty God’s judgment and chastisement of humankind is God’s greatest love. What God’s judgment and chastisement deliver to the human race is salvation, is perfection. Only by accepting and obeying God’s judgment and chastisement does one gain God’s true love and full salvation. All those people who refuse to accept God’s judgment and chastisement will be subjected to God’s punishment and sink into destruction and perdition. Just as God’s words say: “If do not seek the way of life provided by Christ of the last days, then you shall never gain the approval of Jesus, and shall never be qualified to enter the gate of the kingdom of heaven, for you are both a puppet and prisoner of history. Those who are controlled by regulations, by letters, and shackled by history will never be able to gain life, and will never be able to gain the perpetual way of life. That is because all they have is turbid water that has lain stagnant for thousands of years, instead of the water of life that flows from the throne. Those who are not supplied with the water of life will forever remain corpses, playthings of Satan, and sons of hell” (“Only Christ of the Last Days Can Give Man the Way of Eternal Life” in The Word Appears in the Flesh).
“The work of God is like mightily surging waves. No one can detain Him, and no one can halt His footsteps. Only those who listen carefully to His words, and who seek and thirst for Him, can follow His footsteps and receive His promise. Those who do not shall be subjected to overwhelming disaster and deserved punishment” (“God Presides Over the Fate of All Mankind” in The Word Appears in the Flesh).
from “How to Know God’s Work of Judgment and Chastisement in the Last Days” in Collection of Sermons—Supply for Life
