Why does every new stage of God’s work encounter the wild defiance and condemnation of the religious world? What is the root cause?
Bible Verse(s) for Reference:
“And he began to speak to them by parables. A certain man planted a vineyard, and set an hedge about it, and dig a place for the winefat, and built a tower, and let it out to farmers, and went into a far country. And at the season he sent to the farmers a servant, that he might receive from the farmers of the fruit of the vineyard. And they caught him, and beat him, and sent him away empty. And again he sent to them another servant;
and at him they cast stones, and wounded him in the head, and sent him away shamefully handled. And again he sent another; and him they killed, and many others; beating some, and killing some. Having yet therefore one son, his well beloved, he sent him also last to them, saying, They will reverence my son. But those farmers said among themselves, This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance shall be our’s. And they took him, and killed him, and cast him out of the vineyard. What shall therefore the lord of the vineyard do? he will come and destroy the farmers, and will give the vineyard to others” (Mak 12:1-9).
“Then gathered the chief priests and the Pharisees a council, and said, What do we? for this man does many miracles. If we let him thus alone, all men will believe on him: and the Romans shall come and take away both our place and nation. … Then from that day forth they took counsel together for to put him to death” (Jhn 11:47-48, 53).
Relevant Words of God:
The work of God continues to advance, and though the purpose of His work remains unchanging, the means by which He works are constantly changing, and thereby so are those who follow God. The more work of God, the more thoroughly man comes to know God, and the disposition of man changes accordingly along with His work. However, it is because the work of God is ever-changing that those who do not know the work of the Holy Spirit and those absurd men who do not know the truth become opponents of God. Not ever does the work of God conform to the conceptions of man, for His work is always new and never old. Not ever does He repeat work of old but rather forges ahead with work never before done. As God does not repeat His work and man invariably judges the work of God today based on His work of the past, it is exceedingly difficult for God to carry out each stage of work of the new age. Man presents far too many hindrances! The thinking of man is too hidebound! No man knows the work of God, yet they all define such work. Away from God, man loses life, truth, and the blessings of God, yet neither does man accept life nor truth, much less the greater blessings God bestows upon mankind. All men wish to gain God yet are unable to tolerate any changes in God’s work. Those who do not accept the new work of God believe that the work of God is changeless, and that the work of God forever remains at a standstill. In their belief, all that is needed to gain eternal salvation from God is to keep the law, and as long as they repent and confess their sins, the heart of God will be forever satisfied. They are of the opinion that God can only be the God under the law and the God who was nailed on the cross for man; it is their opinion too that God should not and cannot exceed the Bible. It is precisely these opinions that have shackled them firmly to the law of old and kept them fettered by rigid regulations. Even more believe that whatever the new work of God, it must be substantiated by prophecies, and that in each stage of such work, all those who follow Him with a true heart must also be shown revelations, else that work could not be that of God. It is already no easy task for man to come to know God. Taken in addition to man’s absurd heart and his rebellious nature of self-importance and conceit, then it is all the more difficult for man to accept the new work of God.
from “How Can Man Who Has Defined God in His Conceptions Receive the Revelations of God?” in The Word Appears in the Flesh
The three stages of work are the full expression of the work of
saving mankind. Those who do not know the three stages of work will be
ignorant of the various methods and principles of the Holy Spirit’s
work; those who only rigidly stick to doctrine that remains from one
stage of work are people who limit God to doctrine, and whose belief in
God is vague and uncertain. Such people will never receive God’s
salvation. Only the three stages of God’s work can fully express the
entirety of God’s disposition, and completely express God’s intention of
saving the whole of mankind, and the entire process of mankind’s
salvation. This is proof that He has defeated Satan and gained mankind,
it is proof of God’s victory, and is the expression of God’s entire
disposition. Those who understand but one stage of the three stages of
God’s work only know part of God’s disposition. In the conception of
man, it is easy for this single stage of work to become doctrine, it
becomes likely that man will establish rules about God, and man uses
this single part of God’s disposition as a representation of God’s
entire disposition. Furthermore, much of man’s imagination is mixed
within, such that he rigidly constrains the disposition, being, and
wisdom of God, as well as the principles of God’s work, within limited
parameters, believing that if God was like this once, then He will
remain the same for all time, and will never ever change. Only those who
know and appreciate the three stages of work can fully and accurately
know God. At the very least, they will not define God as the God of the
Israelites, or the Jews, and will not see Him as a God who will be
forever nailed to the cross for the sake of man. If you only come to
know God from one stage of His work, then your knowledge is too, too
little. Your knowledge is but a drop in the ocean. If not, why would
many of the religious old guard nail God to the cross alive? Is it not
because man confines God within certain parameters? Do many people not
oppose God and obstruct the work of the Holy Spirit because they do not
know the varied and diverse work of God, and, furthermore, because they
possess but a smidgeon of knowledge and doctrine with which to measure
the work of the Holy Spirit? Though the experiences of such people are
superficial, they are arrogant and indulgent in nature, and they regard
the work of the Holy Spirit with contempt, ignore the disciplines of the
Holy Spirit and, moreover, use their trivial old arguments to “confirm”
the work of the Holy Spirit. They also put on an act, and are wholly
convinced of their own learning and erudition, and that they are able to
travel across the world. Are such people not those who are despised and
rejected by the Holy Spirit, and will they not be eliminated by the new
age? Are not those who come before God and openly oppose Him myopic
little people, who are merely trying to show how clever they are? With
but a meager knowledge of the Bible, they try to straddle the world’s
“academia,” with but a superficial doctrine to teach people, they try to
reverse the work of the Holy Spirit, and attempt to make it revolve
around their own thought process, and short-sighted as they are, they
try to behold in one glance 6,000 years of God’s work. Do these people
have any reason to speak of? In fact, the greater people’s knowledge of
God, the slower they are to judge His work. Furthermore, they only talk a
little of their knowledge of God’s work today, but they are not rash in
their judgments. The less people know of God, the more arrogant and
overconfident they are, and the more wantonly they proclaim God’s
being—yet they only talk of theory, and offer no real evidence. Such
people are of no value whatsoever. Those who see the work of the Holy
Spirit as a game are frivolous! Those who are not cautious when they
encounter the new work of the Holy Spirit, who run their mouths off, are
quick to judge, who give free rein to their natural instinct to deny
the rightness of the Holy Spirit’s work, and also insult and blaspheme
it—are such disrespectful people not ignorant of the Holy Spirit’s work?
Are they not, furthermore, the ones of arrogance, inherently proud and
ungovernable? Even if a day comes when such people accept the new work
of the Holy Spirit, still God will not tolerate of them. Not only do
they look down upon those who work for God, but also blaspheme against
God Himself. Such foolhardy people will not be forgiven, either in this
age or the age to come and they shall forever perish in hell! Such
disrespectful, indulgent people are pretending to believe in God, and
the more they do so, the more likely they are to offend God’s
administrative decrees. Do not all those arrogant ones who are innately
unbridled, and have never obeyed anyone, all walk upon this path? Do
they not oppose God day after day, He who is always new and never old?
from “Knowing the Three Stages of God’s Work Is the Path to Knowing God” in The Word Appears in the Flesh
Each of the three stages of work is carried out upon the foundation
of the previous stage; it is not carried out independently, separate
from the work of salvation. Though there are great differences in the
age and type of work that is carried out, at its core is still the
salvation of mankind, and each stage of the work of salvation is deeper
than the last. Each stage of work continues on from the foundation of
the last, which is not abolished. In this way, in His work that is
always new and never old, God is constantly expressing an aspect of His
disposition that has never before been expressed to man, and is always
revealing to man His new work, and His new being, and even though the
religious old guard does its utmost to resist this, and openly opposes
it, God always does the new work that He intends to do. His work is
always changing, and because of this, it is always encountering the
opposition of man. So, too, is His disposition always changing, as are
the age and recipients of His work. Furthermore, He is always doing work
that has never been done before, even carrying out work that appears to
man to be in contradiction to the work done before, to run counter to
it. Man is only able to accept one kind of work, or one way of practice.
It is difficult for man to accept work, or ways of practice, that are
at odds with them, or higher than them—but the Holy Spirit is always
doing new work, and so there appear group after group of religious
experts that oppose the new work of God. These people have become
“experts” precisely because man has no knowledge of how God is always
new and never old, and has no knowledge of the principles of God’s work,
and, what’s more, has no knowledge of the many ways in which God saves
man. As such, man is utterly unable to tell if it is work that comes
from the Holy Spirit, and if it is the work of God Himself. Many people
cling to an attitude in which, if it corresponds with the words that
came before, then they accept it, and if there are differences with the
work of before, then they oppose and reject it. … Know that you oppose
God’s work, or use your own conceptions to measure the work of today,
because you do not know the principles of God’s work, and because you do
not take the work of the Holy Spirit seriously enough. Your opposition
to God and obstruction of the work of the Holy Spirit is caused by your
conceptions and inherent arrogance. It is not because God’s work is
wrong, but because you are naturally too disobedient.
from “Knowing the Three Stages of God’s Work Is the Path to Knowing God” in The Word Appears in the Flesh
Do you wish to know the root of why the Pharisees opposed Jesus? Do
you wish to know the substance of the Pharisees? They were full of
fantasies about the Messiah. What’s more, they believed only that the
Messiah would come, yet did not seek the truth of life. And so, even
today they still await the Messiah, for they have no knowledge of the
way of life, and do not know what the way of truth is. How, say you,
could such foolish, stubborn and ignorant people gain God’s blessing?
How could they behold the Messiah? They opposed Jesus because they did
not know the direction of the Holy Spirit’s work, because they did not
know the way of truth spoken by Jesus, and, furthermore, because they
did not understand the Messiah. And since they had never seen the
Messiah, and had never been in the company of the Messiah, they made the
mistake of paying empty tribute to the name of the Messiah while
opposing the substance of the Messiah by any means. These Pharisees in
substance were stubborn, arrogant, and did not obey the truth. The
principle of their belief in God is: No matter how profound Your
preaching, no matter how high Your authority, You are not Christ unless
You are called the Messiah. Are these views not preposterous and
ridiculous?
from “When You Behold the Spiritual Body of
Jesus Will Be When God Has Made Anew Heaven and Earth” in The Word
Appears in the Flesh
Foolish and ignorant men often regard the normal humanity of Christ
as a flaw. No matter how He expresses and reveals the being of His
divinity, man is unable to acknowledge that He is Christ. And the more
that Christ demonstrates His obedience and humility, the more lightly
foolish men regard Christ. There are even those who adopt toward Him an
attitude of exclusion and contempt, yet place those “great men” of lofty
images upon the table to be worshiped. Man’s resistance to and
disobedience of God come from the fact that the substance of the
incarnate God submits to the will of God, as well as from the normal
humanity of Christ; herein lies the source of man’s resistance to and
disobedience of God. If Christ had neither the guise of His humanity nor
sought the will of God the Father from the perspective of a created
being, but was instead possessed of a super humanity, then there likely
would be no disobedience in any man. The reason man is always willing to
believe in an invisible God in heaven is because God in heaven has no
humanity and He does not have a single quality of a created being. So
man always regards Him with the greatest esteem, but holds an attitude
of contempt toward Christ.
from “The Substance of Christ Is Obedience to the Will of the Heavenly Father” in The Word Appears in the Flesh
An invisible and intangible God is loved and welcomed by all. If God
is just a Spirit that is invisible to man, it is so easy for man to
believe in God. Man can give free rein to his imagination, can choose
whatever image he likes as God’s image to please himself and make
himself feel happy. In this way, man may do whatever is most pleasing to
his own God, and that which this God is most willing to do, without any
scruples. What’s more, man believes that no one is more loyal and
devout than he toward God, and that all others are Gentile dogs, and
disloyal to God. It can be said that this is what is sought by those
whose belief in God is vague and based on doctrine; what they seek is
all much the same, with little variation. It is merely that the images
of God in their imaginations are different, yet their substance is
actually the same.Man is untroubled by his carefree belief in God, and believes in God however he pleases. This is one of the “rights and freedoms of man,” which no one can interfere, for man believes in his own God and not the God of anyone else; it is his own private property, and almost everyone possesses this kind of private property. Man regards this property as a precious treasure, but to God there is nothing more lowly or worthless, for there is no clearer indication of opposition to God than this private property of man. It is because of the work of God incarnate that God becomes a flesh who has a tangible form, and who can be seen and touched by man. He is not a formless Spirit, but a flesh that can be contacted and seen by man. However, most of the Gods people believe in are fleshless deities that are formless, which are also of a free form. In this way, the incarnate God has become the enemy of most of those who believe in God, and those who cannot accept the fact of God’s incarnation have, similarly, become the adversaries of God. Man is possessed of conceptions not because of his way of thinking, or because of his rebelliousness, but because of this private property of man. It is because of this property that most people die, and it is this vague God that cannot be touched, cannot be seen, and does not exist in fact that ruins man’s life. Man’s life is forfeited not by the incarnate God, much less by the God of heaven, but by the God of man’s own imagining.
from “Corrupt Mankind Is More in Need of the Salvation of God Become Flesh” in The Word Appears in the Flesh
All men wish to see the true countenance of Jesus and desire to be
with Him. I believe that not one of the brothers or sisters would say
that he is unwilling to see or to be with Jesus. Before you have seen
Jesus, that is, before you have seen the incarnate God, you will have
many thoughts, for example, about Jesus’ appearance, His way of
speaking, His way of life, and so on. However, when you really see Him,
your thoughts will swiftly change. Why is this? Do you wish to know?
While man’s thinking indeed cannot be overlooked, it is much more
intolerable for man to alter the substance of Christ. You regard Christ
as an immortal, a sage, but none regard Christ as a mortal with divine
substance. Therefore, many of those who yearn day and night to see God
are actually enemies of God and incompatible with God. Is this not a
wrong on the part of man? Even now you still think that your belief and
loyalty are such that you deserve to see the countenance of Christ, but I
exhort you to equip yourselves with more tangible things! For in the
past, present, and future, many of those who come in contact with Christ
have failed; they all play the role of the Pharisees. What is the
reason for your failure? It is precisely because in your notions there
is a lofty, admirable God. But the truth is not as man wishes. Not only
is Christ not lofty, but He is particularly small; not only is He a man
but an ordinary man; not only can He not ascend to heaven, neither can
He move freely on earth. And so people treat Him as an ordinary man;
they do as they please when they are with Him, and speak careless words
to Him, all the while still waiting for the coming of the “true Christ.”
You regard the Christ that has already come as an ordinary man and His
word as that of an ordinary man. Therefore, you have not received
anything from Christ and have instead completely exposed your ugliness
to the light.
from “Those Incompatible With Christ Are Surely Opponents of God” in The Word Appears in the Flesh
Why do I say that those in the religious world do not believe in God
and are evildoers, who are of the same kind as the devil? When I say
they are evildoers, it is because they do not understand the will of God
or see His wisdom. God at no time reveals His work to them; they are
blind men, who do not see the deeds of God. They are those forsaken by
God and do not possess at all the care and protection of God, much less
the work of the Holy Spirit. Those without the work of God are evildoers
and stand in opposition to God.
from “All Who Do Not Know God Are Those Who Oppose God” in The Word Appears in the Flesh
The source of man’s opposition and rebelliousness against God is his
corruption by Satan. Because he has been corrupted by Satan, man’s
conscience has grown numb, he is immoral, his thoughts are degenerate,
and he has a backward mental outlook. Before he was corrupted by Satan,
man naturally followed God and obeyed His words. He was naturally of
sound sense and conscience, and of normal humanity. After being
corrupted by Satan, his original sense, conscience, and humanity grew
dull and were impaired by Satan. Thus, he has lost his obedience and
love toward God. Man’s sense has become aberrant, his disposition has
become the same as that of an animal, and his rebelliousness toward God
is ever more frequent and grievous. Yet man still neither knows nor
recognizes this, and merely blindly opposes and rebels. The revelation
of man’s disposition is the expression of his sense, insight and
conscience, and because his sense and insight are unsound, and his
conscience has grown supremely dull, thus his disposition is rebellious
against God.The source of the revelation of man’s corrupt disposition is nothing more than his dulled conscience, his malicious nature and his unsound sense; if man’s conscience and sense are able to return to normal, then he will become fit for use before God. It is simply because man’s conscience has always been numb, man’s sense has never been sound, and is increasingly dull that man is increasingly rebellious toward God, such that he even nailed Jesus to the cross and has refused God incarnate of the last days entry into his home, and condemns God’s flesh, and sees God’s flesh as vile and lowly. If man had but a little humanity, he would not be so cruel in his treatment of God’s incarnate flesh; if he had but a little sense, he would not be so vicious in his treatment of the flesh of God incarnate; if he had but a little conscience, he would not be so “grateful” to God incarnate in this way. Man lives in the era of God become flesh, yet he is incapable of thanking God for giving him such a good opportunity, and instead curses the coming of God, or completely ignores the fact of God’s incarnation, and is seemingly against it and weary of it. … Man’s disposition has become supremely vicious, his sense has grown supremely dull, and his conscience has been completely trampled by the evil one and long ago ceased to be the original conscience of man.
from “To Have an Unchanged Disposition Is to Be in Enmity to God” in The Word Appears in the Flesh
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The Church of Almighty God was founded by Almighty God personally
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