Heresy and Cults Cannot Be Determined by People | Eastern Lightning

Heresy and Cults Cannot Be Determined by People

Li Kun Anyang City, Henan Province

Picture of the Church of Almighty God

    God’s last days’ work has already conquered a group of people in Mainland China. Many believers in the religious community who long for God to appear have been conquered by God’s words because they have heard God’s voice and have returned before God’s throne. At the same time, many priests and elders in the religious community are desperate to resist and condemn God’s last days’ work. They always refer to it as heresy or a cult and wantonly condemn and blaspheme it. Their ignorance and arrogance drive them, like the Pharisees of those days, to take the road to perdition of resisting God and viewing God as an enemy, at the critical moment when new work replaces old.

    From the creation of the world until now, God has always been doing new work and continuously leading mankind toward development. But every time God’s new work befalls mankind, a great number of people will emerge who resist God’s new work. They cling to the work that God has done in the past and guard people’s notions and imaginations, determine God’s new work through people’s knowledge and intellect and are eventually eliminated by God because they resist God and reject God’s new work.

    It is a well-known fact that in the days of Noah, when people had fallen to extreme depths and were not able to develop further, God intended to destroy this world with floods. Noah was the only righteous man at that time and he was graced before Jehovah God and God commanded him to construct an ark and told about the floods destroying the world. Instead of using his own mind to analyze and judge God’s work, Noah simply listened and obeyed. He did not consider so much and was full of faith in Jehovah God. He followed God’s words and passed on the way to all who were present in the land at that time, so that those who heard the way could all get on the ark and be preserved by God. This was God’s intention at that time. But the people at that time did not understand God’s intention and on seeing that Noah had sold all of his property to make such a big ark and was saying that the floods would destroy the world, said that Noah was insane and mentally disturbed. Everyone thought he was spreading heresy and things that would not come to pass. Therefore, everything that Noah did was opposed and rejected, ridiculed and slandered by all. Today we are all clear. Was Noah really not normal? Was Noah spreading heresy? No! So why did people at that time condemn him like that? This is all because people are too subjective and too confident and do not accept new things. They just know how to talk irresponsibly, to condemn as they please and ultimately, to die in their own net. And Noah’s family, who people regarded as heretics, survived.

    As mankind’s corruption deepened, by the latter part of the Age of Law, the law is no longer applicable to man. God wished to do even greater work, to become flesh to save those living on the verge of death and to open up a new way out for mankind, to make people break free from the bondage of the law and be able to survive. Therefore, Jesus came to be amongst people to start to preach the gospel of the kingdom and the way of repentance. As long as people believe in the name of Jesus and prostrate before Jesus, they can be forgiven of their sins and live in a new light and have peace, joy, and endless grace. However, the chief priests, scribes and the Pharisees of that time did not know God’s intentions at that time and what work He was to do. They thought that Jesus did not abide by the laws and that He was trying to set Himself apart from Jehovah and that He was dismantling Jehovah’s work and demolishing the temple. Therefore, they detested Lord Jesus with utmost hatred, did their utmost to resist Him and besieged Him everywhere. They deliberately tried to catch Him out and find fault with Lord Jesus’ words and work and said that Jesus did not observe the Sabbath and that He healed people on the Sabbath, led disciples to collect ears of wheat, did not wash His hands before eating, dined with sinners and did not enter the temple to serve God…. These people consistently followed the principle of, “Those who do not agree with me, who do not agree with the records of the Bible, who do not agree with the prophecies of the Bible are heresy and cults,” did not have any intention of seeking or observing all that Jesus did and upheld their own thinking all along, condemned and persecuted Jesus and even though they knew that Jesus has risen from the dead, still deliberately resisted Him and fabricated lies to deceive the common people. They were too self-righteous and arrogant, did not seek the truth, did not obey the work of the Holy Spirit and did not touch God’s current intentions. In what way did they believe in God? They clearly believed in their own imagination and notions and were diametrically opposed to God. They were thus rejected and cursed by God and became the objects of eternal revulsion.

    At that time, was Paul not also one of those who persecuted Lord Jesus? It was only after he was knocked down on the road to Damascus that he knew that the Jesus he hunted and persecuted was God. So he later showed great enthusiasm and desperately preached the way and worked for Jesus and admitted to all: “But this I confess to you, that after the way which they call heresy, so worship I the God of my fathers, believing all things which are written in the law and in the prophets” (Act 24:14). And Paul was treated as one who preached heresy by the Pharisees of that time and condemned and persecuted because he acknowledged the name of Jesus.

    The last days have already arrived. Although we have been redeemed by Jesus Christ, our sinful nature still exists. So on the foundation of God’s work of the Age of Grace, God has once again become flesh to do the work of thoroughly cleansing people and make people break free from Satan’s corrupt disposition, be completely cleansed and to restore the original appearance of people at the beginning. But nowadays, people from all sects still uphold the old work, their own notions and the salvation of the cross. They commit sins and confess their sins and confine God in the Bible, on the cross and in the Age of Grace. They say that God cannot become flesh again, cannot do new work, cannot utter new words, cannot abolish past work and say that God’s last days’ work undermines the work of Jesus. And because God did not arrive on the clouds as they thought in their notions, they once again determined God’s work to be heresy and said that those who preach the gospel of the kingdom are specifically stealing their sheep. Faced with God’s last days’ work, they have no intention of seeking and nitpick and find fault in the words of Almighty God, describing the work and words that do not match their notions as wrong and build up their own notions in their minds as the truth, letting their followers pay homage and obey them in every way. When they see the spectacular occasion of the spreading of Almighty God’s work, not only do they not reflect on themselves and seek God’s work, but instead they condemn and blaspheme God’s work. What difference is there between them resisting God’s last days’ work and words in this way and the Pharisees of those days saying that Jesus relied on Beelzebub the king of demons to cast out demons? They subject Almighty God’s work to all kinds of humiliation and frame and spread rumors and slander those who spread the gospel of the kingdom, saying that these people dig out people’s eyes and cut off their noses, and so on. Are the words and deeds of these religious people not the real second edition of the Pharisees? Is it not a repeat of the tragedy of the Pharisees’ resistance of Jesus? Is it not people’s extremely foolish mistake?

    From start to finish, God’s work is always moving forward. There is always new work and a new age, and every time God’s new work is labelled as “heresy and cult” by people and there is always a large number of people who resist God’s new work. But no matter how people resist, God’s work is accomplished all the same. No one can stop it. As Almighty God said, “Nevertheless, I must tell you that often the work of God greatly exceeds man’s expectations and is difficult for the minds of men to accept. For men are merely maggots upon the earth, while God is the supreme One that fills the universe; the mind of man is akin to a pit of foul water that gives rise only to maggots, whereas each stage of the work directed by the thoughts of God is the distillation of God’s wisdom. Man constantly wishes to contend with God, to which I say it is self-evident who will suffer loss in the end. … You must know that all of the Israelites spurned and denied Jesus, and yet the fact of Jesus’ redemption of mankind still spread to the ends of the universe. Isn’t this a reality that God made long ago? If you are still awaiting Jesus to take you up to heaven, then I say that you are an obstinate piece of deadwood. Jesus will not acknowledge a false believer such as you who is disloyal to the truth and seeks only blessings. On the contrary, He will show no mercy in casting you into the lake of fire to burn for tens of thousands of years” (“Christ Does the Work of Judgment With the Truth” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). Today, although some people do not acknowledge that Lord Jesus has already returned and is the last Christ Almighty God, God’s last days’ work still tumbles on like a wave, spreading throughout the whole of Mainland China with irresistible force, spreading to the west and to all nations, confirming and accomplishing the prophecies of Lord Jesus: “For as the lightning comes out of the east, and shines even to the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be” (Mat 24:27). So, in the face of God’s new work, we should keep a seeking, accepting heart and should not use our own notions to resist God’s new work, because heresy and cult cannot be determined by people.

    Read more: Eastern Lightning  The brief introduction of the Church of Almighty God