I See the Truth of People’s Corruption

Li Heng Suqian City, Jiangsu Province

I See the Truth of People’s Corruption

Among the words by which God reveals man I found this passage: “It was previously said that these people are the progeny of the great red dragon. In fact, to be clear, they are the embodiment of the great red dragon” (“Interpretation of the Thirty-sixth Utterance” in The Word Appears in the Flesh).

I thought these words of God were meant to reveal those who hold power as the embodiment of the great red dragon, because they are atheists, they stifle thought and strictly forbid people from believing in God and worshiping God; they cruelly persecute God’s chosen people, they disrupt and destroy God’s work wherever they can, they do many wicked things and are simply perverse and godless, opposing God in everything. I, on the other hand, am a believer in God who fulfills his duty in the church, and even though I have corrupt dispositions, I’m nowhere near as malicious as them—how could I be the embodiment of the great red dragon? That was until I was exposed by God’s work, and only then did I realize that the essence of my nature was the same as that of the great red dragon, and that I was, without a doubt, the embodiment of the great red dragon.

There was a deacon in our church who was constrained by her family and who wasn’t conscientious in fulfilling her duties, and often she forgot to attend small group meetings. I fellowshiped with her, saying, “You shouldn’t be so irresponsible or slipshod with your duties. You can’t be so focused on your family, because if this keeps up, if you even forget our small group meetings, do you know how serious the consequences will be?” After I’d given her this fellowship, she not only didn’t accept it, she made excuses and gave reasons to refute me. In my heart, I thought, “She can’t be someone God wants to save, can she? Surely she’s unfit for use by God, or someone evil who is being revealed by God?” I began watching closely for a replacement at my small group meetings. As soon as I found the right person for the job, I planned to get rid of her. But for the time being there was no one suitable, so my only option was to again fellowship with her, and afterward she came to understand that she had failed to fulfill her duty and was irresponsible and neglectful, and she wanted to atone for her past mistakes. But still, I always felt like it wasn’t enough, and I didn’t have much fondness for her after that. Once, I asked her to hold a meeting with a host family that was a little out of the way, but she refused and was unwilling to go. The anger in my heart surged up when she said that. I wanted to dismiss her then and there, make her go back to her small group, and forget about her. “People like her are too much trouble,” I thought, “Picky in fulfilling their duties, doing what they like and ignoring what they don’t. She opposes me in whatever I say and she doesn’t submit to the church’s plans, so what good does it do for the church to keep her? She should simply be expelled, and she deserves every tear she sheds over it! She made her bed, so she should lie in it.” Even though I knew expelling people arbitrarily goes against principles, this idea was so strong and it kept coming up in my mind, I couldn’t control it, and in my heart it troubled me constantly, and my state went into a rapid decline. In pain, all I could do was come before God and pray to Him, “God, my sister is disobedient to me, and I want to expel her and see her suffer pain and torment. It feels like I’ll explode if I don’t expel her. I also don’t want to act on my own desires or out of rashness and arrogance, I don’t want to intentionally offend Your disposition. God, I beg You to save me!” After I prayed, I was much calmer, and my desire to dismiss her wasn’t as strong as before. And then a passage of God’s words arose in my mind, “The manifestations of the great red dragon are resistance to Me, lack of understanding and comprehension of the meanings of My words, frequent persecution of Me, and seeking to use schemes to interrupt My management. Satan is manifested as follows: struggling with Me for power, wanting to possess My chosen people, and releasing negative words to deceive My people” (“The Ninety-sixth Utterance” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). God’s words shocked me. Was my behavior not precisely that of the great red dragon? God’s work in the last days is to save mankind, whereas the great red dragon resists God, persecutes God, and does all it can to create disturbances, and fabricate evidence against, condemn and obstruct those who believe in and follow God; it always attempts to take from people their chances to be saved, and it disturbs and interrupts God’s work. Wasn’t that exactly what I was doing? When I saw that my sister had some shortcomings, I didn’t use my compassion to fellowship about the truth to help her recognize her transgressions, to understand God’s will to save mankind, to be able to pursue change and submit to God’s work; instead, I magnified and over-analyzed her shortcomings and I wanted to follow my own desire to expel her and destroy her chance to be saved. Was I not making myself a devil, a Satan, who disrupts and destroys God’s work of salvation among man? Was I not indeed the embodiment of the great red dragon? In Sermons and Fellowship, I read, “See how the great red dragon persecutes God and how it cruelly harms God’s chosen people, then look at how you resist and rebel against God and how you are incapable of getting along peacefully with God’s chosen people. You are filled with grudges and are too selfish. How are you any different from the great red dragon? … Many people don’t recognize the poisons of the great red dragon that lurk within them. They always think the great red dragon is too evil, and tell themselves that when they hold power, they will be much better than the great red dragon; but is that truly the case? If you took power this instant, how much better than the great red dragon would you be? Could you do so much better than the great red dragon? The truth is that the great red dragon holding power is no different than any of corrupt mankind holding power. If the great red dragon can kill 80 million people, how many will you kill when you hold power? Some say, ‘If I held power, I wouldn’t kill anyone.’ Just as you say this, someone will stand up and curse you, and you will get furious and say, ‘Then I’ll just kill one, I’ll make an exception.’ When a group rises up to oppose you, you will say, ‘Killing a group isn’t much, the great red dragon killed 80 million. I’m only killing a small group, that’s much less than the great red dragon.’ When 10 million rise up to oppose you, you will say, ‘I can kill these 10 million too, because if I don’t, how will I hold on to power?’ Don’t you see a problem here? When you have no power, you do no evil, but there is no guarantee you won’t do evil deeds when you hold power, because man’s natures are all the same” (“How People Should Cooperate With God’s Work of Perfecting Man” in Sermons and Fellowship On Entry Into Life (III)). Through the enlightenment and illumination of God’s words and the analysis of Sermons and Fellowship, I finally saw clearly my true colors, that I was the embodiment of the great red dragon, and that my corrupt essence was no different from the essence of the great red dragon’s nature. When my sister didn’t clearly understand the truth and was slipshod and irresponsible in her duties, I didn’t help her with a loving heart at all, but instead I spoke demandingly to her with a forceful tone. And when she rebutted me and didn’t follow and obey my arrangements, I became angry and condemned her as a wicked person being exposed by God, evil intent arose in my heart and I wanted to expel her from the church. Wasn’t I behaving like the great red dragon, with its policies of “exalt only myself,” “those who obey shall prosper, while those who resist shall perish,” “escalate without limit” and “massacre the innocent”? These are all classic examples of the great red dragon’s poisons! The great red dragon massacres innocents and kills countless people; it has never had any regard for people’s lives, and if anyone doesn’t obey it or they offend it in some way, then it murders them. If I were in power, I would be just the same as the great red dragon, and there would be no evil that I wouldn’t do and I would be completely a law unto myself. Were it not for the work arrangements and principles laid down by the church keeping me in check, and my brothers and sisters supervising me, I would surely have long ago placed my sister’s head on the chopping block. Only when I was faced with my own behavior did I see that I was simply a devil that was defying God, that I was worse than a beast, and that I was something that should have long since died and perished away. And yet God had used His words to enlighten and guide me, to make me recognize my own ugly and malicious nature and essence, and to give me a chance to repent. My heart was filled with gratitude for God, and I also came to hate and repent of my actions even more.

This experience gave me a true understanding of my corrupt essence. I saw that I was truly someone without reason or a conscience, undoubtedly the progeny of the great red dragon. But it also gave me a firmer belief of God’s words. No matter how piercing God’s words may be or whether they accord with man’s notions, every utterance is the eternal, unchanging truth, and sooner or later corrupt humanity will be utterly convinced. O God! I want to perform my duties well to repay You for the grace of Your salvation, I want to make peace with my brothers and sisters and make up for my past mistakes, and become someone new who comforts You.

Recommendation: wheat and tares       worship God in spirit and in truth