Why exactly do you believe in God? Most people are still muddled when it comes to this question, and they always have two entirely different viewpoints about the practical God and the God in heaven. It shows that people believe in God not in order to submit to Him, but to receive certain benefits, or to escape the suffering that disaster brings; only then are they somewhat submissive. This kind of submission is conditional—their personal prospects are the precondition of their submission; they submit because they have no alternative. So, just why do you believe in God? If it is solely for the sake of your prospects and your fate, then it would be better if you did not believe in Him. Belief such as this is making a fool of yourself, reassuring yourself, and admiring yourself. If your faith is not built upon the foundation of submission to God, then you will ultimately be punished for opposing Him. All those who do not seek submission to God in their faith are people who oppose God. God asks that people seek the truth, that they thirst for His words, eat and drink His words, and put them into practice, all so that they may achieve submission to God. If that is your true intention, then God will surely exalt you, and will surely be gracious toward you. This is undoubtable and unchangeable. If your intention is not to submit to God, and you have other aims, then all that you say and do—even your prayers before God, and going even further, your every move—will be in opposition to Him. Even if your words are gentle and you are mild-mannered, even if your every move and expression seem proper to others, as if you were a submissive person, when it comes to your intentions and your views about faith in God, every one of your actions is in opposition to God, it is doing evil. People who appear as obedient as sheep, but whose hearts harbor evil intentions, are wolves in sheep’s clothing, and those who directly commit an offense against God. God will not spare a single one of them, and the Holy Spirit will reveal each and every one of them. Everybody will see that all those who are hypocrites will, with certainty, be spurned by the Holy Spirit. Don’t be impatient: God will reckon with and dispose of every last one of them in turn.

If you are unable to accept the new light from God, and you do not seek when you cannot see clearly what God does today, and you doubt it, pass judgment on it, or scrutinize and analyze it, a person such as this has no mind to submit to God. If, when the present light appears, you still treasure the light of yesterday and oppose God’s new work, then you are nothing more than an absurd one—you are one of those who deliberately oppose God. The key to submitting to God is accepting the newest light, and being able to accept it and put it into practice. This alone is true submission. Those who don’t have the resolve to yearn for God are incapable of intentionally submitting to Him, and can only oppose God as a result of their satisfaction with the status quo. Man cannot submit to God because he is possessed by what came before. The things that came before have produced all manner of notions and various imaginings about God in man, and these have become the image of god in his mind. Thus, what he believes in is his own notions, and the standards of his own imagination. If you measure the God who does practical work today against the god of your own imagination, then your faith comes from Satan, and is based on your own preferences—God does not want this kind of faith. Regardless of how lofty their credentials, and regardless of their expenditures—even if they have expended a lifetime of effort working for Him, and have gone so far as to martyr themselves—God does not approve of anyone with faith such as this. He merely bestows upon them a little grace and allows them to enjoy it for a time. People such as this are incapable of putting the truth into practice. The Holy Spirit does not work within them, and God will eliminate each of them in turn. Young and old alike, those who do not submit to God in their faith and have the wrong intentions are those who oppose and disrupt, and such people will unquestionably be eliminated by God. Those who are without the slightest submission to God, who merely acknowledge His name, and have some sense of God’s approachableness and loveliness, yet do not keep pace with the steps of the Holy Spirit, and do not submit to the present work and words of the Holy Spirit—such people live amid the grace of God, and cannot be gained or made perfect by Him. God makes people perfect through their submission, through their eating, drinking, and enjoying of God’s words, and through the suffering and refinement in their lives. Only through faith such as this can people’s dispositions change, and only then can they possess the true knowledge of God. Not being satisfied with living amid God’s grace, actively yearning for and seeking the truth, and pursuing being gained by God—this is what it means to consciously submit to God, and this is precisely the kind of faith that He wants. People who do nothing more than enjoy God’s grace cannot be made perfect or changed; they can only possess superficial submission, piety, love, and patience. Those who only enjoy God’s grace cannot truly know God, and even when they do know God, their knowledge is superficial, and they say things like “God loves man,” or “God has mercy on man.” This does not represent the life of man, and does not mean that people truly know God. If, when God’s words refine them, or when His trials come upon them, people are unable to submit to God—if, instead, they become doubtful, and even fall down—then they are not in the least bit submissive. Within them, there are many rules and restrictions about faith in God, and even long-standing experience that they have derived from many years of faith, or various regulations that take the Bible as their principle. Could people such as this submit to God? These people are full of human things—how could they submit to God? Their “submission” is based on their personal preferences—would God want submission like this? This is adherence to regulations, not submission to God; it is the satisfaction and appeasement of themselves. If you say that this is submission to God, do you not blaspheme against Him? You are an Egyptian Pharaoh. You commit evil, and you expressly engage in the work of opposing God—is this how God wants you to serve? You’d best hasten to repent, and try to gain some self-awareness. Failing that, you would be better off going home; that would do you more good than your “service to God.” You would not disrupt and disturb; you would know your place, and live well—would that not be better? And you would not oppose God and be punished!