Now that we’ve fellowshipped on and dissected these notions and imaginings that people have about God’s work, are you a bit clearer on how to view behaviors like whether or not people suffer hardship, pay a price, and restrain themselves in doing their duties, and whether or not they have a fondness for eating good food and dressing up nicely, and so on, as well as what the principles that God requires of people are, and what exactly the result is that God wants to achieve in people with His work? The result that God wants to achieve in people is not to see your passion for your work all the time. That is, what God wants to see is not your enthusiasm or your resolve to suffer hardship and pay a price. In God’s eyes, if you do not understand the truth, then these manifestations are just a momentary impulse. In other words, they are just your enthusiasm. What essentially is enthusiasm? It is your impetuousness, or to be more specific, it is an emotional approach to things. What God wants is not people’s enthusiasm, their emotional approach to things, their temporary impulses, or this kind of passionate condition. What does God want? (He wants people to be able to understand the truth.) At the very least, He wants you to be able to love the truth and understand the truth, and, when faced with various matters, to not adhere to a regulation, a formality, or a behavior, but to instead abide by the truth principles; He also wants you, in the duty you do and in everything, to be able to seek the truth principles, and practice according to the truth principles, and to make God’s words and truth your reality—this is the result that God’s work is intended to achieve. As for whether, in your personal life, you want to go to bed early and get up early, or go to bed late and get up late, or what kind of gifts you have or how articulate you are, none of this matters to God. Regardless of whether or not you have the resolve to suffer hardship or how much of a price you pay, God doesn’t value these things. Some people say, “For the sake of my belief in God, I haven’t bought nice clothes for several years, and I haven’t been to the hairdresser for over ten years.” Even if you don’t eat well, don’t wear nice clothes, and suffer a great many hardships for your whole life, so what? Is that what God wants? Is the ultimate purpose of God’s preaching and fellowshipping to provide people with a great number of truths just to turn you into an ascetic? Is it just to turn you into a pathetic wretch, a beggar, or an angry youth? No. What God wants to do is to work His words and the truth principles into people. Therefore, when many believe that God likes to see people suffer more hardships and pay more of a price, and that He likes to see them living extremely frugal, hard, and simple lives, being extremely possessed of resolve and aspirations, and extremely passionate, or being extremely self-restrained, and really keeping to their place and behaving themselves, these are just their notions and imaginings about God’s work. Suppose that, for many years of your life, you only eat one meal a day and sleep three hours a night, and aren’t able to eat good food or wear nice clothes, and that you do what you think you ought to be doing for many years, and have suffered countless hardships and made countless resolutions. In your own words, you “stay true to your original aspiration,” and you suffer hardships and expend for God and dedicate your whole life to God. However, despite all this, if you never put effort into God’s words or the truth, and don’t seek the truth principles in everything you do, then you are bound to be abandoned. You want to attain salvation through suffering hardship and paying a price, and through never changing your original aspiration, and expending yourself for God your whole life, and offering up everything you have to Him. This is just a dream—it is wishful thinking. Even if you eat cornmeal and steamed cornbread all your life and never eat good food or enjoy nice things, it will be of no use. God never looks at a person’s behavior, nor does He look at what rules a person outwardly follows, or whether they outwardly lead a simple and plain life. What God wants to see is what path you are on, what principles you abide by in every matter that you encounter, and whether you abide by the truth principles in dealing with problems. If you do not abide by the truth principles, then regardless of how well you follow those fixed stipulations and rules, it will be of no use. It will only indicate that you are a person who lives within notions and imaginings, a person who lives within completely subjective, nice wishes, who has nothing whatsoever to do with God’s work, and nothing to do with any of the ways in which God performs His work of salvation on people—a person who is far away from God’s work. Therefore, if you want to gain something from God’s work, you must first work hard on the truth; you must not put any work into or apply any efforts to your own notions and imaginings—doing so is useless. Some people ask Me: “Do You think I look more decent and proper with long hair or short hair?” I ask them in response, “Do you like having your hair long or short?” They say, “I like having my hair long. But I think that long hair isn’t decent and proper, and that God does not like it.” And I reply, “When did God say that? Does this have anything to do with truth?” There are others who ask Me: “Can I eat snacks?” And I reply, “Is eating snacks a need of normal humanity? Does God stipulate that people can’t eat them? Does God condemn it?” And they say, “I think God condemns it, because eating snacks is dissolute.” What does “dissolute” mean? If you think that eating snacks is dissolute, then does not eating snacks mean that you are not dissolute? Does not eating snacks mean that you understand the truth and practice the truth? You can understand it when I put it this way, right? (Yes.) Notions and imaginings are not the truth and they have nothing to do with the truth. If you are smart, you should hurry to examine what notions and imaginings you still have, and what practices, thoughts and viewpoints of the Pharisees you still have, and let them go without delay. The purpose of letting these things go is not to make you become dissolute and self-indulgent, but to make you come before God to seek the truth principles, and come to gain the truth as your life. God doesn’t want to see you being a beggar and leading the life of an ascetic. Some people say, “God doesn’t like people to be beggars, so does that mean He likes them to be wealthy?” God doesn’t like people to be wealthy either. Some people say, “It is a human notion and imagining that God likes people to suffer physical hardship. So if God doesn’t like people to suffer hardship, does that mean He likes them to live in comfort?” Wrong, this is also your notion and imagining. What, then, is the right way to act? (God likes people to be able to come before Him and seek the truth principles, regardless of what befalls them.) No matter when, the truth principles cannot be forgotten. Some people say, “God likes people to make resolutions before Him and possess the resolve to suffer hardship.” Others say, “God doesn’t like people who are unwilling to suffer hardship.” Is it right or wrong to say these things? Which statement is right and which one is wrong? (They are both wrong.) Some people always suffer hardship for the sake of their own status, fame, and gain—they have a strong resolve to suffer hardship. Do these manifestations please God? (No.) Some people are unwilling to suffer hardship when it comes to personal matters, but are willing to suffer hardship for the sake of doing their duty and for the truth, and are willing to suffer a little hardship in order to act according to the truth principles. Which of these manifestations is better? (Suffering hardship for the sake of the truth principles.) What can be seen from these things? That it is right to act according to the truth principles and to practice the truth. Be it in relation to matters of doing one’s duty, or to matters in one’s own personal life, whether or not one suffers hardship is not a standard or a principle. What are the principles? The principles are God’s requirements, God’s words, and the truth. If you practice according to the truth principles, then even if you do not suffer hardship in doing so, what you are doing is right, and God approves of it; if you don’t act according to the truth principles, then even if you suffer a great deal of hardship or experience great humiliation in the process, it is in vain, and God does not approve of your actions. It’s just like how some people hear an order from an antichrist and then do as they are told, implementing the work according to the antichrist’s preferences, doing a lot of talking and suffering, and keeping themselves very busy, to the point that their body becomes bent and broken-down from physical exhaustion. Does God approve of this? Will God remember it? (He doesn’t approve of it, and He will not remember it.) So what is God’s attitude? (God loathes such people.) What did God say? “Depart from Me, you that work iniquity.” This is God’s attitude, is it not? (Yes.) No matter how much hardship you’ve suffered or how much of a price you’ve paid, though you may use these to boast about your contributions, God does not look at these things. God only looks at whether you did these things according to the truth principles and whether you were following God’s words—He uses this principle to measure you. If you do not follow God’s words, but instead act according to your own ideas, then no matter how much hardship you suffer or how much of a price you pay, it will all be futile. Not only will God not remember it, but He will also condemn it. That would be bringing about your own destruction, would it not? (Yes.) Such people will be eliminated in the end—they deserve this, don’t they? (Yes.) God has spoken thousands upon thousands of words and told you the truth principles, but you just don’t listen. You always have your own ideas, and you wishfully hope to replace the truth with your own notions and imaginings, and thereby gain God’s approval, enter the kingdom, and be blessed and rewarded. Isn’t this courting death? Aren’t such people of the same ilk as Paul? (Yes.) Therefore, if people want to let go of the barriers between them and God and their hostility toward God, they should have an accurate understanding of God’s work. They should not speculate about God, measure His work, or measure their own behavior and practices based on their notions and imaginings, and then handle everything based on these notions and imaginings. The ultimate result of this approach will be that it comes to naught, and in serious cases, they will disrupt and disturb the church’s work, offend God’s disposition, and be punished. Therefore, in approaching God’s work, people should let go of their various notions and imaginings about God. That is, they should examine and dissect their own notions and imaginings and then let go of them, come to seek God’s intentions and the truth, and use the truth principles to replace their notions, imaginings, wrong principles and practices. Only in this way can you embark on the path of salvation. Otherwise, it is impossible for you to be saved, it is out of the question! This is one kind of notion and imagining that people have about God’s work. Let us end our fellowship here.

C. People’s Notions and Imaginings About How God Purifies and Saves Man

People have another kind of notion and imagining about God’s work, which is that in their everyday lives, when they are weak, when various kinds of rebelliousness toward God arise in them, or when they have done things that rebel against God and oppose God, they believe in their notions and imaginings that they should be disciplined, chastened, or even punished, cursed, and so on. For example, sometimes people say the wrong thing or reveal some notions, or they harbor certain opinions and some defiance toward something, and after a while, they think, “I have revealed this rebelliousness and betrayal, but why haven’t I been disciplined for it? There are no blisters on my tongue, I don’t have nightmares at night, and I don’t feel uneasy in my heart. Why is that? How come I don’t feel the work of the Holy Spirit?” In their notions and imaginings, they believe that since God has come to save them, and since God’s work must not only conquer them, but also transform and purify them, and change all kinds of thoughts and viewpoints that they harbor which are inconsistent with the truth, then if there are some things in their thoughts that are inconsistent with the truth, or things that are filthy, dirty, or wicked, then they should be disciplined, reproached, or even punished for them, and they think, “How can people change and how can they be sanctified if they are not disciplined frequently?” What are people’s notions and imaginings here? Namely, that they should be frequently disciplined, reproached, chastened, punished, and even chastised and judged and that only then can they achieve dispositional change. However, in everyday life, when people reveal filthiness, wickedness, and corruption, they do so very naturally, they can feel it, and they even feel at peace living this way and do not sense that they are being disciplined or punished, and they find this to be abnormal. People think that if they reveal corruption, they should at least feel reproached, or fall ill, or get blisters on their mouth, or choke or bite their tongue when eating, and that they should get red and swollen eyes if they watch something they shouldn’t watch. Tell Me, does God do these things? (No.) Does He absolutely not do them? (When people do not understand the truth, God may discipline and reproach them a bit according to their stature, so that they can reflect on themselves and enter into the truth. However, when people understand the truth and know clearly in their hearts that what they have done is wrong, God will definitely not discipline them in that case, because He hopes that they can seek the truth, and use His words and the truth to measure their own actions and behavior.) That was fellowshipped really well. In people’s notions and imaginings, they believe that whenever they reveal corruption and rebelliousness, God should discipline them, and that in particular, when evil people do evil, God’s punishment should come upon them immediately, so that the evil people definitely get punished. But in real life, they rarely see these punishments taking place. In one respect, when people reveal various kinds of corruption and rebelliousness, they do not get disciplined or chastened, and in another respect, when evil people do evil, they do not get punished. This gives rise to certain notions about God’s work deep in people’s hearts, and some people will even lose their faith, and measure God’s work based on these outward things, and pass judgment on His work. These are people’s notions and imaginings, are they not? When people reveal corruption and rebelliousness, must God discipline them, or chastise and judge them? (No.) Some people say, “When God saves people, He must save them thoroughly. What is the purpose of God’s work? Is it not to purify people? So when people reveal corruption and rebelliousness, God should discipline and reproach them—this is being responsible toward them. Otherwise, He does not care about people and does not truly love them and have mercy on them.” Don’t people think in this way? (Yes.) What are the truths that should be understood here? Are being disciplined, chastened, and punished essential processes for people to understand the truth and enter into the truth reality? Are they necessary means and ways for God to save people and transform them? Some people can’t work it out and think, “If God really exists and He does His work in order to save people, then why doesn’t He discipline people when they reveal corruption or rebel against Him? Why doesn’t God punish evil people for doing evil?” When God doesn’t discipline people, or when evil people are not punished for doing evil, won’t it cause some people to question the existence of God and the results of His work? If frequent disciplining and punishment could replace people seeking the truth or enable them to enter into the truth reality, then disciplining and punishment would be the main way that God works to save people, and a necessary means of doing so. But given people’s current level of corruption, could their satanic nature be transformed immediately through God’s disciplining and punishment? Could people immediately come to have true repentance? Could they immediately enter into the truth reality? (No, they could not.) That would be beyond them. Therefore, in this stage of God’s work, at the same time as God expresses truths to provide people with life, He does not—with the exception of the Holy Spirit’s work of enlightening and guiding people—do anything supernatural, and rarely even does He do such things as chastening, disciplining, or punishing people. Chastening, disciplining, and punishing people are not a predominant part of God’s work, but He does still do these things. That is, in the case of certain special people or special matters, or in certain special environments, for the sake of achieving certain special results or due to certain special reasons, God will do the work of disciplining, chastening, or punishing people. But overall, in this stage of His work, the predominant way that He works is to speak and express the truth to provide what people need on their path of pursuing the truth, and the purpose of this is to enable them to understand the truth principles and enter into the truth reality. Now that God has expressed a great number of truths, He rarely does this work of disciplining, chastening, and even punishing that He did in the past. So what people ought to focus on more is the various truth principles that they should put into practice when they encounter matters in everyday life, rather than focusing on whether God is disciplining them, obstructing them, or making things go smoothly for them in a given matter, and other such ways and practices. Since God seldom uses methods such as disciplining, chastening, and punishing, it’s not the case that He never uses them, He just seldom uses them. What do I mean by “seldom uses them”? Occasionally, in some special circumstances, He will use the methods of disciplining, chastening, or punishing to—in a light or representative and symbolic way—do some work that helps people to understand the truth and practice according to the truth principles. That is, He uses these ways to help people enter into the truth reality, but that’s all. Why, then, doesn’t God use these methods in His work a lot? Why doesn’t He predominantly work in these ways? In one regard, it is because at this stage of His work, He has already told and provided people with the various truths that they should understand, and they have already heard these truths, and already have a grasp and knowledge of them within the scope of their comprehension. This is one reason. The other reason relates to people’s subjective factors. People have the conscience of normal humanity, and under the effect of this conscience, they will gauge whether the corrupt dispositions they reveal, or their own actions, thoughts, and viewpoints, are positive or negative. Within people, at the very least, there is the standard of conscience by which to gauge all of this. If you use your conscience to gauge a certain thing and you determine that it is positive, then you should go ahead and do it, and you needn’t reproach yourself if you are a little slow or late in doing it. If you use your conscience to gauge that thing and you determine that it is negative and something that shouldn’t be done, then you should restrain yourself and not say or do it. However, if you do not have feelings driven by your conscience and reason, then you are not a human being. If you do not even have conscience and reason, then you cannot possibly gauge whether something is right or wrong, positive or negative, and thus it would be meaningless for God to discipline and punish you. In other words, God does not work on those who are not subject to the effects of a conscience, and He does not save such people. What does “not saving them” include? He does not even want to discipline them; He does not discipline them or chasten them. There are those who ask, “If someone does evil, will God punish them?” God will not punish them directly, because the church has administrative decrees. If they are an evil person who is causing a disturbance or disruption, then clearing them out or expelling them will be the end of it. Even if they do not meet the conditions for being cleared out or expelled, they will be sent to a B group. If someone squanders God’s offerings, that is more serious, and they must reimburse whatever they ought to, and afterward they must be dealt with appropriately. This is the principle of God’s work and the principle by which He treats people. It’s simple, is it not? (Yes, it is.) Do you think that God choosing you means that He must make you complete, and will not stop until He does so? That is only the case for those who have a conscience and reason, and who pursue the truth—it is only the case for those who can be saved. As for those who do not even have the awareness of conscience, they need only be treated and dealt with according to the church’s administrative decrees—God will not discipline them. What point is there in disciplining them? Disciplining people who lack normal humanity and a conscience is equivalent to trying to force a fish to live on land, or a pig to fly, it is the same as casting pearls before swine and casting holy things unto the unclean to eat—God certainly does not do it. Therefore, in this matter, people should not think, “I was chosen by God, I am one of God’s sheep, and even if I make mistakes and do evil, God will not abandon me.” This statement does not hold water—it is hard to say whether you are a sheep or a wolf. How do you gauge whether you are one of God’s sheep? It depends on whether you have awareness of it and whether your conscience feels reproached and reprimanded when you have done something that goes against humanity and conscience. If it does feel reprimanded, you will turn yourself around, and even if you do not understand the truth, you will be able to act according to the standard of conscience. At the very least, you will be able to act in accordance with normal humanity. If you have these manifestations, then you are one of God’s sheep. If, when you encounter something that goes against the conscience of normal humanity and violates moral justice, you don’t have the slightest sense of justice, and you don’t feel loathing or hatred for the evil you have done, or for the disturbance caused by evil people, and your conscience doesn’t feel reprimanded at all, then you are not one of God’s sheep, you are a wolf, you are a beast, and you are a devil. This is the standard by which to gauge whether you are one of God’s sheep or a wolf. If you are not one of God’s sheep, and yet you still constantly measure God’s work using ideas, notions, and imaginings such as, “I have revealed corruption and rebelliousness, yet God has not disciplined me; God should discipline me,” then you are stupid. You are not one of God’s sheep at all, and God has no intention of saving you, so are you qualified to measure and judge God’s work? If this isn’t stupidity, what is it? You can gauge this matter, right? (I can now.)