In Your Faith in God You Should Obey God

Why do you believe in God? Most people are confounded by this question. They always have two entirely different viewpoints about the practical God and the God in heaven, which shows that they believe in God not in order to obey, but to receive certain benefits, or to escape the suffering of disaster. Only then are they somewhat obedient, but their obedience is conditional, it is for the sake of their own personal prospects, and forced upon them.

It is said: “God should show people great miracles; He must heal the sick and cast out demons, and He must bestow blessings upon people. If He does not show miracles, if He doesn’t bring any benefit for mankind, then He is not the true God. If this Almighty God you believe in is the true God, why do you still get sick? Why aren’t your homes peaceful? As believers in Jesus, those of us who are sick are cured, and those who are not sick have peace at home.”

Response: There are people who deny that Almighty God is the return of Jesus and that He is the true God because people who believe in Almighty God still get sick and their homes are not at peace. They believe that by believing in the true God, people should be free from illness and disaster and their homes should be totally peaceful. These are nothing but human notions and imaginations, and they absolutely are not a genuine understanding of God. They are particularly out of line with the facts of God’s work. As everyone knows, Job believed in the true God, and Jehovah was inherently the one and only God, but Job’s family suffered robbery, plundering of all their wealth, and the death of their children. Even Job himself was covered in sores head-to-toe. So if you say that by believing in the true God everything should be peaceful, there should be no sickness and no disasters, then what do you think of what Job experienced? Could it be that we should deny that Jehovah is the true God? Jesus is the true God, but over the course of Peter following Jesus, he underwent countless difficulties and trials, and his illnesses were never-ending. The Apostle Paul also suffered many adversities—he was flogged and stoned many times, and ran into trouble at sea many times. He also became ill. The other disciples and apostles also suffered through many difficulties. If it’s said that by believing in the true God, one should have peace and health, how can we account for these things that came upon devout disciples and apostles who followed Jesus? Could we actually say that Jesus is not the true God? It is clear that human understanding is one-dimensional and biased! The truth is that Jehovah is the true God, and it was not only because He revealed the miracle of leading the Israelites out of their slavery in Egypt or that He was able to bestow blessings upon mankind. What’s more important is that He could issue the law that led mankind’s lives on earth for two thousand years, and the law that He issued allowed man to understand how to worship God and how to have proper human life on earth. Jesus is the true God, and it is not only because He could heal the sick and cast out demons, or that He could bestow peace and material benefits upon people.

What are the differences between the work of the Holy Spirit and the work of evil spirits?

Relevant Words of God:

You must understand what things arise from God and what things arise from Satan. The things that arise from God cause you to become ever clearer about visions, and they cause you to get closer and closer to God, earnestly sharing love with brothers and sisters; you are capable of showing consideration toward God’s burden, and your God-loving heart does not abate; there is a road ahead for you to walk. The things that arise from Satan cause you to lose visions and all you had before is gone; you become estranged from God, you have no love for brothers and sisters and you have a hateful heart. You become desperate, you no longer wish to live the church life, and your God-loving heart is no more. This is Satan’s work and is also the consequence brought about by the work of evil spirits.

from “The Twenty-second Utterance” in The Word Appears in the Flesh

If it is the work of the Holy Spirit, man becomes ever more normal, and his humanity becomes ever more normal. Man has an increasing knowledge of his disposition, which has been corrupted by Satan, and of the essence of man, and he has an ever greater longing for the truth. That is to say, the life of man grows and grows, and the corrupt disposition of man becomes capable of more and more changes—all of which is the meaning of God becoming the life of man. If a way is incapable of revealing those things that are the essence of man, is incapable of changing the disposition of man, and, moreover, is incapable of bringing him before God or giving him a true understanding of God, and even causes his humanity to become ever more lowly and his sense ever more abnormal, then this way must not be the true way, and it may be the work of an evil spirit, or the old way. In short, it cannot be the present work of the Holy Spirit.

from “Only Those Who Know God and His Work Can Satisfy God” in The Word Appears in the Flesh