Eastern Lightning | The Transformation of an Only Child

Eastern Lightning | The Transformation of an Only Child

        —Only Almighty God Can Save the Degenerate Youth of Today

Bian Hua, Yunnan Province

I started following Almighty God when I was 19 years old: As soon as I left school I joined The Church of Almighty God. I had had very little to do with society, and didn’t really know much about what was going on in it. But I did know that I totally represented one of the special characteristics of Chinese society in that I was a selfish only child.

Picture of The Church of Almighty God

As a result of my parents having to be subject to the Chinese government’s policy of population control, I was in the first batch of “achievements.” After I was born, everybody in my family started treating me with the care and protection deserving of a rare and precious treasure. My mother told me that in my first year I often had a fever and so my father would hold me in his arms and walk around the bedroom all night to stop me from crying. As my parents both had jobs, and so didn’t have the time to look after me, I was sent to kindergarten before the age of 2. My grandma was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to adjust, and so would often stand outside the kindergarten to see if I was crying or not, which made her often late for work. Once when the weather was very cold my mother stayed up all night knitting a warm sweater for me to wear the next day. In school my grades were always good, and having me as a high achiever was gratifying to my parents’ and grandparents’ vanity of longing to see their children succeed, giving them more reason to treat me like a precious pearl. During my school years, the first thing my father would do when he got home from work was to massage my hands to prevent them from getting tired from doing homework. In the summer when I got home after school, my mother would always get a bowl of peeled, frozen, sugary tomatoes from the fridge for me to eat. I remember one time when my parents found a teacher to teach me the pipa, a kind of Chinese lute. But after practicing some finger movements for a couple of days I got tired of it and told my parents that I wasn’t going to learn it, so my parents reluctantly conformed with my wishes. Every weekend I would go to my grandma’s house and she would always put some money in my pocket. If I told her I didn’t want it, she’d say: “Free lunch, why not? Take it. I’ll give you money as long as you come every week.” She always used to stuff my mouth with tasty treats too, and I’d eat so much that I’d get stomach ache. Thinking back on this now, I can see that Chinese parents don’t have truths and that’s why they don’t know how to educate their kids. So what did I turn into from being smothered with all this affection? I turned into a selfish, temperamental, fragile kid who had no willpower or purpose in life. I was like an invalid who sits in bed every day holding out their hand to take whatever is given and opening their mouth when it’s time to be fed, but never caring a jot for anyone else. I was totally unforgiving toward my parents, and I never accepted anyone else’s opinions. If my parents said something critical about me I’d retort with 10 times as much. My father even gave me the nickname “twisted donut” because I’d become so twisted and troublesome. I particularly hated doing anything that resembled hard work, so if my folks weren’t home when I was off school then I wouldn’t eat, because I was too lazy to heat up the food that they had cooked for me. Later, they would give me some money to go out and buy something to eat, but I couldn’t be bothered going for a little walk so I went hungry instead. So my parents told me a story about an idiotic child. The child’s mother cooked a flatbread for him and hung it round his neck because she had to go out for a long time. But when she got home she discovered that her son had died of hunger because he’d only eaten the bread in front of his face and hadn’t known to eat the rest of it hanging around his neck. My mother said I was an even bigger idiot than that boy. Apart from studying, I had no other purpose in life. By the time I got to high school I was even more resentful: School was a bit far from home so I had to cycle an hour every morning and there was a lot more pressure to pass exams. One morning when it was raining heavily, I fell off my bike on the way to school. I ended up lying in a big puddle with my lunch scattered all over the ground. I wanted to cry, and really thought that high school was a living hell. I felt it was all too hard, too tiring, and I really wanted to drop out of school. At a later date, my mother read in the newspaper about a first-year student at Qinghua University who had hung himself in the college dormitory. This student had become tired and depressed with having to do all the other tasks in addition to studying—doing his own laundry, getting meals in the cafeteria, tidying up his room—that students have to do. Apparently, he was particularly upset by having to peel his hard-boiled eggs at breakfast (at home his parents used to peel them for him), and, feeling that he was under too much pressure, took his own life. People started calling this kind of student “high grades but low basic abilities,” and my mother was scared that I’d become one of these useless creatures, so she started nagging me about becoming more independent. But I was already 16 or 17 years old and my character was pretty much fully formed, and so my parents’ exhortations had no effect on me—whatever they said just went in one ear and out the other. At school, a popular saying among my schoolmates at that time was: “Walk your own way and let others say what they want!” But my schoolmates were all just like me: China’s spoiled only children who lacked learning and talent and had no direction in life.

I’m really grateful for God’s salvation that resulted in my whole family accepting the work of the last days of Almighty God when I was 19, which enabled me to quickly start fulfilling my duties in the church. I had never been in a village before then, so I had lots of nice ideas about village life because I had seen programs on TV showing men plowing fields and women weaving cloth as they enjoyed the wonderful natural scenery. When I was young, I’d also heard a song called “In the Field of Hope,” and it conjured up images of bountiful fields of grain swaying in the breeze. In my mind’s eye life in the countryside was really lovely….

Three years later, my “dream” came true. Some of the brothers and sisters in my church had been detained by the communist government and I was involved, so I had to leave home to avoid being captured too. Our church leader arranged for me to go to the countryside, which was also an opportunity for me to fulfill my duties as best I could. My parents didn’t want me to leave them, but I was secretly pleased because at last I could live in a village while fulfilling my duties! After a fast drive out of the city I arrived in the main town of a certain county. On getting out of the car I was taken aback at what I saw: There were just a few 2- or 3-storey buildings and some derelict shacks, there was dust everywhere, and the people were dressed in fashions from years ago. I thought: “I never would have believed that such a backward place still existed in China! What about all those programs on TV about socialist new villages? Isn’t everyone these days supposed to be middle-class prosperous? How come they’re not?”

But I was soon caught up in doing my duties, and the first test I had to pass was riding a bicycle. My duties took me far and wide, and sometimes I had to ride my bike 15 or 20 kilometers for a single trip. Riding long distances was something I could handle, but what really bothered me was the poor condition of the “short-life” roads that the CCP government had built. The local people told me that the roads had only been built a few years when big potholes began appearing in them. Some of them just had bricks for the foundation and a thin layer of asphalt on top, and so started to disintegrate very quickly. Riding my bike along these roads was like riding a horse over rough grasslands in that it was constantly dipping or rearing up, and sometimes my hands went numb from all the vibrating. I actually felt sorry for my bike and thought: “Poor bike, you’re suffering and I can’t do anything about it. This is one of China’s special ‘socialist highways,’ meaning that most of the money went into officials’ pockets while we ordinary citizens have to put up with bumpy rides.” I was used to the hustle and bustle of the big city so I felt really bored riding along these rural highways with nothing but fields to the left and right, and just the occasional cow or a few goats to relieve the monotony. Every day I cycled to do pastoral work with a few of the local sisters and I always ended up far behind them, puffing and panting, while they waited for me up ahead. One time one of them urged me to ride a bit faster, and I didn’t say anything but in my mind I was thinking: “I’m already pushing myself as hard as I can. Why can’t you understand that? How am I supposed to keep up with you when you’ve been riding bikes since you were a kid?” So my heart started to make unspoken complaints and it was with this attitude of resentment that I went about my duties. Every day the distance seemed too far, and my duties too odious. I wanted to go home, but because of the situation there I couldn’t. Then one time when I was doing some self-reflection I read this passage of God’s words: “God’s dealing of people’s external disposition is also one part of His work; dealing with people’s external, abnormal humanity, for example, or their lifestyle and habits, their ways and customs…” (“Only Loving God Is Truly Believing in God” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). “No matter what your actual stature is, you must first possess the will to suffer hardship as well as true faith, and you must have the will to forsake the flesh. … God will perfect you through these things. If you lack these conditions, you cannot be perfected” (“Those Who Are to Be Made Perfect Must Undergo Refinement” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). From these words of God’s I understood His intentions for me. I had no humanity left after being corrupted by Satan and had become addicted to a life of comfort and ease. I hated hard work, and wasn’t even able to take care of myself properly. That’s why God had arranged for me to be sent to this kind of place: To build willpower, strengthen my perseverance, and supplement my deficiencies. Once I knew God’s intentions for me I no longer resisted. From then on, every time I cycled I would pray or sing hymns, and would often be moved to tears by God’s words. My heart felt that it was getting closer and closer to God. Even though the distance I had to travel was as far as ever, I no longer felt it was far, and sometimes I felt that just a short while after starting to draw near to God I arrived at my destination. That was when I first felt that God had put me in a good situation. The countryside air was pure, there were few vehicles on the roads, and there weren’t many things that could distract me from God. I often quiet myself before God to ponder over God’s words and long for His love, which was all conducive to my believing in God, pursuing the truth, and growing in life. At home I had always been a very fussy eater. For example, if there was some fat on the piece of meat I was eating I would bite it off and spit it out. My father used to tell me the story of the son of a rich landowner who only ever ate the filling of Chinese dumplings and would spit out the casings, and in the end died of hunger during a famine. But, as usual, his admonitions had no effect on me—only God has the means to really change people. I had been transferred to a very poor place to fulfill my duties, a place where the locals lived hard lives and all they had to eat was steamed buns, pickled vegetables, and watery soup. As their meals didn’t contain any oils, I went from being a person who ate very little at meals to someone who ate 4 large buns at every meal and still felt hungry soon after! After being “pruned” like this for a few months I stopped being a finicky eater and began to like everything that was put in my bowl. To be honest, when I first began my duties in the village I really felt resentful about having to wash my own clothes and blow up the tires of my bicycle. I wanted to weep (my parents used to do all this kind of stuff for me) but after interacting with the sisters in the village for a while I came to appreciate just how amazing they were! For example, one of sisters, who was 2 years younger than me, got a flat tire while riding her bike. But without batting an eyelid she got out the tools that she carried in her bag, levered off the tire, repaired the puncture with a rubber patch, and was back on her bike in no time, humming a tune as she cycled off. I couldn’t help thinking that if it had been me I would have stood there crying (there was no one around). From then on, I knew that any problems I encountered in the future I would have to resolve them myself because crying and complaining were no use whatsoever. I spent a year and a half in that village, and God sent many people, things, and events to help to perfect me. I learned things that I hadn’t been able to learn in the 20 years I spent with my parents and in school: How to take care of myself and how to solve problems myself with God’s help rather than relying on other people. I also became better at enduring hardships and was no longer fussy about what I ate. All this brought me closer to God. What was even more miraculous to me was that during that year and a half I wasn’t a weak and sickly youth at all. I didn’t even catch a cold once, the enteritis that had bothered me for years disappeared, and I was brimming with energy from riding my bicycle every day for months on end. While fulfilling my duties I was also able to witness the reality of life of the villagers: Many places didn’t have running water and so they were drinking well water that was contaminated with polluted surface water; many villages didn’t have asphalt roads so every time it rained their roads turned into muddy, potholed tracks that were very difficult to navigate; some places had only recently been connected to the national power grid. In general, the villagers worked hard all year round for little money and often suffered from exhaustion and poverty. Their lives were nothing like that depicted by the CCP news reports—all that stuff about “with these socialist new villages China has already become a prosperous middle-class society” was complete nonsense. If God hadn’t arranged for me to spend time in the countryside and witness it for myself I would have remained a deluded, silly child who believed all of the CCP’s propaganda. I would never have gotten to see that side of their whitewashing, lies, and hoodwinking. As a result of the CCP’s education and trickery, my generation had come to believe that everything was simple and beautiful. I had little grounding in reality, and so whenever I encountered difficulties it was like I was paralyzed. If God hadn’t saved me I would have spent my whole life as a piece of useless junk.

Read God's Words

Although on the surface it appeared that my abnormal humanity had improved a little this certainly didn’t mean that my life disposition had changed. God wanted to transform me, to cleanse me, and so continuously arranged situations to refine me. Because my parents had spoilt me over such a long period of time I’d become especially willful and arrogant, and if anyone didn’t agree with me I would fly into a rage. Later on, God put me in other practical situations in order to resolve my corruption. At that time, I was put with over 20 brothers and sisters to complete a big task together, and there were times when living together or fulfilling our duties together that some friction or quarrels occurred. At first, I always took offence and sometimes even stormed off by myself to sulk. I’d think: “Why are they being so unreasonable? I’m clearly in the right, so why won’t they listen to me?” There was one day when one of the sisters came to me and said: “You’ve got a flaw in your character: You don’t respect other people. When others disagree with you, you walk off in a huff and even slam doors!” I stared at her dumbfounded, all the while burning with the injustice of it as I thought: “When did I ever slam doors?!” After standing my ground for a while I decided to put on a show of reluctantly accepting the criticism, but in my mind I was muttering to myself: “No, it’s all of you who are wrong but you blame me…” Because of my constantly revealing my arrogance and self-righteousness, and holding to my opinions, God prodded the brothers and sisters into dealing with me. It was like I couldn’t get on with anybody. At the time, I was very upset and that’s when I remembered God’s words about how a poor relationship with the people around you means you have a poor relationship with God. So I calmed myself down and began to reflect on my actions. I read these words of God’s: “What is the transformation of disposition? You must be a lover of truth, accept the judgment and chastisement of God’s word as you experience His work, and experience all kinds of suffering and refining, through which you are purified of the satanic poisons within you. This is the transformation in disposition” (“How to Know Man’s Nature” in Records of Christ’s Talks). God’s words helped me recognize that He was using various trials and refinements to purify me of the satanic poisons inside of me. The sister’s criticism had been brought on by God in order to help me know myself and transform my corrupt disposition. Only by accepting the brothers and sister’s criticisms and instructions, submitting to God’s arrangements of my situation, the people and things and objects around me, and seeking and practicing truths in everything, could my life disposition achieve transformation. I thought about the corruptions that I’d revealed and recognized that it was Satan’s poisonous idea of “I’m the greatest” acting on me and making me unable to live and work in harmony with the brothers and sisters. I always expected that I had the final say and that everyone had to listen to me, like I was the boss. If anyone disagreed with me in the slightest I would lose my temper, and this was my satanic disposition being revealed, making me live in an arrogant, self-righteous, self-centered, satanic image. All the things that I studied in CCP schools promoted this kind of thinking. For instance, all those emperors of this or that dynasty in the history books—like Emperor Qin Shi Huang, Wu Zetian, Han Wudi etc.—were self-righteous and high and mighty. And a lot of modern Chinese people seem to take that famous sentence of Cao Cao’s—“I’d rather betray everyone than let them betray me”—as their personal slogan. It’s like they believe only people with this type of character have the mark of a leader and can make it big in life, while those gentle souls who never quarrel or kick up a fuss are all cowards. This toxic, satanic concept of “I’m the greatest” that is seen as something positive was instilled into me in those communist party schools, and it became an integral part of my life. When I think back on how unruly and rebellious I was when living with my parents, I know now that it was because I didn’t understand truths and so I didn’t think my behavior was corrupt or wrong. Now I have God’s words to help me distinguish good from evil and beauty from ugliness, and so I must accept God's judgment and chastisement and quickly rid myself of this satanic disposition. After a long period of experiencing God dealing with me and refining me I started to act in accordance with God’s demands. If there was something to be done, I started to discuss it first with the brothers and sisters and learned how to put my ego to one side. My interactions with the brothers and sisters thus became much more relaxed. I used to be very selfish, and whatever I did or said I would only take into account my own feelings and interests, without having the slightest regards for anyone else. One time, one of the leaders was being negative, and since I also had a lot of problems and grievances that were bothering me I took the opportunity to air all of them so that the leader could resolve them for me. After she had done so, she left, and shortly after, another sister came along. I told her about my talk with the leader and how she had said that she was also negative. So the sister asked me: “Did you fellowship about this with her?” I said that I didn’t think of fellowshipping about it with the leader, and she replied: “That’s shows how selfish you are. You don’t know how to help people.” I felt very bad after being criticized like this, but later on I opened a book of God’s fellowship and saw these words of God’s: “In the past, when the words of God have not become people’s lives, it was Satan’s nature that took charge and dominated within them. What specific things were within that nature? For example, why are you selfish? … Right now you all have understood that this is mainly because of Satan’s poison contained within. Satan’s poison can be fully expressed with words. … ‘Everyone for himself and the devil take the hindmost.’ This one phrase expresses the root of the problem: The logic of Satan has become people’s lives, and no matter what they do, whether it’s for some purpose or other, they are only doing it for themselves. People all think that ‘Every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost,’” (“How to Take the Path of Peter” in Records of Christ’s Talks). I was able to reflect on my actions and behavior by comparing them with God’s words. I discovered that at every point I’d only been thinking of myself, and how to get rid of my own negativity, so that I wouldn’t suffer so much. I hadn’t thought for a moment that other people were suffering with their negativity and also needed help and support from the brothers and sisters. I’d been too deeply corrupted by Satan, and in my heart there was only a place for me. I never considered other people’s feelings or made an effort to care about, support, or look after other folks. This is when I understood that this kind of selfish, despicable expression was the revelation of a corrupt, satanic disposition. It was a result of the long-term effect of such toxic, satanic ideas as “Every man for himself and the Devil take the hindmost.” All this school education, social conditioning, and satanic knowledge was what had corrupted and poisoned me. In later years, it was through experiencing negativity, weakness, failures, and setbacks many, many times that I was able to fully grasp how hard and bitter it is to live in darkness, and how much I need the help and support of others. Even if it’s just a word or two of comfort it can still give me a small measure of strength. After experiencing God’s work, and then seeing brothers and sisters who were experiencing negativity and weakness, I am now able to understand their predicaments and how they are feeling and I try my best to help them. Now when I think of how I used to behave at home I feel that I let my parents down badly. They brought me up, but I only took from them and never repaid them with anything. My attitude toward them was usually awful, and I see now that I was corrupted by Satan to the point of having no conscience or rationality, or even a shred of basic humanity. Later on, the church asked me to look after those brothers and sisters who were wanted by the CCP government and so couldn’t return home, and also some who had been away from home fulfilling duties for such long periods that their families were suffering financial hardship. In terms of clothing and other household items, they needed to be consulted and helped quickly, and this duty gave me the chance to learn how to care about and look after others. As God’s words put it: “In believing in God, if man desires transformation in his own disposition, then he must not detach himself from real life. In real life, you must know yourself, forsake yourself, practice the truth, as well as learn the principles, common sense and rules of self-conduct in all things before you are able to achieve gradual transformation” (“Discussing Church Life and Real Life” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). Being in The Church of Almighty God has allowed me to understand at a very deep level just how the schools founded and controlled by the CCP teach children to focus on striving for fame and status. They teach children to try and be better than others in the struggle to make a name for themselves or become experts. But these are things that are out of reach for most people, and the more they pursue them the more arrogant and conceited they become, and the more they consider everything and everyone to be beneath them. By revealing their satanic disposition in this way they harm themselves and their families. By contrast, Almighty God taught me how to behave properly; He helped me to pragmatically equip myself with the things that my humanity was lacking. Experiencing God’s judgment and chastisement is to enable me to live out the likeness of a true person, which is good for me and good for others, too. I feel that the biggest gain from believing in God has been gradually learning how to self-reflect: In the past, I never knew myself and always felt that other people were wronging me, and so was full of resentment. I was living in the middle of Satan’s trickery but didn’t know it. But after reading God’s words I know that we should self-reflect on everything, and so I no longer blame the people or things around me. I now feel free and liberated.

Last winter I saw one of the young brothers (a 19-year old only child) rent a house by himself so that he could repair mp5 devices for free for the brothers and sisters. He also often went to help look after the poorer brothers and sisters. I heard one of the sisters say that he too was once a spoiled “little prince” who often spent many hours at a time in cyber cafes and wouldn’t go home, causing his parents to worry about him a lot. But then his mother found faith in God, and converted him, too. He then started going to youth meetings at the church and became a totally different person: One who listened to others, knew how to act, and started to love positive things.

A few days ago I met another only child, this time a 25-year old sister. After graduating from university she began to carry out duties in the church. I saw how good she was at caring for and looking after the new brothers and sisters, and I thought: “This young sister is an only child but she’s not spoiled at all. She’s a lot better than I was.” At a later date, I was able to fellowship with her, and she told me: “I wasn’t much to begin with, either. My mother used to do everything for me, and I believed that that was how it should be. After going to university, I still called my mother every time I encountered a problem, and would say to her indignantly: ‘Mom, where are you when I need you? Why aren’t you here when I’m sad?’ My mom would say helplessly: ‘I’m your old servant!’” The young sister then told me about how she had undergone the judgment and chastisement of God’s word after believing in God, and the process of how she’d gone from being an extremely selfish person to being saved and transformed by God. That’s when I understood that God had worked on her, that it was God’s judgment and punishment that had so thoroughly transformed her. Not long ago, I also met 3 young brothers and sisters—one 17 years old, two 19 years old—who were fulfilling their duties earnestly and were even working late into the night sometimes. I even saw a 7-year old child talking about truths to pursue transformation of disposition while we were fellowshipping truths! Where is such strength from? Besides God’s power and authority, what else could transform my generation of useless degenerates?

Almighty God's Words

It made me sigh when I thought about how my generation of “deformed children”—the product of family planning, over-indulgent parents, and the CCP’s damaging education system—were so lacking in talent or skills. We still all thought highly of ourselves, however, and all wanted to do great things, but whenever we encountered the smallest difficulties we crumpled. We were so weak, so lacking in perseverance, but were still so very stroppy. I always wondered how the communist party could say that their system of education was producing “miraculous results” when it was clear that each generation of students was worse than the previous one! Our parents had no control over us, and the teachers were even more powerless to change us. Only Almighty God’s words have the power to thoroughly transform the deeply corrupted, degenerate, and aimless youth of my generation. As Almighty God said: “Though the word ‘word’ is simple and ordinary, the word from the mouth of God become flesh shakes the entire universe; His word transforms the heart of man, the notions and the old disposition of man, and the old appearance of the entire world. Through the ages, only the God of this day works in such a manner, and only He speaks and saves man thus. Thereafter, man lives under the guidance of the word, shepherded and supplied by the word; they live in the world of the word, live within the curses and blessings of God’s word, and even more live under the judgment and chastisement of the word. These words and this work are all for the sake of man’s salvation, achieving God’s will, and changing the original appearance of the world of old creation” (“The Age of Kingdom Is the Age of Word” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). The transformations that we have undergone highlight the power of God’s words.

I have been following Almighty God for 14 years already, and in these 14 years I have continuously been fulfilling duties in the church. I really feel that these years have been of immense significance and value to me, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart. I used to complain that I was giving the best years of my life to the church, and that I wasn’t able to enjoy all the tasty foods, the fun and games, and all the other pleasures of youth. But now I deeply feel the love that God has for me. God saved me from being a selfish, despicable, arrogant, self-important and self-righteous “invalid.” Although I have many corrupt dispositions that have yet to be rid of—and there is more of God’s judgment, chastisement, cleansing, and transformation that I must undergo—I won’t leave God or The Church of Almighty God. Even if I had to be the most junior member of the church, I would still follow God to the end! Even if I knew I would suffer harm and persecution at the hands of the CCP, I still wouldn’t leave my God! That’s because I’ve seen God’s work on myself and my team of co-workers, and although nothing miraculous has happened, the power of God’s words indeed surpasses that of miracles. God’s words have brought about life-changing transformations in us, and this is work that absolutely no one else can do! From the bottom of my heart I have pledged to God: “Almighty God, thank you for saving this team of young people that I’m a part of. We’ll always follow You and will never abandon You!”

Dear friends, I don’t know if you have discovered this yet but the difficulty of managing young people has become one of the most serious problems that our society faces. Children are getting more and more selfish, as seen in the way they order their parents around like slaves. They have lost conscience and humanity, and have got to the point where they can’t even take care of their most basic needs. China’s government is making a big public show of its policy of cleaning up the Internet for the sake of the health of young people but at the same time they are quietly developing new online games that trap people in a world of virtual reality in order to make big bucks. What these online games promote is violence, pornography, war and trickery. After the youth of today have been fooled and poisoned by these tricks of Satan’s they inevitably fall victim to one or more disastrous outcomes: Some spend all their time in cyber cafes; some fall in love too early in life; some start getting into fights; some just live for pleasures of the flesh and don’t do anything meaningful. Their parents are usually worried sick by these kids but the kids themselves are never even aware of it, or couldn’t care less anyway. There have even been cases of young people killing their parents—parents who spent so many years dutifully bringing them up— because the parents tried to restrict their access to the Internet! Some parents get so saddened by seeing their offspring tormented by soul-destroying online games that they pay large sums of money to send them to schools that specialize in rescuing kids addicted to Internet stuff. But high-pressure management doesn’t always work, and many kids go straight back to playing the games whenever they can. The parents end up mentally and physically exhausted, and there’s nothing that they or the school staff can do. And of course the national government and social organizations are even less effective at dealing with the problem because they only know how to corrupt people and not how to save people!

Almighty God asks us: “Can you really educate your descendants to become ‘human beings’?” (“The Purpose of Managing Mankind” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). The facts show that we men don’t have the ability to do this, neither do teachers nor school staff, and national governments or social organizations have even less capability. Only God, the Creator of all things, has this ability. That’s because God created us and thus God understands everything about us with total clarity and He knows how to save us! Almighty God said: “Since the day man came into existence, God has been steady in His work, managing this universe and directing the change and movement of all things. … The heart and spirit of man are held in the hand of God, and all the life of man is beheld in the eyes of God. Regardless of whether or not you believe this, any and all things, living or dead, will shift, change, renew, and disappear according to God’s thoughts. This is how God rules over all things” (“God Is the Source of Man’s Life” in The Word Appears in the Flesh).

One of the older sisters has a son who got addicted to drugs. Even being locked up in a drug rehabilitation center a number of times couldn’t cure his addiction. The sister couldn’t eat or sleep well from worrying about him, and was at her wit’s end about what to do. At a later date, she started to believe in God. She prayed to God, entrusted her son to God, and begged God to save him. That’s when she saw, with her own eyes, a miracle happen to her son: He not only quickly gave up his drug habit but even found a steady job. Now he has a wife and children, and leads a normal life. There are many other examples of this kind of thing happening….

Friends, are you troubled by seeing your children sink into degeneracy? You’re living in a world of endless suffering, so it would be better to hurry up and bring your family before Almighty God and see whether or not a miracle will happen to you! We believers in God have witnessed first hand how He works, so we will follow Him with hearts of steel no matter what happens to the world around us. We are telling the truth when we bear witness to God’s ability to save people and the wonder therein to you, and hope that you can be like us and gain God’s salvation and blessings and walk onto the bright, right path of life!