What topic will we fellowship today? We will fellowship a very important topic, a topic that we have fellowshiped ever since God began His work. It is a topic that is very important to every single person, and is also an issue that everyone must come into contact with, and will come into contact with, during the course of their belief in God. It is a very important issue and it is both unavoidable and inseparable from man. Speaking of importance, what is the most important thing to every single believer? Some will say that the most important thing is understanding God’s will; some will say that the most important thing is eating and drinking more of the words of God; some will say that the most important thing is to know yourselves; some will say that the most important thing is to know how to be saved by God, how to follow God and how to be able to satisfy God’s will. But we will set these topics aside for today. What will we talk about? The topic we will talk about concerns God. Isn’t this a topic of paramount importance to everyone? (Yes.) What things does a topic about God involve? Of course, this topic is assuredly inseparable from God’s disposition, God’s essence and God’s work, so today let’s talk about “God’s Work, God’s Disposition and God Himself.”
God’s work is not a topic that anyone will be strangers to, and people come into contact with it from the day they begin to believe in God. Some people will say, “We experience God’s work every day. We’re not strangers to it! How could it be possible that we are strangers to God’s work?” Some will also say, “God’s disposition is a topic that we spend our lives researching, investigating and focusing on, so we’re not strangers to that either. As for God Himself, He is the One whom we follow, we believe in and we adhere to; we’re also not strangers to Him.” Since the creation of the world, God has not stopped His work. As He works, He constantly expresses His own disposition, conveys His own essence and expresses His word in all manner of ways, unceasingly conveys Himself, His will and His essence to mankind, and expresses His will and His requirements for mankind. Therefore, in a literal sense, these topics will not appear strange to anyone, but in actual fact those who now follow God are indeed strangers to God’s work, God’s disposition and God Himself. Why do I say this? Whilst man experiences God’s work, they come into contact with God, and so they think they understand God’s disposition and that they have knowledge of a part of God’s disposition. They think they are on familiar terms with God and that they understand a lot about Him. But looking at the current situation, it seems that many people’s understanding is confined only to books, to their own personal scope of experience and even more their understanding is confined to facts they can see with their own eyes, and there lies a gulf between their understanding and the true God Himself. How big a gulf exactly? You may not be clear about this in your heart, or you may have some awareness and some feeling, but as far as God Himself is concerned, man’s understanding of Him is very far removed from the essence of true God Himself. So, there is a great need for us to bring up this topic of “God’s Work, God’s Disposition and God Himself” and fellowship about it.
In actual fact, God’s disposition is open to each and every person; it’s not hidden. For God has never consciously tried to evade anyone, nor has He ever consciously tried to conceal Himself, not allowing man to know Him or to understand Him. Instead, since the beginning, God’s disposition has been open and has been in plain view for everyone to see. This is because, in God’s management, God works before everyone and on everyone. At the same time as He does this work, He continually reveals His disposition, and continually leads every single person by means of His essence and by means of what He has and is. Within every age, every period of time, whether in good environments or terrible environments, generally speaking, God’s disposition is open to everyone and what He has and is is open to everyone, just as His life provides and supports man in an unending flow. Yet, to some people, God’s disposition is hidden. Why do I say this? For although these people live within God’s work and although they follow God, they have never tried to understand God, they have no desire to know God and even less do they wish to draw close to God. As far as these people are concerned, an understanding of God’s disposition would signify the beginning of their end, and it would signify their judgment and condemnation by God’s disposition. Therefore, these people have never wanted to understand God or understand His disposition, never tried to have an in-depth understanding of God’s will or to comprehend His will, and they have no desire to consciously cooperate trying to grasp His will. They just never grow tired of doing the things they want to do, believing in the God they wish to believe in, believing in the God of their own hearts who exists within their imaginings and conceptions and believing in the God of their daily lives that is with them everywhere they go. As for the true God Himself, they treat Him with a contemptuous disregard; they have no desire to understand Him or to pay Him any attention, much less draw close to Him. Instead, they gloss over themselves and wrap themselves up with the words God expresses and, in this way, they think their belief in God is bearing fruit and that their belief has brought God into their hearts. Within their hearts, however, they are being led by their imaginations, their conceptions and even by their definitions of God, and they have nothing at all to do with the true God Himself. Because once they have understood the true God Himself and God’s true disposition and understood what God has and is, then this would signify condemnation of their behavior, their belief and their seeking, therefore they are very unwilling to try to understand God’s essence, and very unwilling, very reluctant, to actively seek or pray in a way that would allow them to further understand God, know more about God’s will and further understand God’s disposition. They would rather God was a fabrication, a thing hollow and vague, and they would rather God was just as they imagine Him to be, a God at their beck and call, inexhaustible and to be used without end. When they wish to enjoy the grace of God, God would be that grace; when they need to be blessed, God would be that blessing; when they encounter adverse[a]environments, God would give them courage and be their backup. But there are also some people who eagerly wish to understand God’s disposition, who wish to truly see God Himself and who wish to truly and genuinely understand God’s disposition and what He has and is. These people seek the reality of the truth, they seek to be saved by God and they seek for God’s conquest, salvation and perfection. These people read the word of God with their hearts and they use their hearts to experience every environment and every person, matter and thing God arranges for them—they pray and they seek with a true heart. The thing they most want to know is God’s disposition and the thing they most want to understand is God’s true essence, so that they may not offend God and may see even more of God’s loveliness and realness within their experience, so that there may be a true God existing in their hearts, that God may have a place in their hearts, and that they may no longer imagine, no longer live inside a vacuum and no longer live within imaginings and conceptions; they are unwilling to live in vagueness. These people wish urgently to understand God’s disposition and to understand His essence. To them, God’s disposition and essence provide for them at all times—they provide life. Once they understand God’s disposition, they are then able to fear God still further; once they understand God, they are then better able to cooperate with God’s work and better able to be considerate toward God’s will and to do their duty. These are the attitudes toward God’s disposition of two types of people. One type doesn’t want to understand God’s disposition. Though they may say they do, and say they want to know God Himself, that they want to see what God has and is and they want to truly experience what God is like, within their hearts they would rather God did not exist, for they have been rebelling against God and defying Him all along, because they jostle with God for position in their own hearts and because in their hearts they often doubt, and even deny, the existence of God. They don’t want God’s disposition or the true God Himself to occupy their hearts. They want only to satisfy their own desires, their own imaginations and their own wild ambitions. So you see, although these people believe in God and follow God, and although some even abandon their families and careers, their evil deeds never cease. There are even some who steal offerings, some who squander offerings freely, some who curse God on the quiet and some who use their positions to vie with God for people or for status, who use any method and resort to any artifice to get people to worship them, all the while bearing witness for themselves, exalting themselves, and always wanting others to think highly of them. There are even some who want others to mistake them for God, and to them it’s best if people treat them as though they were God. They never say to people, “I am a corrupt human being; I too am corrupt and arrogant, so don’t worship me. No matter how good my actions, it is all because God raises me up, they are all things I ought to do.” They never say anything like this. Why not? Because they are deeply afraid of losing their position in people’s hearts. So these people never exalt God or bear witness for God. And the reason why they don’t exalt God or bear witness for Him is because they have never tried to understand God. Can they know God when they don’t understand Him? Impossible. Therefore, although the words of the title of this topic—“God’s Work, God’s Disposition and God Himself”—are simple, they bear a different significance for every single person. As for those who are always rebelling against God, defying God and being hostile to God, they mean condemnation; whereas for those who seek the reality of the truth and who are always able to come before God to seek His will, then beyond all doubt they will have them be like a fish back in water. So, once you hear that I will be discussing God’s disposition and God’s work, there are some among you whose heads will begin to ache; and when some others hear this, they think,[b] “Mm, this is a good topic. I need to hear about it because it will be of great benefit to me, and it is a topic that I cannot do without in my life experience. It is the key of all keys, and it is the foundation of my belief in God. People cannot do without it.” Though this topic is both near and far, both strange and familiar to everyone, whatever the case, it is still something that everyone here today must hear and is something that you all need to know and to understand. No matter how you approach this topic, how you regard it or how you understand it, it is a topic that still needs to be discussed.
God’s work began when He began to create mankind. In the beginning, God’s work was very simple. Yet despite its simplicity, within it was God’s essence and disposition. Now God’s work is higher than before, and He expresses a great many words to man and He does a great deal of specific work on everyone who follows Him, but always God’s person has remained hidden to man. Though He has twice become flesh, has anyone ever seen God’s real person since the Biblical records began? As far as you know, has anyone ever seen God’s real person? (No.) No, they haven’t, and this is something that everyone agrees on. No one has ever seen God’s real person, that is, no one has ever seen God’s true face. In other words, God’s real person, His Spirit, is hidden from all people, including God’s creations Adam and Eve, as well as Job, the righteous man whom God accepted; none have ever seen God’s real person. So why does God consciously hide His real person? Some people say, “God is afraid of frightening people!” Do you believe this? Some people say, “God hides His real person because man is so insignificant and God is so great. Man cannot look upon Him—to do so would mean death.” Then there are some who say, “God is busy managing His work every day. Maybe He doesn’t have the time to appear visibly to man.” Regardless of what you believe, I have the conclusion right here. What have I concluded? What was the topic I mentioned just now? (No one has ever seen God’s person, and why God wants to hide His person from man.) This “why God wants to hide His person from man,” should be “consciously hide His person from man.” You all heard this word “consciously,” right? God has never shown His person to man, so why does God want to consciously hide His person? Do you believe that God’s person exists? (Yes.) This is for sure! You can’t have believed for this long and then say God’s person simply doesn’t exist—that would be troublesome. We must first affirm that God’s person exists. As for how big His person is or what He looks like, are these issues that we should investigate? No, they’re not. The answer is negative; these issues are not things we as mankind should investigate. So what issues should we investigate? (God’s disposition.) (God’s work.) We’re getting back to our topic just now: God has never shown His person to mankind, so why does He consciously hide His person from mankind? There is only one reason: It is because the created mankind is too insignificant and it has been so corrupted by Satan that it does not deserve to see God’s person. Therefore, God has kept His person hidden since the time He began His work—this is the sole reason. You’re clear on this, right? (Yes, we’re clear.)
Ever since God’s management began, He has been working flat out with all His heart. While He kept His person hidden, He has constantly accompanied man, worked on mankind and worked on every single person by means of His power, His wisdom and His authority, thus bringing about the Age of Law, the Age of Grace and the present Age of Kingdom. Although God’s person is hidden from man, in actual fact He unreservedly shows man His disposition, what He has and is, and the will of God Himself toward mankind, so that man may see and experience them. Isn’t that a fact? (Yes.) Why do I say this? Regardless of what method God uses or from what perspective He does His work, He always uses His true identity to approach man, to do His work and to say the things He is supposed to say. This doesn’t mean that much to man, but to God Himself, no matter what perspective He takes to speak His words, whether from on high in the third heaven or from the perspective of the flesh, or even whether He speaks to people from the perspective of a person, He puts His heart and soul into doing every part of His work, without any deception and without hiding anything from man. And while God is doing His work, He expresses His word and expresses His own disposition and what He has and is without reserve.
After the Age of Law, how long was God in flesh for the first time? Do you know? (33 and a half years.) And would this amount of time—33 and a half years—be a long time to man? (No, not long.) This is because people can normally live into their seventies and eighties; therefore to man 33 and a half years cannot be considered a very long time. God, however, became human, an ordinary person; He was born into an ordinary family, and grew up in an ordinary family. As an ordinary man, He undertook God’s work, and He undertook God’s commission to do His work. In the Age of Grace, how much suffering did the Lord Jesus endure from the time He began His work up until the crucifixion? Although His suffering is not right there for people nowadays to see, yet are you able to perceive any of it through the records in the Bible? You should be able to, right? No matter how detailed or how sketchy the record of this fact is, generally speaking, God was filled with pain and suffering during this period of His work. Man may think that those 33 and a half years is not a long time and that little bit of suffering isn’t a big deal. But for the Lord Jesus who undertook God’s work and undertook God’s commission, didn’t He suffer greatly? Because you didn’t undertake that work or suffer that pain, you think it’s no big deal. But as for the holy, unblemished God, He is the Lord of creation who is the sovereign of all things, who dominates everything; He came to the world devoid of a sinful nature and yet took upon Himself the sins of all mankind; devoid of a sinful nature Himself, He was condemned by man, and He suffered pain never before suffered by normal people. What did His suffering signify? It signified His devotion to mankind and signified the price He paid for man’s salvation, for the redemption of man’s sins and for the completion of that stage of work. The price He paid was the price of blood, the price of life, something that no created being could pay in His stead. Only because He had God’s essence and possessed what God has and is could He undertake this suffering and this kind of work, things that no created being could undertake in His place. Is what God has and is revealed here at all? (Yes.) This was the work of the Age of Grace.
Now in the Age of Kingdom, God has once again become flesh and, although the method used is the same as the first time He became flesh, God has now been working for over 20 years. During this work, God still unreservedly expresses His word, expresses what He has and is and does the work He’s supposed to do, whilst at the same time continuously showing patience and tolerance to man’s rebelliousness and ignorance. Isn’t this also work that God does? (Yes.) During this time then, isn’t God also constantly revealing His disposition and expressing His will? Therefore, since the time of man’s creation and through God’s work up till the present stage, His disposition, what He has and is and His will have in fact always been open to anyone; God has never consciously hidden His essence, hidden His disposition or hidden His will. As for how much man understands God, that depends on their seeking and on their hearts. Isn’t that so? This being said, then isn’t it a simple matter for everyone to understand God’s disposition and understand God Himself? This is not an easy question to answer, is it? You can say it is a simple matter, yet some people seek to know God and never know Him, or never know Him clearly, only knowing Him in a hazy, vague way; and you can say it’s not a simple matter, but then that is also wrong—having experienced God’s work for this long you should have had in your spirit some interaction with God, and in your spirit had previous encounters with God and with His Spirit, and have some tales to tell. Every one of you has had some genuine dealings with God in your experience, and you should all have some perceptual knowledge of God’s disposition. Isn’t that so? (Yes.) If you say it’s a simple matter, in reality people still haven’t gotten to know God; if you say it’s not a simple matter, in reality God has done much work on man, and yet people have no knowledge of it. What problem is this? Is it God’s problem? (No.) Then whose problem is it? (It’s man’s problem.) Tell Me, does God provide a lot or a little to man? (A lot.) Does man then gain a lot or a little? (A little.) You gain a little? This is troublesome. God provides a lot for man, you yourselves acknowledge that He provides a lot and yet, when I ask you whether you gain a lot, you still say no. Don’t you lack conscience? Can you say such a thing? It must be put this way: God provides a lot for man and, in actual fact, they have gained so much since following God. But for various reasons—their lack of caliber, their ignorance, their rebelliousness, their mindlessness and various intentions—they have let so much slip through their fingers. In reality, doesn’t God give much to man? Although God has hidden His person, He provides to man all that He has and is, and He provides them with His life. Some people ask, “Seeing as You say He provides all this to us, is it His entirety that He provides to us?” It can be put this way. Yes, God gives His entirety to man, but there are two sides to this. What God has and is is all-inclusive, and God is so wise; so besides that which God provides to man, these truths and life, is there anything more to God? (Yes.) There is no need to doubt this, and there is certainly more to God! There is one word that can be used to describe God’s wisdom, what God has and is and His entirety, a word that comes from mankind: What God has and is is “boundless,” and God’s wisdom is “boundless.” Despite the fact you think you haven’t gained much from God, I must say that God’s entirety is boundless. It is not restricted only to that little which man can perceive, nor is it restricted only to that which man can understand, much less is it restricted to that which has been recorded from the Bible till now; God’s entirety is boundless. If you are picky about the choice of word and you say “God gives His entirety to us so surely He is this much and there is no more to Him,” then you have made a mistake and you have delimited God. Whatever the case, we had better talk about our main topic and get back to that. God’s work, God’s disposition and God Himself—are these three one? (Yes.) Though we say three things, in actual fact these three are one; they are one thing. God’s disposition is expressed within God’s work, His disposition is revealed and expressed little by little during God’s work, and every single thing that is expressed represents God Himself. Tell Me, does God’s mercy and love represent God Himself? Does God’s patience and tolerance represent God Himself? (Yes.) Then does God’s wisdom represent God Himself? Does God’s supremacy represent God Himself? (Yes.) What about God’s majesty and wrath? What about His righteousness? What about His omnipotence? They all represent God Himself, do they? (Yes.) We can say this about this topic.
If you want to understand God’s disposition and understand God Himself, then you must start with small steps. But what small steps must you start with? Firstly we have found some sections and chapters in the Bible that we can share. Though these writings are old, that which we are fellowshiping are new things, and we will fellowship things that are even newer, things that people do not have and have never heard before. We haven’t selected many chapters so as to save time. We haven’t chosen too many and we haven’t chosen in too much detail. If you would like to read them in more detail, then you can read them in the Bible and look them up yourselves, okay? (Okay.) Maybe some people will feel that this is beyond comprehension: “Bringing up Adam and Eve and bringing up Noah—isn’t this going over old ground?” Whatever you may think, I see these sections and chapters as being highly beneficial to the topic we are fellowshiping today, and they can act as textbooks and first-hand materials for today’s topic. Have you all read these chapters before? (Yes.) (I’ve read the Bible before.) Having read the Bible before doesn’t mean you’ve read today’s chapters; it’s not the same. Read the chapters that I have chosen for you today. Having read the Bible before, were you then able to regard these sections as being key points? (No.) No, you couldn’t. So, you still need to read these that have been chosen today. First of all, have a rough look and see what characteristics are shared by these sections and chapters I have chosen.
From Records of Christ’s Talks
Source from The Church of Almighty God
Recommendation:
Eastern Lightning, the Church of Almighty God was created because of the appearance and work of Almighty God, the second coming of the Lord Jesus, Christ of the last days. It is made up of all those who accept Almighty God's work in the last days and are conquered and saved by His words. It was entirely founded by Almighty God personally and is led by Him as the Shepherd. It was definitely not created by a person. Christ is the truth, the way, and the life. God's sheep hear God's voice. As long as you read the words of Almighty God, you will see God has appeared.
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