The Church of Almighty God | God's will | Concerning Appellations and Identity
If you wish to be fit for use by God, you must know the work of God; you must know the work that He did previously (in the New and Old Testaments), and, moreover, you must know His work of today. Which is to say, you must know the three stages of God’s work over the 6,000 years. If you are asked to spread the gospel, then you will not be able to do so without knowing the work of God. People will ask you all about the Bible, and the Old Testament, and what Jesus said and did at that time. They will say, “Has your God not told you all of this? If He (God) can’t tell you what’s really going on in the Bible, then He is not God; if He can, then we’re convinced.” In the beginning, Jesus talked much of the Old Testament with His disciples. Everything they read was from the Old Testament; the New Testament was only written several decades after Jesus was crucified. To spread the gospel, you should principally grasp the inner truth of the Bible, and God’s work in Israel, which is to say the work done by Jehovah. And you also have to understand the work done by Jesus. These are the issues that all people are most concerned about, and they do not possess an understanding of[a] these two stages of work. When spreading the gospel, first put aside talk of the Holy Spirit’s work today. This stage of work is beyond their reach, because what you pursue is that which is most lofty of all: a knowledge of God, and a knowledge of the work of the Holy Spirit, and nothing is more exalted than these two. If you first talk about that which is lofty, it will be too much for them, for none of them have experienced such work by the Holy Spirit; it has no precedent, and is not easy for man to accept. Their experiences are old things from the past, with some occasional work by the Holy Spirit. What they experience is not the Holy Spirit’s work today, or God’s will today. They still act according to the old practices, with no new light, or new things.