Dong Xiguo
Huaian
City, Jiangsu Province
I was formerly a
district leader of the Joseph Church. In 1998, in a co-workers’
meeting, my senior leader warned me in particular, “Brother Dong,
the situation of the churches in your district is rather messy, so
you have to work harder. Now the preachers of Almighty God are very
rampant, and they grow very fast in number. And their little scroll
is even more intriguing. You must guard the flock carefully and not
let any of them be taken captive. If you neglect your duty, you will
have no crown.” From then on, I began to wantonly seal off all the
churches in my charge. I said to the brothers and sisters, “Those
who believe inAlmighty God have departed from the Bible. Any belief
departing from the Bible is heresy. Any of you mustn’t come into
contact with the believers in Almighty God or receive them. They are
as dangerous as poisonous hooks. Once you have contact with them, you
will become swollen and sore all over, which no doctor can cure. Shut
your ears to the words of their little scroll. Once you listen, you
will be bewitched and be unable to escape even if you want….”
Like this, I regarded the believers in Almighty God as enemies and
strongly resisted Almighty God’s new work, and brought the
believers in the churches under my control.
In April 1999, a
sister secretly told me, “Brother Zhang in our church, who pursues
quite hard, is associating with the believers in Almighty God.”
After hearing that, I immediately went to the worker in charge of
that church and said to him, “I’ve heard that there is a Brother
Zhang in your church who is associating with some believers in
Almighty God. Go and Look into it quickly. Warn him not to get close
to the believers in Almighty God, because they have deviated from the
Lord’s way. You must keep a strict eye upon him lest he be taken
captive.” Three days later, I went to that worker again as I still
felt worried about it. He told me, “Brother Zhang has broken with
those people.” At that, my anxious heart was relieved, and I
thought it was the Lord’s care and keeping for that church. Not
long afterward, another sister told me that her younger brother had
accepted Almighty God and asked her to listen to the message. I
dissuaded her earnestly, saying, “Don’t go to listen. You must
stand firm on your ground. Apart from our Joseph Church, there is no
true way. Only the house of Joseph is most blessed. Genesis 49:25-26
says: ‘… by the Almighty, who shall bless you with blessings of
heaven above, blessings of the deep that lies under, blessings of the
breasts, and of the womb … they shall be on the head of Joseph….’
If you take a wrong way, your many years of belief in God will be in
vain.” So the sister stopped associating with her brother because
of my dissuasion. Thereafter, I resisted the work of Almighty God of
the last days more and more fiercely. Many believers in Almighty God
were ruthlessly driven away by me when they came to preach the gospel
to the believers in our churches.
One day in June
2001, I suddenly felt numb all over, and my legs became so weak that
I was even unable to stand. My family hastily sent me to the
hospital. There I was given intravenous fluids and medicine. However,
I did not get better, but got worse, and eventually I even lost all
feeling in my legs—I became paralyzed. After a period of treatment,
the doctor said, “You’ve got spinal tuberculosis. It is
incurable.” At that, tears burst forth from my eyes. “I’m only
forty-four now. Will I just wait for death at home like this?” On
October 26, I left hospital with despair. Being paralyzed, I was
unable to look after myself. I was struggling in agony and calling on
God in despair. I felt days wore on like years and that I was living
in hell. One day, I was told, “The head of the Joseph Church (Wei
XX) will come to our place.” At the news, I immediately felt that I
could be healed because we all regarded the head of our Church as
“God.” I longed for him, waited and waited. More than a month
passed, but he did not come. Later, someone told me, “The head
won’t come. He said that the situation of the churches in our area
was too complicated and messy, and he gave up the whole flock here.”
The news was simply a head-on blow to me. I could not help crying out
in my heart, “O Lord! Why is this happening? I have been utterly
faithful to You over these many years of believing in You. In order
to protect the flock, I spared no efforts to resist ‘EasternLightning.’ How come I end up like this? O Lord! Where are You? The
house of Joseph has been most blessed by You. Why do You not care for
us anymore? Have You really left us and done a new work? …”
Just when I
hesitated and was in perplexity, Brother Chen of our Church came and
said to me, “Brother Dong, a brother will come to our place to
testify about the work of Almighty God of the last days in a couple
of days. Please have a listen! We can’t rigidly stick to our way
anymore. You can’t walk, can I bring him here to have a fellowship
with you?” Hearing that, I thought, “I’m a dying man, what do I
have to fear? I might as well have a listen. If I don’t make
certain whether it is the true way or not, I won’t die in peace.”
So I agreed. Two days later, the brother really came. He comforted me
and patiently fellowshiped with me about the three stages of God’s
work in detail, from Genesis to Revelation. His preaching was so
wonderful. What he fellowshiped were all things that I had never
heard during my years of believing in the Lord. To dispel my notion
that “the believers in God can only read the Bible and cannot read
the little scroll,” the brother opened the Bible and read me
Chapter 5 of Revelation: “And I saw in the right hand of him that
sat on the throne a book written within and on the backside, sealed
with seven seals. And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud
voice, Who is worthy to open the book, and to loose the seals
thereof? … And one of the elders said to me, Weep not: behold, the
Lion of the tribe of Juda, the Root of David, has prevailed to open
the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof” (Revelation 5:1-2,
5). Based on these verses, the brother fellowshiped, “Today,
Almighty God has come and opened the little scroll, and that has
completely fulfilled this prophecy in Revelation. How can we say that
the believers cannot read the little scroll? If we say so, doesn’t
it mean that we take this prophecy away from the book of Revelation?
Almighty God has opened the little scroll, disclosed to man all the
mysteries in the Bible that they do not understand, and set forth
many truths concerning God’s six-thousand-year management plan, the
entirety of God’s will to save mankind, how man can gain
transformation in his disposition and become holy, and so on. If we
cling to the Bible, we cannot receive God’s blessings, much less
receive the truth and the life that God bestows upon man in the last
days. In John 5:39-40, Jesus said these words: ‘Search the
scriptures; for in them you think you have eternal life: and they are
they which testify of me. And you will not come to me, that you might
have life.’ From these verses, we can see that people
think in the Scriptures they have eternal life. This is man’s
thinking, which comes from his imagination. Actually, there is no
eternal life in the Scriptures. Only if we come to God can we receive
eternal life, because only God Himself is the source of life, and
only God Himself is the truth, the way, and the life. The Bible is
only the record of the work that God has done. It cannot be compared
with God, much less can it represent God.” Then the brother read me
a passage of Almighty God’s word: “You all need to
understand the Bible—it is very necessary that you do so. Today,
you don’t need to read the Bible any longer, for there is nothing
new in it; it’s all outdated. The Bible is a history book. If
during the Age of Grace you were to eat and drink the Old Testament,
practicing the requirements of the Old Testament age, then Jesus
would forsake you, condemn you. If you had tried to impose the Old
Testament on Jesus’ work, you would have been called a Pharisee.
And so today, if you eat and drink and practice the Old and New
Testaments, then the God of today will condemn you; you cannot keep
pace with the work of the Holy Spirit today. If you eat the Old and
New Testaments, then you are one outside the stream of the Holy
Spirit. In Jesus’ day, He led the Jews and all those who followed
Him according to the work of the Holy Spirit in Him. He did not look
to the Bible for evidence, but spoke as His work dictated. He did not
concern Himself with what the Bible said, did not lead His followers
down a path found in the Bible. From the very beginning, He preached
the way of repentance, and the word ‘repentance’ was not
mentioned at all in all the prophecies in the Old Testament. Not only
did He not follow the Bible, He brought forth a new path and did a
new work. He did not make reference to the Bible when He preached,
and the miracles He worked—healing the sick, casting out demons—had
never been performed by men during the Age of Law. No one in the Age
of Law did the work He did, taught those lessons, had that authority.
He simply did His new work, though many people condemned Him, even
crucified Him, by using the Bible. His work went beyond the Old
Testament; if that had not been the case, why would they have nailed
Him to the cross? Was it not because His teachings, His power to cure
the sick and cast out demons, had never been recorded in the Old
Testament? The work of Jesus was to bring forth a new path; He did
not deliberately set out to ‘wage war’ against the Bible or
abolish the Old Testament, but simply performed His ministry,
bringing the new work to those who thirsted for Him and sought Him
out. He was not trying to explain the Old Testament or defend its
work. Carrying on the Age of Law was not His goal, for He did not
care in the least whether His work was grounded in the Bible, but
simply did the job that He needed to do. So He did not attempt to
explain the Old Testament prophecies, did not base His work on words
spoken in the Old Testament Age of Law. He did not concern Himself
with what the Old Testament said, whether it accorded with His own
work, did not care how other people saw His work or condemned His
work. He simply kept on doing the job He needed to do, though many
people condemned Him, invoking the words of the Old Testament
prophets. In people’s eyes His work was not based on a shred of
evidence, and in many ways it ran counter to what was recorded in the
Bible. Were they not grossly in the wrong? Must God’s work obey any
rules? Does He need to follow the words of prophets? Which is
greater, the Bible or God? Why must God’s work be in line with the
Bible? Is it really not within His right to stand above the Bible?
Can He not depart from it and do other work?” (from The
Word Appears in the Flesh) After hearing Almighty God’s words and
the brother’s fellowship, I was enlightened all at once. “Actually,
the ‘Eastern Lightning’ which I prevented the brothers and
sisters from accepting is exactly the new work God does in the last
days; Almighty God, whom I blindly blasphemed, slandered, and
opposed, is none other than the reappearance of Savior Jesus whom I
have been eagerly expecting for years; the little scroll, which I
felt hostility toward all the time and which in my view could not be
read or touched, is precisely God’s utterance in the new age and is
the eternal way of truth God bestows upon man in the last days.” At
that moment, I felt bitterly regretful, tears streaming down my face.
“I believe in God but do not know God, and only hold on to the
letters of the Bible. So many brothers and sisters have been hindered
by me from coming before Almighty God. I’m really a grievous and
most wicked sinner. Now I have known the reason why I suddenly
suffered paralysis. This is my fitting retribution for opposing
Almighty God and is what I deserve to suffer. I truly deserve to
die!”
Afterward, as I ate
and drank more of God’s words, I gained some knowledge of the three
stages of God’s work: If Jehovah had not decreed the law to lead
mankind in the Age of Law, the whole mankind would not have known
God’s existence and what sin is, and they would have been trampled
down and taken captive by Satan and thus completely been destroyed.
If the Lord Jesus had not been crucified to bear man’s sins in the
Age of Grace, they all would have been killed because of their
grievous sins against the Law. If Almighty God did not express the
truth to judge and purify people in the last days, the redeemed
people would never be freed from sin and be purified, but could only
fall into the great disasters by which God will punish people in the
last days. And I also realized this: Only Almighty God—the Christ
of the last days can save people thoroughly, and only Almighty God
can bring the truth and show the way to people and bestow the life
upon them. The head of the Joseph Church is merely a corrupt man. He
can only teach us the letters of the Bible, but is unable to bring a
new way, much less bring the truth to us. He cannot do God’s own
work, and all he can do is to deceive and corrupt people. In the
past, I was blind and foolish, parroted others’ words, blindly
condemned and resisted God’s work of the last days without seeking
and investigating it. To preserve my position, I followed my leader
and fabricated many rumors, spoke many slanderous and blasphemous
words against Almighty God, and condemned the little scroll that God
had opened…. Thanks to Almighty God’s tolerance and grace, I, a
dying man, personally heard and read His words; otherwise, I would
have died without knowing why. At that time, I felt extremely
remorseful. I hated myself for yesterday’s rebellious and resistant
acts, and I was even more deeply indebted that I was unable to repay
God’s love because of my paralysis.
After I accepted
the work of Almighty God of the last days, an amazing thing happened.
My condition was improving every day. In October 2002, miraculously,
I could walk without the crutches and was even able to go to perform
my duty by bike. I couldn’t help praising God, “O Almighty God!
Your love for me is so great, so deep, and so real! Your love has
transcended the heavens. You have forgiven me, a son of disobedience,
who deserves to be cursed and struck by You, so that I have a chance
to survive. And You have also caused me to experience Your majestic
disposition that allows no offense. O Almighty God! You are mankind’s
only hope, and You are mankind’s only Redeemer!”
Dear brothers and
sisters, I hope that you can draw a lesson from my personal
experience. Never tread in the steps of me! Wake up quickly! Almighty
God is truly the Christ of the last days, the returned Savior Jesus
we have been waiting for. Today God is anxiously expecting us to
return to His family soon. His heart, deeply grieved by us, is still
longing for us to turn back….
