Li Heng Suqian City, Jiangsu Province
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| I See the Truth of People’s Corruption |
Among the words by which God reveals man I found this passage, “It was previously said that these people are the progeny of the great red dragon. In fact, to be clear, they are the embodiment of the great red dragon” (“Interpretation of the Thirty-sixth Utterance” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). I thought this didn’t apply to me. It seemed to me that God revealed these words for those who hold power, because they are the great red dragon transformed; they do evil, rebellious deeds, resist God, disrupt and ruin God’s work, and cruelly persecute God’s chosen people. I, on the other hand, am a believer in God who fulfills his duty in the church, and even though I am corrupt, I’m nowhere near as evil as them, nor is the corruption so deep.
How could I be the great red dragon transformed? That was until an experience made me realize that the essence of my nature was the same as that of the great red dragon, and that I was, without a doubt, the great red dragon transformed.
There was a deacon in our church who wasn’t conscientious in fulfilling her duties and often forgot to attend small group meetings. I fellowshiped with her, saying, “You shouldn’t be so irresponsible about your duties, and you can’t trick your way through them. You can’t be so focused on your family, because if this keeps up, if you even forget our small group meetings, do you know how serious the consequences will be? …” After I said that, she not only didn’t accept it, she made excuses and gave reasons to refute me. In my heart, I thought, “She can’t be the object of God’s salvation, can she? Is she someone unfit for use by God, or someone evil being revealed to me?” I began watching closely for a replacement at my small group meetings. As soon as I found the right person for the job, I planned to get rid of her. But the right person evaded me, so after a time my only option was to again fellowship with her, and afterward she came to understand that she had failed to fulfill her duty and was irresponsible and neglectful, and she wanted to atone for her past mistakes. But still, I always felt like it wasn’t enough, and I didn’t have much fondness for her after that. Once, I asked her to have a meeting with a host family that was a little out of the way, but she refused, saying she was unwilling to go. The anger in my heart surged up when she said that. I wanted to dismiss her then and there, throw her back to her small group, and forget about her, because people like her are too much trouble, I thought, picky in fulfilling their duties, doing what they like and ignoring what they don’t. She opposes me in whatever I say and she doesn’t abide by the church’s plans for her, so what good does it do for the church to keep her? She should simply be dismissed, and she deserves every tear she sheds over it! She made the bed and she gets to lie in it, and even though I knew capriciously expelling people goes against principle, the idea kept coming up in my mind, I couldn’t control it, and in my heart it troubled me constantly, bringing my condition into utter shambles. All I could do was pray to God, “God, my sister is disobedient to me, and I want to dismiss her and see her suffer pain and torment. It feels like I’ll explode if I don’t expel her. I also don’t want to act on my whims or out of rashness and arrogance, I don’t want to knowingly offend Your disposition. God, I beg You to save me!” After I prayed, my desire to dismiss her wasn’t as strong as before, and I was much calmer. And then a passage of God’s word floated to the top of my mind, “The manifestations of the great red dragon are resistance to Me, lack of understanding and comprehension of the meanings of My words, frequent persecution of Me, and seeking to use schemes to interrupt My management. Satan is manifested as follows: struggling with Me for power, wanting to possess My chosen people, and releasing negative words to deceive My people” (“The Ninety-sixth Utterance” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). God’s words shocked me. Was my behavior not precisely that of the great red dragon? The great red dragon resists God, persecutes God, and interrupts God’s work. Wasn’t that exactly what I was doing? Expelling someone according to my own whim would be making myself a devil, a Satan, who disrupts and destroys God’s work of salvation among man. God, I was indeed the great red dragon transformed. In the man’s fellowship I read, “See how the great red dragon persecutes God and its cruelty to God’s chosen people, then look at the resistance and rebelliousness to God in yourself. Look at your turbulent relations with God’s chosen people. There is too much of grudges and selfishness within you. How are you any different from the great red dragon? … Many people don’t understand the poisons of the great red dragon that lurk within them. They think the great red dragon is too evil, and tell themselves that when they hold power, they will be much better than the great red dragon, but is that truly the case? If you took power this instant, how much better than the great red dragon would you be? Could you do so much better than the great red dragon? The truth is that the great red dragon holding power is no different than any of corrupt mankind holding power. If the great red dragon can kill 80 million, how many can you kill when you hold power? Some say, ‘If I held power, I wouldn’t kill anyone.’ Just as you speak it, someone will stand up and curse you, and you will get furious and say, ‘Then I’ll just kill one, I’ll make an exception.’ When a group rises up to oppose you, you will say, ‘Killing a group isn’t much, the great red dragon killed 80 million. I’m only killing a small group, that’s much less than the great red dragon.’ When 10 million rise up to oppose you, you will say, ‘I can kill these 10 million too, because if I don’t, how will I hold on to power?’ Don’t you see a problem here? Even if you do no evil without power, there is no guarantee you won’t do evil deeds when you hold power, because man’s natures are all the same” (“How People Should Cooperate With God’s Work of Perfecting Man” in Sermons and Fellowship On Entry Into Life (III)). Through the enlightenment and illumination of God’s words and analysis of the man’s fellowship, I finally saw clearly my true face, that I was the great red dragon transformed, and that my corrupt essence was no different from the great red dragon’s nature. Evil in nature, the great red dragon resists God and persecutes God’s chosen people, arrogantly wants to ban God’s work of salvation among men and make the whole world atheist. It wants to rule all that God has created, make humanity kneel to its power. Isn’t the way I’ve behaved today the same? My sister didn’t grasp the truth clearly and was neglectful of her duties, but rather than help her in the spirit of love, I simply demanded that she meet all of my expectations. I saw her being irresponsible in her work, so I started to despise and dislike her, and even decided she was an evildoer revealed to me by God, making my mentality no different from that of the great red dragon in my ability to “escalate without limit” and “massacre the innocent.” When my sister faced family constraints and was passive, rather than fellowship God’s words with her to help her understand God’s love, requirements, and hopes for people, I used letters and doctrines to restrict her, bring her completely under my control. Did my behavior not exhibit the same signs as the great red dragon—self-magnification, showing no fear of God, and self-righteousness? When my sister disobeyed me, I hated her in my very bones. I wanted to kick her away and drive her out of the church. But are those not the vicious acts of the great red dragon—“lawlessness” and “Submit to me or perish”? God, I see that I am a devil who resists You, that I am worse than a beast, that I am an unworthy who should have been struck down long ago. The great red dragon can kill 80 million, but if I held power, I would be just as evil, vicious, and lawless. If not for the work arrangements and principles defined by the church, and if not for the supervision of my brothers and sisters, wouldn’t I have pushed my sister onto the “executioner’s block” long ago? The nature of the great red dragon is evil and vicious, it kills without blinking an eye, it destroys anyone who ignores it or goes against it with fabricated charges of crimes, and one mistaken word or deed before it is to invite death, but am I not the same? My sister disobeyed me and didn’t do what I asked, at which I became so furious that I turned on her and wanted to attack her, in fact nothing but expelling her and driving her out of the church could appease my anger.
This experience gave me a true understanding of my corrupt essence. I saw that I was truly someone without reason or a conscience, undoubtedly a descendant of the great red dragon. But it also gave me a firmer belief of God’s words. No matter how piercing God’s words may be or whether they fit with man’s notions, every utterance is the eternal, unchanging truth, and sooner or later corrupt humanity will be utterly convinced. God! I want to perform my duties well to repay You for salvation, I want to make peace with my brothers and sisters in the church and make up for my past mistakes, and become someone new who comforts You.
Source:Testimonies of Experience of Christ’s Judgment
