Bible Questions – Goats and Sheep Are Separated! | The Church of Almighty God

Li Jing

Accepting the Gospel

      In February, 1999, the jealousy and strife among the co-workers in our church made me upset and low-spirited. I could not feel the presence of the Lord, had no enjoyment when listening to the sermons of the pastors, and received no light when reading the Bible by myself, feeling very thirsty in my spirit. One day, Sister Tian suddenly came to my home and took me to listen to a sermon. At that time, Sister Cheng fellowshiped with us the three stages of God’s work: the Age of Law, the Age of Grace, and the Age of Kingdom, the relationship among them and the result to be achieved in each stage of work. Moreover, she explained to us what incarnation is. And she told us that Almighty God is just Christ incarnate in the last days, has expressed all the truths of salvation of mankind, and has brought the way of eternal life to man, and all these have fulfilled the prophecies in Revelation: “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last” (Revelation 22:13). “He that has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit said to the churches” (Revelation 3:13). “For as the lightning, that lightens out of the one part under heaven, shines to the other part under heaven; so shall also the Son of man be in his day. But first must he suffer many things, and be rejected of this generation” (Luke 17:24-25). In the end, she sang the song called The Savior Has Long Ago Returned for us. Hearing the sister’s fellowship, I became certain that Almighty God is the Lord Jesus’ second coming. I felt very pleased in my heart, for the time when the Lord comes back has finally come. What’s more, He has expressed so many words to mankind. I must tell this great news to the brothers and sisters who are waiting for the Lord Jesus’ coming back. However, before long, the pastors and elders knew the news that I had accepted God’s work in the last days. Since then I have had no quiet life any longer due to their disturbance.

      One day, I was doing some washing at home when I heard someone knocking at the door. Having opened the door, I saw that they were our church preacher, Brother Wei and another church’s preacher, Brother Zhu. They looked very angry, so I felt anxious suddenly and asked them to enter a room in a hurry. As I was pouring tea, I silently prayed for God to give me confidence and strength and keep my heart from staying away from Him whatever they say. Just then, Brother Zhu slapped the table angrily, saying: “Who allowed you to go out to listen to sermons? Don’t you know that anyone who doesn’t spread Jesus’ gospel goes astray? The Lord Jesus has come; how come the pastors and elders don’t know it? Why don’t so many preachers in the church know it? … ” He criticized and mocked me, with my tears dropping down without cease. I thought in my heart: Almighty God is the Lord Jesus’ second coming. How can you say like that without investigation? After a while, I wiped away my tears and refuted: “When the Lord Jesus was born, He didn’t tell the chief priests and scribes first, yet He made shepherds know it. It indicates that the Lord appears to man not according to their status when He comes back. The Lord Jesus says: ‘Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you’ (Matthew 7:7). Whoever seeks, he will gain, or, he won’t gain. Almighty God is the Lord’s second coming, which completely fulfills the biblical prophecies. It’s my freedom to follow the Lord’s footsteps. Do I need to be approved? Almighty God says: ‘In the eyes of God, man is smaller than an ant, so how can man fathom God’s work? Those who are constantly saying, “God does not work in this or that way” or “God is like this or that”—are they not all arrogant? We should all know that people, who are of the flesh, have all been corrupted by Satan. It is their nature to oppose God, and they are not on a parity with God, much less can they offer counsel for the work of God’ (Preface to The Word Appears in the Flesh).” Hearing my words, Brother Zhu became more angry, standing up and saying furiously to me: “You’re incorrigible. Let’s go!” After they left, I breathed a sigh of relief. Then, I closed the door immediately and went into the room to pray to God, asking Him to protect my heart from being shaken by their words.

     

Reading God's word

From then on, people in my former church often came to disturb and attack me. Thanks to Sister Cheng’s help, she often came to fellowship about Almighty God’s words with me. Under the enlightenment and guidance of God’s word, I learned how to differentiate people. Once, Sister Cheng fellowshiped about God’s words with me. We read those words of God: “You should differentiate between the different work of different types of people; you should not be a foolish follower. This impinges on the matter of your entry. If you are unable to distinguish which person’s leadership has a path and which does not, you will easily be deceived. All these have a direct bearing on your own life. There is too much that is natural in the work of unperfected people; too much of human will is mixed in it. Their being is naturalness, what they are born with, not the life after undergoing dealing or the reality after being transformed. How can this type of person support those who are pursuing life?” (“God’s Work and Man’s Work” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). She fellowshiped: “Almighty God told us in His word that we should discern all kinds of people: Whose words can help us in our personal life entry, what kind of people are blind guides, what kind of people can shepherd the church, what kind of people cannot, what kind of people have the work of the Holy Spirit, what kind of people work and cheat others with their natural characters. If people cannot distinguish these, it will be a tremendous obstacle to their own life entry. Now it is in the last days. Satan interrupts God’s work by different people, events and things. They use different fallacies and means to make man leave the true way. Just like the end of the Age of Law when the Pharisees caged believers to follow them, judged that the Lord Jesus is not God blindly based on the dead words in the Bible and by their conceptions and imaginations for the sake of their statuses and jobs. Moreover, they recklessly slandered and condemned the Lord and incited others to reject Him. God has revealed hypocritical Pharisees by His incarnation. While those with a confused belief were deceived by the priests, scribes, and Pharisees and followed them, shouting loudly: “Nail Him to the cross.” In this way, they had the same evildoing as the Pharisees. Only those who heard the voice of the Lord Jesus and followed Him could gain His redemption, pray to Him and repent and confess sins to Him directly and gain His forgiveness. This is the same as the belief in Almighty God today. Almighty God’s work in the last days is the work that God’s six-thousand-year management plan will come to an end and also the work of conclusion and winnowing. Almighty God expresses words to do the judgment work in the last days to reveal all types of people. Wise virgins and foolish virgins are revealed through the recognition of God’s voice. Goats are separated from sheep, tares from wheat, according to their acceptance of God’s judgment work in the last days. True believers in God can put down their notions and imaginations to submit to God’s new work, whereas the hypocritical pastors and elders do not seek and investigate God’s new work at all, but strongly condemn God’s work and hinder brothers and sisters from investigating the true way so as to control believers and maintain their statuses and jobs. These have just fulfilled the Lord Jesus’ word: ‘But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for you neither go in yourselves, neither suffer you them that are entering to go in’ (Matthew 23:13). So, all their deeds are condemned by God.”

      After hearing Sister Cheng’s fellowship, I thought: These preachers slander and frame Almighty God and His Church, deceiving people and hindering them from seeking and investigating the true way in order to maintain their own statuses and jobs, from which I can distinguish the hypocritical substance of pastors and elders. They believe in God in name, but what they do are resistance against God. The work of Almighty God in the last days has revealed and separated sheep from goats, good servants from evil servants. After I differentiate those people who hinder my acceptance of the true way, I believe in and follow Almighty God with the utmost confidence.

     

Pharisees

Over two months later, they did not resign themselves to failure and kept disturbing me through people and events. One Sunday, I was cooking lunch at home, Brother Cao, who taught believers to sing hymns in the former church, dropped in on me and said: “As long as you don’t accept the Eastern Lightning, we will let you serve as a leader in the church. If you continue to believe, we will have brothers and sisters reject you. Think it over.” I said: “I have nothing to think about. Regardless of whether one has a high status or not, it is no use if he can’t follow God’s new work. The Pharisees had higher status than me; why did they suffer the curses of God?” He was rendered speechless and went away. I thought within: But how will the brothers and sisters think of me if I leave the former church? Involuntarily, I felt a little weak and thus I prayed to God: “O God! I know this is Satan’s scheme. His intention is to make me betray You due to coveting the status. May You give me confidence and let me overcome the trick of demon. I’m not willing to leave brothers and sisters, and I want to bring the brothers and sisters who sincerely pursue the truth in the church before Your presence. …”

      However, they were not reconciled to their defeat and tried every means to prevent me from believing in Almighty God. One day, Sister Gao, in charge of the former church’s affairs (my distant sister-in-law) paid me a visit and said to me viciously: “If I didn’t consider that we were remote relatives, I would have had policemen arrest you earlier. The leaders and deacons of the church persuaded you heartily but you did not listen to them. You do not know what is good for you. In my opinion, you don’t walk the right way, but the wrong one. If you insist on believing in the Eastern Lightning, I will have you put into prison. The moment I heard that she wanted to throw me into prison, I thought of God’s words that Sister Cheng fellowshiped with me: “When the church enters its construction phase, a battle of the saints against Satan[a] ensues. Satan’s various hideous features are set before you; do you stop and backslide, or do you stand up and walk onward, relying on Me? Thoroughly expose Satan’s corrupt and ugly features, spare no feelings and show no mercy! Fight Satan to the death! I am your backup and you must have the spirit of the male child! Satan is lashing out in its final death throes but it will still be unable to escape My judgment. Satan is beneath My feet and it is also trodden underneath your feet—it’s true!” (“The Seventeenth Utterance” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). God’s words gave me confidence and made me see through their ugly faces. I thought: Today I believe in Almighty God. Everything is determined by God, not anyone! So, I said to her calmly: “Sister-in-law, Almighty God is the Lord who saves mankind and the Lord Jesus’ second coming. You’d better investigate it.” She found that I wasn’t frightened by her threat, so she became flustered, saying: “Do you think I don’t know what you are doing? I know where you went, to whom you spoke, where you were….” From her words, I knew she was shadowing me. I thought in my heart: “You are all too contemptible! I don’t have any freedom at all in believing in God. You come to my home time and time again to stimulate my husband to quarrel with me and want to divorce me.” At this point, I said: “We are all believers. Wherever we go and whatever we say, we are aboveboard. We haven’t done any bad things. We have a clear conscience. It is glorifying God to believe in true God and to be arrested. But for those who do evil and resist God, the Lord Jesus says like this: ‘But I say to you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. For by your words you shall be justified, and by your words you shall be condemned’ (Matthew 12:36-37).” Hearing my words, she had nothing to say but left with a long face.

      Almighty God says: “You should know that it is the last days now. The devil Satan, like a roaring lion, walks about, searching for people to devour. All manner of plagues are now breaking out and there are many different kinds of evil spirits. Only I am the true God; only I am your refuge. You can only now hide in My secret place, only within Me, and the disasters will not befall you and no calamity will come near to your tent” (“The Twenty-eighth Utterance” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). Thank God! It was God’s keeping that made me triumph over attacks and enticements from Satan time and time again. Without Almighty God’s words and many fellowships of the brothers and sisters, I could not overcome Satan’s tricks by myself. At that time, I deeply felt God’s love and salvation for me. In the age when demons walk about, I can accept God’s salvation in the last days and triumph over Satan’s tests time after time, which is really a great protection of God. It is the greatest blessing in my life that I can pursue the truth, fulfill my duty and live a significant life in the Church of Almighty God. In the future, I will not ask for anything else. I only want to preach the gospel more to satisfy God, bring people who are still living in the darkness before God soon and help them break free from the bondage and deception of the pastors and elders, so that they can meet the return of the Lord and God’s heart can be comforted earlier.

      Thus, I became actively involved in the preaching of the gospel. Before long, nine brothers and sisters in our former church accepted Almighty God’s work in the last days. Afterward, through their cooperation, we brought the true believers in the Lord of the former church before Almighty God successively. Later, I went to other places to preach the gospel. I have really experienced the true meaning of the word ‘God’s sheep hear God’s voice.’ Those who truly yearn for the appearance of God in all sects and denominations have also returned before Almighty God in succession. All the glory be to Almighty God!

      Footnotes:

      a. The original text omits “against Satan.