By Xiaoxin
A few days ago, I read a story in a book about a wolf child, which basically goes like this:
There was a hunter whose newly born baby was carried off by a wolf. The child was raised by the wolf and gradually grew up. One day, the hunter found the wolf child. In order to take his child home, the hunter even cut off some of his own flesh to feed the wolf child. With the father’s devotion, he finally got the wolf child back home. After being taught for a long time, the wolf child recovered his humanity and lived a normal life.
After reading this story, I was deeply moved. When the hunter found his son missing, he was sorrowful and distressed, utterly overwhelmed with grief. For so many years he had desperately yearned to one day find his son. After more than ten years, one day he spotted his son living with wolves. In order to rescue him from among the wolves and for him to live the life of a normal man, he did not hesitate to cut off his own flesh to guide him home. In the end, the wolf child recovered his humanity, and the hunter regained his son. The family lived happily ever after! This reminded me of the situation of the mankind of today: Wasn’t man like the “wolf child”? Wasn’t man the unfortunate captured by Satan like that child taken away by the wolf? After we humans were tempted, deceived, and corrupted by Satan, we treated Satan as our “father,” and our hearts strayed further and further from God. We had no idea that God is the source of our life, neither did we know how to discern between good and evil or know anything about God’s laws and decrees. We became licentious and corrupt, abandoned ourselves to hideous depravity. Such an ignorant man followed Satan in doing evil, but he did not know that, and he became the same as Satan. God felt pity for and protective toward man, so He started His work of saving man.
In the beginning, God used the laws to lead the newborn human race, so that they could live a normal life on earth. But at the end of the Age of Law, people lost their God-fearing heart and were unable to keep the law, facing the danger of being condemned and sentenced to death by the law. God didn’t have the heart to see the mankind He created with His own hands dying under the law, so He personally became flesh on earth, endured the humiliation of being crucified, and redeemed them from the hands of Satan, giving them the chance to live. Now although we have been redeemed and forgiven of our sins by the Lord Jesus, our satanic nature still remains within us. God says, “For all that man may have been redeemed and forgiven of his sins, it can only be considered as God not remembering the transgressions of man and not treating man in accordance with his transgressions. However, when man, who lives in a body of flesh, has not been set free from sin, he can only continue to sin, endlessly revealing his corrupt satanic disposition. This is the life that man leads, an endless cycle of sinning and being forgiven. The majority of men sin in the day only to confess in the evening. This way, even if the sin offering is forever effective for man, it will not be able to save man from sin. Only half the work of salvation has been completed …” (“The Mystery of the Incarnation (4)”). In the Age of Grace, the Lord Jesus did the work of redeeming man, rather than the work of changing man’s corrupt disposition, so our sinful nature still remains within us. Driven by the deep-rooted satanic nature inside us, we commit sins involuntarily. For example: We are arrogant and conceited, and we always want to have the final say, and reject what we know to be the truth; we are selfish and base, and we scramble for fame and fortune, intrigue against each other, deceive others, cheat God, and guard against God at every turn; we can still judge and oppose God when encountering things that are at odds with our notions; we can still follow the evil trends of the world though believing in God; we are in constant danger of betraying God when faced with trials and refinements…. Controlled and manipulated by our corrupt satanic disposition, we live out nothing but the image of Satan. If our corrupt satanic disposition is not resolved, we can resist and betray God at any time and in any place, and cannot enter into the holy kingdom of God at all. Therefore, to utterly save us from Satan’s camp into God’s kingdom, God needs to do a higher and deeper stage of work.
Hebrews 9:28 says, “So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and to them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin to salvation.” 1 Peter 4:17 says, “For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God.” John 12:48 says, “He that rejects me, and receives not my words, has one that judges him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day.” In order to fully save man who has been deeply corrupted by Satan, in the last days, God has become incarnate again as Almighty God and He speaks words to perform the work of judgment beginning at the house of God.. This stage of work is to fully resolve the root of man’s sin and rid man of his satanic nature, so that he can truly obey God, know God, and worship God. Only by accepting the work of judgment done by Christ of the last days, Almighty God, can we truly be set free from sin and receive God’s full salvation.
Just as God says, “Fully saving man from the influence of Satan not only required Jesus to take on the sins of man as the sin offering, but also required God to do greater work to completely rid man of his disposition, which has been corrupted by Satan. And so, after man was forgiven his sins, God has returned to flesh to lead man into the new age, and begun the work of chastisement and judgment, and this work has brought man into a higher realm. All those who submit under His dominion shall enjoy higher truth and receive greater blessings. They shall truly live in the light, and shall gain the truth, the way, and the life” (Preface). “By means of this work of judgment and chastisement, man will fully come to know the filthy and corrupt substance within his own self, and he will be able to change completely and become clean. Only in this way can man become worthy to return before the throne of God. All the work done this day is so that man can be made clean and be changed; through judgment and chastisement by the word, as well as through refinement, man can purge away his corruption and be made pure. Rather than deeming this stage of work to be that of salvation, it would be more apt to say it is the work of purification. In truth, this stage is that of conquest as well as the second stage in the work of salvation. It is through judgment and chastisement by the word that man arrives at being gained by God; and it is through the use of the word to refine, judge, and disclose that all of the impurities, notions, motives, and individual aspirations within man’s heart are completely revealed” (“The Mystery of the Incarnation (4)”).
Christ of the last days, Almighty God, has expressed all truths to allow people to attain salvation. These truths have disclosed our satanic nature of resisting God and the true condition of our corruption, and exposed and dissected the root of our sin. Through God’s majestic judgment, we know that we are full of Satan’s corrupt disposition: being arrogant and conceited, selfish and despicable, evil and greedy, and so on. At the same time, from God’s words of judgment and chastisement, we also come to know God’s holy substance, His righteous, majestic, and unoffendable disposition, and we develop a real fear for God. We also realize that we are deeply corrupted by Satan. We start to hate our corrupt nature and satanic disposition, gradually break away from the binding of sin. Our corrupt dispositions will begin to change, and we will live out the likeness of a true person. Only after experiencing the judgment of God’s words can we truly realize that God being crucified to redeem mankind, absolving mankind’s sin, is God’s love to us mankind. And in the last days, God has once again incarnated, and has expressed the truth and been doing the work of judgment to thoroughly save us from Satan’s domain. This is the greater love of God! Those who go through God’s judgment and are cleansed will ultimately be, taken to the wonderful destination prepared for us mankind by God!
At this point in time, I thought of the father of the wolf child. In order to let his child escape from the wolves, and live a life of a true person, he didn’t hesitate to cut off his own flesh to guide his son home. Similarly, God pays a great price to work and save us in a practical manner, so that we can fully escape from Satan’s harm. In the Age of Law, God guided mankind to live normally on earth, letting them know what sin is. In the Age of Grace, the Lord Jesus was crucified to absolve mankind’s sins. In the Age of Kingdom, Almighty God expresses words to do the work of judgment, enabling us to fully cast off the bonds of sin, receive cleansing and God’s salvation, and be brought into God’s kingdom. Every stage in the three stages of work of God’s management of mankind is done based on our needs as corrupt humanity. This is God’s love and salvation. Thanks be to God!
