1. “For so many years, people’s traditional way of believing (that is, the way of believing in God in Christianity, one of the three main religions in the world) is reading the Bible. If you leave the Bible, you are not believing in the Lord; if you leave the Bible, you are believing in a cult, a heresy; and even if you read other books, they must be books based on the interpretation of the Bible. In other words, if you believe in the Lord, you have to read the Bible and eat and drink the Bible, and apart from the Bible you cannot worship any other book that is unrelated to the Bible; otherwise, you are betraying God. Since the Bible came into being, people’s believing in the Lord has become believing in the Bible. Rather than believing in the Lord, they believe in the Bible; rather than beginning to read the Bible, they begin to believe in the Bible; rather than returning before the Lord, they return before the Bible. Thus, people worship the Bible as God and take it as their life. If they do not have the Bible, it is as if they have no life. People regard the Bible as high as God or even higher than God. If they do not have the working of the Holy Spirit or cannot touch God, they can live. But once they lose the Bible or lose the famous verses and words in the Bible, it is as if they lose their lives. So, since people believed in the Lord, they have begun to read the Bible and memorize the Bible. The more one can memorize the Bible, the more it proves that he loves the Lord and has great faith. Those who can preach to others after reading the Bible are all very good brothers and sisters. For so many years, people measure a person’s faithfulness to the Lord or his faith according to how much he understands the Bible. Most people simply do not know what they believe in God for and do not understand how they should believe in God, but they just blindly search for the clues to unlock the verses of the Bible. And they never seek after the trend of the working of the Holy Spirit, but just keep studying and researching the Bible strenuously. There has never been anyone who can find outside the Bible the newer work of the Holy Spirit. No one can leave the Bible, and no one dares to leave the Bible. People have been studying the Bible for so many years, making so many interpretations and spending so much effort. And they have many divergent views about the Bible and have been arguing about them endlessly. As a result, more than two thousand denominations have been formed today. People all want to find some higher interpretations or deeper mysteries from the Bible. They all want to explore the Bible and want to discover from the Bible something about the background of Jehovah working in Israel or the background of Jesus working in Judea or more mysteries that others do not know. Their attitude toward the Bible is ‘worship’ and ‘trust,’ and no one is fully clear about its inside truth and substance. So, even today people still feel an indescribable mystical sense about the Bible, and they ‘worship’ and ‘trust’ the Bible all the more. Now, people all want to discover from the Bible the prophecies concerning the end-time work, wanting to find what work God will do in the end time and what the signs of the end time will be. Thus, people have a more intense worship of the Bible. The nearer the end time is, the more people believe in the prophecies in the Bible, especially the prophecies concerning the end time. People worship the Bible so much and trust the Bible so much; consequently they have no heart to seek the work of the Holy Spirit. People think in their notions: Only the Bible can bring the work of the Holy Spirit; only in the Bible can God’s footsteps be found; only in the Bible are hidden the mysteries of God’s work; only the Bible speaks clearly about God’s everything and all his work, and no other books or men can; the Bible can bring the work in heaven to earth; the Bible can start an age and end an age. As people have these notions, they have no intention to seek the work of the Holy Spirit. So, no matter how helpful the Bible was to people before, now it has become a hindrance to God’s newest work. If there were no Bible, people could seek God’s footsteps elsewhere. But now God’s footsteps are ‘controlled’ by the Bible, and the spreading of the newest work is extremely difficult and can hardly take a single step. These are all caused by the famous verses and words in the Bible and by many prophecies in the Bible. The Bible has become an idol in people’s heart and a ‘riddle’ in their mind. They simply cannot believe that God would do another work outside the Bible, and they cannot believe that they can find God apart from the Bible, much less can they believe that God would make a new start apart from the Bible in the final work. They find these incomprehensible and unbelievable but also unimaginable. The Bible becomes a great hindrance to people’s accepting God’s newer work and a difficulty in God’s spreading his newer work.”
from “A Statement About the Bible (1)” in The Word Appears in the Flesh
2. “People of today always believe that the Bible is God and God is the Bible, and they believe that God spoke just so many words in the Bible and all the words in the Bible were spoken by God. Even all the believers in God believe this: Although the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments were written by men, they were God-breathed and are a record of the words of the Holy Spirit. This is man’s erroneous understanding and is not completely factual. Actually, apart from the books of prophecy, the books in the Old Testament are mostly records of history. In the epistles of the New Testament, some are of man’s experiences, and some are from the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. For example, the epistles written by Paul were of man’s work, and they were all inspired by the Holy Spirit. They were letters written to the churches and were his exhortations and encouragements to the brothers and sisters of the churches, not words spoken by the Holy Spirit. He could not speak on behalf of the Holy Spirit, and he was not a prophet, much less had he seen visions. Those letters were written to the several churches of that time such as Ephesus, Philadelphia, and Galatia. … If people consider epistles or words like Paul’s as the utterance of the Holy Spirit and worship them as God, this only means that they are too lacking in discernment. To put it seriously, aren’t they purely blaspheming God? How could man speak on behalf of God? How could people bow down to the record of man’s words and epistles as a ‘holy book,’ a ‘heavenly book’? Can man speak God’s word at will? How could man speak on behalf of God?”
from “A Statement About the Bible (3)” in The Word Appears in the Flesh
3. “Still more people believe that no matter which stage of new work God does, there have to be prophetic bases for it, and when he does each stage of new work, he must give a revelation to all ‘those who genuinely follow him,’ otherwise, it is not God’s work. It is already difficult for people to know God, and in addition, they have an absurd heart and a self-important and self-conceited disobedient nature, so it is more difficult for them to accept God’s new work. People do not investigate God’s new work carefully nor receive it with a humble heart, but take a despising attitude toward it and wait for God’s revelation and God’s guidance. Aren’t all these the manifestations of their disobeying and resisting God? How could such people receive God’s approval?”
from “How Could Those Who Circumscribe God Within Their ‘Notions’ Receive God’s ‘Revelation’?”
in The Word Appears in the Flesh
4. “God’s work has been progressing forward all the time. Although the purpose of his work does not change, the way of his working has been changing continuously. Thus, those who follow God have also been changing continuously. The more works God does, the more fully people will know God, and their disposition will also change accordingly with God’s work. However, because God’s work is always changing, those who do not know the work of the Holy Spirit and those who are absurd and do not know the truth all become ones who resist God. God’s work is always discordant with people’s notions, because his work is ever new and never old and he does not repeat his old work but does works he has never done before. Because God does not repeat his work and because people always measure God’s work of today by his past work, God’s work in every new age is very difficult to carry out. People have too many difficulties! People are too conservative in thought! They do not know God’s work, but they all circumscribe God’s work. Apart from God, people will lose the life, lose the truth, and lose the blessings of God, but they all refuse to receive the life, refuse to receive the truth, and even more refuse to receive God’s greater blessings to mankind. People all want to gain God, but they do not allow God’s work to change. Those who do not accept God’s new work all believe that God’s work is ever unchanging and that God’s work always remains at a standstill. They believe that as long as they keep the law, they will receive God’s eternal salvation. They believe that as long as they repent and confess their sins, they can satisfy God’s heart’s desire forever. They believe that God can only be the God under the law and God can only be the God crucified for man, and believe that God should not and cannot go beyond the Bible. Their ‘believes’ have tightly nailed them to the old law and to the dead regulations.”
from “How Could Those Who Circumscribe God Within Their ‘Notions’ Receive God’s ‘Revelation’?”
in The Word Appears in the Flesh
