By Yang Mei
In 2007, I got chronic renal failure all of a sudden. Upon learning this, my mother and sister-in-law who were believers in the Lord, as well as some of my Catholic friends all came to preach the gospel to me. They told me that as long as I turned to God, I would be healed of my sickness. But I didn’t believe there was a God at all. Rather, in my view, we should rely on science to cure our illnesses
, and those diseases that couldn’t be cured through science must be incurable, for nothing in the world was more powerful than science; God was merely a legend that man imagined, and believing in God was no more than a spiritual sustenance of man. How could I, a dignified teacher who is knowledgeable and educated, possibly believe in God? Thereupon, I refused all of them, and set about seeing doctors and seeking remedies everywhere. In a few years, I had nearly visited all the major county hospitals and provincial hospitals, yet my condition not only didn’t improve but became more serious. Even so, I still stubbornly held on to my view point that science would change all of this, and that it was because the treatment took a process.
In 2010, a sister from the Church of Almighty God came to preach God’s kingdom gospel to me, saying that God had come into the world of man to save mankind. Due to the setbacks and failures I had suffered in the course of seeking for healing over those years, I wasn’t that hard as before, and thus accepted the book the sister gave me. Nevertheless, inside I was still not willing to accept the gospel, nor did I believe that the words in this book were really expressed by God. I merely held that science could change my fate, and still placed my hope on drugs. Later, though I took more medicine than food every day, there wasn’t the slightest improvement in my condition. For nearly a year, regardless of how many times the sister had come to my home, I still refused to place my faith in God.
Since I took medicine all the year round, one day, my eyes suddenly got blurred and my legs became numb. I couldn’t see clearly or walk. Soon afterward, I was diagnosed with drug poisoning. At first I was hospitalized in the county hospital for a week, and then I transferred to a military hospital in Beijing and received treatment there for a month. And after that, I transferred to a well-known traditional Chinese medical hospital in Beijing and underwent a TCM treatment there for two months, but it was all to no avail. My physician-in-charge invited the retired chief of the Department of Neurology to treat me, yet my illness still didn’t improve in the least. At this time, my future daughter-in-law told me that there was a very famous doctor specializing in rare illness in Yunnan Province. So I hurried to Yunnan in my wheelchair. However, after receiving nearly a month of treatment, not only did my condition not improve, but my kidney problem got even worse due to the side-effects of the drugs I had taken for curing my eyes and legs. In pain and helplessness, I could not but go back home. After that, in order to save my kidney, I gave up the treatment for my eyes and legs, and no longer saw doctors or sought remedies.
At that time, I sank to the depths of despair. For I had completely pinned my hope for recovery on science, only to find science was so insignificant and powerless. Since my hope was dashed, I fell to my lowest point and was completely overwhelmed within, at a loss about how to walk the path that lied ahead. Amid the misery and confusion, I frequently thought: Why am I suffering from so many illnesses? And why are my illnesses incurable? I have sought for healing through my own effort, yet in the end my illness hasn’t improved but become aggravated. Is science really incapable of saving me? Can it be that there is really a God in the world? Is man’s destiny really controlled by His hands? I felt very puzzled about this. Later, I lived in the midst of agony every day. Once I thought of myself as a disabled person, I would shed tears secretly, feeling that I shouldn’t be a burden on my family anymore, for I had involved them in too much trouble. I had thought of committing suicide several times, yet feared death. I merely lived from day to day, waiting for the coming of death.
One day, my husband saw the book of God’s word that the sister had left to me. He then opened it and happened to see the title “Do You Know? God Has Done a Great Thing Among Men,” and it immediately caught his attention. So he began to read it, “The work of God is that which you cannot comprehend. If you can neither grasp whether your decision is correct nor know whether the work of God can succeed, then why not try your luck and see whether this ordinary man is of great help to you, and whether God has done great work” (“Do You Know? God Has Done a Great Thing Among Men” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). My heart was touched by these words. The words “then why not try your luck” kept lingering in my mind, lighting up my numb heart like a ray of twilight. And I began to see the hope of living. Then I eagerly asked my husband to read two more pieces of God’s words to me, both of which were the truth about God using words to judge and chastise man as well as change man’s life disposition. Though I had never heard of these words and was unable to grasp the meaning of them, I felt these words were different from the messages preached by those believers in the Lord Jesus. For the believers in the Lord preached mostly about how to gain God’s grace, and told me that my sickness would be healed once I believed in God, which made me rather doubtful about that. On the contrary, Almighty God’s words didn’t say that people would be healed once they believed in Him. I felt Almighty God’s words were quite practical, and the more I listened, the more I became interested.
From then on, every day I would ask my husband to read me God’s words. I learned from the book that the religious people believe in God without knowing Him and even resist God’s words, and that they sin in the day only to confess in the evening. These words had even more convinced me. For my mother and my sisters-in-law all believed in the Lord, and their living out was exactly the same as what God’s words revealed—committing sins and confessing them. At that time, I had an awakening in spirit: Can it be that this is really God’s voice? Who else except God can know the situation of the religious world? The unbelievers don’t know this, let alone the famous or great men, and even the religious people themselves do not know that they are the ones who believe in God yet resist Him. At the thought of this, I even more felt that these words couldn’t be spoken by man, and that they might really be expressed by God incarnated in the human world.
When I had such feelings, the sister, who had ever preached the kingdom gospel to me, came to me with another sister after hearing that I had been discharged from hospital. Not until then did I have awareness in my conscience. I thought to myself: The sisters not only don’t shun me, a disabled person, but again come to preach the gospel to me, which can’t be attained by any ordinary man. If it were others, they would have long ago ignored me. This matter allowed me to clearly recognize that such kind of love must come from God, for we human had no such love at all. And it was not until then that I had a deep-felt understanding of the saying, “A friend in need is a friend indeed.” My family didn’t abandon me as they had no other choice, but the sister, a person who had nothing to do with me, insisted on preaching the gospel to me unconditionally for over a year without any schemes. She paid such high price on a disabled person like me; what great confidence and patience! I was moved by such kind of love of God, and no longer had reason to refuse the gospel of God. Thus both my husband and I accepted God’s work in the last days.
In June, 2011, my husband and I began to live the church life formally. Since I couldn’t see the words clearly, at the gatherings brothers and sisters read God’s word to me, and at ordinary times I either let my husband read God’s word to me or listened to hymns by myself. Later, I found the root of my illness and suffering in two hymns of God’s word. One of them says: “After Satan had corrupted them, man then became more and more degenerate, the illnesses of man were deepened, their suffering became more and more severe, and man felt more and more the emptiness, the tragedy and the inability to go on living of the world. Man felt less and less hope. This suffering was brought on man by Satan” (“God Endured All Sufferings to Bring About the Wonderful Destination for Mankind” in Follow the Lamb and Sing New Songs). And the other says: “So it is still possible for you to have illnesses, troubles and to feel suicidal, also feeling the desolation of the world, or that life has no meaning. That is to say, this suffering is still under Satan’s mastery—this is a fatal weakness of man. This is a fatal weakness of man” (“The Meaning of God’s Suffering on Man’s Behalf” in Follow the Lamb and Sing New Songs). God’ words were absolutely true. The torment of illness really caused me to feel worse than death and almost lose the courage to live. But at that time I didn’t quite understand why God said that all the sickness and suffering were the torments of Satan. It was only by reading God’s words later that I gradually understood these truths and felt my heart brightened more and more.
One afternoon, my husband read me God’s words as usual, and I heard God’s word says, “From when man first had social sciences, the mind of man was occupied by science and knowledge. Then science and knowledge became tools for the ruling of mankind, and there was no longer sufficient room for man to worship God, and no more favorable conditions for the worship of God. The position of God sunk ever lower in the heart of man. A world in man’s heart with no place for God is dark, empty without hope. … Science, knowledge, freedom, democracy, leisure, comfort, these are but a temporary respite. Even with these things, man will inevitably sin and bemoan the injustices of society. These things cannot allay man’s craving and desire to explore. Because man was made by God and the senseless sacrifices and explorations of man can only lead to more distress. Man will exist in a constant state of fear, will not know how to face the future of mankind, or how to face the path that lies ahead. Man will even come to fear science and knowledge, and fear even more the feeling of emptiness within him” (“God Presides Over the Fate of All Mankind” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). Hearing these God’s words, I finally understood why God said that all the illness and suffering of man come from Satan. It is because Satan has corrupted man through knowledge and science. It has instilled into man these fallacies such as “Man evolves from apes,” “There has never been a savior,” “Knowledge can change one’s fate,” “Man’s fate is controlled by his own hands,” “Science can save man,” “Man can conquer nature,” and so on. All of these have first occupied the hearts of people, so that they all blindly worship knowledge and science, and attempt to change their fates through knowledge and solve all problems through science. As a result, men are fooled by Satan and become playthings under its command; they deny everything from God, keeping away from God’s care and protection for them. And I’m precisely one of the millions of victims. When I fell ill, I just relied on science to treat my illness. God couldn’t bear to see me continue to be deceived and harmed by Satan, so He aroused brothers and sisters to preach the gospel to me time after time. However, my heart had been blinded by Satan’s lies, so that I didn’t believe the existence of God, much less did I believe that the fate of man was controlled by God. Instead, I just blindly believed in and esteemed science, and pushed away God’s salvation time after time. I had thought that those specialists of the famous hospitals, the advanced science and technology, and the high-class medical equipment could cure me of my illness, yet in the end, I hadn’t been healed but instead held up by illness. To save my life, I had no choice but to give up the treatment. Science had brought me nothing but irreparable harm, and Satan just used science to shove me into the abyss of death step by step. But in the meantime, God maneuvered my husband to read me His word so as to awaken my hardened heart, allowing me, who was on the brink of death, to receive His salvation eventually.
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