The Call of Love

Xiao Yin

I was born into a rural family. As my family was poor and I couldn’t eat my fill or dress warmly when I was young, other children my age often laughed at me. When I saw those children in rich family never wanted for food or clothing, got unending allowances, and were surrounded by others wherever they went, I was very envious of them. Therefore, I made up my mind that I must work hard to make a lot of money when I grew up, so they would never look down upon me again.

After I grew up, I wished to change my fate by marrying a rich man. Unexpectedly, my husband’s family was poor too. When I saw the classmates and friends around me owned a nice fully furnished house when they got married but I had nothing, I felt very uncomfortable. I wasn’t resigned to be poor all my life as my parents, much less wanted my children to suffer the same indignity as I did. So I made a resolution inwardly: I’ll strive hard to make money and to be a rich man. Thus, I started the seafood business. In order to quickly obtain money, every day I got up at 3:00 a.m. to stock goods and dealt with the remaining goods until late at night. Within less than a year, I was heavily exhausted and got gastropathy, arthritis, and scapulohumeral periarthritis one after another. Nevertheless, I still insisted on doing business in spite of illness, and was as busy as a bee all day long.

During that period of time, my cousin preached the end-time gospel of Almighty God to me many times. However, because at that time I set my mind fully on making money, and simply had no desire to take notice of the gospel, I rejected Almighty God’s salvation of me time and time again. A few years later, I had some savings. I helped my husband run a remedial class, and gradually the remedial class was renowned. My dream had almost come true, and I had my own house and car. I felt very satisfied when people around me eyed me with admiration. Just when I planned to enjoy life, I discovered accidently that my husband was intimate with a divorced female colleague. Right at that moment, I felt as if the sky had collapsed. I thought, “I support the family with great difficulty. But before living a good life, I have to face a marriage crisis….” At that time, I got rather enraged, and even more felt aggrieved. After a several-day bitter quarrel with my husband, my illnesses deteriorated: I had a serious stomachache; thyreoid proliferated rapidly; my arm was scalded when I did physical therapy, and the wound was infected by accident later, which needed skin-grafting…. In the face of these misfortunes, I felt miserable. I kept on asking myself: Is it all that I get after over ten years of painstaking efforts? How could it be so? I couldn’t figure it out and felt it was so miserable to live in this world.

Just when I was in the most depressing time, my cousin came to visit me once again. Seeing her cheeks with a healthy glow and her carefree expression, I was envious of her, or even a little jealous. I said to her, “I do envy you. Although I have need of nothing, I feel very miserable and tired.” She said with a smile, “Have you forgotten that I was in the same condition as you are now? It is Almighty God who saves me from the sea of bitterness, so that I can lead such a free and happy life today. Let me read a passage of Almighty God’s words to you!” Then, she took out from her bag a book named “The Word Appears in the Flesh” and read, “There is an enormous secret in your heart. You never know it there because you have been living in a world without light shining. Your heart and your spirit have been taken away by the evil one. Your eyes are covered by darkness; you cannot see the sun in the sky, nor the twinkling star in the night. Your ears are clogged with deceptive words and you hear not the thunderous voice of Jehovah, nor the sound of the rushing waters from the throne. You have lost everything that should have belonged to you and everything that the Almighty bestowed upon you. You have entered an endless sea of bitterness, with no strength of a rescue, no hope of survival, left only to struggle and to bustle about. … From that moment, you are doomed to be afflicted by the evil one, kept far away from the blessings of the Almighty, out of reach of the provisions of the Almighty, and you embark on a road of no return. A million calls can hardly rouse your heart and your spirit. You sleep deeply in the hand of the evil one, which has lured you into the boundless realm, with no direction, with no road signs. Henceforth, you have lost your original purity, innocence, and started to hide from the care of the Almighty. The evil one steers your heart in every matter and becomes your life. You no longer fear him, no longer avoid him, no longer doubt him. Instead, you treat him as the God in your heart. You begin to enshrine him, worship him, be inseparable like a shadow of his, and mutually commit to each other in life and death.” (from The Word Appears in the Flesh) After reading Almighty God’s words, she said to me, “The evil one is Satan. It uses all kinds of knowledge and social trends to corrupt man, and installs man with the fallacy ‘money is exalted above everything.’ As a result, man adores money and holds the opinion that if one has no money, then he is unable to survive in the world, and he is of a low status and is a cut below others. Therefore, they begin to resort to every possible means, don’t hesitate to give anything, and even barter away their dignity and character in order to acquire more money. With man’s heart occupied by the desire for money and interests, they simply have no inclination to seek God’s utterance, much less are they willing to come before God and accept His care.” On hearing God’s words and my cousin’s fellowship, I felt that Almighty God’s words, like a beam of light, shined upon my long-slumbering heart. In the past decade, in order to make money, I worked hard day and night, without considering my health or cherishing my own life. I thought that if I had money, I would have everything and wouldn’t need to accept God’s salvation. For this reason, I rejected Almighty God’s salvation in the last days over and over again, and avoided the care and protection of Almighty God to me. In consequence, I lived in Satan’s fooling. After knowing this, I no longer evaded God but accepted Almighty God’s end-time salvation gladly.

Later, I saw Almighty God’s words, “One exhausts a lifetime’s worth of energy fighting against fate, spends all of one’s time bustling about trying to feed one’s family and shuttling back and forth between wealth and status. The things that people treasure are family, money, and fame; they view these as the most valuable things in life. All people complain about their fates, yet still they push to the back of their minds the questions that it is most imperative to examine and understand: why man is alive, how man should live, what the value and meaning of life is. All of their lives, however many years that may be, they just rush about seeking fame and fortune, until their youth has fled, until they become gray and wrinkled; until they see that fame and fortune cannot stop one’s slide toward senility, that money cannot fill the emptiness of the heart; until they understand that no one is exempt from the law of birth, aging, sickness, and death, that no one can escape what fate has in store. … Fame and fortune one gains in the material world give one temporary satisfaction, passing pleasure, a false sense of ease, and make one lose one’s way. And so people, as they thrash about in the vast sea of humanity, craving peace, comfort, and tranquility of heart, are subsumed again and again beneath the waves. When people have yet to figure out the questions that it is most crucial to understand—where they come from, why they are alive, where they are going, and so forth—they are seduced by fame and fortune, misled, controlled by them, irrevocably lost. Time flies; years pass in an eyeblink; before one realizes it, one has bid farewell to the best years of one’s life.” (from Continuation of The Word Appears in the Flesh) From Almighty God’s words, I understood that I exhausted over ten years’ worth of energy seeking money, fame, fortune, and position. Although I led a rich life and seemed to feel satisfied outwardly, it was exchanged with the torment of illnesses and the betrayal of my husband. I felt more and more miserable, perplexed, and helpless in my heart. Money didn’t bring me bliss but a lot of suffering. What’s the sense of value and meaning in man’s living? Later, I found out the answer in Almighty God’s word!

Almighty God says, “The source of life comes from God, for all creation, whatever the difference in form or structure. Whatever kind of living being you are, you cannot move counter to the path of life that God has set. In any case, all I wish is for man to understand that without the care, keeping, and provision of God, man cannot receive all that he was meant to receive, no matter how great the effort or struggle. Without the supply of life from God, man loses the sense of value in living and loses the sense of purpose in life.” (from The Word Appears in the Flesh) Almighty God’s words gave me an insight: Man was created by God, and what man needs is God’s salvation. As long as one lives, he should come before God and receive the supply of life God bestows upon man, so as to attain the knowledge of God and attain submission to and worship of God. If one strays far from God and lives only for wealth, position, and fame, then he loses the sense of value and meaning in living.

Thank God! It was Almighty God’s word that opened my eyes to the truth about Satan’s corruption of man, and moreover showed me the right direction of life. From then on, I began to change my viewpoints on things, and no longer pursued money, fame, fortune, and position eagerly, but was willing to live by the word of God and be a person who worshiped God. When I practiced in that way, I felt great peace and joy in my heart. More miraculously, I recovered from my illnesses unconsciously, and my relationship with family members became more and more normal. I thank Almighty God from my heart for His salvation of me. All the glory be to Almighty God!