Previously, I often heard my pastor say the Lord Jesus has redeemed us by crucifixion and forgiven our sins; we have been saved for our faith in the Lord, and once saved always saved; when the Lord comes, we are able to be raptured into the kingdom of heaven and enjoy the blessings of heaven. Thus, I enthusiastically spent myself for the Lord and worked hard for the Lord all the time, longing to be taken to the kingdom of heaven when the Lord comes. But in recent years, I found the co-workers in our church engaged in jealousy and controversy, and formed cliques or colluded with others to fight for status; the believers also gradually lost their previous faith, living in negativity and weakness; many of them followed the worldly evil trends and indulged themselves in fleshly enjoyment and pleasure of sin. As I read the Lord’s word saying, “Truly, truly, I say to you, Whoever commits sin is the servant of sin. And the servant stays not in the house for ever: but the son stays ever” (John 8:34–35); “You shall therefore be holy, for I am holy” (Leviticus 11:45), I reflected on myself and realized that although my sins had been forgiven for my belief in the Lord, I still lived in the cycle of sinning and confessing and couldn’t extricate myself from it. At that time, I was thinking: God is holy and righteous, and the kingdom of heaven is reigned by God. Are those like me—still often committing sins and filled with corruption and filth—qualified to enter God’s kingdom? And how exactly can I enter the kingdom of heaven?
Thank God! Recently, I met Brother Li online. His fellowship was enlightening and helped me solve my confusions. He said, “We have been forgiven of our sins for our faith in the Lord, but we still couldn’t stop ourselves from committing sins often nor extricate ourselves from sins. Actually, it is because we human race have been corrupted by Satan very deeply and we all have sinful nature and satanic dispositions. If we didn’t get our sinful nature resolved, even if our sins have been forgiven, we could still commit sins to resist God. And such people would never ever be compatible with God, much less to enter the kingdom of heaven. So, the Lord Jesus said, ‘I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. However, when He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth’ (John 16:12–13); ‘For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God’ (1 Peter 4:17). We humans cannot solve our own sinful nature, and only God can save us thoroughly from sins. God is faithful and He absolutely won’t give up on His work of saving man halfway. Therefore, as the Lord comes back in the last days, He still needs to express all the truth of cleansing and saving man and do the judgment work beginning at the house of God to completely solve our sinful nature and satanic dispositions, helping us break free from the sins so as to be saved and gained by God. Only if we accept God’s end-time judgment work and experience the judgment and purification of God’s word, are we able to thoroughly get rid of Satan’s corrupt dispositions and attain purification and salvation to be brought into God’s kingdom. Just as God’s word says, ‘Before man was redeemed, many of Satan’s poisons had already been planted within him and, after thousands of years of being corrupted by Satan, he has within him an established nature that resists God. Therefore, when man has been redeemed, it is nothing more than a case of redemption in which man is bought at a high price, but the poisonous nature within him has not been eliminated. Man that is so defiled must undergo a change before becoming worthy to serve God. By means of this work of judgment and chastisement, man will fully come to know the filthy and corrupt essence 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.’”
After listening to brother Li’s fellowship, I understood that the Lord Jesus only did the work of redemption, but not the work of thoroughly purifying and saving man. Since we believed in the Lord, our sins have been forgiven, but our sinful nature and satanic dispositions have still not yet been cleansed, so we are not qualified to enter God’s kingdom. Only if we accept and submit to God’s judgment work of the last days and get our corrupt dispositions changed and our sinful nature cleansed, can we enter the kingdom of heaven and gain eternal life!
