Questions and Answers on the Way of Eternal Life
Answer: There is only one God, and His work of saving mankind can’t be done in one or two stages. Because there are three stages of work in God’s management plan to save mankind, the truth expressed by God in each stage is different, and gradually deepens, so that in the end it becomes perfect. God does different work across the ages based on the needs of man at the time, so the way God gives to man in each age is different. Knowing the difference between the way of repentance and the way of eternal life is very important. It is a truth every true believer in God must understand, because it’s related to how we know the truth and gain eternal life. Now we all know that the Lord Jesus did the work of redemption in the Age of Grace, and gave man the way of repentance. As the Lord Jesus said: “Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Mat 4:17). Which is to say, man should confess his sins and repent before God if he wants to enter the kingdom of heaven. After man confesses previous sins, such sins will be forgiven. Man will no longer sin, repent and be born again. This is repentance. But at that time, the Lord Jesus only taught man to confess his sins and repent, not to commit sins, not to do evil, to deny himself, take up the cross, and follow the Lord, to love the Lord with all his heart, his soul, and his mind, to love others as himself, with humility, forbearance and patience, and to forgive others seventy times seven and so on. These are the ways for man to repent. When man confesses his sins and repents before the Lord Jesus, these sins will be forgiven, which qualifies man to pray before God and fellowship with Him, and enjoy the bountiful grace and truth given by God. But what we can’t deny is that even if man’s sins are forgiven, his sinful nature still exists, and he can still sin, oppose and betray God. This proves that though man’s sins can be forgiven, he can still sin, and can’t escape the satanic disposition to attain purification. The Lord Jesus only did the work of redemption, which merely allows man to confess his sins, repent, return to God, and enjoy the grace given by God. This shows that the truth expressed by the Lord Jesus is the way for man to repent. Just as Almighty God says: “At the time, Jesus only spoke to His disciples a series of sermons in the Age of Grace, such as how to practice, how to gather together, how to ask in prayer, how to treat others, and so forth. The work He carried out was that of the Age of Grace, and He expounded only on how the disciples and those who followed Him ought to practice. He did only the work of the Age of Grace and none of the last days. … The work of God in each age has clear boundaries; He does only the work of the current age and never does He carry out the next stage of work in advance. Only in this way can His representative work of each age be brought to the fore. Jesus had spoken only of the signs of the last days, of how to be patient and how to be saved, how to repent and confess, as well as how to bear the cross and endure suffering; never did He speak of what man in the last days should enter into or how to seek to satisfy God’s will” (“How Can Man Who Has Delimited God in His Conceptions Receive the Revelations of God?” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). “The sins of man could be forgiven through the sin offering, but as for just how man can be made to sin no more, and how his sinful nature may be extirpated completely and transformed, he has no way of solving this problem. The sins of man were forgiven, and this is because of the work of God’s crucifixion, but man continued to live within the corrupt satanic disposition of old. This being so, man must be completely saved from his corrupt satanic disposition, so that his sinful nature may be completely extirpated, never to develop again, thus enabling the disposition of man to be transformed. This would require man to grasp the path of growth in life, to grasp the way of life, and to grasp the way to change his disposition. Furthermore, it would require man to act in accordance with this path, so that his disposition may gradually be changed and he may live under the shining of the light, so that all that he does may be in accord with the will of God, so that he may cast away his corrupt satanic disposition, and so that he may break free from Satan’s influence of darkness, thereby emerging fully from sin. Only then will man receive complete salvation” (“The Mystery of the Incarnation (4)” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). The words of Almighty God clearly tell us that the Lord Jesus did the work of redemption, and what He gave us was only the way of repentance, but He didn’t give man the way of everlasting life to cast off his satanic nature and attain purification. So, in the last days, Almighty God has come, and on the foundation of the Lord Jesus’ work of redemption, He has done the work of “judgment beginning at the house of God” and gives us the way of everlasting life. Only by accepting the way of everlasting life given by Almighty God in the last days can we become obedient to the will of God, completely escape the dark influence of Satan, reach salvation, and enter the kingdom of God.
