Have You Welcomed the Lord Jesus’ Return?
By Zhang Liang
Since I believed in the Lord, in order to welcome the Lord Jesus’ return and be raptured to the kingdom of heaven, I have been passionate, preaching the gospel, sustaining the weak brothers and sisters and so on. However, although many years passed, I didn’t see the Lord come to rapture us into the kingdom of heaven. Instead, the faith and love of brothers and sisters in the church were getting colder and colder. In 2002, I suddenly heard that the Lord has already come back to take true believers in Him into the kingdom of heaven. Right then, I had an immediate thought: It’s impossible. The Lord Jesus should come upon a cloud. Afterward, I inquired the brothers and sisters in varying churches about the news that the Lord has come back. They all shook their heads, saying, “That’s impossible. The Lord will come back with a cloud. We all haven’t seen it yet. So, He hasn’t come back.” So I was even more certain that the Lord should come back with a cloud. I could not accept it if the Lord has not come back on a cloud.
Afterward, when someone testified to me that the Lord Jesus has already come back, I always refused with the excuse “It’s impossible.” But, brothers and sisters did not lose heart. They preached the kingdom gospel to me time and time again. And, they left a book for me to read. However, as I held on that the Lord Jesus will return upon a cloud, I neither accepted the gospel nor read the book. Until one day, I heard a story, “Once there was a family of only three people, a father and his two sons. Due to the living difficulties, the father went to other places to do business. Before he left, he urged his two sons to wait for his return. When the father made money, he came back and knocked the door outside. However, his two sons absolutely refused to open the door just because the man standing outside was not wearing the same clothes as his father had worn when he left. Although the father could tell the real situation of the family and the two son’s life experiences, he wasn’t allowed into his house for he wasn’t wearing the former clothes. Of course, the two sons didn’t gain his money earned from the business.”
Having listened to the story, I laughed at the two stupid sons for recognizing their father according to the clothes. Meanwhile, I couldn’t help reflecting whether I was as foolish as the two sons with regard to the news of the Lord’s coming. I only judge the Lord’s return in accordance with whether He has come upon a white cloud. If not so, it is not the return of the Lord Jesus. I am the same as the Pharisees who waited for the Messiah, recorded in the Bible. They all knew that an infant boy would be born as their Lord. It was because the Lord Jesus’ work did not conform to their own notions and imaginations that they nailed Him to the cross and thus they were subjected to overwhelming disaster. At that thought, I quickly found out the book that brothers and sisters left for me and read those God’s words, “For several millennia, man has longed to be able to witness the arrival of the Savior. Man has longed to behold Jesus the Savior riding a white cloud as He descends, in person, among those who have pined and yearned for Him for thousands of years. Man has also longed for the Savior to return and be reunited with them; that is, longed for Jesus the Savior, who has been separated from people for thousands of years, to come back, and to once again carry out the work of redemption that He did among the Jews, to be compassionate and loving toward man, to forgive the sins of man and bear the sins of man, and even bear all of man’s transgressions and deliver man from sin. … Since Jesus departed, the disciples who followed Him, as well as all of the saints who were saved in His name, have been desperately pining for Him and awaiting Him. All those who were saved by the grace of Jesus Christ during the Age of Grace have been longing for that exultant day in the end time when Jesus the Savior descends on a white cloud to appear before all people. … Yet Jesus the Savior did not do this; He did the opposite of what man conceived. He did not arrive among those who had yearned for His return, and He did not appear to all people while riding upon the white cloud. He has already arrived, but man does not know Him, and remains ignorant of Him. Man is merely awaiting Him aimlessly, unaware that He has already descended upon a ‘white cloud’ (the cloud which is His Spirit, His words, His entire disposition and all that He is), and is now among a group of overcomers that He will make during the last days” (“The Savior Has Already Returned Upon a ‘White Cloud’”). Reading these words, I felt so excited in my heart. Actually, God’s words are clearly spoken. God has plainly told us that the white cloud means His Spirit, His words, and His entire disposition and all that He is. However, I, based on my own notions and imaginations, thought that the Lord Jesus would descend upon a white cloud. In this way, I clung to my erroneous notions: If the Lord Jesus arrives on a cloud I will accept. If not, I won’t accept. Today if I had not read God’s word, I would have delimited God’s work in my own notions and imaginations. Little do we know that the Lord Jesus has long ago arrived upon a white cloud and done His new work. Our notions and imaginations differ considerably from the work that God wants to do practically. God does His work according to His principles and His own plan instead of our imaginations. At that moment, my heart became much more enlightened.
Then, I read another passage of God’s words, “God makes His own choices and His own plans when He does His work; moreover, He has His own objectives and His own methods. Whatever work He does, He has no need to discuss it with man or seek his advice, much less to notify each and every person of His work. This is the disposition of God, which should, moreover, be recognized by everyone. If you desire to witness the appearance of God, to follow God’s footsteps, then you must first walk away from your own notions. You must not demand that God do this or that, much less should you place Him within your own confines and limit Him to your own notions. Instead, you should ask how you are to seek God’s footprints, how you are to accept God’s appearance, and how you are to submit to the new work of God: This is what man should do. Since man is not the truth, and is not possessed of the truth, he should seek, accept, and obey” (“The Appearance of God Has Ushered in a New Age” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). Those words made me feel doubly rebuked in my heart. As for the news of the Lord’s coming, I required God to do this or to do that, which is too unreasonable! I thought back that I had been expecting the Lord for many years. When someone testified to me that the Lord has already come back, I lived in my notions, neither seeking nor investigating, but refusing the Lord’s return. What difference is there between my behaviors and the Pharisees’ resistance against God when believing in God? From this, we can see that faced with the Lord’s return, we should seek, obey, and accept it. If we always hold on to our conceptions, we will repeat the way of the Pharisees. In the end, we will offend God’s disposition because of our resistance against God. Just as God says, “Many people may not care what I say, but I still want to tell every so-called saint who follows Jesus that, when you see Jesus descend from the heaven upon a white cloud with your own eyes, this will be the public appearance of the Sun of righteousness. Perhaps that will be a time of great excitement for you, yet you should know that the time when you witness Jesus descend from the heaven is also the time when you go down to hell to be punished. That will be the time of the end of God’s management plan and it will be when God rewards the good and punishes the wicked. For the judgment of God will have ended before man sees signs, when there is only the expression of truth” (“By the Time You Behold the Spiritual Body of Jesus, God Will Have Made Heaven and Earth Anew” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). God is merciful to us humans as well as wrathful. During the period when God works in the flesh secretly, God does all He can to save man. When God’s work in the flesh concludes is when God unleashes His wrath. Today the Lord Jesus has again returned to flesh to do His work so as to save man. If I cleave to my notions, not accepting Almighty God’s work in the last days, I will have lost God’s salvation in the last days. It will be too late for regret then.
Thank Almighty God for His grace and mercy to me. If God hadn’t arranged for brothers and sisters to preach the gospel to me, I would not have had the chance to meet the return of the Lord. Only after I accept the work of Almighty God in the last days and come to God’s house do I know that Almighty God’s gospel of the kingdom has been spread to the countries all over the world. All kinds of books, and videos including movies, choirs and MVs have been uploaded to all different platforms. God is still giving us this rare and fleeting opportunity, waiting for us to return before Him soon. Now God’s work will come to an end. Have you welcomed the Lord’s second coming?
From: Grow in Christ
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