2 Seeing God’s Hand in Disaster
by Yingxin
(from Cijiawu Church in Fangshan Small District, Beijing District)
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Seeing God’s Hand in Disaster |
On July 22, 2012, the day after the disaster, I hurried to visit a sister who just accepted God’s work of the last days two months ago. As soon as I entered her village, I was shocked at the scene before my eyes. The road caved in, and the roadbed below the asphalt pavement was uncovered. Everywhere were the broken stones washed down from the hills, the big ones weighing several tons, and the cumulate mud was as thick as 30 centimeters. The rainwater flowing down from the hills formed a stream…. The whole village was changed beyond recognition and was in a total mess.
Walking through the village, I met sister Lee (a new believer) on the hillside. She described to me the scene when the disaster happened.
On the evening of the 21st, the sister’s husband was cooking in the shed beside the stone house. They two were talking and laughing, without considering the rain very horrible. When the sister found water flowed into her tall rain boots, she suddenly became aware that the situation was bad, and she burst out, “Bad! Run up the hill quickly!” These words had scarcely escaped her when she saw the flood rolling down from the hill, and the water inundated the ground and was about one meter deep. The sister was frightened out of her wits at that moment. Then she hurriedly pulled her husband and climbed up the hill with the help of the Chinese scholar tree on the slope behind the house. About one minute after they got to a higher place, the torrent with all sizes of stones and litter rushed down from the hill, and swept away the electric scooter, the bike, the shed in the courtyard, and even one corner of the stone house in a flash.
Later, the sister said, “When I saw that the things were all washed away, I wasn’t afraid; instead, I felt very peaceful in my heart. Although I have lost them, I still have God. At that time the power of the flood was so great that once man fell into the torrent, he must be killed. However, we were safe. This is because Almighty God saved us….” When the sister returned home to tidy up the house, she unexpectedly found that The Extracted Records of God’s Three Stages of Work lay on the bed safe and sound. The water didn’t submerge the bed, much less the book, but the tables, chairs, and other things in the house were all floating in the water. The sister said excitedly, “God has purposely kept this book for me. I’ll do my best to follow God from now on.” She also said that she usually left her dress about when she was back home from work, but she hung up her dress that day, and later when she did the cleaning, she found that there were 2000 yuan in the dress, which was completely God’s keeping. When the sister and I walked to the back of the mushroom house, a more wonderful scene lay before us: The road behind the house leading to the villa quarter was piled with broken stones, which was 30 to 40 centimeters high, and because of the blocking of the broken stones, the rainwater from the hill didn’t dash directly toward the sister’s mushroom house and small stone house, but flowed away in different directions. It seemed that floodwaters and stones had eyes. How wonderful God’s deeds are!
In fact, God’s purpose in sending disasters is not to destroy mankind totally, but to arouse our spirits through disasters, to cause us to see the human life clearly in disasters, so that we can break away from Satan’s trap and return to God and receive God’s salvation and keeping. At the same time, through disasters God intends to make us truly know God, see God’s deeds, and be gained by God. This is God’s love and mercy toward mankind. The Hymn of God’s word No. 226 “God Descends With Judgment” goes, “… not only is God descending upon the nation of the great red dragon, He is also turning His face toward the entire universe, so that the whole empyrean is quaking. Is there a single place that does not undergo God’s judgment? Is there a single place that does not exist under the scourges that God hurls down? Everywhere God goes He has scattered ‘seeds of disaster’ of all kinds. This is one of the ways in which God works, and is without doubt an act of salvation for man, and what God extends to him is still a kind of love. … God wishes to make even more people come to know Him, be able to see Him, and in this way come to revere God whom they have not seen for so many years but who, today, is real.”
Brothers and sisters, how should we choose our own way at this time when disasters happen frequently? How should we care for God’s will and perform our last duty well? The greater the disasters become, the more anxious God becomes. May we all understand God’s kind intention and eager desire, and thus cooperate with God initiatively, accept God’s calling and commission, and bring more souls before God, dedicating our whole being to the spreading of God’s kingdom gospel at the last critical moment.
August 15, 2012
Source: A Hundred Questions and Answers on Investigating the True Way
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