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| Interpretation of the Fourth Utterance |
Interpretation of the Fourth Utterance
To stop all people having their heads turned and getting carried away after their transition from negative to positive, in the last passage of God’s utterance, once God has spoken of His highest requirements of His people—once God has told people of His will in this stage of His management plan—God gives them the opportunity to ponder His words, to help them make up their minds to satisfy God’s will in the end. When people’s conditions are positive, God immediately begins to ask people questions about the other side of the issue. He asks a string of questions that are difficult for people to figure out: “Was your love for Me tainted by impurity? Was your loyalty to Me pure and wholehearted? Was your knowledge of Me true? How much of a place did I hold within your hearts?” And so on. In the first half of this paragraph, with the exception of two reprimands, the remainder is all questions. In particular, “Have My utterances struck you at your Achilles’ heel?” is a very fitting question, and one that truly strikes at the most secret things in the depths of people’s hearts, causing them to unconsciously ask themselves: Am I truly loyal in my love of God? In their hearts, people unconsciously recall their past experiences in serving: They were consumed by self-forgiveness, self-righteousness, self-importance, self-satisfaction, complacency, and pride. They were like a big fish caught in a net—and after falling into these nets, it was not easy for them to free themselves. And furthermore, they were frequently unrestrained, they often deceived God’s normal humanity, and put themselves first in all they did. Prior to being called “service-doers,” they were like a newborn tiger cub, filled with energy. Though they somewhat focused their attention on life, sometimes they only went through the motions; like a slave, they were perfunctory toward God. During the time of being exposed as service-doers, they were negative, they fell behind, they were filled with sorrow, they complained about God, they hung their heads in dejection, and so on. Each step of their own wonderful, touching stories lingers in their minds. It even becomes difficult for them to sleep, and they spend the daytime in a stupor. They seem to have been eliminated a second time by God, fallen into Hades, and are incapable of escaping. Though God did nothing more than pose a few difficult questions in the first paragraph, read closely, they show that God’s aim is more than just to ask these questions for their own sakes; in them is contained a deeper level of meaning, one that must be explained in greater detail.
