Peihe Xianning City, Hubei Province
I always believed that my husband and I passed our lives “with our faces to the soil and our backs to the sun” because we didn’t study enough when we were young, and because we had no knowledge. That’s why I decided that no matter how hard or how much I had to suffer, I would send my sons and daughters to school so that they could accomplish something, and wouldn’t have to follow in our footsteps. With that guiding us, my husband and I ate and dressed simply and squeezed every penny to send our oldest daughter to technical school and our oldest son to university. But we still had two more children, so to send them to university, my husband had to leave home to work for years at a time, and I wasn’t either idle; I tended the fields and the pigs at home from dawn to dusk. Whenever the farm work got too exhausting, I wished I could simply stop. But at the thought of how competitive society is today, how if I didn’t send my children to school, they would only have a future working in the mud like me, how they would never achieve anything and be looked down upon, and that only by testing into university could they find a good job or become an official, achieve something, gain a future for themselves, and gain glory for us, the pain and exhaustion I suffered seemed worth it. And so, every day when I woke up, I kept myself so busy with my work that often I had no time to eat and drink of God’s words or for a normal spiritual life, and even less time for a normal life at church or to perform my duties, but I thought nothing of it, and continued to work myself to the bone for my children … until recently, when I heard these words from God’s fellowship: “People all hope that their children can be successful. Everyone hopes their children can go to a famous university, then take up advanced studies, earn a degree, and afterward stand out among others and gain a firm foothold in society. People all have this viewpoint and all want their children to pursue higher education because of the saying: ‘The worth of other pursuits is small, the study of books excels them all.’ Furthermore, competition in this modern society is especially intense. If they don’t have a university degree or have a firm foothold in society, making a living becomes a problem in the future. This is everybody’s thinking and point of view. … But did you think about, after they accept such education, how many toxins and how many of Satan’s ideas and theories will be instilled in them? …
Until one day, your children return and you tell them about believing in God, and they show antipathy. After you tell them about the truth, they say you’re foolish and laugh at you, and scoff at what you say. At that time you will think: ‘Oh, sending my children to those schools to accept such education was the wrong path. I chose the wrong path, but it’s too late for regret.’ … no one is willing to bring them before God to completely accept the viewpoints and ideas that God requires, or to be the kind of person God requires. People are unwilling to do this and don’t dare to do this. They are deeply frightened that if they do so, their children won’t be able to make a living or have a future in society. What does this point of view represent? It represents and confirms that mankind has no interest, confidence and moreover no genuine faith in the truth and in God. What mankind’s heart looks up at is still this world, and in their hearts they still worship this world, thinking that people who leave this world won’t be able to survive. … these ideas and viewpoints are…, a betrayal and rejection of God, and incompatible with the truth” (“Knowing Yourself Requires Knowing Your Deep-rooted Thoughts and Views” in Records of Christ’s Talks). Each and every one of God’s words moved me deeply. So many years of bitter saving and hard, laborious work, giving up everything so that my children could go to university, and why? Because I believed Satan’s “The worth of other pursuits is small, the study of books excels them all” was a rule of survival! Under the influence of Satan’s poison, I put knowledge above all else, and thought that only with knowledge could one stand out, accomplish things, have a future, and gain status in society. I thought those without education were an underclass deserving of disdain, the lowest of the low. So, to ensure my children could succeed in the world and avoid lives “with their faces to the soil and their backs to the sun,” I did everything in my power to send them to study and provide them a higher education. For so many years, I put my goal before anything else in my heart, meanwhile I buried God’s words, my duties, and my own salvation in the back of my mind. Satan’s poison hurt me so deeply! The main reason I paid such a price to send my children to school was my own regret over not studying enough when I was young, so I transferred my hopes to my sons and daughters because I wanted them to finish the dream I couldn’t fulfill myself. For decades I had lived and fought for one thing—knowledge—without even being aware of it. Even though I have followed God for years, I have not obtained the truth, and my viewpoints haven’t changed at all. What I worship is still knowledge, and what I yearn for and rely on is Satan. I am still an unbeliever who pursues worldly trends and resists God!
In God’s fellowship, I also came to understand that Satan uses study and learning to trick them into receiving its education and accepting its poison and thoughts into their minds, and once the poison is delivered, people are completely taken over by atheist thoughts and fallacies that deny and resist God, which is how Satan achieves its goals of corrupting and swallowing people. Because I couldn’t see through Satan’s deceit, I eagerly sent my children off to receive a satanic education, handing them to the evil without ever considering how to bring them before God or make them accept the truth that comes from God and make them live according to God’s requirements. Recently, my son graduated from a prestigious university, and when he returned home, even though he has gained much knowledge, he has also completely gone over to the path of death. When I mention anything about belief in God, he parades all kinds of scientific knowledge and theories to refute me, he calls me uneducated, ignorant, and undiscerning, he even warns me about being scammed and says I should believe in science rather than superstition…. Only when I came to regret it did I realize sending my children to receive higher education was a mistake. Reality finally made me understand that all worldly culture and knowledge is in opposition to God and contrary to truth. They are the tools Satan uses to corrupt and control people. The higher an education people receive, the more knowledge they grasp, the more of Satan’s poison is in them, the further they become from God, the more they become enemies of God, and the harder it is for them to receive God’s salvation. One could say that the more books a person reads and the more knowledge they have, the deeper their resistance to God. Knowledge is a very dangerous thing!
Enlightenment from God finally made me understand that “The worth of other pursuits is small, the study of books excels them all” is a satanic fallacy, just one of Satan’s lies to deceive, delude, and corrupt people. I also understood that sending my children to Satan’s school was the same as shoving them into the abyss of death and the fires of hell. God, I don’t want to be a servant of Satan’s schemes anymore, I want to pursue the truth and change my own fallacious views, I want Your words to be the foundation of my existence, and I want to bring my two youngest children before You, so that they can receive Your salvation and become as men should be.
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