Rumors Almost Destroyed My Family

By Changqing, Australia

The consequences and effects that rumors have on people are never good, and the effect they have on Christian families is even more disastrous. As a Christian, how should you face it when your beliefs are attacked by rumors?

Happily Welcoming the Lord’s Return

I believed in the Lord with my mother from childhood, and I moved to Australia with my parents when I was in my teens. In early 2018, I heard the news that the Lord Jesus has already returned. Through Almighty God’s words and the fellowship from the brothers and sisters, I gained much knowledge of the mysteries of the Bible and also some understanding of the three stages of God’s work in saving mankind. In the Age of Law, God proclaimed laws to guide the people’s lives. Later, people faced the danger of being executed under the law because they couldn’t keep the law. In order to redeem mankind, God began the work of the Age of Grace and was nailed to the cross for mankind. In the Age of Kingdom, on the basis of His redemption work, God expressed the truth to judge and cleanse mankind, so as to thoroughly save mankind from the bondage and constraints of sin and take mankind to a wonderful destination. Only God can reveal the truths and mysteries and speak so clearly about God’s work of saving mankind. I confirmed that The Scroll Opened by the Lamb expressed by Almighty God was God’s voice. I was surprised and happy that the Lord really came back.

Rumors Collapse When Faced with God’s Words and the Facts

In March 2018, I officially accepted Almighty God’s work of the last days. After my husband found out, he called a Korean pastor to ask about The Church of Almighty God. When the Korean pastor heard what my husband was asking, he spoke condemningly and blasphemously about The Church of Almighty God. My husband later went online and searched for information on The Church of Almighty God, and he saw some religious websites also condemning and blaspheming against The Church of Almighty God, and he read many rumors online. Because he was deceived by these rumors, my husband then tried to prevent me from believing in Almighty God and set himself against my belief. He said to me angrily: “You’re being so naive. Look what it says on the internet! It says that the people in The Church of Almighty God trick others out of money. You must not believe in this church!”

Hearing my husband say this, I didn’t know how to answer him, so I stayed silent. Seeing me making no comment, he then opened a webpage and he played a recording for me. In the recording, a woman was telling how she had been tricked out of her money and her home by the people in The Church of Almighty God. As I listened to this recording, I felt a little shaken: Are the people in The Church of Almighty God really like this? Do they really trick people out of money? But then I thought of the months I’d been attending meetings with brothers and sisters from The Church of Almighty God. They had all been fellowshiping about their experiences and knowledge of God’s words and had never once spoken about money matters—how could they be misconstrued as tricking people out of money? Thinking about it, I realized that the things online that talked about the people in The Church of Almighty God tricking people out of money were all just fabricated rumors. The recording must surely be an intentional fabrication made by someone to defame and slander The Church of Almighty God, and I would not believe it. I had already seen that the words expressed by Almighty God were the truth, and I had to read Almighty God’s words all the more.

I thought of this passage of God’s words that a sister read to me, “What I want is not human conceptions or human thoughts, even less do I want your money or your possessions. What I want is your heart, understand? This is My will, and even more it is what I want to obtain.” Also, a passage from Sermons and Fellowship came to mind, “The church does not allow anyone to ask others to make offerings through preaching or any other reason. All those who are keen to talk about making offerings have ulterior motives. The matter of making offerings depends on each individual’s conscience and reason, as well as their understanding of truths.” Almighty God’s words and the words from Sermons and Fellowship strengthened my faith and I became even more certain that what was said online was all rumors. Moreover, the words of Almighty God were very clear: God has come to perform His work and save man. He does not want people’s money, He wants their sincerity. Besides, The Church of Almighty God forbids any talk of donations at meetings, so how could they want anyone’s home or money? Over this time spent in close contact with the brothers and sisters from The Church of Almighty God, I saw them to be people with good humanity and compassion; they all had jobs and families, and they spent their time testifying to me of God’s work without asking for anything in return. Furthermore, the books the church gives out to Christians are given freely. The rumors online which talked about tricking people out of their money and homes were simply at odds with the facts.

Later, I read on the gospel website many articles from brothers and sisters from all different countries about their experiences and testimonies of accepting Almighty God’s work of the last days. They had all read the words of Almighty God, and their misconceptions about God’s work were resolved little by little, until finally they became certain that Almighty God was indeed the second coming of the Lord Jesus. Their experiences were all so moving to read, they had all been totally conquered by Almighty God’s words and they were keeping pace with God’s footsteps. From within these articles of life experiences and testimonies written by brothers and sisters, I also saw that, after brothers and sisters from The Church of Almighty God experienced the words expressed by God, they gradually cast off their corrupt dispositions, they came to know God more and more and they became more and more obedient to God, and their life dispositions began to change. The more I read, the more I was moved. I had truly realized the authority and power of Almighty God’s word. God’s work of judgment through His words in the last days is the work of changing people and transforming their corrupt dispositions. This is ironclad proof. No one can repudiate the results achieved by God’s work. Satan, on the other hand, wants to use rumors to vilify God’s work, and I realized that I must not be caught by its cunning scheme, nor allow myself to be influenced by my husband. I must continue contacting brothers and sisters and attending meetings in The Church of Almighty God. After coming to understand these things, I felt very liberated.

God Keeps Me Away From the Pastor’s Disruption

One day, I was at home looking after my child, when my husband brought Pastor Zhang and his wife and a few other pastors from another church to our home. When I saw them arrive, I felt a little nervous. I didn’t know what they would say, and I was afraid that I did not have the truth and would be unable to stand firm. And so, I prayed silently to God, asking Him to protect my heart and not let me be deceived by their words.

My husband said: “These are pastors and I invited them here to help you change your thinking, so that you no longer believe in Almighty God.”

Pastor Zhang’s wife said, “The Church of Almighty God is heretical, and heretics always trick people out of their money. You must be careful! Our pastors and elders all reject The Church of Almighty God, so why do you believe in it? We have a great church, so if you don’t like your former church, then come to meetings at ours.” She then spoke condemningly and blasphemously about Almighty God and advised me not to believe in Almighty God anymore.

I was worried that I didn’t understand enough of the truth and wouldn’t be able to win a debate with them, so I stayed silent. Seeing me not say anything, they stopped advising me. But when they were leaving, my husband invited them to come again the week after, and Pastor Zhang said he would. I felt very worried just then: What shall I do if, when they come again, they speak their fallacies and I am unable to discern them and am deceived? I prayed to God in my heart: “O God, please give me wisdom, and protect my heart from being taken captive by them.” But I still felt worried afterward and could only let nature take its course. Unexpectedly, the day before the appointed meeting with Pastor Zhang, my husband said that Pastor Zhang had developed chicken pox (normally a skin disease caught by children), and that he was unable to come. When I heard this, I thought: A man in his forties or fifties getting chicken pox? This must be God preventing him from coming again! Thanks be to God, for God knew that my stature was small, that I wouldn’t be able to discern the fallacies disseminated by the pastors and would be deceived by them, and so He prevented Pastor Zhang from coming to my home—this was God protecting me. In my heart, I silently offered up my thanks to God. Yet my husband’s attempts to obstruct me did not stop.

The Background to My Husband’s Attempts to Prevent Me from Believing in God

One day, my husband discovered that I had connected with brothers and sisters from The Church of Almighty God on Facebook. He was very angry, and he deleted all the brothers and sisters from my friends list on my Facebook account, and he threatened me, saying, “How can you still be in touch with them? Do you want God or me? If you want God, then let’s get a divorce.” Hearing my husband say he wanted to divorce me made me very upset, and I thought to myself: Our child is not yet 18 months old, he’s still so young. If we get a divorce, then I’ll be on my own. How will I cope? Besides, we’ve lived together for six years and I don’t want to lose him. But I’ve always longed for the Lord Jesus to return, so now that He has returned, how could I not believe in Him? I couldn’t decide, my heart was in torment and I couldn’t even sleep at night. From then on, I wouldn’t dare to go online and read God’s words when my husband was home, but instead I’d go online and read God’s words in my spare time at work, and I wouldn’t let brothers and sisters attend meetings in my home anymore. But then I thought of how believers must keep attending meetings, so I arranged a time with my sister from the church and, taking advantage of the opportunity provided by taking my child to the park to play, we began to meet in the park.

When we met, I told the sister all the thoughts in my heart. She listened, and then encouraged me not to be disheartened or weak. She said this was a battle in the spirit world, and that it was the disruption of Satan that had befallen me. Then she read to me a passage of Almighty God’s words, “God works, God cares for a person, looks upon a person, and Satan dogs His every step. Whoever God favors, Satan also watches, trailing along behind. If God wants this person, Satan would do everything in its power to obstruct God, using various evil ways to tempt, harass and wreck the work God does in order to achieve its hidden objective. What is its objective? It does not want God to have anyone; it wants all those that God wants, to occupy them, control them, to take charge of them so they worship it….” Then she fellowshiped, “Almighty God’s words make it very clear. Within the spirit world, Satan doesn’t want to allow people to turn back to God, but instead wants to have mastery over mankind. When we believe in Almighty God, Satan becomes furious and will not accept it without a fight. So it uses all manner of underhanded methods and means to obstruct us, and it even uses our weaknesses to disrupt us. When we don’t understand the truth and cannot thoroughly comprehend the battle in the spirit world, we can become negative and weak, and we can easily lose faith in God and even betray Him. Take Satan using your husband’s threat of divorce to disrupt you, for example. Satan’s aim by doing this is to force you to give up on following God. This is Satan’s evil motive, and it is a battle in the spirit world. If you are unable to see through Satan’s cunning scheme, then you can become disheartened and weak because your husband is threatening divorce, and you will lose your faith to follow God. If that happens, you lose your testimony and Satan’s cunning scheme prevails. Therefore, when Satan’s disruption befalls us, we must pray even more to God, not shun God, and we must read His words more. When we understand the truth, we understand God’s will, we have the faith to experience His work and we can then stand firm in our testimony to God.”

After listening to the sister’s fellowship, I understood that, behind my husband’s attempts to stop me from believing in Almighty God there raged a spiritual battle. Satan wanted to use my husband’s threat of divorce to disrupt me and to compel me to give up the true way so that I would lose the salvation of God. Seeing how despicable Satan was, I could not surrender to my husband and allow myself to be caught in Satan’s cunning scheme. Moreover, I thought, “God is almighty, and my marriage is in His hands. God would have the final say on whether my husband and I divorce or not, and I would not be constrained by the possibility.” The next morning, I got up and immediately prayed to God in my heart: “O God, whether my husband divorces me or not is in Your hands. I wish to follow You in earnest and not be constrained by my husband.” I’d just finished praying when my husband suddenly said to me, “I don’t care whether you go to heaven or hell after your belief in God. I just want to live my life with you.” Hearing my husband say this, I knew that he didn’t really want to divorce me, but had just been using divorce to force me to stop believing in God after being deceived by all the rumors.

God’s Words Lead Me to Overcome My Husband’s Obstruction Once Again

Seeing my husband’s attitude change somewhat, I thought that he would no longer try to obstruct me from believing in God. Unexpectedly, I found that he was still opposed to my belief. One time, I inserted a flash drive with recordings of books from The Church of Almighty God into our computer and forgot to remove it afterward. When my husband finished work, he discovered the flash drive and broke it to pieces, and he was very angry at me. He told me that if I believed in the Lord Jesus, then he would support me, but if I believed in Almighty God then he would not permit me to attend meetings. He also told me to put our child in daycare and to immediately go full-time at work (whereas previously I’d only worked part-time), and he told me that I had to go to my mother’s house every day. That way, I wouldn’t have time to attend any meetings. As I watched this situation unfold, my heart darkened, and I thought to myself: My husband has gotten angry at me twice in one week, and each time he grows more formidable! Oh, how can I live like this? Do I want a peaceful life, or do I want to believe in God? If I persist in my belief, he’ll just keep arguing with me. If I obey my husband and do not read God’s words or go to meetings, then that would amount to a betrayal of God, and I would feel guilty. But my husband is always trying to restrain me because I believe in Almighty God, and I feel such pressure on me. When will this painful life come to an end?

In my pain, I came before God and prayed: “O God, faced with my husband’s obstruction, I feel a little weak and I don’t know what to do. O God, please enlighten and guide me.” After prayer, I thought of some verses recorded in the Bible, “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household” (Matthew 10:34-36). The Lord’s words were coming true: The Lord had come to earth in the last days to perform His work and believers and unbelievers would be at loggerheads with each other. It looked as though this spiritual battle was unavoidable, and I decided that I must stand firm in my testimony to God.

Later, I read a passage of God’s words, “Each stage of the Holy Spirit’s work simultaneously requires the testimony of man. Each stage of work is a battle between God and Satan, and the object of the battle is Satan, while the one who will be made perfect by this work is man. Whether or not God’s work can bear fruit depends on the manner of man’s testimony to God. This testimony is what God requires of those who follow Him; it is the testimony made before Satan, and also proof of the effects of His work.” From God’s words, I understood that, within spiritual battles, God’s will is for us to stand firm in our testimony to Him, for only in that way can we be able to shame Satan. Behind my husband’s repeated attempts to obstruct me from believing in God was a wager between Satan and God, and I realized that I could not be fainthearted and back out for the sake of seeking a peaceful life. I thought of when Job had been tempted by Satan; he had lost all his family property and his children, his whole body was covered in sores and he was in unbearable pain, and yet he relied on his faith to satisfy God and bear testimony to God. Job brought comfort to God’s heart. At that time, I gained confidence, and thought: I must follow the example of Job in standing witness for God. If my husband kept on like this, then that was his choice, but I would follow God till the very end. I then sent my husband a message, saying, “My dear husband. You can be in charge of everything in our home, but my belief in God is not up to you. I’ll respect your decision whatever you choose.” I never thought that, when I firmed up my resolve to satisfy God, my husband’s attitude changed, and he no longer argued with me as he had before.

Seeing Through the Rumors and Following God Resolutely

Later, I asked my husband: “I haven’t done anything wrong by believing in God. What on earth made you constantly try to stop me from believing in God, to the point where you wanted to divorce me?”

My husband then said, “The pastor said that The Church of Almighty God was bad, and someone said online that people who believe in Almighty God abandon their families. So I thought that, even if I didn’t threaten divorce, you would still leave us.”

Listening to my husband, it all became clear in my heart. My husband had been constantly deceived by the rumors spread by the CCP and the religious world, and this had led him to keep trying to obstruct me from believing in Almighty God, to the point where he used divorce to compel me to betray God. Later, a sister in our church sent the video “Massimo Introvigne | Part 2 : Analyzing the CCP’s Rumors Against The Church of Almighty God” for me to watch. Massimo Introvigne in the video exposes the rumors about The Church of Almighty God made up by the CCP. It is not true that brothers and sisters all abandon their families. Because of the savage suppression and persecution of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), countless Christians are forced to flee their homes. It is the CCP that persecutes Christians, which has led to many of their homes being broken, and some have homes they cannot return to. The CCP is the real culprit in the destruction of countless Christians’ homes. After watching the video, I was able to discern the CCP’s rumors even better! I saw how the CCP claimed that black was white, and how shameless their behavior was by spreading rumors to discredit The Church of Almighty God. And the pastors and elders of the religious world were on the CCP’s side, disseminating the CCP’s rumors to the point where they wantonly condemned God’s work, as well as obstructing brothers and sisters from accepting God’s work of the last days. They also were people who defied God, and were likewise to be hated. It was precisely because of these rumors that my husband had constantly been trying to stop me from believing in God, so much so that he had even wanted to divorce me—these rumors had almost destroyed my family.

Then the sister fellowshiped with me, “The CCP is an atheist party, a dictatorship, and is under one-party rule. It simply won’t allow anyone to believe in God, nor will it allow any individual or group with a differing political view to exist. It only allows people to worship it and follow it, and it suppresses and persecutes any ethnic group and any group or individual with a religious belief that refuses to obey it. Especially for religious beliefs, ever since the CCP came into power, its persecution of Christians has never ceased. It condemns Protestantism and Catholicism as cults, has burned countless copies of the Bible after condemning it as a cult book, and also frantically suppresses and persecutes Christians. Since God became flesh in the last days and worked in China, the CCP has arrested and persecuted the Christians from The Church of Almighty God. It wants to turn China into a godless country and control the Chinese people. The CCP has seen the fact that the words expressed by Almighty God and all kinds of videos and films that bear witness to God’s work in the last days have been uploaded to different websites. More and more people are conquered after listening to God’s words, and then they have accepted Almighty God’s work in the last days. The CCP is most afraid that after believing in God, mankind will understand the truth, will see through its hideous face, and will reject it. So, in order to maintain its authoritarian regime, the CCP cracks down on The Church of Almighty God more crazily. They have made use of television, radio, and internet media to slander, attack and discredit The Church of Almighty God. This is just one of the many underhanded means it employs. Its aim is to deceive all the people of the world, to make people misunderstand The Church of Almighty God, to be on its side and resist the work of Almighty God, and to go down with it into hell at the end.” After hearing the sister’s fellowship, I finally had some discernment about the CCP’s despicable intent to fabricate rumors about The Church of Almighty God, and I saw that the CCP was a legion of devils that defied God and set itself against God. Once I’d seen clearly the true face of the CCP and the religious world, my resolve to follow Almighty God became even stronger. In the days that followed, I didn’t miss any meeting and, through God’s words and the fellowships of my brothers and sisters, my spirit gradually became strong and I was no longer subject to my husband’s constraints.

Experiencing this situation made me see that my husband being deceived by rumors online and trying to prevent me from believing in God was all a spiritual battle. At the same time, God was testing my faith through this situation, and this made me see even more the fact of mankind’s resistance to God. This made me think of 2000 years ago when the chief priests not only denied and condemned the Lord Jesus’ work but also, when the Lord Jesus resurrected, they paid soldiers with silver so that they would make up rumors about the Lord Jesus and say that He had not resurrected, but that He had been taken away by His disciples. Because of the influence of those rumors, today’s Jews still do not accept that the Lord Jesus was the Messiah. Now, the rumors online are exactly the same as the rumors spread about the Lord Jesus by the chief priests 2000 years ago, and various religious leaders and the CCP regime make up many rumors about The Church of Almighty God so as to destroy God’s work of the last days. These rumors are all from those enemy forces who resist God’s work of the last days, and they are all borne of Satan’s trickery. They themselves don’t believe in Almighty God, and they make up rumors so that even more people will reject God’s coming. They serve as Satan’s lackeys who are come specially to interrupt and disturb God’s work. At the same time, I also saw that these rumors were the lies of Satan and that they would not stand in the end. Those who sincerely believe in God will all break through the obstruction and disruption of these rumors, keep pace with God’s footsteps and be led by God into a new age. All these rumors can do is tightly bind up the chaff, and they are unable to bind up even one grain of wheat. Thanks be to God that, under His guidance, I now have some discernment of rumors, and I will follow God till the very end with steadfast faith. Later, when I gave everything up to follow God, my husband no longer concerned himself with my belief in Almighty God. All the glory belongs to God!