Editor’s Note:

For 2,000 years, all Christians have been waiting for the Lord’s return. Nowadays, the prophecies of the Lord’s return have basically all been fulfilled, but we haven’t welcomed Him yet. Could it be because the Lord hasn’t returned, or is it because the method of our wait for Him is wrong? How should we receive the second coming of the Lord? In what way and with what attitude do we meet the Lord’s appearance? The movie Waiting will tell all these problems urgently needed to be sought to you!

Obviously, the movie Waiting is a gospel video about the return of the Lord Jesus because the subheading “Hear the Voice of God and Welcome the Lord” has clearly explained that. The reason why I decided to watch the movie was totally because I had expected the Lord for many years, and meanwhile, because I produced some doubts about the news “The Lord Jesus has returned” directly preached at the beginning of the movie: Doesn’t the Bible say the Lord Jesus will descend with great glory on clouds? If the Lord has returned, why haven’t we been raptured?

At the beginning of this film, the prayer of Yang Hou’en, the main character, keeps straight to the subject: “O Lord! When will You return? We so desperately long for Your return.” These words describe how all Christians longing for the Lord’s arrival are feeling exactly. Afterward, under an old tree, Yang Hou’en sets off a discussion with his father Yang Shoudao and his cousin Li Jiayin regarding the topic “how to watch and wait for the Lord’s arrival?” The ingenious design of the plot gets straight to the subject “The Lord has returned” again, which can be said that the plots are all closely interconnected and absorbing.

However, just when they are discussing the concept that there should also be a method of working in secret about the Lord’s arrival, the plot suddenly reverses. A believer goes to convey a message and says that the CCP policemen closed down their meeting place in the charge of Li Jiayin, that some believers were taken away, and that the police are looking everywhere for Li Jiayin and want to arrest her. In order to escape being arrested by the CCP, Li Jiayin had to leave her hometown and escape to other places. It is during this escape that she gets the chance to converse with Eastern Lightning. Through investigating Eastern Lightning, she is certain that the incarnate Almighty God is just the return of the Lord Jesus and accepts the work of Almighty God in the last days. Three years later, she finally has a chance to return home and preach the gospel to her uncle and Hou’en who have been waiting for the Lord’s arrival!

Though the witnesses from the Church of Almighty God have fellowshiped very clearly about the questions such as “In the last days, how do false Christs and false prophets deceive people?” “how to differentiate between the true Christ and false Christs?” “What it means to watch and wait on earth?” “Why do people who work hard for the Lord not accord with His will or welcome Him, but instead, they will be condemned by Him?” and Yang Shoudao also acknowledges within that Almighty God’s words are all truths, he still rejects, resists and condemns Eastern Lightning blindly. Because he knows that as soon as the believers all believe in Almighty God, they will have discernment of him and will no longer worship him or look up to him. It is absolutely intolerable and unacceptable for Yang Shoudao to lose status, so even if he knows that Eastern Lightning is the true way, he still does his utmost to resist God. He keeps saying that the church was built painstakingly by him and that Eastern Lightning steals his sheep, which shows that in the depths of his heart, he has treated the church and believers as his own so that faced with the important matter of the Lord’s coming, he still doesn’t change his mind in the slightest. It is sufficient to show that Yang Shoudao has already been carried away by his own ambitions and desires and has lost direction! For the sake of protecting his own fame and status and putting the believers firmly under his control, he not only does not accept Almighty God’s work of the last days himself but he blocks believers from seeking and studying that, and at last, he actually speaks out these words that resist God: Even if it results in death, we will not convert to the Eastern Lightning. At that moment, the lightning flashes and the thunder roars. I think that considering this as God’s wrath is not at all excessive.

The prayer of Yang Shoudao before he dies is completely his inner true expression. He says: “Why is it so dark within my spirit, why do I always feel afraid? Could I really have opposed You?” Only then does he realize that Almighty God he opposes all the time probably is truly the returned Lord Jesus, and that he has committed such a great sin, so he has no chance, for God is righteous! Most likely, the death of Yang Shoudao also sounds an alarm for all the pastors and elders who are of the same opinion as him. At the same time, it allows me to have some discernment of the wrong viewpoints and pursuits of the pastors like Yang Shoudao.

On the matter of waiting for the Lord’s coming, the viewpoints of Yang Hou’en and his father Yang Shoudao are all much the same. However, after hearing Almighty God’s word, Yang Hou’en understands the path of true watching and waiting, knows what the heavenly father’s will is and accepts Eastern Lightning very quickly, which shows that his attitude is totally different from Yang Shoudao’s. Especially when he has recognized the word of Almighty God comes out of the Holy Spirit, after pondering deeply a whole night, he realizes that if his watching and waiting has no basis in the Lord’s words and if he does nothing but waits like fools, he is unable to wait for the Lord’s return at all; on the contrary, he will hold on to his notions to resist God and end up as one of the hypocritical Pharisees, being condemned and forsaken by the Lord! Hence, he decides to put down his status as a pastor, break through the years of “teachings” of his father, and insist on walking the path of seeking the truth so that brothers and sisters have the fortune to hear God’s voice, meet the Lord’s return and follow the footprints of the Lamb. Seeing this, I feel that on the way of believing in the Lord and welcoming Him, a good pastor’s guidance is really too important!

Li Jiayin’s attitude in waiting for the Lord’s arrival is something every devout Christ should emulate. She can do everything according to the Lord’s word and has a God-fearing heart, so with regard to the Lord’s arrival, she studies the prophecies of the Lord’s return in many aspects and understands that the Lord’s return possibly has two methods, as when the Lord Jesus worked. One is hidden and the other is open. After hearing the news that the Lord has returned and the viewpoints of all kinds of people toward this matter, she can still stick to the Lord’s words and not be misled by their viewpoints, much less make improper verdicts; instead, she humbly seeks and waits. Frist of all, she is sure that as long as what Eastern Lightning people preach has light and the work of the Holy Spirit and comes from God, then she should seek and study; meanwhile, she can also learn a lesson from the failure of the Pharisees, thinking: If people preach the way that the Lord has returned, and the way has been again condemned and rejected by the religious world, she must give some thought to what they say and cannot blindly refuse them and casually condemn them. These fresh and incisive viewpoints are the precondition for her being the first to meet the Lord’s return. Besides, her own unique insights and retrograde way of thinking are beyond most of us.

At this point, when it comes to the arrival of the Lord, the distinctly different attitudes and results of Yang Shoudao, Yang Hou’en and Li Jiayin form an obvious contrast, and that who is right on earth is obvious at a glance. The Lord Jesus said: “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man comes to the Father, but by me” (John 14:6). I consider this word as the soul that penetrates the whole film and also regard it as a very important word to reflect on my life of belief, because in the movie, regardless of Yang Shoudao or the initial Yang Hou’en, in waiting for the Lord’s arrival, what they hold on to are mostly man’s words and their own notions and imaginations, but rarely the words of the Lord Jesus, and I’m no exception. During the debate, the witnesses from the Church of Almighty God have always used God’s word to remind us that regarding the important matter of waiting for the Lord’s arrival, we must go by the Lord’s word. Only by praying and seeking more and paying attention to listening to the Lord’s voice can we be sure that our practice will not commit any errors. I think this is also the true meaning that the movie Waiting wants to convey.

Has your wait for the Lord Jesus’ return come to an end?

For two thousand years, all the Christians have been waiting for the Lord’s return. Nowadays, the prophecy of the Lord’s return has already been fulfilled, but so far we haven’t welcomed Him yet. Is it because the Lord hasn’t returned, or because we didn’t wait for Him in the right way? This is indeed worthy of our deep reflection! How should we welcome the second coming of the Lord? And in what way and with what attitude do we welcome the Lord when He reveals Himself? These are the most important and pressing problems that we need to think over right now.

Extended Reading:

This Voice Is the Voice of the Second Coming Lord