The 3rd letter submitted by Brother Michael Young to the IA on Sept 3 2012 Final Part

6.4
Lessons the church has learnt from the Pr. YM Yang Incident and things the church
should beware of in the future

The church has learnt many valuable lessons from the painful experience brought about
by the Incident of Preacher YM Yang:

a. God is the Lord of the church; all workers and members should serve Him and
care for His church with a true, devout, reverent and thankful heart.

b. Every one of God’s people will make mistakes and sin against Him. As long as
we sincerely repent of our wrongs, God will surely forgive us.

c. What grieves God most and what God most abhors is when man sins but does not
repent even when he knows he has sinned.

d. As the mouthpieces of God, preachers and other divine workers should behave
cautiously as faithful and honest servants, only preaching teachings in the Bible
concerning which God has left clear instructions; they must not teach or talk
about topics of which God has not given a clear account.

e. The Bible records many mysteries of God;
--1) it is impossible for man to find the answers to these mysteries through his own knowledge and learning.
--2) The church should not engage in inconclusive discussions or dispute over such
topics/mysteries.

f. There are certain issues and topics in the Bible which God has not spoken clearly
about. These include, but are not limited to: 1) the world before the Creation, 2)
what God did before the Creation, 3) the origin of Satan, 4) details of the political
situation of the world before the Lord Jesus’ second coming, 5) when the
millennial kingdom begins, etc.

g. If a person were to insist on answering these questions using his own knowledge,
he would fall into the trap of misinterpreting the word of God, and thus be guilty
of the sin of adding to or subtracting from the word of God. As a result, he may
even be rejected by God.

h. Therefore, when members or truth-seekers ask us questions about the mysteries of
God or about matters not clearly explained in the Bible, we ought to reply humbly
and honestly that we do not know the answers to such questions or how these
matters should be explained, because the Bible does not speak clearly of them.

i. There are some workers in the church today who like to make a fuss over these
questions/the mysteries of God that have no answers. A few such workers are
often 1) very proud of their invented explanations, 2) look down on co-workers
who do not study these new questions, and 3) consider these co-workers to be
people who have fallen behind the times.

j. The history of the church clearly shows that studying and discussing these
mysteries of God has brought about many worries and much danger to the church.

For instance,
In 2012, an IA preacher came to California to pastor the churches here; his
interpretation of a certain verse in the Bible (Rev 6:3, the red horse of the
second seal) on this occasion differed from that which he had given a few
years ago.

Consider this:
i. Would the word of God change with time?
ii. Does the word of God have to change because this preacher’s views
concerning the global situation and the state of the church have
changed?

k. Unfortunately, this preacher insisted that “These words of God should now be
interpreted in this way”. This preacher made the same error that Elder Yung Ji
Lin did when Elder Lin stated in the Holy Spirit Monthly, issue no. 387
(December 2009) that the Lord Jesus would not come again in the next 100 years.

l. Both these workers believe that the true God in heaven has to act according to
their interpretations of the Bible, having forgotten that the Lord Jesus is their God
and their Lord.

The End