Talk about Mid-Autumn Festival

Talk about Mid-Autumn Festival

The Church of Almighty God | Chang'e ascended to the Moon

Today is the Mid-Autumn Festival for Chinese people. There are no food and drinks for I need to pay more attention to my duties. Just remember what should I do. I know some western brothers and sisters have no idea about Mid-Autumn Festival, so I'd like to make a short introduction about it. 

In China, Mid-Autumn Festival is in the lunar August 15 every year. It is almost as important as the Spring Festival every year. It is time for families to get together to have a wonderful time while enjoying the beautiful moonlight and eating the mooncakes. 

How does this festival come from? It is said that long long ago, there was a hero named Hou Yi whose beautiful wife was Chang’e. Hou Yi was a hero for he can remove nine suns by his bow and arrows to save mankind (for there were ten suns in the sky at that moment and people couldn’t bear such high temperature). So all the people worshiped him. His beautiful wife Chang’e was gentle and virtuous. They loved each other so much. One day, Hou Yi got some elixir of life for his contribution to those people. This kind of elixir can make people young forever. So Hou Yi kept it carefully. However, His wife heard that and was very curious about such elixir. So one day, after her husband went out, she took out the elixir and tasted some. However, after she did that, she couldn’t help ascending to the sky, of course, she became much younger and beautiful. After Hou Yi came back home, he found his beloved wife was lost and the elixir also was lost. Then he knew what happened. He was very very upset for he loved his wife so much and he missed her so much. That day was just lunar August 15. He knew his wife would live in the Moon Palace. So he made moon cakes to move someone in Moon Palace to let his wife go back to him. From that day, every year people will make cakes as a kind of offering to Moon. It means people hope the reuniting with their families. This is the origination of Mid-Autumn Festival. 

The Church of Almighty God | Brothers and sisters are reading Almighty God's words

From this story, we can know this festival just a beautiful and moving love story. It is just a conceive of mankind’s brain for Bible never said that and Jehovah God or Lord Jesus also never said that before. So it is just a beautiful dream of people to get reuniting with their families. However, today this festival has evolved to be a kind of commercial activity. It is not just for reuniting of families even more for the money. Many companies make moon cakes or other relevant presents to attract customers to make more money. Actually, not just Mid-Autumn Festival is like this, almost all the festivals including eastern festivals or western festivals are the same situation. Although some festivals were related with God’s work before. However, none of them are required by God directly. All of them are from man’s understanding and Satan’s tricks. If we take too much time to celebrate these festivals, on the one hand, it will cost too much money, on the other hand, we can’t quiet our heart before God even our hearts stray away from God when we are busy celebrating the festivals. The most important thing is that we can’t get any truths from celebrating festivals. However, Almighty God says, “I decide the destination of each man not on the basis of age, seniority, amount of suffering, or least of all, the degree of misery, but on whether they possess truth” (“You Ought to Do Enough Good Deeds to Prepare for Your Destination” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). So if we pay more attention to such meaningless things, we still can’t get nothing. 

I remember a passage of God’s words about how should we treat such festivals. Almighty God says, “During the course of man’s entry, life is always boring, full of the monotonous elements of spiritual life, such as doing some praying, eating and drinking the words of God, or forming gatherings, so that people always feel that believing in God brings no great enjoyment. Such spiritual activities are always carried out on the basis of humanity’s original disposition, which has been corrupted by Satan. Although people can sometimes receive the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit, their original thinking, disposition, lifestyles and habits are still rooted within, and so their nature remains unchanged. The superstitious activities that people engage in are what God hates the most, but many people are still unable to let go of them, thinking these superstitious activities to be decreed by God, and even today have yet to shed them completely. Such things as the arrangements young people make for wedding feasts and bridal trousseaus; gifts of cash, banquets, and similar ways with which joyous occasions are celebrated; ancient formulae that have been handed down; all the meaningless superstitious activities conducted in behalf of the dead and their obsequies: these are even more detestable to God. Even Sunday (the Sabbath, as observed by Jews) is detestable to Him; and the social relationships and worldly interactions between man and man are all the more despised and rejected by God. Even the Spring Festival and Christmas Day, which are known to everyone, are not decreed by God, let alone the toys and decorations (couplets, New Year cake, firecrackers, lanterns, Christmas gifts, Christmas parties, and Holy Communion) for these festive holidays—are they not idols in the minds of men? The breaking of bread on the Sabbath, wine, and fine linen are even more emphatically idols. All the traditional festival days popular in China, such as the Dragon Heads-raising Day, the Dragon Boat Festival, the Mid-Autumn Festival, the Laba Festival, and New Year’s Day, and the festivals in the religious world, such as Easter, Baptism Day, and Christmas Day, all of these unjustifiable festivals have been arranged and handed down from olden times to today by many people, and are thoroughly incompatible with the human race that God created. It is humanity’s rich imagination and ingenious conception that have allowed them to be passed down to today. They appear to be free of flaws, but are in fact tricks Satan plays on humanity. The more a place is thronged with Satans, and the more obsolete and backward that place is, the more deeply entrenched are its feudal customs. These things bind people tight, allowing absolutely no room for movement. Many of the festivals in the religious world seem to display great originality and to create a bridge to the work of God, but they are actually the invisible ties with which Satan binds people from coming to know God—they are all Satan’s cunning stratagems. In fact, when a stage of God’s work is finished, He has already destroyed the tools and the style of that time, without leaving any trace. However, “devout believers” continue to worship those tangible material objects; meanwhile they consign what God has to the back of their minds, studying it no further, seeming to be full of the love of God when they actually pushed Him out of the house long ago and placed Satan on the table to worship. Portraits of Jesus, the Cross, Mary, Jesus’ Baptism and the Last Supper—people venerate these as the Lord of Heaven, all the while repeatedly crying out “God the Father.” Isn’t this all a joke? To this day, many similar sayings and practices that have been passed down amongst humanity are hateful to God; they seriously obstruct the way ahead for God and, furthermore, create huge setbacks to humanity’s entry. Putting aside the extent to which Satan has corrupted humanity, the insides of people are completely filled up with things like the law of Witness Lee, the experiences of Lawrence, the surveys by Watchman Nee, and the work of Paul. There is simply no way for God to work upon human beings, because they have inside them too much of individualism, laws, rules, regulations, systems, and the like; these things, in addition to people’s feudal superstitious tendencies, have captured and devoured humanity. It is as if people’s thoughts are an interesting film narrating a fairy tale in full color, with fantastic beings riding the clouds, so imaginative as to amaze people, leaving people dazed and speechless. To tell the truth, the work that God comes to do today is mainly to deal with and dispel the superstitious attributes of human beings and completely transform their mental outlook. God’s work is not what has been handed down the generations and preserved till today by humanity; it is work as personally initiated by Him and completed by Him, without any need for succeeding to the legacy of a certain great spiritual man, or inheriting any work of a representative nature done by God in some other era. Human beings need not concern themselves with any of these things. God today has another style of speaking and of working, so why should human beings trouble themselves? If humans walk the path of today within the current stream while continuing the legacy of their “ancestors,” they will not reach their destination. God feels deep repugnance for this particular mode of human behavior, just as He abominates the years, months and days of the human world” (“Work and Entry (3)” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). 

The Church of Almighty God | Believers performed their duties faithfully

From God’s words, we can see a fact: First, these festivals are not from God and God never asked us to celebrate them. Second, these festivals have nothing to do with truths. No matter we celebrating them well or not, God won’t approve us. Third, if we are free and not busy, we can reunite with our families and celebrate simply. It’s OK. However, if we have many important things to do, then we need to know which need us to do first. So we need to know the principles about treating these festivals. This is the key. 

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