(Clearwisdom.net) Some Dafa disciples in China have recently revealed a situation on the Internet that certain disciples in their area had become attached to a time frame after reading Master's lecture, which mentioned the "42 months" as stated by a disciple in the article from the Bible's Book of Revelation. Some disciples who did not study the Fa deeply enough even started to wait and were reluctant to further commit themselves to Fa-rectification work. I think this is a misunderstanding of the Fa principles as well as an example of manifestations of human attachments! We need to address this issue seriously right now.
"42 Months" is the Old Forces' Arrangement
Master did mention what was stated in the Book of Revelation in his lecture "Teaching the Fa at the Washington, D.C. Fa Conference," "...says that the evil beast would attack God with his mouth for forty-two months, which is three and a half years. I won't comment on whether that's the case, but I can say that this evil drama has really come to the final stage, where it has the will but not the strength to carry on." From His words alone we can clearly see that Master did not affirm the "42 months," yet he explicitly told us of the important progress, that "this evil drama has really come to the final stage, where it has the will but not the strength to carry on."
For all the old prophecies in history, no matter how accurate they were at that time, they were produced in the old cosmos, before Fa-rectification. They only predicted the old forces' arrangements, many of which have already changed during Fa-rectification. Master basically does not acknowledge those arrangements at all, so how can we, Master's disciples, become attached to the old forces' arrangements?
How Can We Reach Consummation Without Making the Best Use of Time to Offer Salvation to People?
The meaning of our existence lies in Fa-rectification. The progress we have made during our personal cultivation was only paving the way for us to carry out our current Fa-rectification mission. Only by making diligent and constant progress and offer salvation to as many people as possible can we establish the mighty virtue we are supposed to have as Dafa disciples; only then can we constantly rejuvenate and enrich our own cosmos, according to the requirements of the new cosmos, so that countless heavenly beings who count on us for their salvation will be truly saved. If, because of our human attachments, we just sit there and wait for Master to do everything, isn't that the same as rejecting the most wonderful things Master has prepared for us in order to save us? How can we reach Consummation that way?
Look Inside Ourselves to Break Through the Old Forces' Arrangements
We think of non-practitioners as being selfish for planning their actions and commitments around their personal interests. However, we cannot assume that we can get rid of this, our own selfishness as a matter of fact. Many of our remaining attachments result from this selfishness, and whether we can give the selfishness up determines whether we can completely break away from the old forces' arrangements.
We have all come from the old cosmos. All of our notions and arrangements prior to our cultivation came from the old forces. As I understand from Master's teaching that, selfishness exists all the way up to a very high level in the cosmos. Every cultivator has selfishness. In order to do away with it, Fa-rectification disciples must be diligent during Fa-rectification and "attain the righteous enlightenment of selflessness and altruism" ("Non-omission in Buddha-Nature," Essentials For Further Advancement) in order to reach the pure standard of the Fa required from the guardians of the new cosmos.
It is therefore of critical importance that we study the Fa well and look inside ourselves in all circumstances. This is the key point to consider in the decision whether a Dafa disciple can eventually break away from the old forces. In other words, we can't do away with the old forces' arrangements simply by eliminating external interferences! We must also pay attention to assimilating ourselves to the Fa and cultivating ourselves, so that we can distinguish and eliminate many bad things from the old forces that we still harbor within ourselves, including selfishness, and many other attachments.
