The secretive group behind religious spam on Facebook
Thousands of Kiwis are being spammed online with religious messages telling them to find God – but the senders won’t say what church they’re from. Melanie Earley investigates.
The first message popped up several weeks ago from a mysterious Facebook account: ‘‘God Is Powerful’’.
Curious, I clicked and opened it, and was bombarded with a wall of text and emojis. There were waving hands, four-leaf clovers and love hearts galore among the words, which offered a ‘‘free online fellowship’’.
Subsequent office discussions revealed these messages were widespread: dozens of colleagues reported receiving them since the start of the year and online communities such as Scammer Check NZ were full of queries about who’s behind the mysterious online preaching.
The messages all followed a very similar layout and came from dozens of different Facebook profiles: St Mary of the Angels, God is good all the time, Daily Prayers and God’s Blessings.
Most of the profiles had only a few likes and were created in the past few weeks. They posted images of inspirational Christian quotes that were often only liked by the pages themselves.
The messages usually began by wishing the reader a ‘‘nice day ahead’’, or with greetings that welcomed a ‘‘friend with a good heart’’. Many of them read:
‘‘Could I invite you to join our sessions? Pick a time – 8pm or 10pm every day, just say yes.’’
They were not, apparently, ‘‘based on any religion, just the word of God’’, and those who attended the online events could share about how to ‘‘welcome the Lord’s return in the last days’’ and build a relationship with God free of ‘‘emptiness’’.
A few of the messages seen by
Sunday News listed a West Auckland address and phone number that led to a woman named Vivian Lee. Online sleuthing revealed Lee was a Christian preacher who shared her teachings on YouTube and Facebook.
Lee said the Bible study group was trying to teach people about the second coming of Jesus and claimed it was a ‘‘nondenominational’’ gathering.
When asked why so many different pages were sending out the same message, Lee said she ‘‘doesn’t know’’ how many people have been contacted.
‘‘We have a lot of volunteers who send these messages, so I don’t know who they choose to message or why. This is an online fellowship which has been going for years in New Zealand and overseas. We’re not associated with any church.’’
She followed up with an offer. ‘‘Come along to a Messenger group sister. We can arrange this for you, could you send me your Facebook please?’’
Taking Lee up on her offer of a joining a Bible study group, I messaged back the God Is Powerful page – run by a woman who goes by Charlotte Grey – and asked to attend one that very night.
A short time later I was added to a Messenger group called ‘‘Seek the path to a beautiful kingdom’’ with around 30 others. Many were listed as group admins, leaving only a handful of people who seemed to be new recruits. We were instructed to keep our cameras off and microphones muted and the preacher, a man named Singto Lau, began to speak.
Lau explained he was from Hong Kong but had recently moved to Christchurch. The group, he said, moved online during the pandemic when ‘‘normal’’ church life was halted.
The preacher delivered a multi-choice question to answer in the chat – does everyone who believes in Jesus get to enter
God’s Kingdom?
I answered yes but was reprimanded that the ‘‘correct answer’’ was no. Lau said only those who were ‘‘holy’’ would be admitted to heaven.
He told attendees that to be holy they must ‘‘abstain from fornication’’ and ‘‘put the words of God into practice’’. The buzzword
‘Unfortunately a lot of naive people out there will respond to these messages. Even if the response rate is one in every 10,000 this group will benefit. The potential market on Facebook is enormous.’ PETER LINEHAM
of the night was definitely ‘‘holy’’, with Lau saying it more than 20 times in the 90-minute session.
I asked in the group message what being ‘‘holy’’ actually meant and was told simply it meant ‘‘following God’s will’’.
Another question posed was whether our ‘‘sinful nature’’ had been removed by Jesus Christ; the correct answer Lau said, was no. When one group member disagreed they were swiftly removed from the chat.
At the end of it Lau sent a link to his Facebook profile imploring those who attended to accept his friend request.
Former members of Korean doomsday cult Shincheonji initially suspected the group might have been responsible for the messages.
Closer examination revealed minor but noticeable differences from how Shincheonji usually communicates, and suspicion moved to a similar Chinese doomsday sect called ‘‘Church of the Almighty God’’ or ‘‘Eastern Lightning’’.
‘‘Some of their messages have used Chinese and one of their seminar descriptions lines up with the teachings of their group – a 6000-year plan,’’ says the former Shincheonji member.
Eastern Lightning teaches that Jesus has returned to Earth as a Chinese woman, according to a research paper titled Cult, Church, and the CCP:
Introducing Eastern Lightning, authored by Emily Dunn, in the Modern China journal.
Lau was evasive when asked if he had any ties to Eastern Lightning, asking what I knew about the group. He did not reply to further questions and I was subsequently removed from the Facebook group chat.
A number listed on the official Eastern Lightning website as a ‘‘gospel hotline’’ in New Zealand led to a nervous-sounding volunteer named ‘‘Peter’’.
Peter said he was part of an ‘‘online fellowship’’ and would not elaborate on why his number was listed on the Eastern Lightning website, claiming ‘‘it’s a bit complicated’’.
‘‘We’re just volunteers sharing God’s word together,’’ he said. ‘‘You know, people send messages online because they want to share God’s words.’’
Joining an online Bible session was not unlike online dating, said Peter Lineham, an emeritus professor of religious history. ‘‘They share the same kind of risks because by the time you find out who they really are it’s too late.’’
The messages and conversations with the online Bible group were ‘‘troubling’’, Lineham said, as the senders were ‘‘so dishonest’’.
‘‘Unfortunately a lot of naive people out there will respond to these messages. Even if the response rate is one in every 10,000 this group will benefit. The potential market on Facebook is enormous.’’
Lineham agreed the messages were most likely from Eastern Lightning due to the ‘‘process of elimination’’.
‘‘The tone of the messages doesn’t fit right for any other groups who use these tactics,’’ he said.
NetSafe’s chief online safety officer Sean Lyons said he hadn’t previously encountered the religious campaign but added such approaches were commonly known as ‘‘nuisance messages’’.
‘‘It’s not dissimilar to someone grabbing your number from a phone book and cold calling you,’’ Lyons said.
‘‘On social media we unknowingly expose our profiles to lots of different people. These messages could be coming from a friend of a friend or from a group you’re a member of.’’
Lyons said the best response was to not respond, delete the message and block the user. He added if the content was particularly troubling, it could be reported to the social media platform.
Vivian Lee, the online Bible preacher, said the messages were the virtual equivalent of door knocking: ‘‘we just use social media instead.’’
Any messages asking people to join an online Bible group should be ignored, Lineham warned, unless it was absolutely clear where they were from.
‘‘They’ll take your money from you and eventually ask you to give up everything in your life that doesn’t fit with their group.’’