FOLLOWERS OF FEMALE JESUS BUSTED
More members of the Church of Almighty God arrested as China cracks down on religious cult
Police in China have detained 18 suspected members of a banned religious cult. The Church of Almighty God – aka Eastern Lightning – is notorious for some of its members beating a woman to death in a McDonald’s restaurant in Shandong in 2014 after she refused to give them her phone number [ FT319:4]. Eastern Lightning was founded in 1989 by Zhao Weishan, a physics teacher from Heilongjiang province. Adherents believe Jesus has returned to Earth as a middle-aged Chinese woman named Lightning Deng from Henan province, and hold that belonging to the group will save them from an impending apocalypse. After the police put Zhao and his lover Yang Xiangbin on a wanted list in the mid-1990s, the pair travelled to the US on false passports and claimed asylum. They mastermind an organisation with as many as a million members and which is on a ruthless recruitment drive, especially targeting housewives and Christian congregations.
Chinese authorities frequently crack down on the cult, having arrested many of its members over the years. As part of the current detention, police also confiscated computers and books. Heads of the cult preach that the “chosen ones” should be ready to “sacrifice their lives” and that their ultimate goal is to kill the Communist Party, referred to as “the Great Red Dragon”. If cultists murder Communist Party members, “the spirit of the Great Red Dragon will no longer possess them,” the cult instructs followers. While many Christian sects find it hard to worship freely in China, Eastern Lightning is accused of isolating members from friends and families and pressuring them to donate money in exchange for salvation. “The cult is anti-family, anti-human, anti-government,” said one man who went undercover to rescue his wife and father-in-law. “It is constantly training its members to lie to their husbands and wives. They throw away family relationships and encourage each other to do the same. Whoever is more resolute in rejecting their family is given a higher rank. It takes people who are kind and makes them crazy and extreme.”
After the 2014 McDonald’s killing, several cult members were arrested and two later executed. They had attempted to recruit the 35-year-old victim in the restaurant in the town of Zhaoyuan in May 2014. When she refused to give her phone number, the group believed that she was “possessed by an evil spirit”. The group then beat the woman with chairs and metal mop handles. She died at the scene from her injuries. Interviewed in prison later, one of the murderers, Zhang Lidong, said: “I beat her with all my might and stamped on her too. She was a demon. We had to destroy her.” China’s crackdown on the cult predates the McDonald’s murder. There were a string of arrests in 2012 in Qinghhai and Zhejiang where nearly 100 members were sentenced to prison, including several senior members. In 2014, more were arrested in Hubei and Xinjiang. In August 2016 local police in Anhui detained 36 members accused of creating and spreading video content for the cult. BBC News, 13 Aug 2014; 27 July 2017.