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 loverYang 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.
This story is from the September 2017 edition of Fortean Times.
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This story is from the September 2017 edition of Fortean Times.
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