Although it happened five years ago, the pain has always been with me. Whenever I saw my wife who had been driven mad by the evil "Almighty God" cult and thought of my lost daughter, I can't help but feel blood dripping from my heart.
Speaking of this thing, I feel not only very sad but also deeply remorseful. It often occurred to me that if I had got some anti-cult awareness or knowledge, I wouldn’t have allowed the "Almighty God" cult to destroy our life and thus make me live in the abyss of pain every day.
My name is Li Xiaogang. I come from Beijingtou Township, Baishui County, Shaanxi Province. My wife is called Wang Cuizhen, 37 years old. She is one of my former high school classmates. We got married in 2003 by establishing love relationships out of our own will After marriage, we decided not to have children for the time being, and instead, we both went to work in Zhejiang Province to earn money, in order to help our family get out of poverty.
After several years of hard work, we earned a small fortune, so we decided to go back to our hometown.
In August 2010, the birth of our daughter not only brought us enormous joy but also provided me with great hope for the future. However, what I didn't expect was that the evil hand of the "Almighty God" cult was quietly reaching out to our family.
According to our local custom, when a child is added to a family, their relatives and friends should visit and congratulate the family before the child is a month old. One day, a distant maternal aunt of mine who hadn’t been in contact with us for many years visited our family. Having had a look at our baby daughter and chatted with us for a while about the daily life of our respective families, she began to change the topic by urging my wife to believe in the "Female Christ", also known as “Almighty God”.
At first, my wife didn't take my aunt's words seriously, but a few days later, my aunt came again. This time, she said seriously, "There will be a great catastrophe for mankind, and only those who believe in the ‘Female Christ’ will be saved. I’m not cheating you..." She also said that the "Female Christ" was the "Real God" of the world and that we would realize all of our wishes if we believed in the “Female Christ”. She enumerated vividly to my wife various “miracles of God", i.e. the blessings she had received. Finally, my wife gave in to my aunt’s endless pestering.
From then on, my aunt visited our family more often, helping to take care of my wife who was in confinement after giving birth, while telling her about the doctrines of the “Almighty God” and praying with her. I hate my aunt for her telling the lie that what she asked my wife to believe in was legitimate "Christianity", so it didn't arouse too much of suspicions on my part. I thought I should support my wife as long as she was happy believing in “Christianity”.
Later, my aunt brought several other believers in succession to our house for fellowship meetings. Seeing that we had no objections about it, my aunt simply used our house as a meeting point. With such meetings becoming increasingly frequent, the number of participants grew to more than a dozen. During the meetings, they preached loudly and sang spiritual songs, and meanwhile, they had to be provided with foods and drinks. As there were too many people who made too much noise, our house was turned into a mess. My baby daughter cried all day long due to the noisy environment, getting sick with fever from time to time. What’s more, whenever they had a fellowship meeting, they kept talking about the doomsday, among other weird topics, which made my wife so scared that she wanted to lapse from the Church of “Almighty God”.
However, when my wife expressed her intention of quitting the church, she encountered strong opposition from my aunt and other adherents, who took turns to dissuade my wife from doing so. In order to escape from their pestering, my wife hid at my mother-in-law’s home with my daughter for some time.
One day in March 2011, learning that my wife had come back, my aunt took a middle-aged man to our home and told my wife that he was the church "leader". The man first talked about how good the "Female Christ" was, and then he said sternly, "Quitting the church after you’ve joined it is apostasy and you will be killed by lightning as a result. If you quit the church to take care of your daughter, your daughter will be killed by God, so the baby’s life will not be guaranteed!" On hearing these words, my wife was struck speechless by fears.
That night, my wife told me nervously about what had happened during the day. I was very angry after hearing about it. It wasn’t until then that I realized that what my aunt had drawn my wife into believing in wasn’t genuine Christianity. So I insisted she quit the belief and comforted her not to worry about.
Later, seeing that my wife insisted on quitting the belief, my aunt and her fellow believers repeatedly called my wife by phone or threatened her at our door, saying that God would take my daughter away. Afraid of causing troubles to me, my wife, an introverted woman, didn’t share with me about what had happened. Living in fear alone, she often woke up in horror while sleeping.
On the night of February 20, 2012, when my wife was sleeping with our daughter in the bedroom, I suddenly heard my wife shouting "Don't touch my baby!" while I was watching TV in the living room. I hurried into the bedroom and saw my wife holding our daughter tightly and, her face full of fear, pleading repeatedly, "Please don't touch my daughter!" I called one of my neighbors to come and help me look after my wife. Finding my wife in such a condition, the neighbor told me directly, "Your wife may have gone mad!"
The next day, I took my wife to the hospital straight away. After about a month of treatment in a mental hospital, my wife's condition improved. However, just a few days after my wife was discharged from hospital and back home, those "Almighty God" members came to harass my wife again when I was absent from home. They told my wife that her illness was a warning from God, saying, "If you dare to quit, more severe punishment will wait for your husband and daughter."
On the afternoon of April 24, 2012, I was working in the orchard when my younger male cousin came riding a motorcycle and shouted to me before the motorcycle stopped completely, "Brother, come home immediately, my sister-in-law is suffering from an attack of her old illness again!" I got on his motorcycle and hurried home. Just outside the gate of my house, I heard my wife shouting, "Don't touch my daughter; don't touch my baby!"
I ran into the house, only to find the door of the bedroom locked from inside. When I kicked the door open, I saw a mess in the room. My daughter was covered under the quilt with only two feet left open, while my wife put the weight of her whole body on the quilt and kept shouting, "Don't touch my daughter." I quickly opened the quilt, but it was too late, my less than two-year-old daughter had stopped breathing for a long time.
At the sight of the tragedy, our neighbors shook their heads and sighed. Looking at the messy home, my mad wife and our dead daughter, I couldn't help crying.
Photo of Wang Cuizhen, Li Xiaogang’s wife, who was driven mad by the "Almighty God"
I hate the evil "Almighty God" cult for ruining my life, and I also hate myself for having no idea of guarding against heresies and thus causing an irreparable tragedy to our family.
I know what's done cannot be undone, so all I can do now is to tell my painful experience, hoping that more people can learn from it, stay aware to guard against heresies at all times, and keep away from the merciless harm of evil cults.
