“Due to my lack of study of national laws, regulations and the knowledge of identifying cults, I could not tell the difference between cult activities and normal religious rituals. As the result, I was tricked by the words of cult members and unwittingly became their prey.” This is the self-reflection by a former Almighty God cult follower who once mistakenly blundered into worshiping the cult and successfully broke away from it later.
Yu Jing (a pseudonym), female, with a junior high school education, 57 years old, lives in Hunjiang District, Baishan City, Jilin Province today. Years ago, she lived in a big family with her husband, son, daughter-in-law, and 2 grandsons. They led a happy and harmonious life together where her husband was diligent and hardworking, her son and daughter-in-law were filial, and her two grandsons were healthy and lovely. The whole family seemed to have a bright future ahead.
However, misfortunes were creeping up on the family.
One day in the autumn of 2013 when Yu Jing was shopping in the market, she met one old neighbor, Aunty Meng, who she hadn’t seen for many years. Aunty Meng was quite friendly, asking about her well-being and chitchatting about small family affairs of their neighbors. Before leaving, Aunty Meng gave her a pamphlet. Yu Jing picked it up casually and didn’t take it seriously. At that time, she had to spend most of her time on taking care of her weak and sick old mother and had no time to read it at all. Therefore, she just threw the pamphlet aside after getting home.
The next year, Yu Jing’s daughter-in-law gave birth to a little grandson and Yu Jing helped take care of the baby together with her daughter-in-law. Unexpectedly, Aunty Meng whom Yu Jing hadn’t seen for over a year paid an uninvited visit to give Yu Jing books and then kept talking about heresies and fallacies to her, such as “the ‘era of grace’ of ‘god’ has passed”, and “‘God’ has been incarnated on earth so that it’s the ‘era of kingdom’ now. Only those who believe in Almighty God could get salvation and ascend to the kingdom of heaven”. Aunty Meng also mentioned catastrophe for mankind and the incoming doomsday, and described terrible scenes at the end of the world in a vivid way by saying, “floods roar on, mountains collapse, and rivers burst banks. All families on earth would be broken. Then, there would be no reunion for mothers and sons, no gatherings for fathers and daughters.” She went on, saying, “Those who don’t believe in Almighty God are bound to go to hell”, “The giant dragon is Satan”, etc. Succumbing to fear and lies instilled by Aunty Meng, Yu Jing was worried, nervous, and frightened, and was eventually convinced by those heresies of the Almighty God cult. At that time, Yu Jing ridiculously believed that she could only survive from Satan’s clutches by putting her faith in “God”, loving “God”, obeying “God” and pursuing “God”, and that she should follow Aunty Meng so that her whole family could be eligible ones to ascend to heaven with the help and protection from “God”.
After spending a period of time on “listening to scriptures and preaching”, Yu Jing wrote a “guarantee” full of wicked words such as “life is worse than death”, “being pursued by countless ailments and afflictions”, “being hit and killed by a car”, “going to hell”, etc. At this point, she was completely mind controlled by the Almighty God cult.
Back then, Aunty Meng was already the “leader” of the Almighty God cult in the local community. She instructed Yu Jing to distribute illegal propaganda materials, recruit new believers by spreading “Gospel”, and “contribute” all her family savings as tributes to “God”, claiming that the more tributes Yu Jing paid, the closer she could be from “God”, and the more “blessing” she could get from “God”. “Only in this way could you survive from the ‘judgment day’. And as for those who didn’t do their part enough or did nothing at all would definitely face their punishment accordingly”, etc., Aunty Meng further added. Thus, after several times, Yu Jing consecrated tens of thousands of Yuan in total to Almighty God, which was all her savings accumulated over years through hardwork.
Ever since Yu Jing believed in Almighty God, the whole family soon became lifeless. While few and few relatives and friends came to visit them, Yu Jing also cut them out of her life. After getting home at night, Yu Jing would stay indoors, concentrating on reading “words from God” or saying prayers. During the day, Yu Jing would go out to draw people into the cult or attend cult gatherings. After knowing that she was a believer of the Almighty God cult, her husband and son all tried to dissuade her by saying that her grandson was still so young, and she was really needed to take care of the baby. It was inappropriate for her to leave home quite early in the morning and get back home quite late at night while leaving pot empty and stove cold at home every day. However, advice like this always turned into the blasting fuse for a quarrel each time. From Yu Jing’s point of view, family members around her were too foolish to be aware of their imminent deaths, and they had no idea that she was saving them with her devotion to Almighty God. What she did was for the well-beings of the whole family. Since no one in the family trusted her, well, she would just have to let them die.
In this way, Yu Jing gradually became indifferent, selfish and heartless.
In 2015，Yu Jing’s mother was critically ill and wanted to see Yu Jing on her deathbed. At that time, Yu Jing was busy with spreading “Gospel” and “witnessing for God”, so when called by phone, she simply turned down her mother’s last wish with the excuse of not having time. When visiting her mother’s grave on the third day after burial, Yu Jing simply stood there indifferently without kowtowing, offering incense or burning paper. She had been indoctrinated with fallacies of the Almighty God cult that “nowadays people are at the stage of being the most corrupt and backward and know nothing other than kowtow, incense and paper burning, which are signs of being vulgar, decadent, conservative, degrading and filthy and typical behaviors to corrupt the whole mankind……” Influenced by those absurd ideas, Yu Jing’s personality had been so distorted that she could only mentally rely on the existence of the so-called “God” and ended up being indifferent and heartless as such.
Over the years, Yu Jing contributed most of the family savings to Almighty God as tributes. Seeing that there was no use arguing and quarreling with her, her husband stopped giving his salary to her, so she began to borrow money from her son in private from time to time. In her opinion, she was about to go to the “Kingdom of Heaven” soon, so what was the use of money?
One day in the autumn of 2016, Yu Jing ran away from home without saying goodbye after a quarrel with her husband. Word had it that she was in the home of another Almighty God believer, so her husband went look for her there but only found that she had already left and disappeared without a trace.
In order to find her, her husband had travelled nearly ten thousand miles, and his footsteps were all over villages and nearby provinces and cities where she might go. As long as there were news regarding her whereabouts, no matter whether it was true or false, her husband would take the chance to search for her. Because of her, her poor husband with whom she was in love for many years suffered from heart attacks from time to time, her grandsons were left unattended while her son and daughter-in-law had to go to work, and the warmth in the formerly happy family was totally gone with the wind.
In the early winter of 2018, Yu Jing came back home. In fact, the reason why Yu Jing ran away from home ruthlessly was that she needed to “do her part” for Almighty God and “cultivate” newly converted followers. It was preached by the Almighty God cult that “people such as parents, husband, children or relatives were all worldly entanglements, and lives of followers could only achieve mature after they abandoned their husband and children.” Moreover, the cult also claimed that “followers must break up their family and abandon their children. It was their pursuit for God, not their emotion that could save them from coming disasters. God would make a good arrangement for your family. You must believe in God and pursue God with all your heart, otherwise, you would be eliminated and go to hell without any mercy from God.”
While being away from home to spread heresies of the Almighty God cult, she was forbidden from contacting her family, and all that she was allowed to do was to say prayers, read cult books, talk to people at gatherings. Things such as TV, cell phones and books irrelevant to cult activities were all strictly prohibited.
After returning home, Yu Jing didn’t restrain herself at all. She went even further and further on the wrong path of breaking laws and committing crimes. Finally, in September 2018, Yu Jing was under compulsory measures by the public security organization for participating cult organization and violating state laws. Then she was freed on bail pending an appeal.
Meanwhile, officials from the government and people with caring heart from the society didn’t abandon her. Instead, they guided and educated her in a patient way. With the help of deprogrammers’ gentle attitude and scientific education, Yu Jing gradually let down her suspicions, opened her heart and eventually realized the evil nature of the Almighty God cult.
Looking back on those absurd days, Yu Jing was deeply regretful, and wrote down the following words from the bottom of her heart, “I want to thank the Party and the government for not letting me go further and further on the wrong path of breaking laws and committing crimes. Now, I have fully realized the real danger of the Almighty God cult. My obsession with Almighty God has taken a heavy toll on my family life. My beloved ones have been living in fears all day long, and they suffered so much because of me. Today, I feel terribly sorry for all the pains I have brought about to them. From now on, I’ll learn how to protect myself and others from cult, and I’ll fight against any cult organization to the end.”
Now, Yu Jing is optimistic for the future with high expectations.
