The “Tiger Head” bridge guarded by an elderly protection team of the Almighty God cult
In November 2012, Zhou Xiong (a pseudonym) served as a preacher for the Almighty God cult at a local community church in a city in Guangdong Province. At that time, the Almighty God cult was hyping “the Doomsday” heresy, claiming that December 21 was the Last day (the end of world) when people would have to live in darkness for 6 days and 6 nights and then be judged by God，that only those who believed in the Almighty God would be allowed to ascend to heaven. Apparently, it was a trick to scare people into joining the Almighty God church.
One weekend night, the community leader of the Almighty God cult called together all second-tier leaders of Gospel teams and key members of churches to a rented house for a meeting near the old public security bureau in the downtown area. (Note: community leader, second-tier leaders mentioned here all refer to internal organizational positions of the Almighty God cult) Among those attendees were Zhou Xiong, Zhou Li (second-tier leader), and Gospel team members including Huang Bing (male), Xiao Li (female), Xiao Cao (female) etc. During that meeting, Zhou Li announced in solemn, “we should step up our efforts to expand our Gospel work so that the gospel of the Almighty God could be heard and known to every household……” She relayed instructions from high level of the Almighty God cult to her subordinates, aiming to draw in as many innocent people as possible and put them under mind control before the so-called doomsday.
After the meeting, Zhou Li went to see Zhou Xiong alone about how to carry out the relevant work of the church and asked him to mobilize all Almighty God believers in urban areas to preach in an organized way to every single family by knocking on doors, and he specifically pointed out that they should take advantage of night times to distribute the “Gospel booklets” to every family possible. According to their arrangement, some believers would go to public places such as factories and companies to perform their tasks, and others would go to the streets to preach by pulling banners, shouting with trumpets and even with gongs and drums.
In addition, the Almighty God church also issued some work instructions, demanding that each church should implement large-scale gatherings to spread “Gospel” to groups of 5 or even more people in an aggressive way, or they could take turns to preach in an overwhelming way to relatives, friends or neighbors whenever there was a wedding ceremony.
At that time, the Mayan prophecy about doomsday in 2012 was widely spread, so the rumor of “the end of the world” propagated by the Almighty God cult caused panic as well. In order to execute orders of the cult and draw more people into the cult, Zhou Xiong and his partner Yang Xiong set up a protection team composed of elders in accordance of instructions from high levels of the cult.
The main role of the so-called protection team was to serve as human shields in case of emergencies or when necessary. If someone calls the police and police cars arrive, the team would step up to block police cars to stall the police officers so that they could effectively prevent the police from arresting cult followers. Besides, the team would mess with people who reject cult propaganda in public places, and prevent them from hurting cult followers spreading “Gospel”. Members of the cult all believe that neither the police nor common people in the society would do anything to harm the elderly.
Just a few days after the establishment of the protection team, the community church received an important message that in a village near the suburb of Tiger Head, Xiao Dong, the neighbor’s son of a female cult believer Ah Hua, was about to get married. Upon receiving the news, Zhou Li immediately called together the backbone of the church to arrange details of a large-scale “Gospel spreading” activity, and asked Ah Hua to be the one on the inside to assist them. In the meanwhile, they also ordered some elderly cult believers to pose as motorcyclists patrolling around or as bystanders chatting or playing chess at roadsides, the mission of whom was to spot and block the police in time.
The only route to the suburb of Tiger Head was guarded by a protection team
On the day of Xiao Dong’s wedding, a protection team was deployed under Zhou Xiong and Yang Xiong’s order. Every few tens of meters, there were several elderly cult believers standing guard on the road from the Tiger Head to the village. If someone called the police, they would go up to block the police cars, buying some time for other cult believers to flee from the on-site arrest. During their inspection tour made by Zhou Xiong and Yang Xiong, they noticed that those elderly believers were shivering in the howling wind of the icy winter, but they fooled them into holding fast to their positions in the name of “doing their part”.
Under the leadership of Zhou Li, the second-tier “Gospel” team went uninvited to the wedding, and made an all-out “Gospel spreading” propaganda by taking the opportunity when everyone attending the wedding were having their meals. Although these uninvited “guests” didn’t belong there at all, they were barely nervous after years of brainwashing by the cult, so they quickly entered their roles according to their plan. In order to gain a good impression, they went on the stage at the wedding to sing a song called “blessing” first to greet the parents on both sides and congratulate the couple on their marriage. Although people at the wedding were all curious about these strangers, they applauded them for the blessing song they sang, thinking they were either performers invited by the host family, or a troupe going on tour in the countryside. But a few minutes after they sang the blessing song, they began to sing an Almighty God cult song called God dominates the fate of mankind, preaching that in the coming doomsday, only those who believed in the Almighty God could survive. They also distributed the propaganda booklets of the Almighty God cult then and there while they were singing the cult song.
The host family soon realized that they were not here to sincerely congratulate the marriage but to mess up the wedding. People from the host family picked up benches from under tables, brandishing them at those ridiculous “performers”, shouting in anger, “You bastards, leave here immediately, or it will end up very unpleasant for you!” Xiao Dong, the groom, was also quite angry and said, “You have gone too far by fooling people here into believing ghosts and gods in this way. I would definitely break your legs if it were not my wedding day.” When guests there figured it out, they all accused the uninvited group of being wicked, because people regarded it as bad luck to talk about hell, demons and so forth at a wedding.
In spite of the anger and scolding, these “actors” showed no intention to leave at all. On the contrary, they still tried to slip Almighty God cult booklets to old people there, preaching to them about the cult. At last, people from the host family reached the end of their forbearance and started to drive these cult believers away with shoulder poles, brooms, sticks, etc. Seeing such dangerous situation, Ah Hua also slipped away.
The “Gospel spreading” activity carried out by the Almighty God cult with filthy measures, severely disturbed and ruined the couple’s wedding, and had a very bad influence in the society. However, some people who were unfortunately cheated into the "Almighty God" cult were unconsciously trapped in the quagmire of the cult.So, we must sharpen our vigilance to guard against evil intentions and harm of the Almighty God cult.
(This article is a real case, in which pseudonyms are used for names of people and places)
