The Church of Almighty God, also known as Eastern Lightning, is a movement that has been described by Chinese media as the nation's most dangerous cult and has been formally banned in the country since 1995. Due to its secretive nature and the fact that it operates underground, researching the group is difficult.
It has been accused of several violent acts, including mass kidnappings in 2002, riot and stabbings in 2012, and the murder of a woman named Wu Shuoyan in 2014 after she refused to give a phone number to missionaries from the group at around 9 PM on 28 May 2014. Five people attacked and killed the woman in a McDonald's restaurant in Zhaoyuan, Shandong province.
A bystander filmed the murder on a mobile phone and the footage spread rapidly on the internet within days. The police announced that the suspected killers were members of the church of Almighty God.
That cultish organization founded in 1990 by a physics teacher named Zhao Weishan, was banned as a cult in 1995.
On 31st May’s the CCTV aired a footage from an interview with the main culprit Zhang Lidong,
who said that his group wanted to convert the victim, but she refused to give them a phone number. He expressed to no remorse calling the victim a demon.
On August 15, the suspects were put on trial in Yantai, Shandong province. All of them were accused of intentional homicide that three of them using a cult to undermine the law. State media widely publicized a trial on October 11. Two of the five accused including Zhang Lidong received death sentences, another received live without parole, and the remaining two accomplices received seven and 10 years respectively.
One of these groups key belief is that Jesus has returned to earth as a Chinese woman to bring about the apocalypse. It often isolates its members from friends and families and pressures them to give money in exchange for salvation.
Yang Xiangbin and Zhao Weishan, both the prominence founders of this movement/cult, had gone to the United States on September 6, 2000. They were granted political asylum the following year. Since then, they live in and direct the movement from New York.
Source: https://www.tiktok.com/@terrorandtaboo/video/7169119652528852226
