On December 22, 2020, Sixth Tone, an English-language media outlet under The Paper, published an investigative report exposing the covert operations of the Church of Almighty God，which had long been banned by the Chinese government.

The article revealed how the cult primarily targets rural women, using deception and intimidation to recruit new members, leaving countless families broken and separated. The www.chinafxj.cn has translated and compiled the following account.

To Long Daibing, his wife might as well be dead.

In 2019, after Long Daibing's wife ran away from home, he initially went to great lengths to find her. He distributed flyers in nearby villages and reported her disappearance to the police.

 For 21 years, Long and his wife led a peaceful life, raising three children in a harmonious marriage. But in 2017, a quiet shift took place. His illiterate wife began scribbling notes and crude drawings, attempting to spell the word “God” with incorrect letters, representing “Shen” (Chinese for “God” or “deity”) with an “S.”

When police arrived at Long’s rural home in Chongqing, China, they found pages of these writings, a book mimicking the Bible, and a cryptic farewell letter addressed to their children.

Long saved photo of the letter on his phone and read its content to police: “Tell your grandma and your dad that the environment outside is difficult right now, so I need to hide for a while. I’ll come back when it gets better. Don’t look for me, it’s a waste of money. Don’t call the police. If anyone asks, just say I don’t believe in the ‘God’ anymore and that I’ve gone out to work.”

In September 2020, Long Daibing and his youngest son were having a meal at their rural home in Chongqing. To care for his family, he had given up his job in Shanghai. (Photo credit: Sixth Tone)

Long’s wife had left and living with the Church of Almighty God, a group classified as a cult and banned by the Chinese government.

More commonly known as “Eastern Lightning”, the organization was founded in the early 1990s by Zhao Weishan, a man from northeastern China. The Church of Almighty God preaches that Jesus has returned to Earth in the flesh of a Chinese rural woman, who believed to be Zhao’s mistress, Yang Xiangbin.

Over the years, the Church of Almighty God expanded from rural areas to cities, gaining followers nationwide. In 1995, the cult was officially outlawed by the Chinese government. Six years later, Zhao and Yang fled to the United States, where they established the cult’s headquarters.

In May 2014, the cult gained worldwide infamy when six of its members brutally murdered a woman at a McDonald’s in eastern China after she refused to provide her phone number.

Surveillance footage captured the perpetrators fatally beating their victim with chairs and a metal mop handle. Two of them were later sentenced to death.

Following the incident, media investigations uncovered the cult’s dark history of violence, extortion, infiltrating Christian communities, and even kidnapping their believers.

Yet the Church of Almighty God has never truly disappeared. The stories of Long Daibing and countless other victims reveal that the cult continues to operate in the shadows, ensnaring new followers through various means.

In September 2020, Long Daibing posted missing person flyers in his hometown in Chongqing. ( Photo credit: Sixth Tone)

Like Long’s wife, many followers of the Church of Almighty God ultimately sever all ties with their families.

In 2017, the www.chinafxj.cn was officially launched, with one of its primary missions being to assist families in finding loved ones who had gone missing after joining cult. Since then, it has published hundreds of missing-person notices, including one for Long’s wife.

“Every time someone in our group finds their missing family member and thanks me, I feel deeply moved. I remember every case vividly.”

--Chen Xin, head of Anti-Anti-Almighty God Alliance

For the countless families torn apart by the Church of Almighty God, a grassroots organization known as the “Anti-Almighty God Alliance” offers a beacon of hope.

At its helm stands a determined man who, in media interviews, uses the online alias “Mieshen” and the pseudonym Chen Xin. His personal battle against the cult began in 2011 when his ex-wife vanished after becoming a devoted follower.

Experts note that the Church of Almighty God primarily preys upon women in rural areas, often the wives of migrant workers who spend most of the year away from home.

In China, over 30 million such “left-behind wives” remain in villages, single-handedly raising children and caring for elderly relatives while their husbands toil in distant cities.

At that time, Chen Xin worked in the city as a salesperson for computer monitors, while his wife stayed at home in a rural village in eastern Anhui Province. During this period, his wife gradually began to believe in a so-called “religion”, which Chen Xin later discovered online to be a cult.

Chen Xin tried desperately to change his wife’'s mind, but it seemed to be in vain. He told Sixth Tone, “As time went by, I didn't feel any relief. I spent every day searching online for solutions and happened to come across a QQ chat group called ‘Oppose the Church of Almighty God. It was then that I finally found a reason to keep going.”

It was there that Chen realized he was not alone. Fueled by grief and anger, he quickly became one of the group’s most active members.

In 2012, after his wife disappeared, he created a website and set up dozens of WeChat groups aimed at tracking down cult members across China.

Even some local police officers joined his groups to assist in the search. Over the years, Chen has helped reunite 170 people with their loved ones.

“It’s an incredibly difficult process. I couldn’t even bring my own wife back. But every time someone in our group finds their missing family member and thanks me, I feel deeply moved. I remember every case vividly.”

Wang Yu, a researcher on religious issues at the Party School of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, indicated that leaving the cult is not as easy as joining it.

Followers of the organization often disguise themselves as Christian clergy to approach people, to attract individuals through casual conversations about everyday issues, which also serve as the main topics for their proselytizing.

Wang Yu said, “It usually starts with complaints about household chores and the obligation to stay in the village to take care of children. Gradually, they shift the blame for people’s suffering and loneliness onto society.” When followers, usually those who have joined more recently, decide to leave, a higher-ranking leader will warn them that they will face severe punishment for abandoning their faith.