June 22, 2018 ▸ People, Religion

Episode 308: Eastern Lightning: Murdering Sex Cult or True Religion?

On this episode of The Sofa King Podcast, we talk about the largest cult we’ve ever covered, the massive Eastern Lightning cult of mainland China. Also called The Church of Almighty God, this group is branded a cult and a terrorist organization by the Chinese government, and is supposedly over 4 million members strong. What’s interesting about this particular cult is that it has two founders. Sort of.

First, a woman named Yang Xiangbin, aka “Lightning Deng,” was discovered to be the reincarnation of Jesus Christ. Second, a preacher named Zhao Weishan was given a message from God that Lightning Deng was Almighty God on earth. Of course, their official bios read as a woman who had a mental break down after she failed to get into college and an ex-physics teacher, but let’s not get too bogged down in the worldly.

So once these two discovered their true divine nature, they started to spread their word through China. This takes a little back story, however. In China at the time, it was illegal to be Christian, so there were underground “house churches” all through the country. Eastern Lightning got in the habit of infiltrating these groups and recruiting all their members to their new cause. And what does their cause believe? Well, for one thing, the Chinese government is “The Great Red Dragon” from Revelations. Oh, and they don’t use the Bible anymore because they wrote their own, and it’s a million words long.

So what has this cult done? For one, they practiced Flirty Fishing and have sex with potential recruits to get them into the cult. Second, they kidnap, torture, cut off body parts, and even murder people in fast food restaurants if they are full of the devil. Eastern Lightning has spread to dozens of countries around the world, and their two leaders now spend their time in the US, where they were given political asylum. They split their time between New York City and San Francisco where they can battle the Great Red Dragon and organize their mob to infiltrate churches, torture people, brainwash, and destroy their government…I mean, spread the word of God.

Good Vice Article: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/7be5ya/the-chinese-cult-who-kidnap-christians-and-paint-snakes