The Lightning comes from the East - to NZ

In late January this year, committee member Katrina Borthwick messaged our NZ Skeptics committee chat channel about a spam message she received on Facebook inviting her to join a fellowship meeting:

Craig replied that he'd received something similar, as had Dan Ryan, and Bronwyn and I both jumped to the conclusion that it was likely Shincheonji, a Korean cult group that has been active in New Zealand in the past 10 years or more. However, an article that came out a few days later from Stuff revealed that this spate of religious spam likely came from a different cult, called Eastern Lightning.

A couple of days after the article, Dan decided to take the bait and join an online fellowship meeting, to scout out who was running the group. I messaged him and asked how I could join in, and he told me to just reply to any post on any of their many Facebook pages and I'd get an invite. Sure enough, as soon as I responded to a post I immediately received a Facebook private message from the page (in all of the following message boxes, my responses are aligned to the right and in italics):

👋Hello Mark Honeychurch, welcome to our page. The Lord Jesus said, “Come to me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”🙏🙏God always has man's need in mind, and we can always lean on Him. When we come before God and read His words, life will be easy and happy. 💖☘️

💖🤗 Would you like to join our free sermon on Messenger to learn God's words together and accept God's blessings?

Which time do you prefer?

🌹A. NZ Time 8 pm

🌸B. NZ Time 10 pm

🍁C. Not interested

_Yes please, I'd love to join. What day is the sermon on? 10pm would probably suit me better. Thanks!

B_

Little did I know how much this multiple choice format would come to haunt me! The person messaging me introduced themselves and then sent me a Facebook friend request, which of course I accepted:

You are a person who loves the truth, God blesses more people who love the truth😊🥰

The sermon is this evening, do you have time to join ?🤗

_Yes, I think I can join tonight. How long does it go on for?_

The sermon is in the messenger group. I will add you to this group. When the sermon begins, I will call your messenger. After you have answered, listen quietly.

_Thank you!_

btw, my name is Amanda, from italy but in New zealand 2 years. I am a christian and hope to help more friends get closer to God 💕. Feel free to contact me if you have any difficulties or questions, may the love of Jesus be with you always.

I've sent you a friend request, have you seen me?😊

At this point Amanda switched to messaging me from her personal profile, and it was obvious that she had already been scouring my Facebook profile for information. I was asked what being a skeptic meant, and as a veteran infiltrator of weird and wonderful groups dodged this one easily with an answer about “trying to find the answers to life”. This monitoring of my social media would continue in the coming days, with another fellowship leader adding a Facebook like to my profile picture from 2015, and facts about my work and family that I had never divulged being brought up in conversations. Here's the beginning of our conversation:

😊 I know that whoever I meet in my life is God's plan. I hope this is the beginning of our friendship

_Yay!_

I saw your job on your profile, that was interesting, skeptic what type of job is that

_It's not a job - just a hobby.

And it's all about trying to find the answers to life._

What is this for? I'm curious

Interesting, have you tried to find any answers lately about life ？😊

_Yes, always. I'm always searching!_

Would you mind telling me what answers you've been looking for lately

_The meaning of life I guess._

It's a very deep question, and we're always looking for

_answers?_

yes

btw my husband and I live in Christchurch

_Oh, cool. How's the weather there today?_

sunny day

Hot weather

Where are you?

_Wellington._

Amen Nice to meet u 😊 God has arranged for us to get to know each other and tonight at 10PM let's study God's word together

_I'm looking forward to it!_

Is everything ok with you there, I read on the news that there is flooding in Auckland

_Yes, there's no flooding in Wellington._

great

Disasters are getting worse now, and I also feel that this is the last days, when the Lord Jesus will soon return

_Maybe - it's hard to know what's going on these days._

🥝 Grp1 3th Feb NZ10pm-Seek the path to the beautiful kingdom

I have added you to the group, have you seen the group

_I have, thank you._

do you have time to join now

_I've joined._

And with that I was in. I had connected, along with a few other people, to a group Facebook call - I was now a member of a group titled “5th Feb God's sheep hear God's voice” (I've removed the emojis from the group title to spare you my pain). This was my Level 1 group for the next few days.

My first fellowship leader was “Sister Mercy”, and although her Facebook profile name is Mercy Spencer, her Chinese name, from her Facebook URL, appears to be Song Jiayin.

Sister Mercy gave us instructions on how to use the chat, instructions that not everyone was able to follow:

😇To study in a quiet environment and hear the sharing clearly, I expect each sibling to follow the following tips👇👇

1. Please keep your mic muted when you are not speaking.

2. Please keep your camera closed during the sermon.

Over the next few weeks, I would hear meeting attendees preparing dinner, swearing at their partners, shouting at children and even snoring loudly - and I've seen up more people's nostrils as they held their phone close to their face to read the words of Almighty God than I care to remember!

From now on I would be known as Brother Mark, as all members refer to each other as Brother and Sister - or often the shortened form of Bro and Sis. I guess this terminology helps engender familiarity, and I can't help but think that it's a deliberate effort to make new members feel welcome.

There has been heavy emoji use in these introductory groups. I've told the leaders I don't like emojis. When asked why, I used the word “childish” with one leader and told another I thought they were “a lazy way to communicate”, but this didn't seem to dissuade them from using them with me. I had a suspicion that they were copying and pasting a lot of canned responses from a document they used for these meetings, and that these messages came with emojis already embedded. This suspicion was confirmed after a couple of weeks (more on that next time!).

It turns out that copying and pasting is a large part of how these groups operate, complete with spelling mistakes. Presumably the level of written English among the leaders (all of whom so far have been Chinese or Taiwanese nationals) is low enough that it makes sense to supply them with text they can simply share with us. This copy and paste mentality even went as far as being used for “personalised” messages. Here's the greeting I received from my Level 2 group leader, Sister Katherine:

…I'm very glad to know you from our level 2 fellowship group, this is Katherine, 32 years old, from Taiwan, I'm sis Mercy's co-worker and good friend, now living with my family in Christchurch, New Zealand…

I love cooking🥩🍤🥗, doing chores, gardening🌻🌸, taking nice photos🖼️🖼️, and managing time well⏰⏰, we could share our hobbies with each other😊💖🙏

Would you mind introducing yourself and your family briefly? So we can get to know each other better 😊

And here's an eerily similar intro from my Level 3 group leader, Bella:

…I'm very glad to know you here 😊😊 this is Bella, the hosting in level 3, I'm 28 years old, from China, now living with my family in Christchurch, New Zealand…

I love cooking🥩🍤🥗, doing chores, gardening🌻🌸, taking nice photos🖼️🖼️, and managing time well⏰⏰, we could share our hobbies with each other😊💖🙏…

Would you like to introduce yourself to me? so we can know each other better 🥰🥰

Look at that, it turns out that Sister Katherine and Sister Bella have the same hobbies, right down to using identical emojis in the same places. I also loved the subtle hint to new members of “managing time well”, which I can only assume is a suggestion that we should connect to our evening fellowship in a timely manner. I've tended to respond to messages like this by deflecting in a way that hopefully doesn't seem like I'm avoiding answering:

_Hi, thank you for your message. It's a little hard to read with all those emojis, but I think you've asked me about myself. What would you like to know - I'm happy to answer specific questions if you have any._

Did I tell you already that I don't like emojis? Good, then you'll understand just how infuriating messages like this garbled mess look to me:

Good evening, brother ~ welcome aboard to the Journey of Purification in Level-2 🥳🎊🎊🎊✈️🛫🛬🛩💺 fasten your seatbelt 💺💺 haa 😍😍 We are about to take off now ✈️🛫

The NEW gc for Level-2 👉

💧10pm-3rd-Feb🎉Level 2-The Way of the Kingdom of Heaven🥳

Let's come and explore nowww na 🤗🤗🤗 Have a pleasant journey 👏👏👏

Anyway, these fellowship sessions usually last for about an hour and a half, and we were given a choice of an 8pm or 10pm starting time. For Levels 1 and 2 the schedule is intense, with a meeting every night. Then, at Level 3, the frequency drops to three times a week. Each meeting starts with a couple of hymns, fairly normal sounding Christian songs, that seemed to get a little more unusual as we were taught more about the church's beliefs.

The reason for these Level 1 and 2 groups appears to be an attempt to slowly acclimatise people to a big truth reveal - one that I'll reveal to you in due time!

The format of the meetings themselves was quite formulaic, with a mixture of bible passage readings and multiple choice questions designed to test our comprehension. In reality, these questions usually just require you to scroll up a few paragraphs and quickly scan the text to find the answer. And, over time, the bible passages are slowly and sneakily replaced with text from a different source, until after a couple of weeks we arrived at the point where it was surprising whenever a bible verse was used in a meeting.

For the readings, on the first day or two most of the passages were read by our group leader, with frequent mis-readings. Sometimes it was hard to make out what was being said, but as the passage text was always posted to the Facebook chat, it was easy enough to follow along.

Here's an overview of what we were “taught” during the Level 1 meetings, which lasted 3 nights before we “graduated” to Level 2:

Day 1

Day one taught us that we are not holy - apparently Jesus washed away our sins, but we still have a sinful nature which needs to be fixed. Here we can see that our sins are just the fruit, but at the root of our problems is our Sinful Nature:

And here is one example of several multiple choice questions we were asked to show that we had understood this lesson:

Why can't we stop sins totally after our sins are forgiven by our lord Jesus' redemption?

A: Because we are living in flesh

B: Because we still have sinful nature

C: I am not sure

We were told that God would be coming back to judge everyone, and that he would open the Sealed Book as part of this process. We would need to accept God's Judgement Work in order to be truly saved.

Of course, me being me, I was the fellowship swot and tried to always be the first one to answer the questions. Over time it became easy enough that I could answer a question before the leader had managed to ask the question - they'd post the question text, start reading it, and within a few seconds I'd paste my single letter answer. Some questions were a little more difficult, asking us to type a sentence, but even then it was all fairly simple, and easy to slip into the persona of being a willing follower.

Day 2

On day two we were taught about how God would come back to earth to carry out his Judgement. He will supposedly come back twice. First secretly, like a thief, and at that time he will open the Sealed Book and reveal its words. Then publicly, on a cloud, to punish those who did accept his message.

We were told that other Christians were mistaken in thinking that when God comes back publicly, it would be to save people. By this time, we were told, it would be too late. Those who were unable to discern and worship God during his first return, in secret, would be punished with an eternity in hell when God returned.

Again, multiple choice questions paved our way to understanding:

Q-🌷According to the biblical prophecies, how many ways are there in the Lord's return？

A. One way: coming quietly like a thief.

B. One way: coming with white clouds publicly.

C. Two ways: coming secretly first, then appearing publicly.

We were told that God will reincarnate in a “normal” form, and speak a human language, and that we would recognise the returned God through his words rather than his appearance. If we were ever to read the Words of the Sealed Book, it would become obvious to us that we were reading God's words, and that He had returned to earth.

At the end of this lesson we were given a warning to not share what we had learned with anyone who was not a member of the church, along with a bible verse to back it up:

Proverbs 13:3 He that keeps his mouth keeps his life: but he that opens wide his lips shall have destruction.

Day 3

On day three we were read several “powerful” passages, such as:

My words are the forever unchanging truth. I am the supply of life for man and the only guide for mankind. The worth and meaning of My words are not determined by whether they are recognized or accepted by mankind, but by the substance of the words themselves. Even if not a single person on this earth can receive My words, the value of My words and their help to mankind are inestimable by any man. Therefore, when faced with the many men who rebel against, refute, or are utterly contemptuous of My words, My stance is only this: Let time and facts be My witness and show that My words are the truth, the way, and the life. Let them show that all I have said is right, and is that which man should be furnished with, and, moreover, that which man should accept. I will let all who follow Me know this fact: Those who cannot fully accept My words, those who cannot practice My words, those who cannot find a purpose in My words, and those who cannot receive salvation because of My words, are those who have been condemned by My words and, moreover, have lost My salvation, and My rod shall never stray from them.

This was followed by the big reveal that these are the words of the returned God, taken from the Sealed Book. Given the preparation of the previous two lessons, the idea here is that the words they've chosen to reveal to us are so powerful that we would instantly recognise them as God's words, and that this would let us know that God has returned in the flesh, and we are in the end times.

After each passage, we were asked another multiple choice question, like this one for the passage above:

Who else other than God, can ever speak to us with such a tone and from such a position?

Who else can bless man and fulfil His words?

Who else can display God's authority and sovereignty over all created creations?

A. They are spoken by a random person.

B. They can only be expressed by God HIMSELF!

C. I can't tell yet…

🥑 May I know your idea?

This image was used to help reiterate what we had learned:

After this revelation, we were told that God has a six thousand year management plan. There are apparently three stages, or Ages, within this plan - the Age of Law, the Age of Grace and the Age of Kingdom:

We are now in the final Age, the Age of Kingdom, where some of us will be chosen to be saved, and others will be judged and found wanting, and will be punished.

Again, the meeting closed with another warning:

Last point for tonight, don't tell people directly that our Lord has returned. Cause every one needs to learn step by step. Even 2000 years ago, our Lord didn't allow His diceple to tell people directly , that is about the timing things. God will lead us to learn more first! Then we can help others.

We were asked to keep God's return secret from family and friends, and let them learn by attending the lessons themselves. This secrecy is pushed pretty hard. It feels like the church is concerned about losing people if family members find out what they've been learning - that Christian family members will consider the idea that God has returned a blasphemy. Their way to avoid this appears to be to get their hooks into family members and friends first, and to “reveal” this new truth to them individually.

At this time we were asked to supply the Facebook account names of 10 close family members, 10 relatives and 10 friends - for “prayer”. In reality, it was obvious that the reason they asked for Facebook account names rather than just names was because the church was planning to reach out to everyone who you gave to them to try to convert them.

Outside of Fellowship

This is a really interesting part of how the church does what they do. In cult circles, the technique they employed is known as love bombing - plying new members with so much positive attention that they feel overwhelmed in a positive way. For me, this consisted of first my initial contact, and then my fellowship group leaders, constantly messaging me to ask me questions about my personal life, test me on the previous night's lesson, check on my wellbeing and generally be a “friend” to me.

For Amanda, my initial contact, this didn't last more than a few days, and mainly consisted of conversations about our fellowship meetings. Here's a snippet of a conversation:

today is saturday, do you have any plans

_Maybe tidy the garage. How about you?_

not feeling well, just resting

_Oh dear - not COVID, I hope?_

How did you feel about the fellowship last night?🥰

no just some heart problems

😅😅

_Heart problems? That sounds serious._

Feel uncomfortable when there is excessive stress,

We always need to face a lot of pressure in our life

_I'm sorry to hear that - I hope you're getting the treatment you need._

🙏🙏Thank you

btw how did you feel about the fellowship last night

_Good - were you there?_

yes i was there last night didn't you see me😅

_No I didn't, I guess I was focused on the message 😉_

😄😄I have been following you very positively

_Following me?_

i mean you are very active in the group

_Was I not supposed to be? Should I stay quiet?

I hope I didn't mess up 🙁_

it's a good thing

because i'm a shy person

I'm always silent in the group

_Ah, okay. Phew!_

In fact, I am also a beginner, still need to learn a lot of things

_It seems like there is a lot to learn._

Yes, I think so too, I still have a lot of things I don't understand

You can see from this interaction that within a couple of days, I'd already started to find my footing in the group, sending questions to look like I was trying hard to understand things, offering to read the occasional passage out loud, and interacting with the occasional Amen or other Christian sounding response. As an ex-Christian, this isn't too hard to do, and I soon endeared myself to my Level 1 leader, Sister Mercy. She was quick to send me a friend request and strike up a conversation with me:

Mark Honeychurch Thanks for joining dear🥰It is God who guides us to be family. Though we are far from each other, our hearts are together and longing for God. And your seeking will truly inspire me~~😍👏👏 You did a wonderful job tonight😍 I notice that ~

_Thank you!_

Thank you for reading brother😁

your voice is so good and clear🥰🥰

_That's too kind, thank you._

😊Now I give you a gift🎁, you can choose what you want, I will give it to you personally! Which one do you want? 🤗

🙏❤ I wanna give a small present.🎁💝

🌱 A. A passage of God's word; 📕

🌱 B. A song of praise; 🎶🎵

🌱 C. A special prayer; 🙏

_I'm not sure - can you choose for me?_

lol sure, how about C

_Awesome, good choice!_

so do you have any prayer requests ? I have the gift of prayer, when I pray, God will answer. If you have any difficulties, I can pray for you 🙏

_I'm sure God already knows what is best for me, I'm happy to trust his will._

yeah, u r right brother

if u have any prayer request in future, u can message me

_Thank you again!!!_

After every evening's lesson, Sister Mercy would send me a “key” as encouragement:

It wasn't long before Sister Mercy started mothering me:

Mark Honeychurch Good morning dear brother, how did you sleep yesterday? Have a glass of warm water 💦💦💦 it's good for your health.🥰🥰

Well~my bro, can sleep Otherwise I will worry about your lack of sleep na I wish you a sweet dream of ice cream. 😄😁😊🥰

it's midnight there, u should sleep

brother how many hours you usually sleep😀

don't stay up too late hehe

i know sometimes u are busy, but better to have regular meals brother, that's good for ur health and work

I wonder if this works for some people who join the church - whether it's nice to have someone caring for you in this way. For me, at least, this wasn't going to help, and was going to drive me potty. So I decided that, to help me stay sane and set some boundaries, I'd try to nip this in the bud. I eventually described to her how it felt to be treated like a child, and followed up with what I hoped was an easy to understand description of the problem:

_It feels like you're my mother. And yet I'm old enough to be your father!_

Our conversations were quite intense for those first few days - as I said, this was definitely a case of using love bombing to win me over. Sister Mercy and the other leaders have sent me not just text messages, but also audio messages, cute animated gifs, a unique Good Morning image every morning, and more. We talked about all kinds of topics, with me trying to sail close enough to the truth that I was answering as honestly as possible, while not giving away personal details about myself or those around me that are best kept private. Sometimes it was just so obvious that they were fishing for useful details, about my family members, my job and my education level, but I guess for people who don't know about this tactic it's probably nice to just have someone who's interested in you.

At times I'd amuse myself with the weird conversations we ended up having (and see if you can spot the spoiler in our conversations of one of the “surprises” coming in our Level 2 class):

do u have some special gift or supernatural ability?😁

_I don't know - does being able to tie a knot in a cherry stalk with my tongue count?

I learned that trick many years ago._

wow

i didn't know it before

it's special😄

Now God has returned, and God's words have fulfilled, so many disasters are happening now, we need to equip more truth and our spiritual life can grow us, it is our God's urgent will on us, Amen 🙏🙏🙏

_Ah, okay, so the rate of disasters has been increasing over time? Do we know anything about this increase? Is it linear, or maybe exponential? This sounds very worrying to me!_

btw, are u surprise that God incarnated in China, my bro?😁

_No, not really.

It could have been anywhere in the world, and given that China has the largest population statistically it's the most likely country.

If, however, God had been born in the Nagorno Karabakh Autonomous Region, it would be a little odd. But still, God would have His reasons I'm sure to incarnate wherever He chooses._

I'm still in regular communication with Sister Mercy, my Level 1 leader, and I enjoy talking with her. I'm not sure how it'll go when I “leave” the church, and honestly I worry about how she might feel if she finds out that my real reason for being in the group is to learn the truth about their activities and their tactics, and report on them. Like many people who find themselves in high control groups, I'm sure she's a good person who's basically found herself in a bad place, where she's now actively trying to convert people to a cause that's both damaging and dangerous.

But the stark reality is that she is doing harm to others, and she's making things worse for real people by recruiting them into this cultish church. I just hope that at some point in her life she realises the mistake she's made, and that she's brave enough to be able to walk away.

Next Time

I'll be back soon with stories of some more of my shenanigans, where I'm joined in Level 2 by Dan Ryan, but not as we know him - he's had a trick up his sleeve to quickly and easily mask his identity. I'll also tell you about what we learned in Level 2 and beyond, my eye-opening conversation with a fellowship leader about honesty and lying, my return to the Level 1 group, and a meeting with a senior church member called Ellen from Guam, where I begin preparation for my role as a preacher and get my hands on some of the church's teaching materials!