The Lightning has Died, at least for me

When I last wrote about Eastern Lightning, the strange Chinese cult I joined at the beginning of this year, I celebrated the fact that I had managed to get my hands on a couple of copies of one of their books. Little did I know how much trouble this would get me in!

Last time I also talked about how my time in Eastern Lightning had probably come to a close, but when it came down to it I didn't seem to be able to leave. The whole thing had become so familiar to me - Friday evening meetings every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 10pm, reading the words of Almighty God, listening to others trying their hardest to read translations of Chinese text that leaned heavily on long, obscure words. It was comfortable to be in the group, and the idea of leaving and having to deal with the inevitable consequence of being grilled for my reasons for leaving and coerced into coming back didn't feel very enticing. I figure that if I felt like this, as an atheist, I can imagine that the attraction to stay in the group for those that actually believe would be even more hard to resist. It would be much simpler to just go with the flow, especially as turning up requires very little effort. The beauty (or horror) of this group using Facebook is that most people are permanently logged in, and once they're in one of the cult's Facebook chats, it's easy for one of the group leaders to just click the Call button at 10pm and actively pop up on the screens of every member.

The online lessons were mostly pretty repetitive, pushing the same simple, nefarious messages, like trusting the Word of God (as interpreted by our group leaders) and not the words of warning that we might be hearing from friends, family and other religious leaders about our membership of Eastern Lightning, and understanding that we need to be subservient to God, and do whatever He wants us to do. Sometimes the lessons would push things far enough that I would speak up, like the time that the lesson included the story of Lot, and how he trusted God's command that he should give up his daughters to an angry crowd. I spoke up on that occasion, saying that I had always had a problem with this passage (and this much is true - when I was a Christian in my 20s, I always struggled with this and other passages, like 2 Kings 2 about bears being commanded by God to maul rude children).

I figured it would be interesting to see what the leadership would do with this push back, given that the lessons (and other text from the leaders, like greetings and casual conversations) are almost exclusively just regurgitated text from Google spreadsheets and docs. In this event they doubled down, showing at least some knowledge of the bible, by comparing this passage to the one where Abraham was commanded by God to sacrifice his son Isaac on a mountain.

Most of the time I would stay fairly quiet, only speaking up when asked to give a reading - and, with my loud voice and authoritative English accent, these would always go down well. Occasionally I would try to push people a little, to see how they would react. One of our group's members, a man called Jared who lives in Palmerston North, always seemed a little high-strung. He was always fairly active in the group, posting about his struggles with demonic forces. Here he is talking about his fight with the devil:

_The privilege of growing up in a pastor family, exposed me to both the miraculous by anyone's standards, and the unfortunate existence of demonic forces. Basically, I'd be incredibly ignorant to not believe in a power beyond our understanding._

_When my state of mind is troubled, this is satan. For years, satan is gnawing on my bones, and now satan has no choice, but to relinquish me to God. It could take years of convincing us of the truth, but only one second to believe. Yet, to truly believe takes effort. Satan will battle me, but everyday I read Almighty God's word, I have more resolve, more strength to destroy satan completely one day. Amen._

After our previous group leader, Sister Bella, was replaced by Sister Marina from Guam, Jared from Palmerston North was promoted, and he proudly displayed his new title in the Facebook group we used for our fellowship:

✨Gc leader ღ Jared✨

At 1:38am one morning, Jared posted (copy/pasted) our morning devotional into our chat group:

🌤☕Blessed Tuesday morning, brothers and sisters 🥰🥰

A new day starts, and may God lead us to start a wonderful day. 🙏💖

I'd like to share with you some passages of God's words. May God lead us in further understanding last night's topic: Why does God not use man to do His work of judgment in the last days, but becomes flesh and does it Himself 🙏

Give that I was still awake at that time of night (I'm a bit of a night owl), I responded with a little snark:

I'm not sure where you are Jared, but it's still dark here in New Zealand! Not sure it's a new day yet 😉

After a little back and forth, with me deliberately taking Brother Jared's typos seriously, things started to get a little heated:

It's important we teat each other here with respect my bro

Not sure you're being completely honest

Still think you're lying

I responded as innocently as I could muster:

Sorry, so far you've accused me of lying and being disrespectful. That makes me a little sad.

I forgive you, Brother Jared.

I think this might be the straw that broke the camel's back, as the next two messages I received in the group chat were:

Ok mate

If you're going to mock me, just prepare for judgement

After this, Sister Marina stepped in to try to resolve things:

hi brothers, let's try to calm down, we are siblings in Christ. and may God be quiet u guys' hearts. if we have any different opinions or suggestions, we can chat privately ha. 💖

I was certainly not going to chat privately with Jared! For one, I didn't want him to escalate his threats any further in a forum that was away from any third party observers. And secondly, I had a sneaking suspicion that Jared had possibly figured out who I was, as his attitude towards me had quite suddenly turned sour. I wondered if my cover was blown, but, as nobody was saying anything to me, I figured I'd just carry on regardless and hope that it would all blow over.

As well as our online meetings, the church had eventually started (badly) organising in-person meetings, called “face to face fellowship”. We were usually messaged about these only a few hours before meetings occurred, hence my jibe about them being badly organised. I was able to turn up to two of these meetings. At the first meeting, there were only three of us present. We worked together through a lesson plan, reading the words of Almighty God and discussing them. The lesson was made harder both because the study notes weren't shared with us until about half an hour into the meeting, and because there were no books available to study from. Instead we had to find and install the church's apps - called CAG (Church of Almighty God) and CAG Lite - to be able to read.

I used this shambles as leverage to renew my push for the church to supply us with books. At our next in person meeting, it was a little weird as the host and I were the only two people attending, despite at least three of us having RSVPd. The host, who was working all hours as a single parent to look after his children, had even taken a day of leave from work to run the fellowship - and the fact that the church had pushed him to do that made me angry.

In the fellowship, we had to watch some church-created Tik Tok dances. And because, as my kids tell me, sharing is caring, here they are:

In case you found yourself vibing to the music in those videos, here are a couple of the music videos we were also asked to watch:

After watching these, we watched part of a feature movie, and the scene was one where Eastern Lightning representatives were meeting with members of what appeared to be an underground church, convincing them of the sound logic of their Church of Almighty God.

And, at the end of the meeting, there were books! The books I'd been lusting after for so long, the physical memento of my time in Eastern Lightning that I really wanted to get my hands on. As Dan Ryan had also infiltrated the church with me, but was unable to turn up to any meetings, I asked politely if I could take two copies, and was told it was okay. Yay!

However, my sense of victory was short-lived. It turns out that these books would, in a sense, be my undoing. I gloated about finally being given a book in one of my newsletters, and talked about it on the podcast too. And so, when one Saturday afternoon just before 2pm Sister Marina messaged me asking if I'd taken two books from the fellowship, it seemed a little odd.

Given that the only two people at the event where I was given the books were me and the church member who was hosting it, and given that it seemed very unlikely he would have reported such a small detail (that I had taken not one but two copies of a book he was told to give out to us) to our leadership, I was immediately suspicious. Here's how the conversation with Sister Marina started:

Hello bro Mark, how is ur weekend going?

It's good, thanks - how is yours?

thank God, me too, 😊

bro Mark, I just heard that u asked two books from bro xxxxxx, is it ?

Yep, absolutely!

oh? why u asked two books then?

I'm happy to answer you, but first I really have to ask why you were talking with brother xxxxxx about me!

Actually, maybe I'll talk to him about it when I next see him.

I need to know where is each book, this is God's book. bro,

What followed was a couple of hours of cat and mouse, where sister Marina tried to convince me that the books I was gifted were just loaned to me, that they were needed by another family for study, that I needed to give them back immediately, and that this was simply an “adjustment” to their stock levels. When I insisted that the books were promised to me months before, and that they belonged to me, Sister Marina threatened to send someone round to my house to pick them up (although thankfully she doesn't know where I live, and obviously if she tried this I'd phone the police immediately!)

I then tried changing tack, and accused Sister Marina of being possessed by demons - why else would she want to take the Word of Almighty God from me, except for some nefarious reason? This didn't work - she was having none of it - and we ended up in a stalemate.

At this point I sent a friend request to the church member whose house I'd visited for our face to face fellowship. I figured I should just make absolutely sure that I'd been rumbled, and that he hadn't actually mentioned to Sister Marina that I had taken two copies of their book “Christ of the Last Days has Appeared”. When my friend request was accepted, I immediately messaged him and asked him whether he had told Sister Bella about me taking the books from our meeting. He said that yes, he had told her. Damn, okay, was this all above board then? The entire conversation I'd had with Sister Marina felt really weird, so this seemed surprising. Maybe he had been asked to lie about this? That was unlikely, as he came across as a genuine, kind man. In his next message to me, he asked if we could talk via voice, which I was more than happy to do.

When he called me on a Facebook voice call, he told me that Sister Marina had been acting weird. He said she had called him and asked if I had taken any books at our meeting, and that he had told her that yes, I had taken two books. Okay, so he hadn't offered up this information, he was asked for it. I then asked him what time she had called him - 3pm. Hah, so Sister Marina had first messaged me about the books at 2pm, telling me that she had already been told that I had taken them, and then phoned the person who was supposed to have dobbed on me after our conversation, to try to cover her ass.

The most plausible explanation I have for all of this is that I think Sister Marina had read my article, or listened to the podcast, and just seen red. I had gloated so much about getting my hands on the books that she probably saw the return of the books as a way to get one over me. And, to manage that, she had to pretend that she was just innocently asking for them to be returned, and not tip her hand that she was on to me. But this was a rookie mistake - her anger led her to make bad decisions on the spot, and her repeated attempts to get me to return the books, changing her story over time, just made it more and more obvious that something was amiss. She really should have bided her time, stopped to think rationally about what the best way of handling an infiltrator would be, and carefully executed her plan. But instead she lost her cool, was led by her emotions, and slipped up almost immediately.

Looking back at where and how I had talked about these books, I had only mentioned taking “a copy” in my newsletter article, so I have a sneaking suspicion the church had managed to find our podcast, where I probably talked about the fact that I had taken two copies. However I can't imagine Sister Marina would have managed this herself, or that she would have had a good reason to go looking for me online in the first place.

But Brother Jared, from Palmerston North, is another matter altogether. We'd clashed more than once in the group, with me playing dumb and making him more than a little upset. I suspect he searched for me online, found out that I'm in the NZ Skeptics, and then trawled through our podcasts until he found us talking about Eastern Lightning. So, I guess, I have to hand it to him - well done for finally being the one to do your homework and find out who I am!

Anyway, after I had confirmed that I had been rumbled, I decided to ignore Sister Marina's messages - she was getting annoyingly insistent, calling me and messaging me incessantly. Previously Sister Bella had ignored messages from me for weeks, ghosting me when I was asking for books or trying to arrange to attend the face to face fellowships. So I figured I could do the same back to them - what's good for the goose is good for the gander!

This was always going to be a short-lived tactic, though, as two days later, on the Monday, we were due to have our next online fellowship meeting - and I knew that, whatever else was going to happen, they weren't going to let me into that group voice call, in case I started trying to scare people away.

So, at about 5pm on the Monday, while I was on a work video call with a Chinese colleague, Sister Marina and Sister Katherine tried to voice call me through Facebook. The colleague I was on a call with at the time knows that I've joined this weird Chinese cult, and dared me to answer it, so I did.

The call was brief, with Sister Marina and Sister Katherine both trying to get me to give back the books they so desperately wanted. After a few minutes I told them I was still at work, and that I needed to hang up on them. After hanging up, my Chinese colleague said that, as an Englishman, even my attempt to tell them to sod off was ridiculously polite - a compliment I happily accepted.

And then, a couple of minutes later, my time in the cult of Almighty God was unceremoniously over:

That's it, game over! I was removed from the group - and the reason given, that the group was “full” and I was being moved to another group, was a familiar lie. Dan and I had seen many members dropped from the group at one time or another, always with an explanation after the fact that they were “moving to another group” that was geographically closer to them, or moving to a group that ran at a time that better suited them. It seems like at least some of these people were being removed for some infraction or other, but the church was unwilling to admit that it was having to deal with this issue and instead decided that lying to people was the better option.

Since my removal, I've been told by Sister Marina that she is willing to tell me via voice call why I was removed:

Hi Mark, I removed u from the group, if u wanna know the reason we can still talk here. we are going to tell you in advance but it's pity u do not have time to listen. maybe when u are free and if u wanna get the reason let's talk here.

I've told Sister Marina that she'll have to tell me the reason via text - of course, I want a handy record of anything they want to say to me, so that I can report on it! Sadly, though, I'm not persuasive enough to convince her to do that for me:

but I do not wanna type to explain the reason. if we can not reach the agreement of the way, then when u wanna have a call maybe we can explain to you. if not then do not know maybe it's also good. so it's up to you.🙂

So, that's it for me. I'm pretty sure that, whatever I do, there's no way back into the church for me short of inventing a new identity on Facebook. But I think I've learned more than I ever expected to about how these kinds of groups operate, and it's been a real eye opener to see it all happening to me, and to those who were in the group with me. I'm not sure which group I might get the chance to join next, but I definitely feel like this won't be the last time I do something of this magnitude.

Back when I first joined Eastern Lightning, before I'd even graduated from Level 2 to the hallowed heights of my Level 3 group in week two, I was thinking about my exit and what, if anything, I might say to the people still in the group. So I wrote a short message that I thought you might like to read - I never had the chance to post it anywhere that other church members could see it, but who knows if someone in the church might now come across it online and find it helpful:

I'm sorry you've found yourself in a Doomsday Cult. Life is wonderful and rich and complex, and not at all the overly simplistic story the church's leaders have told you about. The end is not nigh, God has not returned, this religion does not have the answers you are seeking.

It might be a good idea to trust those around you who have warned you about joining this group, and try to reconnect with any family members you have shunned or pushed away with your attempts to convert them.

I'd also recommend doing some background research on any group, like this one, that you consider joining - and also try to talk with ex-members, if you can find any. There are usually support groups on Facebook for people who have left churches like Eastern Lightning. Just set up a new Facebook anonymous account and join one of these groups if you can, and read the conversations other people are having about their experiences.

And remember, it's okay to have made a mistake and been tricked into joining this group - everyone makes mistakes. Always keep in mind that you are free to leave at any time.