Christ Returns to Earth as a Female — An Exposé of the Eastern Lightning Cult

Author:

Hank Hanegraaff

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Article ID:

JAFP4823

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Updated: 

Jul 21, 2025

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Published:

Jul 21, 2025

This article first appeared in the Christian Research Journal, volume 48, number 02-03 (2025) in the From the President  Column.

For further information on this issue please click here. To learn more about receiving this issue for your partnering gift please click here. 

 

“The first incarnation was male, the second female.” 1

—from The Word Appears in the Flesh

 

Imagine this! Imagine Jesus Christ reincarnated as a female on “the Chinese mainland.” A new iteration of the King of kings and Lord of lords who self-designates as “the truth, the way, and the life.”2 A woman by whom “all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities” (Colossians 1:16).3 Almighty God poised to “kill all who are not in line with My will.”4

Imagine this Chinese christ shamelessly asserting that the words of Jesus Christ spoken during His Olivet Discourse (Matthew 24) apply specifically to her. That the “lightning” that “comes out of the east, and shines even to the west” (v. 27) points prophetically to her reincarnation in the East and to the reality that this “eastern lightning” (her mission and ministry) will radiate to the West and the rest of the world.5

Imagine this woman and her devotees designating the people of China, “children of the great red dragon.”6 And that she, who declares herself Almighty God, will soon cause the whole of China to “be annihilated” and “laid to waste.”7

Imagine one more atrocity. Imagine that this Chinese deity and her millions of devotees are now being legitimized in the West as a Christian group unjustly persecuted by the Chinese government. That “Eastern Lightning,” also dubbed “The Church of Almighty God,” is “very much a Christian tradition.” Not just a Christian tradition! But a Christian tradition “in responsive dialogue with other Christianities.”8 Not an “evil cult.” But more palatably a “new religious movement.”

No need for further imagination. All of this is very real! In this special edition of the Christian Research Journal, you will come face-to-face with one of the most insidious cults imaginable. An evil cult that has gone so far as to publish a lurid volume provocatively titled Typical Examples of Punishment for Resisting Almighty God (i.e., resisting the Chinese woman who claims to be the very One who spoke and the universe leapt into existence). Eastern Lightning portentously describes this tawdry publication as “a collection of typical examples of people from various religions and denominations who were punished and cursed by God due to having resisted Almighty God’s work of the last days.”9

An example referenced in my article, “What Are the Characteristics of C-U-L-T-S Such as Eastern Lightning?” (p. 66), is that of a 54-year-old pastor who refused to convert to the cultic commune. Consequently, this cleric was brutally dismembered as proof that the Chinese woman was none other than God Almighty. And that to resist her is a ready prescription for suffering a gruesome demise.

As highlighted by Warren Nozaki, lead researcher on Eastern Lightning at the Christian Research Institute, in an article titled, “The Iron Rod of the Faux Almighty God” (42), the “iron rod” is hardly hyperbole. Myriad accounts validate the vicious use of rods to intimidate, punish, and kill those who oppose the faux female christ. Moreover, as Nozaki documents in “The Faux Almighty God’s Assault on the Family” (60), spouses divorce and children become estranged from parents and siblings in accordance with the strict instruction of the female christ.

The dangers posed by The Church of Almighty God are such that being arrested by public security officials appears to pale by comparison. As documented by Pastor Zhang Heng in an article titled, “A Firsthand Account of the ‘4/16 Eastern Lightning Kidnapping Case’” (52), adherents of the China Gospel Fellowship avowed that they would rather be arrested by public security officials than fall into the clutches of Eastern Lightning operatives. Why? Because violating Chinese law might lead to imprisonment. Falling into the hands of Eastern Lightning devotees may well portend death.

In the article, “Radical Discontinuities” (18), Paul Chang has aptly noted that in America, pernicious religions such as Eastern Lightning are generally “regulated by society rather than the government.” By contrast, in China, “the government intervenes much more proactively in religious affairs for the purposes of maintaining social harmony. Furthermore, the Chinese may have more reason than most to be fearful about heterodox, Christian presentations of Jesus’s identity. The Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864) was by far the bloodiest civil war in history, claiming more than twenty million lives. It was fomented by Hong Xiuquan, a Chinese man who claimed a uniquely exalted position as Jesus’s younger brother” (23–24).

From the Chinese government’s perspective, Eastern Lightning poses an even greater threat to social destabilization. It is one thing for a Chinese man to create devastation and social chaos as the professed architect of a Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. It is quite another for a Chinese woman to attract an army of followers dedicated to annihilating the whole of Chinese culture. To quote the self-designated female christ, “China will be the first to be annihilated; it will be laid to waste by the hand of God.”10 Why? Because “[i]t is the Chinese people who have been most corrupted by the great red dragon, who have the strongest opposition to God, whose humanity is most base and impure, and so they are the archetype of all corrupt humanity.”11

Tragically, the theological and sociological threats posed by the female christ are no longer relegated to mainland China. Like Islam, The Church of Almighty God is using the full force of its financial and creative resources to spread pernicious dogmas to far-flung places across the globe. In the Oxford University Press publication, Inside The Church of Almighty God, Italian sociologist of religion Massimo Introvigne provides a partial list of the countries now boasting Eastern Lightning devotees, including “South Korea, Taiwan, the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, France, Germany, Greece, Finland, Spain, [and] Hungary.”12 Additionally, Introvigne cites the Philippines, Hong Kong, and New Zealand among nations in which Eastern Lightning has established churches.13 Collectively, these cultic conclaves are home to multiplied millions of adherents. Introvigne cites official Chinese sources estimating that membership in The Church of Almighty God had already escalated to four million more than a decade ago.14

Appallingly, in many of these countries, the notion that The Church of Almighty God is just another persecuted Christian group has become the prevalent narrative. While I do not for a moment minimize the reality of Christian persecution, The Church of Almighty God is both sociologically subversive and doctrinally deviant. As such, it exacerbates rather than alleviates the reality of Christian persecution.

In “The Sociological Deviance of The Church of Almighty God” (26), I recount my interview with a church leader who would rather die than surrender to the sociological deviances of the Eastern Lightning cult. Pastor Shuhai is the spiritual leader of a group of churches in Henan Province. Sitting on a small stool in his village church surrounded by family, Pastor Shuhai recounted being savagely beaten with rods and left for dead by devotees of the female christ. He raised his right pant leg, exposing the scarring left by broken bones. When I inquired as to the motive for his beating, Pastor Shuhai forthrightly communicated that had he been wholly incapacitated, he would not have been able to walk to surrounding villages to tend to his flock. And had he been killed, the sheep would not only have lost a shepherd but would become easy prey to cultic wolves in sheep’s clothing.

On yet another occasion, I interviewed a young man named Jie who dropped out of school after being convinced by Eastern Lightning devotees that the current world order was about to end. In time he embodied the counterfeit christ’s mandate to become “absolute in compliance,” to refrain from analyzing right from wrong, and to relinquish the ability to think rationally and critically.15

Over time, disciples of The Church of Almighty God abandon virtually all their social obligations and commit themselves to spreading the culturally subversive message of the counterfeit christ. And this extends even to the rending apart of the family unit. In graphic terms, the faux female christ exhorts her devotees to leave their families and wholeheartedly commit to the mission of gaining new converts. Those who fail to do so, she explicitly renders “worthless.”16

Just as destabilizing as their sociological deviances are the spiritual seductions of the Eastern Lightning cult. In an article titled, “Theological Travesties of the Church of Almighty God” (08), I disclose the female christ’s explicit disparagement of the Christian Bible as not only “outdated” but as a “low” and “moldy old book.”17 Not only so, but Eastern Lightning’s most authoritative tome blatantly asserts that “the triune God simply does not exist. That is, the Trinity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit simply does not exist.”18

In place of resurrection, the female christ proliferates a variant of reincarnation in which “some people will continue to be human, while others will become animals.”19 Moreover, she overtly denies the bodily resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ by asserting that she is His reincarnation. In the vernacular of the counterfeit christ, had Jesus only come as a man, “not even a single woman could be saved.”20

Even their preferred moniker, Eastern Lightning, is patently perverse. To assert that they are The Church of Almighty God is tantamount to avowing that a female from China, now presumably residing in New York, is the very One who spoke and the universe leapt into existence.21 Thus, in an article titled, “Contrasting Eastern Lightning Deception and Essential Christian D-O-C-T-R-I-N-E” (86), I lay the straight stick of Christian doctrine next to the Eastern Lightning counterfeit in order by contrast to observe its crookedness.

It is readily apparent that the unique Deity of Jesus is compromised by the profane pontification that He is now a Chinese female. Original Sin is compromised by the perverse assertion that the corruption of Adam and Eve was not due to their original sin, rather their “corrupt nature originates entirely from Satan.”22 The Canon of Holy Scripture is supplanted by a blasphemous extra-biblical revelation that purports to eclipse the Ten Commandments with “Ten Administrative Decrees” — declarations in which the female christ warns devotees that it is her prerogative to kill all violators.23 The Trinity is deemed incoherent — a mere figment of Satanically corrupted imagination. Resurrection is malevolently compromised by the outrageous assertion that the female christ is the reincarnation of the first Christ, and Incarnation debased by the profane assertion that Jesus Christ failed “to do the work of completely gaining man.”24 The scintillating truth that “if anyone is in Christ, he is a New Creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17) is compromised by the counterfeit concoction of eternal estrangement from God. And Eschatology — the thread that weaves the tapestry of Scripture into a harmonious pattern — is ignominiously sullied by a largely incoherent Eastern Lightning eschatological charade.

Despite the horrific social and theological consequences of Eastern Lightning’s perversions, an increasing number of Western academics are loathe to designate them a cult. In an article titled, “Cult vis-à-vis Xiejiao” (76), Abraham Ho and Jacob Feng describe how the word “cult” has been abandoned by Western scholars “in favor of other, less judgmental terms, such as ‘new religious movement,’ ‘alternative religion,’ ‘novel religion,’ or ‘minority religious groups’” (80).

Ho and Feng further note that while the words “xiejiao and cult share some similarities,” they “also possess sharp differences” (80). Etymologically, “the Chinese term xiejiao 邪教 consists of two words, xie (evil) and jiao (teaching or religion)” (78). Moreover, “in contemporary China, xiejiao is primarily a political term” (80) and “has a specific definition from the perspective of today’s Chinese law” (81). As such, “the dividing line between xiejiao and bona fide religions does not lie in doctrinal differences but primarily moral and societal order. Xiejiao are extremely opposed to society and the government, endanger the health of the people and society, and pose a severe threat to the morality, order, stability, and harmony of society” (81). Therefore, say Ho and Feng, “scholarship in China and the West will do well if terms such as cult and xiejiao are used complementarily to understand the Chinese problem now going global” (84).

In conclusion, a few thoughts concerning Why? Why a special edition of the Christian Research Journal devoted to a cult emanating from Henan Province in central China’s Yellow River Valley? In answering this question, let me first note that “cults are the unpaid bills of the church.”25 Put another way, the church has largely failed Christ’s Great Commission (Matthew 28:18–20), and cults have stepped into the vacuum created by a recalcitrant church.

Furthermore, if truth matters, and it most certainly does, the church must take the task of Christian education seriously. Not “edutain” but educate. Equip ourselves and our children to “always be ready to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have” (1 Peter 3:15). To do for the truth what cults like Eastern Lightning do for a lie.

Finally, alongside the Christian Research Institute’s commitment to primary-source research remains our steadfast commitment to equipping the leadership of churches worldwide, not only in America but in places such as India, Africa, and Asia — domains in which multiplied millions of new believers are vulnerable to the kingdom of the cults and the world of the occult.

In evidence, during the last year alone, users have accessed our website equip.org from more than 230 countries, thus benefiting from our vast reservoir of unrestricted resources — including the Bible Answer Man broadcast, Hank Unplugged podcast, Bible Answer Man YouTube Channel (with over 1.6 million yearly views), Christian Research Reads audio article podcast, Bible Answer Man Instagram account, Daily e-Truths, and Christian Research Journal online, freely available to anyone with internet access anywhere worldwide. To God be the Glory! —Hank Hanegraaff

 

 

NOTES

  1. “Part Three: The Words of Christ as He Walked in the Churches III (July 1993 to March 1994): The Essence of the Flesh Inhabited by God,” in The Word Appears in the Flesh, vol. 1, The Appearance and Work of God, trans. The Church of Almighty God (n.p.: The Church of Almighty God, 2023), accessed March 13, 2025, https://www.holyspiritspeaks.org/the-essence-of-the-flesh-inhabited-by-god/.
  2. “Appendix 4: Beholding the Appearance of God in His Judgment and Chastisement,” in The Word Appears in the Flesh, vol. 1, accessed March 13, 2025, https://www.holyspiritspeaks.org/god-judgment-and-chastisement/.
  3. Bible quotations are from NIV1984, unless noted otherwise. Emphasis in Bible quotations is added.
  4. “Utterances of Christ in the Beginning: Chapter 103,” in The Word Appears in the Flesh, vol. 1, accessed March 13, 2025, https://www.holyspiritspeaks.org/?p=62890; cf. slightly different translation at https://www.holyspiritspeaks.org/the-one-hundred-and-third-utterance/.
  5. “Documentary of The Church of Almighty God | The Appearance and Work of Almighty God (Part 1),” The Church of Almighty God, April 22, 2020, video, 46:12, quoted material at 43:35–44:50, accessed September 14, 2024, https://www.holyspiritspeaks.org/videos/appearance-and-work-of-Almighty-God-part-1/. English Bible translation in The Church of Almighty God video.
  6. “Part One: Utterances of Christ in the Beginning—The Words of the Holy Spirit to the Churches (February 11, 1991 to November 20, 1991): Chapter 87,” in The Word Appears in the Flesh, vol. 1, accessed March 13, 2025, https://www.holyspiritspeaks.org/the-eighty-seventh-utterance/.
  7. “Appendix: Interpretations of the Mysteries of ‘God’s Words to the Entire Universe’: Chapter 10,” in The Word Appears in the Flesh, vol. 1, accessed March 13, 2025, https://www.holyspiritspeaks.org/the-interpretation-of-the-tenth-utterance/.
  8. Holly Folk, “Protestant Continuities in The Church of Almighty God,” The Journal of CESNUR 2, no. 1 (2018): 73, https://doi.org/10.26338/tjoc.2018.2.1.4.
  9. Typical Examples of Punishment for Resisting Almighty God, trans. The Church of Almighty God (n.p.: The Church of Almighty God, 2002), accessed March 13, 2025, https://www.holyspiritspeaks.org/books/typical-cases-of-punishment-for-resisting-almighty-god/.
  10. “Chapter 10.” See note 7.
  11. “Part Three: The Words of Christ as He Walked in the Churches II (November 1992 to June 1993): The Vision of God’s Work (2),” in The Word Appears in the Flesh, vol. 1, accessed March 13, 2025, https://www.holyspiritspeaks.org/the-vision-of-gods-work-2-2/.
  12. Massimo Introvigne, Inside The Church of Almighty God: The Most Persecuted Religious Movement in China (Oxford University Press, 2020), x.
  13. Introvigne, Inside The Church of Almighty God, 41.
  14. See Introvigne, Inside The Church of Almighty God, 41.
  15. See, e.g., “The Words of Christ as He Walked in the Churches IV (1994 to March 23, 2010): The Ten Administrative Decrees That Must Be Obeyed by God’s Chosen People in the Age of Kingdom,” in The Word Appears in the Flesh, vol. 1, accessed September 14, 2024, https://www.holyspiritspeaks.org/ten-administrative/.
  16. “Part One: The Sermons and Fellowship Given in Congregation by Almighty God (2007 to September 25, 2021): Only by Recognizing One’s Own Misguided Views Can One Truly Transform (Spring 2008),” in The Word Appears in the Flesh, vol. 3, The Discourses of Christ of the Last Days, trans. The Church of Almighty God (n.p.: The Church of Almighty God, 2024), accessed September 26, 2024, https://www.holyspiritspeaks.org/recognizing-misguided-views-to-truly-transform/.
  17. “The Words of Christ as He Walked in the Churches II (November 1992 to June 1993): Concerning the Bible (1),” in The Word Appears in the Flesh, vol. 1, accessed September 20, 2024, https://www.holyspiritspeaks.org/concerning-the-bible-1/.
  18. “The Words of Christ as He Walked in the Churches II (November 1992 to June 1993): Does the Trinity Exist?,” in The Word Appears in the Flesh, vol. 1, emphasis added, accessed September 14, 2024, https://www.holyspiritspeaks.org/does-the-trinity-exist-2/.
  19. “God Himself, the Unique X: How God Rules and Administers the Spiritual Realm” (February 15, 2014), in The Word Appears in the Flesh, vol. 2, On Knowing God, trans. The Church of Almighty God (n.p.: The Church of Almighty God, 2023), emphasis added, accessed September 20, 2024, https://www.holyspiritspeaks.org/god-himself-the-unique-x-2/#sigil_toc_id_230.
  20. “The Words of Christ as He Walked in the Churches II (November 1992 to June 1993): The Two Incarnations Complete the Significance of the Incarnation,” in The Word Appears in the Flesh, vol. 1, emphasis added, accessed September 20, 2024, https://www.holyspiritspeaks.org/the-significance-of-the-incarnation/.
  21. Introvigne, Inside The Church of Almighty God, 39–40.
  22. “Part Three: The Words of Christ as He Walked in the Churches IV (1994 to March 23, 2010): A Very Serious Problem: Betrayal (2),” in The Word Appears in the Flesh, vol. 1, accessed March 8, 2025, https://www.holyspiritspeaks.org/a-very-serious-problem-betrayal-2-2/.
  23. See “The Ten Administrative Decrees That Must Be Obeyed.” (See note 15.) See also “Chapter 103.” (See note 4.)
  24. “Part Three: The Words of Christ as He Walked in the Churches III (July 1993 to March 1994): The Essence of the Flesh Inhabited by God,” in The Word Appears in the Flesh, vol. 1, accessed March 8, 2025, https://www.holyspiritspeaks.org/the-essence-of-the-flesh-inhabited-by-god/.
  25. Jan Karel van Baalen, The Chaos of Cults, 4th rev. ed. (Eerdmans, 1962), 14.
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