Theological Travesties of The Church of Almighty God (aka Eastern Lightning)

Author:

Hank Hanegraaff

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Article ID:

JAF48231

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Updated: 

Sep 21, 2026

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Published:

Sep 21, 2026

This article first appeared in the Christian Research Journal, Special Print Issue, volume 48, number 02-03 (2025).

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

For information on receiving  the Special Dual Language “Flip”-English and Chinese Print Issue 48: 02-03 — The Eastern Lighting Cult: Christ Returns to Earth as a Female please click here. 

I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds
may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. For if he who comes preaches another
Jesus whom we have not preached, or if you receive a different spirit which you have not
received, or a different gospel which you have not accepted — you may well put up with it!
—the apostle Paul (2 Corinthians 11:3–4 NKJV)

As president of the Christian Research Institute (CRI) for almost four decades, I have had a front row seat to some of the most bizarre and dangerous cults in modern history. In 1997, for example, the media flocked to CRI’s headquarters to gain perspective on the sociologically deviant Heaven’s Gate cult. A cult that ended in the largest mass suicide in US history. Our broadcast studios were packed with television cameras as I conducted an exclusive interview with the daughter of the cofounder of this treacherous cult.

A mere six years prior to the carnage that took place on American soil, another deviant cult morphed into existence on the other side of the planet. The year was 1991. The place was Henan Province in central China’s Yellow River Valley — the very place in which Chinese civilization originated. The cult? The Church of Almighty God. Also frequently designated by devotees and detractors as Eastern Lightning.

According to a video documentary by The Church of Almighty God titled, “The Appearance and Work of Almighty God,” the year 1991 is of quintessential significance. This purportedly is “the year in which Christ of the last days began to speak….the year that paved the way for the work of judgment….and the year in which the Age of Grace crossed into the Age of Kingdom.” As such, “God’s chosen people” dubbed 1991 “The Golden Year.” The year in which “the utterances of the Son of man completely fulfilled the prophecy of the Lord Jesus” that “as the lightning comes out of the east, and shines even to the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of manbe [Matthew 24:27].”1

Who is this “Son of man”? In Eastern Lightning lore, the Son of man is the female reincarnation of Jesus Christ.2 A female christ ironically referenced within its cultic canons by male pronouns. The utterances of this alleged female deity allegedly comprise a new and “holy bible” perfectly suited for what The Church of Almighty God dubs “The Age of Kingdom.”3 A “holy bible” that goes so far as to overshadow The Ten Commandments with “The Ten Administrative Decrees That Must Be Obeyed by God’s Chosen People in the Age of Kingdom.”4 A bible that renders both Old and New Testaments largely irrelevant. In the words of the female christ, the Christian “Bible is of no great use for today’s people of the last days. At most, it serves as a provisional reference, but it basically has little use value.”5 Not only so, but according to the alleged female incarnation of Almighty God, the Bible is not only “outdated” but a “low” and “moldy old book.”6

OUTDATED, LOW, MOLDY?

Far from outdated, low, and moldy, the Bible is ever relevant, timeless, and magnificent in content and character. Rooted in history and evidence, it is a reliable and trustworthy authority for faith and practice. In evidence, the Bible has stronger manuscript support than any other work of classical history — including Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Caesar, and Tacitus. Equally amazing is the fact that the Bible has been virtually unaltered since the original writings, as is attested by scholars who have compared the earliest extant manuscripts with manuscripts dated centuries later. Moreover, the wisdom of God is evident through the way He protected the biblical text from tampering or ecclesiastical chicanery. By the time ecclesiastical power was centralized, the biblical manuscripts were long since copied, distributed, and buried in the sands of time.7 Nearly six thousand New Testament Greek manuscripts have now been uncovered. Not only is there a relatively short time interval between the earliest papyrus and parchment copies of the New Testament and their autographs (original writings), but there is also less than a generation between those autographs and the events they chronicle. The quantity and quality of manuscripts assure us that the message and intent of the original autographs have been passed on to the present generation without compromise.8

In stark contrast to the unfounded ramblings of Eastern Lightning’s female christ, the people, places, and particulars chronicled in sacred Scripture are securely grounded in history and evidence. Recent archaeological finds have corroborated biblical details surrounding the trial that led to the fatal torment of Jesus Christ — including Pontius Pilate, who ordered Christ’s crucifixion, as well as Caiaphas, the high priest who presided over the Jewish leaders’ trials of Christ. It is telling when secular scholars must revise their biblical criticisms in light of solid archaeological and historical evidence.9

Biblical prophecy likewise provides powerful proof that the Bible is divine rather than merely human in origin. In the words of the Almighty, “I told you these things long ago; before they happened I announced them to you so that you could not say, ‘My idols did them; my wooden image and metal god ordained them’” (Isaiah 48:5).10 Or, in the words of Jesus, “I have told you now before it happens, so that when it does happen you will believe” ( John 14:29).

Counterfeit prophets such as the female christ have one thing in common: they are consistently wrong. In illumined contrast, genuine prophets are infallibly correct, and, unlike the pretenders, their prophetic prowess cannot be pawned off to good luck, good guessing, or deliberate deceit. Daniel provides a classic case in point. Writing six centuries before Christ, he accurately predicted a progression of kingdoms from Babylon through the Median and Persian empires to the persecution and suffering of the Jews under the Old Testament antichrist Antiochus IV Epiphanes, his desecration of the temple, and finally to freedom for the Jews under Judas Maccabeus (165 BC).11

As with its prophetic prowess, the synergistic harmony of the Bible is a powerful testimony and an enduring reminder that God has spoken, that these are His words. Indeed, the Bible contains myriad books, written by many authors, in multiple languages, over more than a millennium, on a multitude of different subjects, yet it remains unified and consistent throughout. How is that possible? The individual writers had no idea that their message would eventually be assembled into one Book, yet each work fits perfectly into place with a unique purpose as a synergistic component of the whole. Clearly, scriptural harmony is a powerful indicator of the trustworthiness of Scripture.12

Commensurate with the egregious assertion that the Bible is outdated, low, and moldy is the female christ’s distortion and denial of three essential Christian doctrines, beginning with the foundational belief of one God revealed in three Persons, eternally distinct.

HOLY TRINITY

I believe in one God, Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all ages; Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten, not created, of one essence with the Father, through Whom all things were made….And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Creator of Life, Who proceeds from the Father, Who together with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified, Who spoke through the prophets.

—from the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed

During the entirety of my tenure as president of the Christian Research Institute, I have consistently communicated that every theological heresy begins with a misconception of the nature of God. This is particularly true with respect to the Holy Trinity.

In direct opposition to historic Christian faith and practice, The Church of Almighty God posits a unitarian God revealed in three successive dispositions and in three sequential dispensations: Jehovah in the Age of Law; Jesus in the Age of Grace; and the reincarnation of Jesus Christ as the female christ in the Age of Kingdom.13 Not content to embrace a remarkably innovative variation of the ancient heresy of modalism,14 The Church of Almighty God’s most authoritative multi-volume tome — The Word Appears in the Flesh — brazenly 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. These are all conventional notions of man, and the fallacious beliefs of man.…This great Trinity man holds in the heart simply does not exist.”15

Whereas it is popular for modalistic cults like The Church of Almighty God to assert that the triune God is the fallacious figment of man’s imagination, this Christian essential doctrine is thoroughly biblical and consonant with what has been “believed everywhere, always, and by all.”16 While the word Trinity — like the word incarnation — is not found in the Bible, it aptly expresses what God has condescended to reveal to us about His nature and being.

In sum, the Trinitarian platform consists of three planks: (1) there is but one God; (2) the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God; and (3) Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are eternally distinct.

The first plank underscores the inviolate verity that there is but one God. Historic Christianity is not polytheistic. It is fiercely monotheistic. “‘You are my witnesses,’ declares the Lord, ‘and my servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was formed, nor will there be one after me’” (Isaiah 43:10).

The second plank emphasizes that, in hundreds of Scripture passages, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are each declared to be fully and completely God. As Saint Paul put it, “there is but one God, the Father” (1 Corinthians 8:6). The Father, speaking of the Son, says, “Your throne, O God, will last for ever and ever” (Hebrews 1:8). And when Ananias “lied to the Holy Spirit,” Saint Peter asserted that he had “not lied to men but to God” (Acts 5:3–4; cf. Matthew 28:19).

The third plank of the Trinitarian platform assertsthat the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are eternally distinct. Scripture clearly portrays subject/object relationships between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. For example, the Father loves the Son ( John 3:35); the Son prays to the Father ( John 17); and the Father sends the Holy Spirit ( John 15:26). Additionally, Jesus proclaimed that He and the Father are two distinct witnesses and two distinct judges ( John 8:14–18). If Jesus were Himself the Father, His argument would have been not only irrelevant but also fatally flawed; and if such were the case, He could not have been truly God.

What appears to be completely lost on the counterfeit christ of The Church of Almighty God is that when Trinitarians speak of one God, they are referring to the nature or essence of God. Moreover, when they speak of Persons or Subjects, they are referring to personal self-distinctions within the Godhead. Put another way, authentic Christians believe in one What and three Whos.17

Moreover, the unitarian deity of The Church of Almighty God lacks the moral perfection of love. And thus, based on logic is morally defective. Why? Because for God to be a perfect being, He must of necessity also be a loving being (1 John 4:8, 16). This implies that there is someone to love. But there has not always been someone to love because in accordance with contemporary cosmology, the universe and the persons who inhabit it came into being a finite time ago.18 Thus, independent of creation, the unitarian god of The Church of Almighty God would not have had an object on which to lavish love.

While moral imperfections apply to a unitarian god, they do not likewise apply to the Trinitarian God. Whereas the God of the Bible is a single being, there are subject object distinctions within the Godhead. And the three centers of consciousness within the one true God have loved one another from all eternity. Said C. S. Lewis: “All sorts of people are fond of repeating the Christian statement that ‘God is love.’ But they seem not to notice that the words ‘God is love’ have no real meaning unless God contains at least two Persons. Love is something that one person has for another person. If God was a single person, then before the world was made, He was not love.”19

RESURRECTION

Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost. He said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your minds? Look at my hands and feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.” When he had said this, he showed them his hands and feet. And while they still did not believe it because of joy and amazement, he asked them, “Do you have anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate it in their presence.

—The Gospel of Luke 24:36–43

If the female christ of The Church of Almighty God cult is to be believed, the biblical account of Christ’s physical resurrection is fiction, fantasy, or perhaps just a gargantuan fraud. A fraud perpetrated by silly Christians who do not know what they are talking about. “What does it mean to resurrect from the dead?” asks the fraudulent female christ. “Does it mean to die in the flesh and then return to the body after death? Is this what it means to resurrect from the dead? Is it that simple? I am the almighty God; what do you know of this? How do you comprehend this? Could My resurrection from the dead during My first incarnation really be taken literally? Was the process really as it was described in those [biblical] texts?”20 Her answer, though admittedly convoluted, is essentially — no!21

And that’s not all! In place of resurrection, the counterfeit christ of The Church of Almighty God fixates on reincarnation. A peculiar brand of reincarnation in which “some people will continue to be human, while others will become animals.” And this, according to the self-styled Word Appears in the Flesh, includes a wide range of animalistic possibilities. “The range of animals that they might become,” she intones, “includes cows, horses, pigs, and dogs. Some people could be reborn as birds, or ducks or geese.” And not just once or twice. According to the Chinese female who dogmatically asserts herself to be the reincarnation of Jesus Christ, “Most people commit too much evil, and their sins are too grievous, so they have to incarnate as animals seven to twelve times.”22

In reality, resurrection and reincarnation are mutually exclusive. In the book of Hebrews, the apostle Paul emphatically states that human beings are “destined to die once, and after that to face judgement” (9:27). Rather than the transmigration of our souls into the bodies of animals, Saint Paul makes plain that Christ “will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body” (Philippians 3:21).

While devotees of the kingdom of the cults consider the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ to be fiction, fantasy, or a gargantuan fraud, Christians hold the incarnate Christ’s physical resurrection to be the greatest feat in human history. Resurrection is not merely important to the historic Christian faith; without it, there would be no Christian faith. It is the singular doctrine that elevates Christianity above every cult and world religion. Through His resurrection, Christ demonstrated that He does not stand in a line of peers with Abraham, Buddha, Confucius — and most certainly not Eastern Lightning’s self-proclaimed female deity.

In the quintessential passage on resurrection (1 Corinthians 15), Saint Paul goes so far as to say that resurrection is of “first importance.” He proceeds to make the pivotal four-part argument that “Christ died for our sins,” that He was buried and was raised on the third day, that He appeared to hundreds of people, and that as a direct result of His resurrection the disciples were forever transformed. They faced “the tyrant’s brandished steel, the lion’s gory mane,”23 and the fires of a thousand deaths because they knew that they, like their Master, would rise from the grave in glorified, resurrected bodies.24

While it is conceivable that they would have faced torture, vilification, and even cruel deaths for what they fervently believed to be true, it is inconceivable that they would have been willing to die for what they knew to be a lie. No one drove that point home more eloquently than did Simon Greenleaf, the famous Royall Professor of Law at Harvard:

The great truths which the apostles declared were that Christ had risen from the dead, and that only through repentance from sin, and faith in Him, could men hope for salvation. This doctrine they asserted with one voice, everywhere, not only under the greatest discouragements, but in the face of the most appalling terrors that can be presented to the mind of man.

Their master had recently perished as a malefactor, by the sentence of a public tribunal. His religion sought to overthrow the religions of the whole world. The laws of every country were against the teachings of His disciples. The interests and passions of all the rulers and great men in the world were against them. The fashion of the world was against them…. If it were morally possible for them to have been deceived in this matter, every human motive operated to lead them to discover and avow their error. To have persisted in so gross a falsehood, after it was known to them, was not only to encounter, for life, all the evils which man could inflict from without, but to endure also the pangs of inward and conscious guilt; with no hope of future peace, no testimony of a good conscience, no expectation of honor or esteem among men, no hope of happiness in this life, or in the world to come….If then their testimony was not true, there was no possible motive for this fabrication.25

INCARNATION

[The Only Begotten Son of God] for us and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became Man.

—from the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed

The more one contemplates the mystery of God becoming man, the more staggered the imagination. The thought that the One who spoke and trillions of galaxies leapt into existence should cloak Himself in our humanity is, well, beyond all comprehension. To imagine that the One who knit me together in my mother’s womb would Himself inhabit Mary’s temple boggles the mind. Yet this is precisely what the historic Christian faith proffers — a Creator beyond all comprehension who has revealed Himself in incarnation. In the words of the Beloved Apostle, the Christ who was with God and who is God “became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth” ( John 1:14 NASB1995).26

Yet, as with the Christian confession respecting the Holy Trinity and the Resurrection, The Church of Almighty God supposes that Christ was reincarnated as a female in modern-day China. Why? Because the first incarnation of Christ is alleged to have only partially completed the work of salvation. Had Christ only come in incarnation as a man, “not even a single woman could be saved.” And “would it not have been pointless for Jehovah to have created woman, that is, to have created Eve? And would not woman perish for eternity?”27

From the perspective of the historic orthodox Christian faith, the notion that Jesus Christ only partially completed the work of salvation and that apart from a female christ women would perish for all eternity is as bizarre as it is blasphemous. Saint Paul makes plain in the book of Hebrews that “by one sacrifice” Jesus Christ “has made perfect forever those who are being made holy” (10:14). Moreover, in Christ “there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (Galatians 3:28–29 NIV2011). The quasi-modalistic notion of a God who manifests in the flesh first as son and now as daughter is far afield from “the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints” ( Jude 3).

While pretenders like “The Word Appears in the Flesh” have proliferated throughout human history, only one superstar endures. One for whom there is no measure. He spoke and a universe of numberless stars leapt into existence. Morning stars together proclaimed His holy birth. One day, He will flash across the Eastern sky in an epic return to the planet He saved. He is “the Root and the Offspring of David, and the bright Morning Star” (Revelation 22:16).

In stark contrast to The Church of Almighty God’s fraudulent female impersonator, the authenticity of the Christ of Christianity is rooted in history and evidence. His ancestry was marked, and His birthplace foretold. Circumstances surrounding His death were prophesied before crucifixion was even invented. The date of His visitation was predicted within historically narrow time parameters. He would work extraordinary miracles and fulfill the Law and the Prophets. It would be too small for Him to bring back only those of Israel, thus He would be a light to the Gentiles so that salvation would go out to the ends of the earth.

Only the hand of God could have etched a prophetic portrait of Christ in the Old Testament. Only God could cause it to take on flesh in the New. Only Jesus of Nazareth could emerge through the doorway of Old Testament prophecy. And only Christ will carry His perfected bride over the threshold of Jordan into “the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God” (Revelation 21:2).28

HANK HANEGRAAFF is president of the Christian Research Institute and host of the Bible Answer Man daily broadcast and the Hank Unplugged podcast (equip.org). Hank has authored more than twenty books, including MUSLIM: What You Need to Know About the World’s Fastest-Growing Religion (W Publishing Group, 2017), Truth Matters, Life Matters More: The Unexpected Beauty of an Authentic Christian Life (W Publishing Group, 2019) and The Complete Bible Answer Book — Collector’s Edition, revised and expanded (Thomas Nelson, 2024).

 

NOTES:

  1. “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, emphasis added, accessed September 14, 2024, https://www.holyspiritspeaks.org/videos/appearance-and-work-of-Almighty-God-part-1/. English translation in The Church of Almighty God video.
  2. See “Why Is the God Incarnate of the Last Days Female?,” The Church of Almighty God, September 28, 2021, accessed September 23, 2024, https://www.holyspiritspeaks.org/gospel/God-incarnate-oflast-days-female/; “Sermon Series: Seeking True Faith | Why Is the God of the Last Days Female?,” The Church of Almighty God, October 14, 2021, video, 33:15, accessed September 23, 2024, https://www.holyspiritspeaks.org/videos/God-incarnated-as-female-in-lastdays/; “Chapter 2: The Incarnate Son of Man Begins to Speak in the House Churches (1991),” in “Picture Exhibition,” accessed September 20, 2024, https://www.holyspiritspeaks.org/special-topic/picture-exhibition/Son-of-man-beginsspeaking-in-house-churches; “Chapter 4: During the Six Trials of the Chosen People, God Testifies to God Incarnate and the Man Used by the Holy Spirit,” in “Picture Exhibition,” accessed September 20, 2024, https://www.holyspiritspeaks.org/special-topic/picture-exhibition/God-incarnate-and-man-used-by-God.
  3. See “Preface,” 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 September 14, 2024, https://www.holyspiritspeaks.org/preface-4/; “Introduction,” in “Picture Exhibition of the Appearance and Work of Almighty God,” The Church of Almighty God, 2024, accessed September 20, 2024, https://www.holyspiritspeaks.org/special-topic/picture-exhibition/introduction; “Chapter 2: The Incarnate Son of Man Begins to Speak in the House Churches (1991),” in “Picture Exhibition,” accessed September 20, 2024, https://www.holyspiritspeaks.org/special-topic/picture-exhibition/Son-of-man-begins-speaking-in-housechurches; “Chapter 4: During the Six Trials of the Chosen People, God Testifies to God Incarnate and the Man Used by the Holy Spirit,” in “Picture Exhibition,” accessed September 20, 2024, https://www.holyspiritspeaks.org/special-topic/picture-exhibition/God-incarnate-and-man-used-by-God.
  4. “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/. Reiteration and expansion of the Ten Administrative Decrees can be found in “Part Two: Almighty God’s Discourses with Leaders and Workers (1995 to January 12, 2022): On God’s Administrative Decrees in the Age of Kingdom” (1995), 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 14, 2024, https://www.holyspiritspeaks.org/God-s-administrative-decrees-in-the-age-of-kingdom/.
  5.  “The Words of Christ as He Walked in the Churches II (November 1992 to June 1993): Concerning the Bible (2),” in The Word Appears in the Flesh, vol. 1, emphasis added, accessed September 14, 2024, https://www.holyspiritspeaks.org/ concerning-the-bible-2/.
  6.  “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-thebible-1/. Cf. Emily Dunn, Lightning from the East: Heterodoxy and Christianity in Contemporary China (Brill, 2015), 74. Says the female christ, “The work of today is not history, and as such, if you wish to walk the new path of today, then you must depart from the Bible, you must go beyond the books of prophecy or history in the  Bible. Only then will you be able to walk the new path properly, and only then will you be able to enter into the new realm and the new work. You must understand why, today, you are asked not to read the Bible, why there is another work that is separate from the Bible, why God does not look for newer, more detailed practice in the Bible, and why there is instead mightier work outside of the Bible” (“Concerning the Bible (1)”).
  7. See James R. White, The King James Only Controversy: Can You Trust the Modern Translations? (Bethany House Publishers, 1995), 47–48.
  8. For detailed argumentation, see Hank Hanegraaff, “Part One: Manuscript C-O-P-IE-S,” in Has God Spoken? Memorable Proofs of the Bible’s Divine Inspiration (Thomas Nelson, 2011), from which this paragraph is largely adapted.
  9. For detailed argumentation, see Hank Hanegraaff, “Part Two: Archaeologist’s S-PA-D-E,” in Has God Spoken?, from which this paragraph is largely adapted.
  10. Unless noted otherwise, Bible quotations cited by the author (not in quotations from The Church of Almighty God) are taken from NIV1984. Emphasis in such Bible quotations is the author’s.
  11. For detailed argumentation, see Hank Hanegraaff, “Part Three: Prophetic S-TA-R-S,” in Has God Spoken?, from which the two previous paragraphs are largely adapted.
  12. For detailed argumentation, see Hank Hanegraaff, “Part Four: Scriptural L-I-G-HT-S,” in Has God Spoken?, from which this paragraph is largely adapted.
  13.  See “Preface,” in The Word Appears in the Flesh, vol. 1. See note 3.
  14. Holly Folk writes, “The Church of Almighty God is not Trinitarian; neither can it accurately be called ‘Modalist.’ The CAG [The Church of Almighty God] believes that Jesus, Almighty God, and Jehovah God are one and the same God. There is a sense that God is complete and singular throughout the ages, but that some of God’s dispositions are more prominently expressed in different time periods. God’s dispositions present what he has and is and his essential identity, which is possessed uniquely by the Creator. God’s dispositions are understood to be eternal, but across the ages his different dispositions were manifested according to his works in different stages.” Holly Folk, “Protestant Continuities in The Church of Almighty God,” The Journal of CESNUR 2, no. 1 (2018): 60, https://doi.org/10.26338/tjoc.2018.2.1.4.
  15. Says the unitarian female christ, “His [ Jesus’s] calling God in heaven Father was solely His humility and submission. His addressing God (that is, the Spirit in heaven) in such a manner, however, does not prove that He was the Son of the Spirit of God in heaven. Rather, it was simply that His perspective was different, not that He was a different person. The existence of distinct persons is a fallacy!…. After Jesus went away, this idea of the Father and the Son was no more. This idea was only appropriate for the years when Jesus became flesh; under all other circumstances, the relationship is one between the Lord of creation and a created being when you call God Father. There is no time at which this idea of the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit can stand; it is a fallacy rarely seen through the ages and it does not exist!….At all times, God can only be called the almighty and one true God, the all-inclusive God Himself. The distinct persons do not exist, much less this idea of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. There is only one God in heaven and on earth!” “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/.
  16. Vincent of Lérins (d. 456), Commonitorium 2.
  17. See Hank Hanegraaff, The Complete Bible Answer Book — Collector’s Edition, rev. and expanded ed. (Thomas Nelson, 2024), 52–53, from which previous five and a half paragraphs are largely adapted.
  18. Including the angelic realm (see Colossians 1:15–16).
  19. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, rev. ed. (HarperOne, 2001; originally published 1944), 174, emphasis added. Two previous paragraphs largely adapted from Hank Hanegraaff, Truth Matters, Life Matters More: The Unexpected Beauty of an Authentic Christian Life (W Publishing Group, 2019), 68.
  20.  “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 98,” in The Word Appears in the Flesh, vol. 1, emphasis added, accessed September 20, 2024, https:// www.holyspiritspeaks.org/the-ninety-eighth-utterance/.
  21.  The convoluted discussion in “Chapter 98” (see note 20) is clear enough. But the female christ further denies the bodily resurrection of Jesus by contending that neither the first nor the second incarnation is permanent — the embodied interactions between a human incarnation of God and humanity eventually cease. Why? Because the faux Almighty God “has to shed the flesh to do the work He must do.” She says of Jesus’s body, “His work being finished, at that point the body was taken away, disappearing along with the Spirit. This is the principle by which God works in the flesh. And so, strictly speaking, the humanity of God incarnate is not of primary importance….Once His work is done, the significance of His incarnation also ends. Finishing this stage means the work that He needs to do in the flesh has concluded, and the ministry of His flesh is complete. But He cannot keep working in the flesh indefinitely. He has to move on to another place to work, a place outside of the flesh. Only thus can His work be performed fully, and advance to greater effect.” “Part Three: The Words of Christ as He Walked in the Churches I ( June 1992 to October 1992): 40 The Essential Difference Between the Incarnate God and the People Used by God,” in The Word Appears in the Flesh, vol. 1, accessed March 17, 2025, https://www.holyspiritspeaks.org/incarnate-god-and-people-2/; “Part Three: The Words of Christ as He Walked in the Churches II (November 1992 to June 1993): 21 The Mystery of the Incarnation (2),” accessed March 26, 2025, https://www.holyspiritspeaks.org/the-mystery-of-the-incarnation-2/.
  22.  “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.
  23. From the hymn by Reginald Heber, “The Son of God Goes Forth to War” (1812).
  24. For detailed argumentation, see Hank Hanegraaff, Resurrection (W Publishing Group, 2000), chaps. 4 and 5, from which the three previous paragraphs and the following three paragraphs are largely adapted.
  25.  Simon Greenleaf, The Testimony of the Evangelists: The Gospels Examined by the Rules of Evidence (Kregel Classics, 1995; originally published 1874), 31–32.
  26.  For further exposition of the Incarnation, see Hank Hanegraaff, “Incarnation,” in Truth Matters, Life Matters More, 112–15, from which this paragraph is adapted.
  27.  “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/.
  28. For detailed argumentation, see Hanegraaff, Has God Spoken?, chap. 16, from which the three previous paragraphs are partially adapted.
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