The “May 28 Shandong Zhaoyuan Case” had occurred a mere three days before the CCP used the media to fervently gain influence. They used this matter to frame the Church of Almighty God and shifted the blame onto them. On June 16, the Central Leading Group on Dealing With Heretical Religions (The 610 Office) urgently convened a video and phone conference over the whole country, and deployed a special task for dealing with the Church of Almighty God. At this meeting, the CCP brought up the suppression of the Church of Almighty God as a political mission of “utmost urgency, arduous labor and great importance.” They strictly ordered that in every province, city, and autonomous region, there would be launched the operation known as the “Hundred Days Battle” to specially deal with the Church of Almighty God. And then they deployed forces of public security as well as the armed police to overwhelmingly carry out blanket and dragnet manhunts and inspections. And they mobilized the entire populace to report them, investigated village by village and house by house, followed closely by dispatching national security, internet police, technical investigators, criminal investigators, public security, and other divisions of the police. They threatened to carry out thunderous actions and heavy-handed attacks: “Discover one group, unearth one group, take one group into custody, and severely punish one group of core members of the Church of Almighty God to make sure to create a situation of high pressure.” High officials of the CCP government also issued death warrants, saying: “One group of these people must be killed, and one group must be imprisoned.” They vainly attempted to completely ban the Church of Almighty God. Soon afterward, the CCP publicly declared the Church of Almighty God to be an “evil cult organization” and enacted laws to punish them. Quickly, a tyrannical operation without precedent to attack and persecute the Church of Almighty God was carried out overwhelmingly on the Chinese mainland.
1. Many kinds of secret documents and notices were intensively issued to manufacture a state of disaster.
Since June of 2014, the CCP, vicious and desperate, has continuously issued many secret documents, and adopted a series of actions: On July 18, 2014, the CCP issued a secret document (No.18 [2014] of the Supreme People’s Procuratorate), entitled “On active participation in the special punitive campaign against the evil cult organization of ‘Almighty God’ and the lawful crackdown on crimes of evil cults.” And they issued the order to carry out the “Hundred Days Battle,” emphasizing the regulation of fifteen provinces including Shandong, Henan, and Shanxi. On October 7, 2014, the CCP issued “The Notice on Severely Punishing and Safeguarding Against the Evil Cult of Almighty God in Accordance With the Law and Offering a Reward for Denouncement.” The requirements of the notice were: “Everyone in possession of ‘The Word Appears in the Flesh’ or other books, audiovisual materials, and other resources of the ‘evil cult’ of Almighty God must turn them in of their own accord within three months. As for those who continue to conceal or disseminate these materials, they will be subject to severe investigation in accordance with the relevant regulations. …” This notice encouraged the vast masses of people to provide clues and meant to provide monetary rewards for those who report Christians of the Church of Almighty God to the authorities. Every deserving person who reported on them would be given a monetary reward of anywhere from 500 RMB up to 5,000 RMB. The highest leadership of the CCP issued the following order: It is necessary to recapture all of those believers of Almighty God who had previously been arrested. Each recaptured one must tell the name of six people, and this move is known as “tracing the seedlings to the root.” The CCP also secretly ordered: There are no rules in dealing with the people who believe in Almighty God; however you deal with them is fine. Whoever sees a gathering of people, they must be reported no matter who they are. The sole condition of belief in Almighty God is illegal and is subject to sentence; those who may be punishable by a sentence of one year should be sentenced to three to five years. Those who refuse to confess will be beaten to death. With respect to believers of Almighty God, their sons and daughters will uniformly have their qualifications cancelled for joining the army, taking the college entrance examination, and taking the civil service examination. Furthermore, they will not receive a dime of any kind of welfare benefits (including minimum living benefit for the elderly). Their welfare will be cancelled without exception, and their descendants for three generations will be implicated as well. People who believe in Almighty God who do not return home within a year will be deemed as dead, and will have their residence written off. Moreover, the CCP conducted forced brainwashing of middle and primary school students in every place of the entire country, and issued teaching materials for blaspheming Almighty God. Through opening meetings with parents, issuing documents outlining initiatives, putting up propaganda posters, and other methods, they made middle and primary school students supervise and report on families. In state enterprise units, leaders required every employee to sign a pledge that neither they nor their family members believe in God, and must sign their names on materials that blaspheme Almighty God. At the same time, they offered rewards to encourage people to report on believers in Almighty God. And anyone who was discovered to believe in Almighty God would be dismissed, removed from his position and investigated, even be imprisoned and detained. On June 26, the Propaganda Department of the Shandong Provincial Party Committee, the Provincial Public Security Department, and others jointly issued a “Notice on the Work of Strengthening and Standardizing the Dissemination and Reporting Concerning Criminal Cases of Evil Cults.” It claimed to strengthen the “work of dissemination and reporting concerning criminal cases of evil cults” in the entire province, and strengthen “efforts of dissemination and reporting about criminal cases of evil cults,” as well as to establish “organizational leadership mechanisms for the work of dissemination and reporting concerning criminal cases of evil cults” in every place. On July 4th and 10th, the CCP’s mouthpiece, the “Qilu Evening News,” made a report that as a response to the CCP’s “Hundred Days Battle,” the Public Security Department of Shandong Province would carry out the special operation of severely cracking down on the “Church of Almighty God” for three months in the whole province. The head office of a bank of Hebei Province issued a secret document entitled “Notice on Carrying Out Thorough Investigations of Cult Personnel of ‘Almighty God’ in Our Department,” and conducted a thorough investigation of internal staff members of the bank (including those who are currently employed, retired, have been dealt with, and who have been terminated). Shortly before summer vacation in 2014, the Education Office in Fuqing, Fujian issued a file headed in red called “Notice on the Work of Guarding Against Students and Teachers Participating in Illegal Religious Activities While on Summer Vacation.” The document required schools in the whole city of all levels and categories, including kindergartens, to utilize the school’s morning meetings, team meetings, propaganda columns, broadcast stations, and other propaganda fronts to their fullest extent, and to urgently adopt measures, such as “giving a letter to the head of the household,” “organizing students to launch online questionnaire activities for opposing evil cults,” and other methods. They tried to restrict students and teachers at schools, and the students’ family members, from participating in religious activities, and to grasp the belief circumstances of the students’ families. After the document was issued, the schools urgently convened the teaching and administration staff to convey the demands of the higher authorities: Currently the country is entering a period of “preventing terrorism and protecting social stability.” The Church of Almighty God is the target of focus for these attacks. They sternly ordered the prohibition of students and teachers, as well as the students’ families, from believing in Almighty God.
2. The government in every place actively responded and quickly adopted all kinds of measures, giving aid to the tyrants.
Using the three provinces of Shanxi, Henan, and Hunan as examples: the Deputy Director-General of the Public Security Department of Shanxi Province, Li Yusheng, and the Deputy Secretary-General of the Provincial Party Committee, Feng Zheng, deployed the pertinent measures in the relevant departments of the whole province:
1. In every place of Shanxi Province the Local Police Station will lead the Township Party Committee Anti-cult leadership group, the comprehensive management department, the village (community) two committees, and security personnel to carry out a “blanket” and “dragnet” inspection, village by village and house by house, with the purpose of feeling out the organizational system of the Church of Almighty God, as well as the number and distribution of the members, and the ones at district and above levels and their activities.
2. To carry out a real-name system to control all members of the Church of Almighty God, and to make a registry person by person; as well as through special mechanisms of investigation, secret cover, and other kinds of methods to focus on a thorough search of those personnel not registered or not within the range of monitoring; and to reward the masses for reporting on them.
3. The departments concerned will also make use of the security and polls committees, defense teams, the security information officers, legal propaganda officers, dispute mediators, household management officials, duty patrol officials, sanitation officials, cleaning staff, and others to monitor the whereabouts of members of the Church of Almighty God, so as to carry out their capture at the appropriate time.
4. Fully utilizing the functions of consensus guidance of media and grassroots “Anti-cult Education Base” to adopt a unified approach and prevent the masses from accepting Almighty God. The personnel of education, youth leagues, women’s federation, and others shall get into people’s home and pay a return visit to strengthen the result of opposing evil cults.
5. Organizing people in religious circles to preach the messages of condemning Almighty God and block the believers of every denomination and sect from turning toward Almighty God.
6. Strengthening study classes for heightening efforts in brainwashing members of the Church of Almighty God who have been arrested. In addition, some people will be convicted and punished. Even if a crime cannot be found, they will be convicted by Article 300 of the criminal law.
7. Each place will mobilize literature and art groups and grassroots organizations, and the vast masses to innovate anti-cult programs to develop “culture against cults.”
Soon after, the three levels of cadres of every county, town, and village of Shanxi Province personally set out to go from house to house and make the villagers sign a declaration that in the future they would not believe in Almighty God. And furthermore they published large amounts of pamphlets and booklets that slander, condemn, and blaspheme Almighty God and distributed them to every household, and they also published a list of searches to be done. They hung up banners everywhere in the villages that say “Severely crack down on the cult organization of Almighty God.” And they organized villagers who do not believe in God to put on performances in the streets that attack and slander the Church of Almighty God. The great loudspeakers of the village committee broadcast statements attacking and blaspheming the Church of Almighty God all day. And they roused the villagers to report strangers who have approached the village and the Christians who believe in Almighty God. In some villages, martial law is implemented at 10 pm. There are checkpoints at every intersection and street. And all personnel and vehicles passing through are frisked and inspected without exception.
In Henan, there have been dragnet inspections carried out according to the principle of “territorial management,” to practically achieve the goals of the “four detections” and the “four ‘not to leave out.’” The “four detections” are: First, to detect the organizational mechanisms and spreading channels of the Church of Almighty God as well as their activities. Second, to detect their core members and participants. Third, to detect major recent activities as well as the manners and characteristics of their activities. Fourth, to find out the participants’ family environments, economic circumstances, civilizational quality, intentions in participation, degree of obsession, and actual behavior. The four “not leave out” are: The sub-district office does not leave out any community, the community does not leave out any group, the group does not leave out any family, and the family does not leave out any individual. It is demanded that in the course of searching, they first of all conduct deep discovery of staff who show signs of activity, and especially pay attention to discovering unknown persons, that the local police station should arrange on-duty police, ready to be dispatched at any time, so as to avoid letting even a single propaganda person slip through, and dig out behind the scenes organizers and the core members…. It is also demanded that they adopt every kind of method and use every kind of means to promptly get a firm handle on the trends in activity of the Church of Almighty God and to understand their patterns of activity.
In Hunan, from September 24 to December 31, the entire province unified in an operation to crack down on the Church of Almighty God. On the evening of September 25, the district and above level cadres of the entire province were convened in a united conference call, and they again emphasized the desire to crack down on people who believe in Almighty God. They also prepared and printed materials to resist the Church of Almighty God (which have already been distributed to every village), and got the masses to keep an eye on and report on each other. In case there was a person who was reported, he or she must be arrested. In order to increase efficacy, the “610” special investigative team (specially directed at the Church of Almighty God) tried to understand the situation at bottom and find out inside information, and then waited for an opportune moment to initiate their capture.
3. Deployment of armed police and regular forces to cooperate in the capture of God’s chosen people of the Church of Almighty God, causing harm and suffering to the country and the people.
From August to September, the CCP also mobilized five teams one after the other of the People’s Armed Police Force (in total four thousand people), together with six groups of regular troops (in total more than 14,000 people), to go to every area of Zhejiang Province, on standby to suppress household churches and arrest the Christians of the Church of Almighty God. At around 3:30 in the afternoon on September 28, 2014, some police station of the Public Security Bureau of Tai’an City in Shandong Province convened a secret meeting. During the meeting, the participants were without exception forbidden from carrying mobile phones and were prohibited to go home. The main topic of the meeting was about launching “blanket” searches in the whole city, to strive to snatch up the believers in Almighty God all in one net, as well as to secretly murder a group of them. And they claimed that this kind of inspection would continue all the way until the end of the year, and that during the National Day holiday, they would perform more rigorous searches. In order to increase the effectiveness of this operation, Tai’an City dispatched more than a thousand tactical police to be allocated to every police station.
4. Implementing a reward system to incite the masses to expose and report Christians and to create discord.
The CCP has allocated millions in funding to implement rewards for units and individuals with outstanding performance, together with the masses for informing, so as to encourage mass reporting and exposing of the Christians of the Church of Almighty God. They claimed that the reward for reporting one person was anywhere from 500 to 5,000 RMB. Since the secret document was transmitted from high levels of the CCP, in every area of Shandong, Henan, Fujian, and other provinces and cities, the police used the methods of cellular networks and posting announcements to persecute and capture Christians of the Church of Almighty God. Toward the end of July, the Public Security Bureau in Bincheng District of Binzhou City in Shandong posted colored propaganda leaflets everywhere about “attacking the Church of Almighty God,” and claimed that they would give informants a reward of from 500 to 3,000 RMB. The CCP government also paid idle members of society to establish “auxiliary police” groups, for secret monitoring and tracing of Christians in the Church of Almighty God.
5. Inciting university students to go into villages and spread slander of the Church of Almighty God, and harming students.
In the middle of June, the CCP government sent students at Communications University of China to Tongzhou District of Beijing to begin publicity activities of discrediting the Church of Almighty God. More than ten students were sent to several villages. And in the villages not only did they broadcast profanities against Almighty God, but also distributed booklets of blasphemy against Almighty God to each household.
6. The implementation of monitoring, pursuit, home searches, and persecution of Christians across the entire country to create an atmosphere of terror.
During the period of the CCP carrying out the “Hundred Days Battle” across the entire country, it is unknown how many Christians fell into the clutches of the CCP and suffered the torture and cruel treatment of the wicked police. It is unknown how many Christians were searched, had their homes ransacked, or were fined heavily. And their family members were also implicated. Some Christians were even persecuted to death or were threatened to death. There were also a large number of Christians who, in order to flee seizure and persecution by the CCP government, were forced to abandon their fields, work, and homes and to take flight outside their hometown, living destitute and miserable as well as homeless…. According to incomplete statistics, from July to September 23 of 2014, in Shandong Province alone there were at least 200 Christians of the Church of Almighty God who were subject to illegal seizure and even torture and interrogation by the CCP police. In a county of Heilongjiang Province, there were more than 500 Christians of the Church of Almighty God who were arrested and imprisoned, and subjected to cruel beatings. On July 1, a female Christian of the Church of Almighty God in Chongqing (81 years of age) was beaten after encountering henchmen of the CCP, and died after medical treatment proved unsuccessful. On July 17, a female Christian in Huantai County of Zibo City in Shandong Province (53 years of age) was simply beaten to death by the CCP police. On July 20, a female Christian of the Church of Almighty God in Hejin City of Shanxi Province (57 years of age) was afflicted and tortured by the judicial authorities of the CCP, and thirteen days later committed suicide by jumping from a building. A male Christian of the Church of Almighty God in Taiyuan City of Shanxi was seized during a gathering, and during his interrogation, the CCP police used cigarettes to burn the palms of his hands and his nipples, and poured three pots of boiling water on his body, and even went as far as to pour boiling water on his genitals…. The methods of interrogation were cruel in the extreme. An innocent female Christian of Yantai City in Shandong was arrested because she believed in Almighty God, and the police demanded high bail of 30,000 RMB from her. On August 10, in Yangxin County in Binzhou City of Shandong, a married couple was detained and arrested by the CCP police for believing in Almighty God, and they were also extorted with a fine of close to 100,000 RMB, such that their household was left in ruins and they had no way to make a living….
The evil party of the CCP reeks with the blood of suppressing and persecuting Christians of the Church of Almighty God. Their wicked deeds have reached unto heaven, and there is no precedent for this in all of history. They have already gotten to the condition of having reached their pinnacle, beyond which no further progress is possible. A black pall oppresses the entire Chinese mainland, and everyone lives in fear and feels anxious. The inhuman persecution of the evil party, the CCP, has brought tremendous catastrophe to Christians of the Church of Almighty God. The CCP resists the true God, and opposes Heaven. They use savage methods to slaughter Christians who are absolutely defenseless, they are even more fascist than the fascism of the Nazis! The evil crimes of the CCP resisting Almighty God are piled up to heaven. They have long since been met with the disdain and condemnation of the peoples of the world. God’s righteous disposition does not tolerate any offense. All who resist God must suffer the righteous punishment and retribution of God! All those Chinese who give aid to the tyrant, follow the CCP in doing evil and resisting the true God must be met with retribution, and become the victims of the CCP. We can look back at history: In the year 64 A.D., the tyrant Nero of ancient Rome set fire and destroyed the city of Rome, and shifted the blame on the Christians. He wantonly started rumors and incited the population into a mood of opposition to Christians; he cast the Christians into the arena to be ripped apart and mauled by ferocious beasts, and even bound many Christians together with bales of hay and burned them alive. Nero’s savage carnage incurred the wrath of Heaven and the people. In 79 A.D., the Roman city of Pompeii was buried by a volcano, and this is the disaster that inundated Rome because of their tyrant resisting God! In contrast, even though violence ran rampant among the people of Nineveh, and God decided to destroy the city, yet when Jonah conveyed God’s message to the people of Nineveh, all the people of Nineveh, from the king all the way down to the commoners, draped themselves in sackcloth and ashes and repented to God. God pardoned them and averted their destruction. We can see from the above examples that because the ancient Roman tyrant Nero resisted God, his massacre of Christians provoked God’s disposition and brought his country and people to be inundated in catastrophe. Whereas the king of Nineveh led his people to repent to God, and they received God’s salvation. From this we can see that God’s disposition is righteous and even more intolerant of offense. Those who resist God must be destroyed, and those who obey God will live on. The CCP government has extreme loathing for God and for the truth, deceives and incites the masses of China into insane resistance to God, and cruelly persecutes God’s chosen people. Black clouds oppress the entire Chinese mainland, a blackness devoid of daylight. This will lead to God sending forth His intense rage and to the Chinese people being inundated in calamity. The CCP is the root and source of all the calamity that befalls China. The Chinese people should wake up, abandon and revolt against the CCP, and turn toward God. Only then will they be able to be spared the punishment of God, because God is a righteous God. Just as Almighty God said: “We trust that no country or power can stand in the way of what God wishes to achieve. Those that obstruct God’s work, resist the word of God, disturb and impair the plan of God shall ultimately be punished by God. He who defies the work of God shall be sent to hell; any country that defies the work of God shall be destroyed; any nation that rises up to oppose the work of God shall be wiped from this earth, and shall cease to exist. I urge the people of all nations, countries, and even industries to listen to the voice of God, to behold the work of God, to pay attention to the fate of mankind, thus making God the most holy, the most honorable, the highest, and the only object of worship among mankind, and allowing the whole of mankind to live under the blessing of God, just as the descendants of Abraham lived under the promise of Jehovah, and just as Adam and Eve, who were originally made by God, lived in the Garden of Eden” (“God Presides Over the Fate of All Mankind” in The Word Appears in the Flesh).
Studying The Eastern Lightning 