Hội Thánh Đức Chúa Trời Toàn Năng

1989 revival và giáo phái Gào thét

Although the movement never mentions her name nor any biographic details (while admitting she is female), and cautions that any information supplied by outside sources may be wrong, several scholars believe it identifies the incarnate Almighty God with a Chinese woman, Dương Hướng Bân (tiếng Trung: 楊向彬; bính âm: Yáng Xiàngbīn; b. 1973), who was born in northwestern China. In 1989, during a revival of the Chinese independent churches, the person identified by the movement as Almighty God formally entered the House church movement, i.e. the Protestant churches independent from the government, and began to utter words that followers compared for authority and power to those expressed by Jesus Christ. At that time, she was attending meetings of the groups founded by Witness Lee, known as the Local churches in the West and as the Shouters in China, as did most of her early devotees. Many believers in the Chinese House Church movement believed that those words were from the Holy Spirit and started to read them in their gatherings in 1991, so that the origins of the church may be dated back to this year, although only in 1993 the person who was the source of these messages was recognized as Christ, the incarnate God, and the only one true God, and The Church of Almighty God emerged with this name.

Sự mở rộng và sự đàn áp

The Chinese government was immediately suspicious of The Church of Almighty God because of its anti-Communist teachings, and the harsh repression of the mid-1990s targeted together the Shouters and The Church of Almighty God, whose theological differences were not necessarily clear to the Chinese authorities. In 2000, Triệu and Dương went to the United States, where they entered on September 6, and in 2001 they were granted political asylum. Since then, they live in and direct the movement from New York. In early 2009, Hà Triết Tấn (tiếng Trung: 何哲迅; bính âm: Hé Zhéxùn), who used to be in charge of the work of the Church in Mainland China, was arrested by the Chinese authorities. On July 17, 2009, Mã Toả Bình (female, 1969–2009; tiếng Trung: 馬鎖萍; bính âm: Mǎ Suǒpíng), who took over Hà Triết Tấn’s role, was also arrested by the Chinese police and died while in custody.
Despite governmental repression, and the fact that some leaders of Christian mainline churches accused The Church of Almighty God of heresy, the Church grew in China and, according to Chinese official sources, had reached three or even four million members in 2014, although scholars regard these figures as somewhat exaggerated. Since the Zhaoyuan McDonald's Cult Murder of 2014, the repression in China intensified, and several thousand members escaped abroad, where they founded churches in South Korea, United States, Italy, France, Spain, Canada, and other countries, in addition to those established in Hong Kong and Taiwan, with non-Chinese members also joining the movement. An unattended consequence of the diaspora was the flourishing, in the countries where the Church of Almighty God can freely operate, of a considerable artistic production of paintings and movies, with some films winning awards in Christian movie festivals.

Thánh thư

In The Church of Almighty God, the Bible is accepted as the holy scripture for the Age of Law and the Age of Grace, although it is argued that "recorded by human beings, it contains messages from God and some truthful insights, which are helpful to know God's work in the Age of Law and the Age of Grace, but it also carries many human errors." In our time, the church believes that we find a safer guide in the utterances of Almighty God, which are recorded in the massive book The Word Appears in the Flesh, consisting of more than one million words, addressing a number of questions of sacred history, theology, ethics, and spirituality, and regarded as normative by the movement.

Millennialism

The Church of Almighty God teaches a form of millennialism. Although they are parts of the Age of Word (giản thể: 话语时代; phồn thể: 話語時代; bính âm: Huàyǔ Shídài), the Age of Kingdom is not to be confused with the Age of Millennial Kingdom (giản thể: 千年国度时代; phồn thể: 千年國度時代; bính âm: Qiānnián Guódù Shídài), a future time following the apocalyptic disasters prophesied in the Bible, when the message of Almighty God will be accepted in all countries, humans’ sinful nature will be transformed, and humans purified by God’s work will live on earth eternally. According to the church, after the incarnated Almighty God (who is not believed to live forever on Earth) will have completed God's work on Earth for the last days, the catastrophes prophesied in the Book of Revelation of the Bible will come, in the form of earthquakes, wars and famines. However, "the Earth will not be annihilated, and the ones who are purified by God will be saved in the cataclysms of the last days, and will live on Earth forever." According to American scholar Holly Folk, "the division of history into several eras reflects the influence of the Plymouth Brethren and other evangelical missionaries in China. Dispensationalism, a method of Biblical interpretation that supports a cosmic view of history that includes the end times, was developed in the nineteenth century by John Nelson Darby," although there are also differences between Darby and The Church of Almighty God.

Great Red Dragon

The Church of Almighty God believes that Almighty God is the returned Jesus in our days and was born in China, a country that, according to the church, represents at the same time the place where the evil Great Red Dragon (giản thể: 大红龙; phồn thể: 大紅龍; bính âm: Dà Hóng Lóng) of the Book of Revelation manifested itself in the semblance of the Chinese Communist Party and where the Second Coming of Jesus Christ must also manifest himself. It is also believed that the Great Red Dragon "will fall by itself under the weight of its errors." As Emily Dunn noticed, the theology identifying the Great Red Dragon with a political power that persecutes Christians has not been invented by The Church of Almighty God, but has a long tradition among Chinese Christians, including the Shouters.

Absences of sacraments; worship

The Church of Almighty God believes that the sacraments, including baptism, were practices of the Age of Grace and have no place in the Age of Kingdom. Accordingly, there is no baptism in The Church of Almighty God, and one becomes a member of the church by confessing that the incarnated Almighty God is the Second Coming of Jesus Christ and the appearance of the only one true God in the last days, being willing to pray in the name of Almighty God, and being able to understand and accept the beliefs of The Church of Almighty God. The absence of sacraments does not mean that gathering together, praying and worshiping God is not important for the members of the Church of Almighty God. They “fellowship” regularly by meeting and discussing their sacred scriptures, hearing sermons, singing hymns, and sharing testimonies; Italian scholar Massimo Introvigne observes that, in this sense, "the intensity of the religious life contrasts with a minimalist style of worship."

Controversies

Accusations of serious crimes against The Church of Almighty God, which frequently appears in the media, come from two sources: the Chinese Communist Party and other Christian churches. The Chinese government and media periodically accuse The Church of Almighty God of crimes. The most frequent accusations concern four main incidents: the Zhaoyuan McDonald's Cult Murder of 2014, which was at the center of a BBC World Service’s news service in the same year, the pulling out of a young boy’s eyes in 2013 in Shanxi, the kidnapping of Christian leaders in 2002, and riots connected to announcements that the end of the world will occur in 2012.
Chinese official sources also occasionally mention other accusations: that riots were instigated by the church in 1998 in Hetang county, Chu Châu City, Hunan, where they reportedly broke the arms and legs, and cut the ears off their victims; that in 2010 members killed an elementary school student, leaving a lightning-like mark on one of the victim's feet, because one of his relatives was leaving the church; and that on an unknown date, a follower of Eastern Lightning killed her father before calmly turning herself in to the Public Security Bureau.
In 2017, Western scholars, including Massimo Introvigne and Holly Folk, who had studied the church, were invited in Henan by the official China Anti-Cult Association for a conference on dangerous cults and The Church of Almighty God. A second conference was organized by the same China Anti-Cult Association later in 2017 in Hong Kong, and scholars received from Chinese law enforcement officials information and documents on the crimes the latter regarded The Church of Almighty God as guilty of. They observed that the additional accusations appear to be less frequently mentioned and less supported by documents with respect to the accusations concerning the four main incidents.
While the Church is often accused to be "against the family," a study published by the same Introvigne in 2018 in Baylor University's Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion argued that in fact its theology of the family is quite traditional and conservative, and presented survey evidence showing that most of the Chinese members who escaped to South Korea, the United States and the Philippines were converted to The Church of Almighty God by members of their own family.

Case of Quách Tiểu Bân

On August 24, 2013, a woman pulled out the eyes of a young boy named Quách Tiểu Bân (tiếng Trung: 郭小斌; bính âm: Guō Xiǎobīn) in Sơn Tây. The boy later became internationally famous for the successful ocular prosthesis surgery performed in Shenzen. After the Zhaoyuan McDonald's cult murder, some Chinese media attributed the crime to members of The Church of Almighty God. A study by the American scholar Holly Folk, written after her participation in the two 2017 conferences organized by the China Anti-Cult Association, noticed that the Chinese police had closed the case in September 2013 by concluding that the crime was perpetrated by Quách Tiểu Bân’s aunt, and had nothing to do with The Church of Almighty God. Only after the McDonald’s murder in 2014 did some Chinese anti-cultists start to mention The Church of the Almighty God in connection with the incident. Folk also noted that accusations of gouging out eyes of Chinese victims were a common theme in Chinese anti-Christian propaganda since at least the 19th century.

Accusations of kidnapping Christian leaders

Some leaders of other Christian churches have accused The Church of Almighty God both of “heresy” and of “sheep-stealing” through devious strategies. Accusations include the claim that, in 2002, The Church of Almighty God kidnapped thirty-four leaders of the China Gospel Fellowship (CGF; giản thể: 中华福音团契; phồn thể: 中華福音團契; bính âm: Zhōnghuá Fúyīn Tuánqì) in order to convert them. A number of Christians in the West found the accusations believable. In a study published in 2018, Introvigne found inconsistencies in the story as told by the China Gospel Fellowship, found it strange that nobody was arrested or committed to trial for the crime, and concluded that it was not impossible that, by inventing the story of the kidnapping, the China Gospel Fellowship simply tried to find a justification for the fact that many of its members, including national leaders, had converted to The Church of Almighty God, although other interpretations of the accounts also remain possible.

2019 Israeli election

In weeks before the 2019 Israeli election, Twitter suspended dozens of Hebrew-language accounts run by The Church of Almighty God, that were amplifying right-wing religious messages.

Refugee issues

Particularly after the crackdown following the 2014 McDonald’s murder, thousands of members of The Church of Almighty God escaped to South Korea, the U.S., Canada, Italy, France, Australia, and other countries, seeking refugee status. While authorities in some countries claim that there is not enough evidence of the fact that asylum seekers have been persecuted, some international experts counter that with evidence that The Church of Almighty God is persecuted as a movement is enough to support the conclusion that members would face serious risks should they return to China, and decisions unfavorable to applicants are not justified.

Fake news claims

The Church of Almighty God claims to be the victim of fake news campaigns instigated by the Chinese Communist Party. It insists that some flyers and banners depicted in Chinese and Western Web sites as evidence of its 2012 prophecies were in fact either fabricated or derived from alterations with Photoshop and other techniques of existing materials of the Church of Almighty God. Some scholars have indeed studied certain Chinese campaigns against the Church as a classic example of fake news. The Church has also denounced the existence in the United Kingdom of a false Web site “Church of Almighty God UK.” Attempts by The Church of Almighty God to have it removed have been so far unsuccessful, despite scholars stating that the fact that the Web site does not represent the positions and theology of The Church of Almighty God should be obvious to anybody familiar with them. A “Declaration Concerning Websites Imitating The Church of Almighty God” was issued by the Church denouncing the incident.