The Church of Almighty God (), known also as Eastern Lightning, is a new religious movement established in China in 1991,Dunn (2008a). to which Chinese governmental sources attribute from three to four million members,Li (2014), Ma (2014). although scholars regard these figures as somewhat inflated.Introvigne (2017c). The name "Eastern Lightning" is drawn from the New Testament, Gospel of Matthew 24:27: "For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be." Its core teaching is that Jesus Christ returned to earth in their days as the incarnate Almighty God (全能神), this time not as a man but as a Chinese woman.Dunn (2008a); Dunn (2015), 62. The movement is regarded by the Chinese authoritiesIrons 2018. as a xie jiao (邪教; a term often translated as “evil cult” but in fact used since the Ming dynasty to indicate “heterodox teachings”)Palmer (2012). and accused of various crimes, including the infamous Zhaoyuan McDonald's Cult Murder.Dunn (2015), 2-3. Christian opponents and international media have in turn described it as a cultGracie (2014); Shen and Bach (2017). and even as a "terrorist organization."Tiezzi (2014). The Church denies all accusations, and there are scholars who have concluded that some accusations they have investigated so far are indeed false or exaggerated.Dunn (2015), 204; Introvigne (2017a); Introvigne and Bromley (2017), Folk (2017). သမိုင်း 1989 revival and the Shouters 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,Introvigne (2017c). several scholars believe it identifies the incarnate Almighty God with a Chinese woman, Yang Xiangbin (b. 1973; ), who was born in northwestern China.Dunn (2015), 68-72. 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.Zoccatelli (2018), 8. 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,Introvigne (2017c). as did most of her early devotees.Folk (2018), 72. 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.Dunn (2015), 48; Introvigne (2017c). Zhao Weishan Among those who accepted the person and the message of Almighty God was Zhao Weishan (; born December 12, 1951), the leader of an independent branch of the Shouters.Dunn (2015),48: "Other Chinese sources present a far more complex account of Eastern Lightning's origins. They charge a middle-aged man named Zhao Weishan 赵维山, once a physics teacher or railroad worker, with founding the movement. These sources ... was a member of the Shouters in the late 1980s. He left the group with other believers in 1989 to form an offshoot called the Church of the Everlasting Foundation (永存的根基教会 Yongcun de genjijiaohui), in which he presented himself as a 'Lord of Ability' (能力主 nengli zhu). In May, 1992, a Chinese Christian magazine reported that a group called 'the New Church of the Lord of Ability' (新能力主教会 Xin nenglizhu jiaohui) had been distributing tracts and cassette recordings in the southwest Henan since March 1991." While some scholars regard Zhao as the founder of the movement,Kindopp (2004), 141: “Similarly, a disgruntled Protestant Christian named Zhao Weishan broke from his church to establish the Eastern Lightning cult, also in Henan"; Aikman (2003), 242: “"Some time in the 1990s, the man regarded as the founder of Eastern Lightning, Zhao Weishan, came to the United States with a false passport and applied for—and in 2000 was granted—political asylum.” others believe that this is due to a bias in the Chinese sources, which would not easily accept that a large religious movement was founded by a woman, and in fact the title of "founder" of The Church of Almighty God should rather be attributed to the (female) person the movement venerates as Almighty God.CESNUR (2017). According to Australian scholar Emily Dunn, in 1991, the organization had more than a thousand members. After being investigated and prosecuted by a local police station, Zhao left Heilongjiang Province and continued the organization in Qingfeng County, Henan, where it continued to expand.Dunn (2015), 48. He was later recognized as the leader and the Priest of The Church of Almighty God. The church insists that it is personally led and shepherded by the person it recognizes as Almighty God, and that Zhao, "the Man used by the Holy Spirit," is the administrative leader of the movement.Introvigne (2017c); Zoccatelli (2018), 9. တိုးချဲ့ခြင်းနှင့် ဖိနှိပ်ခြင်း The Chinese government was immediately suspicious of The Church of Almighty God because of its anti-Communist teachings,Dunn (2008b). 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.Introvigne (2017c); Irons (2018). In 2000, Zhao and Yang 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.Dunn (2015), 49; Introvigne (2017c). In early 2009, He Zhexun (), 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, Ma Suoping (; female, 1969–2009), who took over He Zhexun’s role, was also arrested by the Chinese police and died while in custody.Introvigne (2017c). Despite governmental repression, and the fact that some leaders of Christian mainline churches accused The Church of Almighty God of heresy,See e.g. China for Jesus (2002; upd. 2014); Chan and Bright (2005). the Church grew in China and, according to Chinese official sources, had reached three or even four million members in 2014,Li (2014), Ma (2014). although scholars regard these figures as somewhat exaggerated.Introvigne (2017c). 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.Zoccatelli (2018), 10. 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.Introvigne (2017b). ယုံကြည်ချက် ခေတ်သုံးခေတ် ပညတ်တော်ခေတ် ()၊ ဓမ္မဟောင်းကျမ်း၏အချိန် ကျေးဇူးတော်ခေတ် ()၊ ယေရှု၏ထွန်းထံမှနှောင်းပိုင်း 20 ရာစုအတွင်းအနန္တတန်ခိုးရှင်ဘုရားသခင်၏ထွန်းမှ နိုင်ငံတော်ခေတ် ()၊ အနန္တတန်ခိုးရှင်ဘုရားသခင်၏ထွန်းထံမှ အသင်းတော်အဆိုအရ၊ အရှေ့အရပ်မှလျှပ်ပြက်ခြင်းသညျယရှေုခရဈသလူသားမျိုးနွယ်အပေါ်၏တတိယအရွယ်ဖွင့်လှစ်ရန်တရုတ်အတွက်အနန္တတန်ခိုးရှင်ဘုရားသခင်အဖြစ်ပြန်လာဖြစ်ပါတယ်၊ နိုင်ငံတော်ခေတ်ဟုခေါ်တွင်။