On Saturday, two members of the Chinese Church of Almighty God were sentenced to death. The sentence comes as response to the violent murder of a woman, inside a McDonald’s restaurant, in May this year. Zhang Fan and Zhang Lidong were two of the five members belonging to the doomsday cult church, or “Quannengshen”. They were sent on trial for the incident which took place in Zhaoyuan, from the Shadong Province. The other three followers of the Church of Almighty God also got sentenced for their participation in the attack. Lyu Yingchun got life in prison, Zhang Hang was sentenced to 10 years in prison, while Zhang Qiaolian was sentenced to 7 years. The four members named “Zhang” were actually related.
The five cult members were attempting to recruit new members for the Church of Almighty God. When they entered the McDonald’s restaurant, one of the workers, a woman named Wu Shuoyan refused to co-operate and hand them out her phone number. One of the followers called her an evil spirit and hit her over the head with a chair found nearby. Afterwards he jumped on her and kept smashing her head. Another member of the Church of Almighty God joined in and bashed the victim over the head with a mop. He stomped on her face, and another follower kicked her while she was down on the floor. The other church members stopped the other McDonald’s staff members from helping out their colleague.
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The Church of Almighty God has been mentioned before in scandalous incidents. The group is linked to acts of kidnapping, extortion and violence. It has been on the list of fourteen banned religious cults in China, since 1995. The Church of Almighty God was founded in the early 1990s, in Henan Provence. The group formed its doctrine around the idea that Jesus Christ had been reincarnated as the Yang Xiangbin. Yang Xiangbin is the wife of the group’s founder, Zhao Weishan. In 2000, the couple fled to the United States. The group also went by the name “Eastern Lightning” and preached that they are engaged in a struggle against China’s “great red dragon”, which actually refers to the Chinese Communist Party. The cult is estimated to have up to one million members. In August, the Chinese police reported that they had arrested approximately 1,000 members of the Church of Almighty God. This includes about 100 important members as well. They were charged with instigating violent acts, among their families mostly, such as suicide and murder. In 2012, the Church of Almighty God publicly stated that the end of the world was upon us.