Church leaders in north-eastern India’s Nagaland state are concerned about a Chinese Christian cult misleading thousands of their young people with faulty doctrines.
The Church of Almighty God, which emerged in China some three decades ago, teaches that a woman named Yang Xiangbin is the second Christ.
The cult is “reportedly making inroads into our land,” said Reverend Zelhou Keyho, general secretary of the Nagaland Baptist Church Council (NBCC), in a letter to all church bodies and Baptist leaders in the state.
It has reportedly attracted thousands of young people through social media, church leaders say.
Yang Xiangbin, also called Lightning Deng, and cult founder Zhao Weishan fled China in 2000 after the Chinese government banned it, mainly because of its direct opposition to the Chinese Communist Party, published re-ports show.
The cult “is a well-organized group, aggressively moving for-ward with publication and creat-ing many Facebook pages and colourful artwork that appears biblical and enticing,” said the letter of Reverend Keyho.
The council is the top body of nearly 1,500 Baptist Churches in Nagaland, where Christians form 90 percent of two million people. The majority of Christians are Baptists. The cult’s Facebook page has some 137,000 followers. They claim to have offices in the US, UK, South Korea, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Germany and France.