[aron]

As a follow-up to yesterday's post (#139), for the "Brother X has the Ministry of the Age" systems to work, first Brother X must suffer from the delusion that He (or She, if Sister X) has the unique speaking of God to man on earth today. Watchman Nee put out the "recovery of local ground" idea in Mainland China in the 1920s, and in the 1930s tens of thousands streamed in. By WWII he was the head of the largest Chinese Christian church, by historical accounts that I've read. He was saved 2 or 3 years and was suddenly penning "Christian classics", some of which were essentially translations of European works. But who cared because he got there first. And so it went to his head.

So "Watchman Nee is the Great Man of the Current Hour" was then formulated as an organizing principle, the Lodestone of the Little Flock. The second thing that the system needs is an ambitious underling or two or three, who see Brother X as the meal ticket. Promote Brother X and you have a job for life, as his Right Hand Man, Flunkie, Maximum Cheerleader, or whatever. When the Seer of the Divine Revelation in the Present Age gets caught with his hand in the cookie jar, then the Maximum Cheerleader is there to chide the Shanghai elders, "How did you feel when you expelled Brother Nee?"

And lo and behold, when Brother X passes from the scene, The Maximum Cheeleaders now have the reins as the "closest disciple", and can carry the message however they want to. Witness Lee did this with Nee, and now the Blendeds are doing it with Lee. Likewise Pedro Dong will likely carry Dong Yu Lan, and so forth. If you look at the Eastern Lightning mug shots, there are usually two: first is the Yang Xiangbin the Incarnate God, a college drop-out from China who's now holed up in NYC, and second is her lover and chief promoter, a man named Zhao Weishan. So she's his meal ticket.

Asia Harvest: "Eastern Lightning, or Dongfang Shandian in Chinese, was founded by Zhao Weishan in Acheng City, Heilongjiang Province, in 1989. Zhao was an unhappy member of the Shouters sect. He rejected many of the Shouters’ teachings and broke away with several other church members to start a new group which they called ‘Church of the Everlasting Fountain.’ Zhao began to call himself “Powerful Lord.”

They grew rapidly, and somehow managed to receive substantial financial support that enabled them to set up an underground printing house, producing tens of thousands of booklets and tracts outlining their views. By 1991, when the group was declared illegal and the printing press was shut down, they already had thousands of followers.

Zhao and his leading coworkers fled from the authorities in Heilongjiang and restarted their activities in Henan Province. In 1993 Zhao changed the name of the cult to “Real God” and said he had received divine revelation on the verse “For as lightning that comes the east is visible even in the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.” (Matthew 24:27). This is how they came to be commonly known as the “Eastern Lightning,” or “Lightning from the East.”

Zhao sent his main leaders, Yi Haitao, Zhang Xindong and Zhang Hongzhen, throughout Henan Province, spreading their influence among thousands. Many of the deceived who joined their group were illiterate rural house church members, who had little Bible training and so were susceptible to the group’s influence. They also target educated university students who have an unstable grounding in the Bible.

Eastern Lightning quickly spread to neighboring Anhui, Shaanxi and Jiangsu, and then to most parts of China. Today the Eastern Lightning (EL) has grown with remarkable speed to at least 22 of China’s provinces, and they are believed to number in the millions of members. A November 2001 article in Time Magazine said the EL claim just 300,000 followers across China, (1) but that number is almost certainly a deliberate underestimation, especially considering the Chinese government concedes the EL have infiltrated more than 20 provinces throughout the nation.

The EL are highly organized and secretive. Their structure is hierarchal, ranking from “the person used by the Holy Spirit” (Zhao), to provincial leaders, district leaders, section leaders, and cell group leaders. Each member is given responsibility for tasks he or she must carry out.

The Eastern Lightning are known to have a special emphasis on publishing literature. According to a speech by Bi Rongsheng, deputy director of the Shijiazhuang Public Security Bureau, the cult printed a total of 870,000 books between 1989 and 1999. (2)

Instead of trying to convert unbelievers to their group, the Eastern Lightning appears to have decided it is better to deceive existing Christians. They do not mind targeting nominal believers, but it’s clear their chief goal is to attack church leaders and those with the most influence. Their methods have included financial inducement, beatings and torture, sexual seduction, and brainwashing.

In 1997, Tianfeng, the official magazine of the Three Self Patriotic Movement (China’s government-sanctioned church) were so alarmed at the inroads Eastern Lightning were making among their congregations that they wrote several articles exposing the cult, warning readers how to defend themselves against it. The magazine noted, “The [Eastern Lightning] missionaries scurry to every part of the country, making a beeline especially for the responsible persons and preachers in other religions, those who have been preaching for many years, and when someone of a definite status has been trapped he becomes their tool and their accomplice in crime.” (3)

Even the Catholic Church has seen many of their top leaders lured over to the Eastern Lightning. According to an official Chinese government report, “This cult is hastening its efforts to infiltrate underground Catholic churches so as to increase its strength by uniting with other underground powers. Tangshan Public Security authority [in Hebei Province] discovered that underground Catholics in areas such as Zunhua, Fengnan and Qianan have joined hands with this cult.” (4)

The founder of the Eastern Lightning, Zhao Weishan, was granted refugee status in the United States in 2000, [with lover/incarnate "God" Yang Xianbin] on the ground of being persecuted for his religious beliefs. He continues to command the cult’s activities inside China and around the world from his American base."

Third, you need an ignorant and compliant populace. Note that recruiters go for people who are already amenable to the sales pitch; i.e. they go to Christians. Note also that in China the EL recruiters can even get Christian ministers to come into the group, because they already are "good building material", to use LC jargon. They're already in agreement with a number of EL doctrines; all you have to do is convince them that the Leader of the EL is "the person used by the Holy Spirit". (See the bolded part in the quote above).

Likewise, if the LC recruiters can convince the "new one" that the LC is "just a Christian group", then once they establish relationships, they next convince them that the LC has the "high peak truths" which no one else in degraded Christianity has. The excitement that the new one got by shouting repeatedly in group meetings is actually evidence of the Holy Spirit, and God's favor. Then they new one realizes that Witness Lee was God's Deputy, with the ministry of the age, and the current Blendeds in Anaheim are the sole legitimate curators of this vision, and thus are the conduits for God's unique move on the earth today. What a privilege! You get to be in "God's Best"!

The key is to get Christians who are amenable to "pursuing Christ" in the LC, but who are ignorant enough to not see the warning signs, as aberrant teachings begin to surface. Then, once they are committed, when things get bad, they are told that it is even worse elsewhere. So the "messy kitchen" of the LC, in Witness Lee's parlance, is deemed tolerable, while anything in Babylon the Great, Christianity the Degraded Harlot is to be utterly rejected. The new member is now isolated, and a compliant disciple, and is put to work as a recruiter as well.