‘Hi! Thank you for accepting my request. God seeks those who hear his words. I’ve come across your account in the Catholic group and I think we see things the same way. May I share with you an online Bible Study? The time to attend is: 8pm in London, England. I sincerely invite you to attend, will you accept God's blessing?"
If you are an Irish Catholic and have received a message similar to this over the past few months, you are not alone.
If you have replied to such a message, thinking that you were speaking to a generic Irish Catholic, you are also not alone.
Since the summer, a barrage of fake profiles created by a Chinese Cult have targeted Irish Catholics with regular messages telling them to join them on their online Bible chat.
Some of these profiles are borderline plausible as real people, some are embarrassingly obvious fakes.
These pages will often have a number of obvious features that distinguish them as being part of a network of fakes.
1) A generic name.
2) Some Asian writing in their intro, which makes no sense in the overall message. For example, this lady is allegedly living in Newcastle, despite being from Greece and also studied at the University of Athens, which she inextricably wrote in Chinese writing, rather than in English. It is also clear that Catholics are the group that they are trying to target.
3) They will make strange efforts to seem like real people, posting generic messages about animals and nature or food.
4) They will work hard (but not very hard) to convince you that they are Catholic.
5) They will invite you to join an online Bible Study.
These accounts, which are being befriended by the thousands by naive Irish Catholics, are inviting people to a Bible Study hosted by Eastern Lightning, a Chinese Cult also known as The Church of Almighty God.
This Channel 4 report discusses how members of the group were involved in murdering a woman at a McDonald’s in 2014, screaming ‘Die! Evil Spirit!’
The group themselves have their own Youtube channel, including this bizarre video explaining their beliefs.
The group are banned in China due to their controversial nature, which in turn gives Christianity itself a bad name with the already sceptical CCP.
These Eastern Lightning accounts have infiltrated many Latin Mass and other Catholic groups based in Ireland, many naive administrators of Latin Mass Facebook groups and other Catholic groups on Facebook are allowing their members list to be exposed to these fake accounts by repeatedly permitting obviously false profiles into such forums.
Interestingly, during the 2019 election, Eastern Lightning were accused of being involved in interference with Israeli politics. Their accounts were said to have been ‘programmed to look for tweets in Hebrew (to influence Hebrew speakers) generated by account clusters outside Israel. Essentially, a queen bee generates the narrative and worker bees generate interactions with those narratives to spread it further or to give it greater credibility’’.
Interestingly, the 2019 Buzzfeed article suggests that these accounts may have been created by the CCP in order to discredit the cult.
‘“Part of the Chinese government’s efforts to undermine this group has sometimes been to create alternative and fake websites.
In the UK, there was a separate CAG that was doing demonstrations and having photos [taken] and posting the photos online. Those photos were then being used in website articles as part of a disinformation campaign.”
Certainly, given the fact that a Chinese Police Station has been allowed to operate in Dublin for years, given the fact that the controversial Confucious Institute continues to be allowed here and given the fact that Chinese investment continues to flood Ireland at a rapid pace, it makes sense that there could be plausibility to this story.
Regardless, it is not a sin to be naive, but Irish Catholics should learn to be a bit more prudent.
