A woman in Shaoguan, Guangdong was sentenced to five years in jail for inviting 39 people to her home and organising study sessions on behalf of the religious sect “Church of the Almighty God”, just days after the beating death of a woman in Zhaoyuan, Shandong Province by six members from the religious sect.

Huang Mingfei, 39, became a member of the religious group in 2010 and has since been supplying materials to her fellow 39 members, Yangcheng Evening News reported. Huang organised a total of more than 10 meetings between 2010 and her arrest in September last year, according to the report.

Zhao Weishan, the founder of the Almighty God religious cult. Photo credit:China.com

The Shaoguan intermediate court said Huang, an unemployed woman with a primary school education, is guilty of “organising and using a religious cult to break laws,” the report said without identifying whether the verdict was delivered before or after the beating death of a woman in Zhaoyuan on May 28.

Confiscated study materials found at Huang’s home include materials titled “Satan meeting” and “little ghost gives an injection of the dead”, the report said.

Founded in 1989 in China’s northeastern Heilongjiang Province, the Church of the Almighty God, which is loosely based on Christianity, was banned by the Chinese government as a religious cult in 1995. The cult’s beliefs include the Mayan 2012 apocalypse, and its preachings include that God has returned to earth in China as a woman, the New York Times reported.

 Home page photo: AFP