[8] Scholars who have tried to study the group have complained that, due to its "secretive" nature and the fact that in China it operates underground, researching Eastern Lightning is difficult,[9] and media coverage is only partially reliable.

[13] Due to the growing influx of refugees from Eastern Lightning who seek asylum abroad,[14] some national authorities have published reports on the group.

"[16] In 2020, an article published in The Daily Beast by veteran reporter Donald Kirk found that Western scholars who have written about Eastern Lightning tend to support the sect's position that it has been unfairly accused.

In 1986, Zhao was a member of a Christian house church, and in 1987 he was baptized into a branch of The Shouters, a group within China targeted by the Chinese government as a criminal cult.

[25] According to Holly Folk, an associate professor at Western Washington University that has been studying the Church, it does not view the Bible as God's word but as a human work with flaws.

There, they pray, read and discuss the revelations of Almighty God, sing hymns, hear sermons, and sometimes present artistic performances.

[32] Holly Folk, an associate professor at Western Washington University, said that "a lot of their international ministry functions as an internet religion".

[33] Eastern Lightning is banned in China and proselyting or organizing meetings on its behalf is a crime prosecuted under Article 300 of the Chinese Criminal Code.

"[36] The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom reported that "in 2018, the Chinese government harassed and arrested thousands of followers of [...] the Church of Almighty God.

[38] From October 30 to November 10, 1998, two alleged members of Eastern Lightning, Liu Shunting and Zhao Fating, committed a series of assaults and robberies across Tanghe and Sheqi Counties in Nanyang, Henan.

[39][40] Liu and Zhao, using knives, steel poles, and lime powder, beat, stabbed, blinded, and robbed 9 people over a 12-day period, reportedly for refusing to join or provide funds to the church.

[41] In 2002, The Church of Almighty God was accused of staging a campaign of simultaneous kidnappings across multiple cities to capture thirty-four leaders of the China Gospel Fellowship (CGF).

Scholar Emily Dunn concluded in her 2015 book that rogue members of the sect, acting without the approval of the leaders, might have been responsible for the incident, writing that, "While Eastern Lightning's leadership evidently does not condone the use of violence, it may be unable to impress this upon some followers.

Covering the trial and the confessions of the accused assassins, reporters for the Chinese daily The Beijing News wrote that the perpetrators were in fact not members of Eastern Lightning at the time of the murder: they recognized as the living incarnation of God, rather than Yang Xiangbin, their own two female leaders, regarded as one divine soul in two bodies, and claimed that Eastern Lightning was a cult while theirs was a legitimate religious group.

Although they maintained that theirs was a group based on the belief that the two female leaders of their movement, not Yang Xiangbin, were the real Almighty God, they also blamed books and Web sites of Eastern Lightning for having "ideologically corrupted" them in their youth.

[59] In weeks before the 2019 Israeli election, as reported by BuzzFeed News, Twitter suspended dozens of Hebrew-language accounts run in The Church of Almighty God's name that were amplifying right-wing religious and political messages.

[30] The BuzzFeed article reported the opinion of Holly Folk, that the political activity was "outside the pattern of CAG's [Church of Almighty God's] typical behavior," and the accounts might have been created by Chinese agencies to discredit Eastern Lightning.