16. Children of God Sex Cult

Flipping Tables

Monte Mader

Society & Culture

5 • 626 Ratings

🗓️ 21 May 2025

⏱️ 66 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In a world of cult like beliefs, propaganda, and manipulation its important to become experts on how these tactics work so that we can avoid them and so that we understand whats happening in the world around us.

A little true crime break from the norm but an important discussion we have to continue to return to.

HOW DO PEOPLE BELIEVE THIS? By using tactics we see everywhere.

The Children of God, founded in 1968 by David Berg, was a sex cult that disguised itself as a Christian missionary movement. Berg, who called himself “Moses David,” claimed divine authority and used it to manipulate and control his followers through apocalyptic teachings and a series of writings known as “Mo Letters.” Under his leadership, the group promoted sexual “freedom” that included disturbing practices like “flirty fishing,” where women were encouraged to use sex to recruit new members. Even more sinister, Berg endorsed and participated in the sexual abuse of children, normalizing pedophilia within the group’s teachings. He lived in hiding for much of his life to evade legal consequences, but continued to exert control over the group until his death in 1994. Berg’s legacy is one of extreme psychological, spiritual, and sexual abuse, with many former members coming forward to expose the deep and lasting trauma they endured under his cult leadership.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	A cult is defined as a system of religious veneration and devotion directed towards a particular figure or object.
0:07.3	The secondary definition is a relatively small group of people having a religious belief or practice regarded by others as strange or sinister, or both.
0:15.9	I don't know what it is about Southern California, but man, is it a breeding ground for some wild cults?
0:25.4	The counterculture movement of the late 1960s had young people raised in these strict religious structures rejecting established institutions and materialism, but wanting somewhere to belong.
0:30.8	And when you're raised with great restriction, to not ask questions, to question your own
0:36.2	mind, to follow without hesitation your usually male leader
0:40.5	and you're kind of set up to follow into a cult-like mindset people searched for new meaning
0:47.2	new family minds were more open to new ideas and expounding boundaries and in a lot of ways
0:52.3	that's a great thing it's great to be curious and expand.
0:55.5	I talk about curiosity all the time. But it also can give rise to falling into pitfalls of
1:01.2	charismatic leaders who seek to manipulate. The counterculture movement gave rise to great
1:06.2	things such as the civil rights movement, open-mindedness about racial equality and equal
1:10.7	rights for women.
1:12.1	It opened the door also for charismatic leaders like Charles Manson, Jim Jones, and today's Dave Berg,
1:16.9	to step in and give people new meaning, give them a new leader and a new God.
1:21.2	New leaders that God somehow always told to take money from their members, marry tons of women and children.
1:26.6	She lie, and in this case, support paedophilia pretty openly.
1:30.3	Interesting how religious doctrines just so happened to benefit the leaders specifically because
1:34.6	God said so.
1:36.6	David Brantberg, a charismatic preacher who left the traditional Christian church, formed
1:40.6	the children of God in 1968.
1:42.7	He believed the apocalypse was near and urged believers
	...

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