Ian Wilks was a high-ranking leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He is a former bishop, a former branch president, and a member of the stake presidency in British Columbia, with responsibility for shepherding twelve congregations and thousands of members. Then-apostle Dallin H. Oaks, now the 18th president and living prophet of the LDS Church, personally recruited him, interviewed him, called him, set him apart, and trained him into that role.¹ For 37 years, Ian devoted his entire life to his church. He paid tithing on his gross income. He sealed his marriage in the London Temple. He conducted hundreds of worthiness interviews. He trained bishops. He stood at pulpits and at altars. He made sacred covenants in the temple to give all he had, including his own life if required, for the building up of the kingdom on earth. In a snowstorm, the cost of those 37 years lands all at once. The thing he wanted most to be true, he learned was untrue. I spoke with Ian on my podcast Cults, Culture & Coercion and in a recent livestream. He is the co-host of the Inside Out podcast with Jim Bennett, son of the late US Senator Bob Bennett. What he told me confirms what former members of the LDS Church have been describing to me since my first book was published in 1988. The Mormon Church meets every criterion of an authoritarian cult under my BITE Model of Authoritarian Control™ and sits on the destructive end of my Influence Continuum©. Ian himself took the BITE Model self-test based on his decades of experience and scored the church at roughly 85 to 90 percent across the four dimensions of behavior, information, thought, and emotion. This group is one of the wealthiest, most influential groups in politics and its believers are over represented (compared to all other faith groups) in our FBI, CIA, Homeland security and faithful people will follow the direction of the Prophet over the Constitution (even though they swear an oath to uphold the Constitution) which should make all Americans worry. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices