What Is Children Of God?

so I found an interesting cult called the children of God it's pretty messed up sometimes these cults go way over the top and how crooked and crazy they are in a while back I decided I wasn't gonna shy away from sensitive subjects for the sake of monetization which is why my Westboro Baptist Church video got permanently demonetised however I do have young family members that watch my channel sometimes so I can't go all out on this you'll see exactly why soon first I'll cover the church's history then I'll address their core tenets the leadership and finally I'll cover what they call the law of love let's get into it [Music] so what is the children of God they were founded by a man named David Berg in Huntington Beach California in 1968 under the name teens for Christ when it started out it was filled with teenagers and hippies later on it drew in a more diverse crowd by 1972 they had 130 communities all over the world and in 1978 David Berg disbanded it and created the new organization called the family of love basically the same organization same rules same leadership different name it was an attempt to throw off the allegations of sexual assault well they went by the name family of love between 1978 and 1982 the members were encouraged to do what they called flirty fishing where they would spread the love of God by sleeping with random people and then trying to bring them into the church imagine that according to them they actually claimed over a hundred thousand converts with that method I have my doubts and I'll talk about their statistics in a little bit for now let's continue with their history so in the 90s the police started getting heavily involved in what was going on there were a number of raids on their communities and in 1994 and 95 a court case in Britain determined that it was in fact safe for children to live with the family as long as they denounced anything David Berg said about child abuse which included promises to stop corporal punishment in 2005 during the family era a spokesman had this to say due to the fact that our current zero-tolerance policy regarding sexual interaction between adults and underaged minors was not in our literature published before 1986 we came to the realization that during a transitional stage of our movement from 1978 to 1986 there were cases when some minors were subject to sexually inappropriate advances this was corrected officially in 1986 when any contact between an adult and a minor any person under the age of 21 was declared an ex communicable offense of course I happened to know personally that child abuse is still deeply ingrained in their society even if they came out and said that one statement thirty years ago members still believe that it's part of worshipping God which makes it both a sex cult and a child abuse cult in case I haven't communicated it clearly enough yet for the majority of their history they've openly believed that sexually abusing children was part of worshiping God now they're just less public about it now let's talk about their core tenets their doctrine speaks out against men being gay but it's pretty accepting of gay women they believe in the Trinity and they think the Holy Spirit is the female maternal influence there are a number of spirits not just angels but believers who've died to the Archangel Gabriel actually had physical sex with Mary to conceive Jesus which means she wasn't a virgin well you know what they say what's more likely that the entire natural order is suspended or that a teenager would tell a lie anyways they also think that Satan was one of God's best angels and when he rebelled he took a number of other angels with him who became demons which is pretty close to what you have his witnesses believe so they're on par with jehovah's witnesses on that front they think there's a constant war in the spirit realm and humans play an active role in the war through prayer just wait until you find out how and what they do while they pray it only gets better from here as far as Armageddon ghosts they think it's immediately impending and that belief colors almost all of their long-term decisions which is a deep problem within Christianity in general in my opinion they think natural disasters are one of the key signs that the end is near and the one-world government is on its way as we speak they also have some weird twisted up endtime predictions which is a hallmark of extremist religions the predictions they had in the 90s were linked to David Berg and some of the other members at the time but Berg ended up dying in 1994 so obviously that eventually fell flat they believe that heaven is in a pyramid in the moon it's dimensions are 1,500 by 1,500 by 1,500 miles they also believe that scientists have measured the moon inaccurately David Berg's vision of heaven apparently included several naked women surrounding Jesus now about their leadership as I mentioned earlier the founder and leader was David Berg this is what he looked like total creep asaurus there's nothing good about this guy's face imagine him starting a sex cult he felt like mainstream Christians failed to follow Jesus as most cult leaders do both of his parents were evangelical pastors as I said a few minutes ago he died in October of 1994 the current leader is Karen Zerby she joined the church in nineteen 69 and she was married to berg up until his death when he died she took over and married one of Berg's personal assistants Steve Kelly apparently Steve Kelly was picked by Berg as his wife's consort oddly enough and now Steve Kelly is kind of the public face of the church Karen now calls herself the queen and a prophetess and she's also called Maria mama Maria Queen Maria and a number of other variations an extremely strained group of people with extremely strange relationships okay so that's their history their core tenets their beliefs and their leadership with all that out of the way let's talk about the really crazy stuff the law of love it's kind of a central doctrine of theirs here's the bottom line anything done in love is okay by God the law of love supersedes all other laws in the Bible and should be followed even if it contradicts the laws of men so if you murder somebody because you love somebody else it's okay in God's eyes here's a quote from their official website why we do it love is God's solution to the problems the world faces even in the complex and challenging world we live in today love put into action is the greatest service to humankind presumably when they say love put into action they mean something very specific King they mean King in case you didn't catch that marriages seem to be monogamous with the group but swinging is heavily encouraged and members are told they're part of one wife of Jesus and should be freed from jealousy and experience the joy of sharing their partners I know I have polygamous viewers but I could not do it I have no problem with you doing it but I couldn't get past the jealousy seriously I am too jealous I'm too exclusive maybe it's the result of the culture I grew up in but I couldn't do polygamy myself anyways being Jesus wife is heavily emphasized for everybody men and women they're told to respond to Jesus as an eager wife would and to engage in sexual activity during prayer since Jesus wants spiritual sex with each of his true followers I told you guys it was about to get King crazy up in here basically when you do anything with anybody you're supposed to imagine that you're doing it with Jesus you're also supposed to be immersed in prayer the whole time and during that prayer there are some phrases that Jesus likes to hear you say in fact interestingly they're the exact same phrases that David Berg liked to hear so quite the coincidence there I'm not gonna say them here because they're a little too NSFW but if you want you can come to my discord and go to the NSFW channel as long as you're over 18 and you can read all about the phrases you're supposed to say to Jesus okay thank that part's over back to the normal destructive cult-like beliefs they're also supposed to express their special love for Jesus through graphic poetry art and songs Jesus likes to hear people talk dirty to him so marriages are forced the leaders of the group tell them that it's God's will for them to be together birth control is heavily stigmatized but not outright banned if you use it you're basically saying you don't trust God's plan for your life abortion isn't allowed in any circumstance here's the thing normally I wouldn't bother with this cult because they seem to have died out a couple decades ago but I've had multiple requests for it it turns out they didn't die out after all they just went underground they're alive and well even to this day I have some statistics here but they're self-reported so they should be taken with a grain of salt there's no telling if it's accurate but I'd say it'll at least get us in the range according to the group in 1972 there were 130 communes or colonies as they call them in 15 countries in 1993 they had about 10,000 members 7,000 Devoy are under 18 in 2000 they said there were about 26,000 members and in 2005 they said they had 32,000 members like I said these numbers are self-reported so there's no telling what their real numbers are groups like this have a tendency to exaggerate their membership but in this case this group seems to be trying to appear low-key so it wouldn't surprise me if they'd underestimated their own numbers for context there are around 200 10,000 Quakers in the world around a hundred thousand Christian Scientists about eight point four million jehovah's witnesses and around 15 million mormons so that should give you a rough idea of how they compare to sizes of other cults anyway so they have some very messed up beliefs in practices and they need to be called out i can't just let this go it's crooked and it's damaged people physically mentally and emotionally so i'm shining a spotlight on them maybe raising awareness will help the victims of their practices anyway so that's all i've got for you follow me on discord patriot and all social media check out my science channel I just released a video on neural nets pretty interesting stuff check out my podcast too it's on YouTube and iTunes and check out the secret link of the day in the description it's a random youtuber who I feel deserves a little more exposure thanks for watching guys [Music]

Channel: Telltale

Views: 112,712

Rating: 4.9424634 out of 5

Keywords: youtube, video, telltale, children of god, children, god, religion, cult, jesus, flirty fishing, what is children of god, bible

Id: Yw0JTbE2Zxg

Length: 10min 16sec (616 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 28 2018