I hope Randy and Lady Lee don't mind me posting this again but it is very interesting and worth watching. The Youtube video entitled "Egomania" gave some good insights into what makes these monsters that start cults tick. I found the part on David Berg very interesting because I came in contact with him in Huntington Beach in the late 60's and fortunately didn't get sucked into his Children of God Cult. At that time I believe he was still part of Teen Challange and didn't have the women in the cult going out and sleeping with men to suck them in but he was teaching that California was going to fall in the ocean and I think that was why they left and move to Arizona. I also heard that HB was trying running him out of town. Once he left HB his cult got crazier and crazier. After watching the video I'm convinced that it was never about religion for him it was just the tool he used because religion lends itself well to this sort of narcissitic monster.
On Youtube there is a very interesting 7 part documentary by Noah Thompson who was born into the Children of God cult and left it when he grew up. On it you learn that because of the abuse a lot of these kids suffered (mental, physical and sexual) as children they commited suicide. There is one very eerie home video done by Ricky Rodriguez. In the video he show talks about how much he hates his mother. He has a cattle prod, a gun, and a knife he plans to use on her. He talks about shooting himself when he is done with the killing. He speaks about how he hopes he doesn't F it up and blow his nose off instead of killing himself. He wasn't able to locate his mother so he killed one of his nannies who had sexually abused him then he killed himself. I found it very strange watching the video because Rick came across as a very likeable person and when I learned what he and his sister went through as children I felt sorry for him and wished someone would have been able to talk him out of doing what he did.