False Teachers

The longer the internet lives, the more inescapable a certain trend becomes: the performance of grief. That is, when someone on TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube, exhibits a hardship for audience consumption. At The Atlantic, Maytal Eyal has an interesting appraisal:

People post videos of themselves crying (or trying not to). Some of these videos moody music; many rack up hundreds of thousands of views. … Influencers and celebrities strip down to what can seem like the rawest version of themselves, selling the promise of “real” emotional connection—and, not infrequently, products or their personal brand.

The weepy confessions are, ostensibly, gestures toward intimacy. They’re meant to inspire empathy, to reassure viewers that influencers are just like them. But in fact, they’re exercises in what I’ve come to call “McVulnerability,” a synthetic version of vulnerability akin to fast food: mass-produced, sometimes tasty, but lacking in sustenance. True vulnerability can foster emotional closeness. McVulnerability offers only an illusion of it.

In my years as a therapist, I’ve seen a trend among some of my younger clients: They prefer the controlled environment of the internet — the polish of YouTube, the ephemeral nature of TikTok — to the tender awkwardness of making new friends. Instead of reaching out to a peer, they’ll turn to the comfort of their phone and spend time with their preferred influencers.

Psychotherapist Esther Perel touched on this impulse while discussing what she calls “artificial intimacy.” She says that these digital connections risk “lowering our expectations of intimacy between humans” and leave us “unprepared and unable to tolerate the inevitable unpredictabilities of human nature, love, and life.”

Putting yourself out there is uncomfortable. But I also worry that by relying mostly on social media to encounter other humans, they’re forfeiting opportunities to develop the skills that could help them thrive in the flesh-and-blood world.

When officials saw Dustin Nehl pull up to one of the burned-out areas from the Los Angeles Palisades fire, they were tempted to wave him through. Nehl was driving a full-size red fire truck with California plates and American flag decals, and was wearing bright yellow fire gear.

But a firefighter at the checkpoint noticed something amiss, and urged one of the sheriff deputies to check his identification. A background check quickly revealed Nehl’s criminal history, which included a five-year stint in prison for arson. A check of his truck revealed tools that could potentially be used in a burglary. And according to a source within the department, the truck had since been decommissioned from service from a Northern California fire department 30 years prior.

Nehl, along with his wife Jennifer, were arrested on suspicion of impersonating firefighters and unauthorized entry of an evacuation zone. Nehl was not alone in his attempt to impersonate emergency personnel. The week prior, police arrested a man wearing a yellow firefighter’s outfit and carrying a radio. Prosecutors later announced charges for receiving stolen property, impersonating a firefighter, unlawful use of a badge, and unauthorized entry of a closed disaster area.

LAPD chief Jim McDonnell said, “We have people who will go to all ends to do what they do.”

Almost half of Americans (48%) believe that the rise of artificial intelligence has made them less “scam-savvy” than ever before. With AI working its way into education, finance, and even science, a new survey finds people admitting they can’t tell what’s real anymore.

The poll of U.S. adults revealed that only 18% feel “very confident” in their ability to identify a scam before falling victim to it. As the United States enters a new era of tech, AI is continuing to blur the line between reality and an artificial world.

One in three even admits that it would be difficult for them to identify a potential scam if the scammer was trying to impersonate someone they personally know. Between creating fake news, robo-callers with realistic voices, and sending texts from familiar phone numbers, the possibility and probability of falling victim to a scam may cause anxiety for many Americans.

This may be because 34% of respondents have fallen victim to a scam in one way or another over the years. For others, the sting is still fresh. According to the results, 40% of people have been impacted within the last year — with 8% indicating it was as recent as last month.

BOSS Revolution VP Jessica Poverene said in a statement, “As AI technology advances, so do the tactics of scammers who exploit it. It’s crucial for consumers to stay vigilant.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

The question “Can You Spot an AI Scam?” can apply to Christians with a slight change. The question becomes, “Can You Spot a Doctrinal Scam?” In this age of deception, there are many false doctrines being spread by false teachers and it is important to be informed and vigilant. “But evil people and impostors will flourish. They will deceive others and will themselves be deceived.” (2 Tim. 3:13)

Have you ever heard about "The Ant Death Spiral"? A fascinating NPR article describes this phenomenon. A particular species of army ant is utterly blind, so they get about by sniffing trails left by the ants in front of them. They, in turn, leave chemical trails of their own.

But, as the article notes, "the system works smoothly when everybody's going in a straight line in one direction. But when the lead ants start to loop, bad things can happen …. If the ant-in-front loops and intersects with its old trail, the whole crowd then turns in on itself and everybody gets caught in the endless circle." Another researcher wrote, “this circle is commonly known as a ‘death spiral’ because the ants might eventually die of exhaustion. It has been reproduced in laboratories and in ant colony simulations.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Theodore C. Schneirla, the scientist who first observed this behavior, was quick to point out "that ants get stuck in ways that we humans never do." I'm not so sure Schneirla is right about that.

A new survey reveals that more Americans are trusting social media and health-related websites for medical advice over an actual healthcare professional. The poll of 2,000 adults finds many will turn to the web for “accurate” information regarding their health before asking their physician. In fact, significantly more people consult healthcare websites (53%) and social media (46%) than a real-life doctor (44%). 73% believe they have a better understanding of their health than their own doctor does.

Further showcasing their point, two in three Americans say they’ve looked up their symptoms on an internet search engine like Google or a website like WebMD. Respondents say they would rather consult the internet or ChatGPT instead of their doctor because they’re embarrassed by what they’re experiencing (51%) or because they want a second opinion (45%).

Of course, much of the trust people have for technology doesn’t stop with AI. Many would also trust major tech companies with their personal health data, including Google, Apple, Fitbit, and Amazon. Overall, 78% state they’re “confident” that AI and tech companies would protect their health information.

Researcher Lija Hogan said, “This means that we have to figure out the right guardrails to ensure people are getting high-quality advice in the right contexts and how to connect patients to providers.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

In a similar way, many congregants are fact checking their pastor during the sermon and may put trust in strangers on social media and the internet over their pastor’s teaching, relying on dubious information or incorrect theology.

As part of a push to "sinicize" religion (to make it Chinese in character), the Chinese Communist Party has embarked on a 10-year project to rewrite the Bible and other religious texts. In the Gospel of John, Jesus famously confronts the accusers of a woman caught committing adultery, saying "let the one among you who is guiltless be the first to throw a stone at her." The chastened accusers slink away and Jesus says to the woman, "‘Has no one condemned you?' 'No one, sir,' she replied. 'Neither do I condemn you,' said Jesus. 'Go away, and from this moment sin no more.'"

A beautiful story of forgiveness and mercy. Unless you’re a CCP official. Then it's a story of a dissident challenging the authority of the state. A possible sneak preview of what a Bible with socialist characteristics might look like appeared in a Chinese university textbook in 2020. The rewritten Gospel of John excerpt ends, not with mercy, but with Jesus himself stoning the adulterous woman to death.

The 10-year project to rewrite the Bible, Quran, and other sacred texts is all part of Xi Jinping’s quest to make the faithful serve the party rather than God. At the 19th Party Congress, Chairman Xi declared "We will … insist on the sinicization of Chinese religions, and provide active guidance for religion and socialism to coexist." In other words, Xi Jinping has no problem with the first commandment, just so long as he and the CCP are playing the role of God.

Yet, even under intense persecution, faith persists throughout China and the number of faithful grows. There are accounts of underground churches, brave clergy, and steadfast believers every bit as courageous as saints of the early-church.

The CCP wishes for there to be nothing higher than their authority, and views love for anything besides their Marxist-Leninist regime with vicious jealousy. In an interview the pastor of one Chinese church stated, "In this war … the rulers have chosen an enemy that can never be imprisoned – the soul of man." The pastor ended with an assessment "[The PRC rulers] are doomed to lose."

An Aperture video goes into some depth as to how the promises of self-help and New Age teachings fail to deliver what the individual truly needs. The narrator says:

Today a snake oil salesperson describes someone who advertises or sells any product that promises the world and fails to deliver. Sadly, that's the story of self-improvement, at least as it is today. Because while it might seem like a new trend, the idea of self-help dates back to early philosophers like Seneca and Socrates. In the Fifth Century BC Socrates spoke about the constant improvement of your soul. He insisted that practices like meditation, fasting, prayer, and exercise could feed your soul and therefore improve your life.

Hundreds of years later, in the 1970s, the New Age movement arose and preached a philosophy of personal transformation and healing. The movement revolved around accessing our spiritual energy through yoga, meditation, tarot card readings, and astrology. This idea that we could elevate ourselves has persisted. But like most things in the West, once people found out just how much money they could make, self-improvement shifted from being a guide for those who needed it the most to a product reserved for those who could afford it.

Deepak Chopra, a prominent figure in the New Age movement, tells us that our mental health can determine our physical reality, that we can think ourselves into being healthier and happier. After his ideas were popularized by Oprah Winfrey, Chopra became an international sensation. He held seminars and became a spiritual advisor to celebrities like Michael Jackson. Needless to say, lost souls worldwide have made Chopra a very wealthy man.

Possible Preaching Angle:

One of the biggest problems with self-help is that just like snake oil salespersons, self-help experts claim to be able to heal the world with their speech. In reality, whether you're Chopra or one of the hundreds of other experts, the false path to self-improvement continues to ruin lives.

The alleged prophet Nostradamus is more popular than ever in these troubled times. Books about him and his prophecies are high on the best seller lists even today. His predictions are fraudulent not because they contradict Scripture, but by pure logical reasoning.

The British daily paper the Guardian recently exposed the prophet's devious methods. The reader can read into Nostradamus' vague words whatever he or she wants:

Circumlocution and evasion of directness play a large part. He usually waffled in his astrological datings, since conjunctions are repeated. He invoked obscure Latin words to create possibilities of double meanings; he omitted prepositions, articles, reflexives, and connectives, and favored the infinitive as a timeless, personless form that can be read many ways.

Nostradamus has the virtue of vagueness combined with apocalyptic fervor. That’s not unusual. Many sayers of sooth, from Merlin and Geoffrey of Monmouth onwards, have done the same. This vagueness lends itself to what we now know as confirmation bias. In desperate times, soothsayers have a ready audience for their insane nonsense. It’s the meeting point of cynicism and gullibility.

When life seems chaotic and the future uncertain, people look for patterns, narratives and meaning. At moments of great change or social anxiety we do tend to go looking for explanations. We want the past and the future to make narrative sense.

Snake oil was a real product. It was a traditional Chinese medicine that was brought to the United States in the 1800s by thousands of Chinese migrants who came to the country in order to find work building the Transcontinental Railroad. They brought with them their families, their culture, and their medicines. One of these was snake oil, extracted from Chinese water snakes, and used to treat arthritis and joint pain.

As word of the healing powers of Chinese snake oil grew, many Americans wondered how they could make their own snake oil here in the United States. Because there were no Chinese water snakes in the American West, many healers began using rattlesnakes to make their own versions of snake oil.

It was Clark Stanley, the self-styled “Rattlesnake King,” who successfully capitalized upon this. Stanley traveled across the United States, dressed as a cowboy, and put on shows. In front of a crowd, he would slice open a live rattlesnake and throw it into boiling water, and when the fats of the reptile rose to the surface, he would skim the top and bottle up the oil. Throngs of people lined up at his shows to buy the stuff.

Stanley claimed that he learned about the healing power of rattlesnake oil from Hopi medicine men. In 1893 he and his rattlesnakes gained attention at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Later he went on to establish production facilities in Beverly, Massachusetts and Providence, Rhode Island.

However, there was a problem with Stanley’s product: Stanley's Snake Oil didn't contain any snake oil at all. In 1917, federal investigators seized a shipment of Stanley's Snake Oil and found that it contained primarily mineral oil, fatty oil believed to be from beef, chili peppers, turpentine, and camphor. Stanley was charged for fraudulent marketing and fined $20.

Ever since then, the term “snake oil” has been established in popular culture as a reference to any worthless concoction sold as medicine, and has been extended to describe a wide-ranging degree of fraudulent goods, services, ideas, and activities such as worthless rhetoric in politics.

As recently as five years ago, author and speaker Doreen Virtue was the world’s top-selling New Age author. She enjoyed a phenomenally lucrative lifestyle, living on a 50-acre ranch in Hawaii. Her publisher treated her like a rock star, flying her and her husband first class to give sold-out workshops across the globe. She rubbed elbows with celebrities.

Virtue described her life and teaching this way:

New Agers often view Christianity as having dogmatic rules, but they have their own rigid standards about what an “enlightened person” must and mustn’t do. During my 20 years as a New Age teacher, I promoted techniques like “positive affirmations,” believing and teaching that “your words create your reality.” We held up our wealth and fame as evidence that our principles were true and effective. Yet despite this worldly success, we were unrepentant sinners with lives marred by divorces and addictions. Having sold-out workshops, standing ovations, adoring fans, and celebrity friends gave us swollen egos. I remember believing my every thought was a message or a sign from God or his angels.

In January 2015, she was driving along a Hawaiian road while listening to the Scottish-born pastor Alistair Begg. It was a sermon called “Itching Ears” taken from 2 Timothy 4, where the Apostle Paul writes that in the end times, people will want their itching ears tickled by false teachers who offer false hope (v. 3).

I could tell he was describing people just like me. God used Begg’s sermon to convict me for the first time in my life. His words pierced my stony heart, and I felt ashamed of my false teachings. Then when I read Deuteronomy 18:10–12, I encountered a list of sinful activities that included several I was practicing, such as divination, interpreting signs and omens, and mediumship. I was broken, deeply shamed, and humbled. I dropped to my knees in shame and sorrow. “I’m so sorry, God!” I kept wailing in repentance. “I didn’t know!” On that very day I gave my life to Jesus as Lord and Savior.

The decision had far-reaching consequences. Doreen and her husband left their fancy Hawaii home. Her New Age publisher ended their professional partnership. New Agers treated her as an object of scorn.

Having to admit that I was wrong to the entire world—my books were published in 38 languages—has been deeply humbling. Even so, I needed that humility to better learn how to lean upon God. After seeking but never finding peace in New Age, I have finally found it in Christ.

LifeWay Research and Ligonier Ministries have once again examined the theological awareness, or lack thereof, of American evangelicals. This time, instead of defining “evangelical” by whether participants identify as such, they used a definition endorsed by the National Association of Evangelicals. Below are the areas where believers have most gone astray in their theology:

People have the ability to turn to God on their own initiative. 82% Agree

Individuals must contribute to their own salvation. 74% Agree

Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God. 71% Agree

God knows all that happens, but doesn’t determine all that happens. 65% Agree

The Holy Spirit is a force, not a personal being. 56% Agree

God accepts the worship of all religions, including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. 48% Agree

My good deeds help to earn my place in heaven. 39% Agree

God will always reward faith with material blessings. 37% Agree

Benny Hinn’s nephew, Costi Hinn, was confident of his relationship with the Lord. He traveled the world in a private jet and enjoying all the luxuries that money could buy. He believed he was serving Jesus Christ and as a result was enjoying the abundant life he promised. The only problem--he wasn’t preaching the true Gospel.

Costi Hinn writes:

Growing up in the Hinn family our lifestyle was lavish and our version of the gospel was big business. God’s goal was not to set us free from sin but to make us rich. We lived in a 10,000-square-foot mansion, drove two Mercedes Benz vehicles, vacationed in exotic destinations, and shopped at the most expensive stores. We were abundantly blessed.

Doubts would surface. What about unsuccessful healing attempts? I learned that it was the sick person’s fault for doubting God. Why did many of our prophecies contradict the Bible? Despite the questions, I trusted my family because we were so successful. Millions packed stadiums annually to hear my uncle. We healed the sick, performed miracles, rubbed elbows with celebrities, and got incredibly wealthy. God must be on our side!

After graduating college, I met my wife, Christyne. I had no idea that God would use her in bringing about my salvation. In fact, my family and I were nervous because she didn’t speak in tongues. We set out to fix that problem by having her attend one of Benny’s crusades, but nothing happened.

Then one day she pointed to a verse I had never seen: 1 Corinthians 12:30 (“Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues?”). I was shaken to the core. There it was plain as day—not everybody has to speak in tongues. Soon, the domino e­ffect began. Other longstanding beliefs were failing the biblical test. No longer did I believe that God’s purpose was to make me happy, healthy, and wealthy. Instead, I saw that he wanted me to live for him regardless of what I could get from him.

While struggling to strike out into ministry, I received a call from a pastor friend, offering me a part-time youth pastor position. One of my first preaching assignments was John 5:1–17—the healing at Bethesda. The passage showed that Jesus healed (only) one man out of a multitude, the man didn’t know who Jesus was, and the man was healed instantly! This left three treasured beliefs in tatters.

I wept bitterly over my participation in greedy ministry manipulation and my life of false teaching and beliefs, and I thanked God for his mercy and grace through Jesus Christ. I am thankful that my wife was willing to question my insistence on speaking in tongues and that my pastor loved me enough to disciple me out of prosperity gospel confusion.

The Puritan colonists who settled in New England in the 1630s had a nagging concern about the churches they were building: How would they ensure that the clergymen would be literate? Their answer was Harvard University, a school that was established to educate the ministry and adopted the motto “Truth for Christ and the Church.” It was named after a pastor, John Harvard, and it would be more than 70 years before the school had a president who was not a clergyman.

Nearly four centuries later, Harvard’s organization of chaplains has elected as its next president an atheist named Greg Epstein. Epstein, author of the book Good Without God, is a seemingly unusual choice for the role. Yet many Harvard students—some raised in families of faith, others never quite certain how to label their religious identities—attest to the influence that Epstein has had on their spiritual lives.

Epstein said, “There is a rising group of people who no longer identify with any religious tradition but still experience a real need for conversation and support around what it means to be a good human and live an ethical life.” He has been Harvard’s humanist chaplain since 2005, teaching students about the progressive movement that centers people’s relationships with one another instead of with God.

This reflects a broader trend of young people across the United States who increasingly identify as spiritual but religiously nonaffiliated. That trend might be especially salient at Harvard; a Harvard Crimson survey of the class of 2019 found that those students were two times more likely to identify as atheist or agnostic than 18-year-olds in the general population.

Epstein said, “We don’t look to a god for answers. We are each other’s answers.” Epstein’s community has tapped into the growing desire for meaning without faith in God. A.J. Kumar, president of a Harvard humanist graduate student group, said, “Being able to find values and rituals but not having to believe in magic, that’s a powerful thing.”

The Washington Medical Commission has suspended the license of Scott Miller of Miller Family Pediatrics. The suspension was the culmination of an investigation launched after more than a dozen complaints about Miller were filed, all having to do with his conduct regarding the COVID-19 pandemic and/or treatment thereof.

Among them were allegations that Miller prescribed medicine without seeing patients, actively interfered with patient care in hospitals, and engaged in “a hostile and threatening public campaign against hospitals and doctors.” Complainants also alleged that Miller’s use of social media was also detrimental to general medical practice because of his disdain for masks. One complainant wrote, “He talked about the stupidity of people taking the pandemic seriously, then shared a barrage of antiquated or false information regarding COVID.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Dire consequences result when people in positions of public trust act recklessly and put others at risk. Misconduct from leaders is judged more harshly because of their responsibility to do right in serving the community.

When Duke Energy officials got to the bottom of the power outage, nature was to blame. It wasn’t wind or rain, or thunder or earthquakes … or even, as is sometimes the case, human nature. Like Adam and Eve in the Garden, it started with a snake.

A snake got into the electrical equipment in a local substation, which ended up causing an electrical fire that created the outage. By 10am that morning, more than 1,400 people had lost power.

Duke Energy Spokesperson Jeff Brooks said,

This is one of the reasons we are making electric grid improvements in the region. We often think of storms and trees which are the leading cause of outages, but other items like cars hitting utility poles and snakes and squirrels getting into equipment also cause a number of outages for electric utilities. That’s why it’s so important we make these improvements to strengthen our electric grid and protect it from a variety of disruptions.

Power in the region was restored later that day.

Possible Preaching Angle:

All it takes is one agent of sin and destruction to bring dishonor and harm to many in the community. The same is true in the spiritual community. The “ancient serpent” brings havoc and harm to the entire world.

A new worship center in the former East Berlin represents the ultimate secular view of religion. It also reflects the kind of cultural future the American left envisions for the US.

The House of One, to be built on the foundation of a demolished church, will enable Christians, Jews, and Muslims to worship under one roof. Each faith will have its own sanctuary surrounding a central hall that will serve as a place of public encounter. Contractors will lay the foundation stone in May, 2021, and construction is expected to take four years.

Roland Stolte, a theologian involved in the project said, “East Berlin is a very secular place. Religious institutions have to find new language and ways to be relevant, and to make connections.” In other words, religion must conform to, not challenge, the secular ethos.

The House of One embodies the secular view of religion as secondary, if not destructive, to human identity and progress. The divinities being worshiped are not Yahweh, Jesus, or Allah but diversity, multiculturalism, and inclusion.

Maureen Mullarkey, writing from a Catholic perspective, believes the Holy See has fallen into that trap. “This is politics. It is not testimony to those matters of personal sin and redemption at the core of the Church’s reason for being. … The Church’s pope (Francis) would put a spiritual face on the aims of secular politics.”

Replacing transcendent values with political ones often brings despotism. Americans see that now in the left’s hypersensitive tyranny, embodied by cancel culture, and hostility toward conservative religious ethics. East Berliners saw it for 45 years under communist domination.

In Berlin today, the House of One also reflects capitulation to the postmodern zeitgeist (spirit of the time). As one theologian said, “This is not a club for monotheistic religions—we want others to join us.”

The Department of Justice has filed charges against a father and his three sons for their role in illegally selling industrial bleach. The bleach itself is not an illegal substance, but according to officials, the family business consisted of fraudulently marketing the toxic chemicals as a miracle cure.

According to the criminal complaint, Mark Grenon of Bradenton, Fla, along with his adult sons, repeatedly told their customers that their “Mineral Miracle Solution” could cure not only COVID-19, but also various other aliments including malaria and cancer. According to a press release from the US Attorney’s office for the Southern District of Florida, "[The] FDA has received reports of people requiring hospitalizations, developing life-threatening conditions, and dying after drinking MMS."

The DOJ alleges that the Grenons sold thousands of bottles of the fraudulent solution, netting over $1 million in the process. They are also accused of attempting to operate as a religious nonprofit entity, the “Genesis II Church of Health and Healing,” for the purpose of avoiding government scrutiny and regulations.

The Grenons are charged with conspiracy to commit fraud, and also criminal contempt, because the government previously filed a civil suit to stop the sale of their product, which they ignored. Not only did they continue selling the toxic fake cure, but they sent a letter to the judge of the civil case informing him that they had no plans to comply with the court order. They also included threats of violence if the state were to try to enforce compliance.

The FDA has warned consumers not to purchase or consume MMS, explaining that it’s the same as drinking bleach and can cause serious side effects, including severe vomiting, diarrhea, and life-threatening low blood pressure.

Possible Preaching Angle:

All kinds of people make promises of wealth, prosperity, or healing. However, you can tell who's legit in part by the outcomes of their "ministry"--are people really healed or set free? Or is it a trick? God is about wholeness and integrity, not just headlines and spectacle.

Wellness preachers are wildly popular on Instagram. The New York Times calls them “quasi-spiritual influencers” and “Instavangelists” who have replaced the televangelist. They have online followers anywhere from 900,000 to 7.5 million (Gwyneth Paltrow). They are the “neo-religious leaders of our era.” Their online followers are composed largely of Millennials, and according to the Pew Research Center, 22% are not affiliated with any specific religion. The new belief system is “a blend of left-wing political orthodoxy, intersectional feminism, self-optimization, therapy, wellness, astrology and Dolly Parton.”

The article’s author, Leigh Stein, notes what is fundamentally missing:

Left-wing secular millennials may follow politics devoutly. But the women we’ve chosen as our moral leaders aren’t challenging us to ask the fundamental questions that leaders of faith have been wrestling with for thousands of years: Why are we here? Why do we suffer? What should we believe in beyond the limits of our puny selfhood?

Stein longs for

… role models my age who are not only righteous crusaders, but also humble and merciful, and that I’m not finding them where I live (online). ... There is a chasm between the vast scope of our needs and what influencers can provide. We’re looking for guidance in the wrong places. Maybe we actually need to go to something like church? ... I have hardly prayed to God since I was a teenager, but the pandemic has cracked open inside me a profound yearning for reverence, humility and awe. I have an overdraft on my outrage account. I want moral authority from someone who isn’t shilling a memoir or calling out her enemies on social media for clout.

The NXIVM cult (pronounced Nex-ee-um), chronicled in HBO’s current docuseries The Vow, is a cult that targeted celebrities so they could recruit other celebrity friends. Their fame earned the cult more credibility and attracted new members. Actors and directors from major Hollywood productions were cleverly duped by its founder, Keith Raniere, who was recently sentenced to 120 years in prison.

Cult experts who have worked with ex-members explain the lure for famous, successful people:

Many people in that line of work think, OK, I had success with this series, and I have money, and I have name recognition. But I don't feel that I have a deeper sense of meaning. I've accomplished many of the things I hoped for regarding my career in entertainment, but what about really making a difference in the world? And Keith Raniere was selling that. He was telling people, ‘OK, you made movies. You were successful in television. But what about changing the world? What about really having an impact, not just through entertainment, but in a meaningful way?’

With the help of friends, family and cult experts, many celebrities realized that it was a destructive, abusive cult. They came to regret how they had hurt so many. One cult expert reported:

They feel terrible. When they start understanding how it works, the psychological manipulation part, they realize that it was self-perpetuating: You get hooked in, and the next thing you do is start bringing other people in and using the same manipulative techniques. And when you realize that's what's taken place, it's horrible to realize that you've messed up so many people's lives. A lot of people that I know that were in the upper echelon of it are doing everything they can to help those people they brought in.

Editor’s Note: As of 12/20/20 the NXIVM website has been taken down, and the leaders are in jail, but some followers have reorganized under different names.