Children of God

While David Berg placed a strong emphasis on the reverse of what Applewhite did, he placed tremendous weight on sexual purity. Not that he adopted that as the first goal statement when he founded his commune in 1968 at Huntington Beach, California. It was a self-isolating cult that claimed to be closer to Jesus Christ's original spirit during the first ten years of its existence by rejecting traditionalist ideals; Christ was so anti-establishment that the Pharisees persuaded the Romans to have him put to death. However, even the most extreme application of Christ's teachings would find it impossible to defend the 1978 activity Berg, who lived in continuous isolation, referred to as "flirty fishing."

It was basically prostitution-level free love used as a recruitment strategy. Berg defended it by using 1 Corinthians 6:20, which states that although God owns our bodies, using them to advance the faith is still righteous. It was so prosperous that it increased the cult's membership to 14,000 at its peak and led to estimates of 223,000 services being rendered through it. It supposedly also contributed significantly to child abuse.

By the time the AIDS crisis hit in 1987, prostitution for God had all but disappeared. The end of the world, according to Berg, would occur in 1993. He himself, though, stopped in 1994. The cult shrank down into the much smaller Family International after losing its main figure.