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Thank you.

It's a heck of a subject.

Okay.

You know, my grandmother was really like my best friend. And when she was 82 and she was living in a nursing home, a bizarre kind of radical religious group infiltrated the paid staff of the nursing home to target the elderly. And my grandmother was confronted. And she told me about it.

She was very upset that this woman who was a paid aide on the staff had tried to recruit her into this religious organization. And I became an activist. I became an anti-cult activist, community organizer back in the early 80s. And it grew out of my concern that groups were targeting the elderly.

And then I would later find out targeting prisoners, literally a captive audience, and also going after minor children without parental notification or consent. So what began for me as a personal interest because of my grandmother grew into... life's work, and here I am 40-some years later. But it all started with my grandmother. What was the What was the cult that was after your grandmother?

It was a fringe group that targeted Jews. My grandmother lived in a Jewish nursing home, and this group felt that it was their mission to convert Jews to their group, which they identified as supposedly Hebrew Christians. But in fact, the leader was an ordained Pentecostal minister, and the group was called the Jewish Voice Broadcast. I think they still exist, though under different leaders.

At the time my grandmother was confronted, the leader was a man by the name of Lewis Kaplan. who had been raised as a Jew, but had converted to Pentecostalism, and he felt that it was his mission to convert other Jews. And you know, I have no problem, Sean, with people preaching what they believe. I may not agree with it, that's fine. My issue is do not covertly

enter into a nursing home staff with a hidden agenda. If you want to share your faith with people in the nursing home, come in the front door and say, hey, I'm going to do a Bible study. Would you post this on your bulletin board? And maybe some of your residents would like to participate. That I have no problem with. What I have a problem with is deceptive,

covert type of activities like the one that I dealt with with my grandmother. It's sneaky. It's very sneaky.

Well, if you get involved with a group and the group is obsessed with a leader and that leader has no accountability and that leader seems to be an object of worship, that would be a red flag. Another red flag would be, is this group do they encourage people to become socially isolated?

That is, when you become involved with a group, they're kind of dissing your old friends and your family, and they're encouraging you to make your life totally within this new social environment. That type of environment control, that type of social isolation would be another warning sign. And is the leader open to criticism? Is the group open to criticism?