"My father started the organization in 1958 and my mother went to a few meetings and well, the rest is history." While his mother and father proclaimed a direct line of communication with God and later founded the Church Universal and Triumphant, Sean Prophet has taken a radically different route. "I am an atheist."

He says his doubts were substantiated by a stunning revelation from his mother when she admitted regret to him for abusing the power she held over followers.

"It was shocking because I didn't think she would admit that. It was a shocking and towering admission in my mind and basically said to me she had made a lot of this up. There was compassion and anger. People got married, had children, drained bank accounts, emigrated, immigrated, went to school and did any number of things based on her recommendations. I think it destroyed a lot of people's lives. I always thought that may have been the case but to hear her admit it was another thing altogether."

Today, Sean Prophet says he has many friends still in the church and he isn't trying to tear them down, but to free them from what he calls a belief system with a faulty foundation.

"I grew up with these people and I love them. And it's a hard decision to come from. It's hard to see people who have been there 30, 40 years and have nowhere to go."

Another quest for Sean Prophet: unraveling how things escalated during the nuclear shelter cycle. "It goes back to this question: how do you convince well-educated people to do something that is so unconventional and seemingly contradictory to common sense and logic."

He's interviewed dozens of ex-members in pursuit of finding an answer and is planning to combine those interviews with home video he's shot over the years to create a documentary film. He expects it will be released in 2 to 3 years.

In the mean time, the church boasts of rapidly increasing tithing, expanding construction efforts and record book sales worldwide. It's a troublesome prospect to the first son of CUT.

Prophet says, "To think of people hundreds of years from now following this stuff as scripture scares me. Because it's made up."

Coming up on Thursday, The Church Universal and Triumphant will share it’s side of the story with a closer look at their belief system in the final installment of our series "A Question of Faith."