Summary
This is a bit of a long post, but it is in relation to a pretty serious situation that has come to the attention of some members of the community, and I feel people need to be made aware about what is going on to avoid more people getting hurt by this organization/ cult. Before I get started, I should preface with the following notice, as well as stating that this post is not affiliated with the MMC website and this investigation was done independently by myself based on the information gathered by Farrel McGuire:
This post is not made with the intention to start drama or a "witch hunt." I do not condone doxxing. Please read it in its entirety before making assumptions, and do not go after/ harass people. This post is simply to bring awareness to a particular group, and caution members in their dealings with them. I will only mention the names of the people who are directly leaders of the organization so people are aware of who they are and can avoid them if needed, as they are directly responsible for emotionally and psychologically hurting people. Most of this information has already been made public through various articles and documentaries. This is just to make the MC community aware of what’s going on as it has been flying under the radar for at least 3 years now.
With that out of the way, I should probably introduce myself so I don't sound like a rando madman raving from the rooftops. I'm Tempest, a modpack developer that has been active in the MC community for a few years now and that has participated in various projects during that time. You can view my CF profile and Github page if you want. I am not a person to ignore bad actors when they arise, as I believe it is our responsibility as a community to keep each other informed to stay safe, and I believe being complacent is being complicit. We do this when vulnerabilities are discovered and malware attacks on the MC community happen, and the information net it creates helps to protect users. I intend to do something similar here. People need to be made aware if a member of the community is acting in bad faith and may cause harm to others, which I believe these people are given the evidence available.
Twin Flames Universe & The Church Of Union
I have recently learned of an organization by the name of Twin Flames Universe, a self help group run by Jeff Divine, who also founded the aforementioned non profit church which encompasses this group (surprise, it’s for profit). Twin Flames Universe, Divine Gaming, and other affiliated groups have all been placed under the TCOU umbrella, likely for religious organization tax cuts. Through a documentary recently released on Netflix by the name of Escaping Twin Flames, this video that has also investigated the issue, and several articles online, I have learned that this organization is a for profit group that takes advantage of people who are in an emotionally vulnerable point in their lives and practices abusive behavior to exploit them. They are, by all definitions of the word, a cult. This actually isn't the first time they have been outed, with the first mention of them I could find being in 2020 by the journalist Alice Hines on Vanity Fair, and the earliest mention I could find on Discord being in 2021 in the server MCDrama. But it seems to have flown under the radar in the MC community, and the public at large until recent months.
So what exactly is this organization? I won't go into too much detail here as the aforementioned documentary and video I linked above explains it better than I ever could, but to summarize: They are a self help group that markets spiritualism and the idea of "twin flames," which is the belief of there being soulmates and the pursuit of finding said soulmate, using manipulative and abusive tactics and selling their service at a steep premium (up to tens of thousands of dollars). There is a Wikipedia page on them as well.
NightmareCraft & Divine Gaming
You may be wondering what this has to do with the Minecraft modpack and studio of the above name. I recommend watching the above video for context on what follows.
As a member of some projects associated with NightmareCraft, I investigated the matter to figure out what was going on, and if the claims made in the video were true. If so, I needed to figure out how deep the involvement of the Divine Gaming studio was, and what their intentions were. It was clear at this point that the owners of NightmareCraft, who go by Nayna and Lau on the Discord server, are members of the Church Of Union organization, and held rather high positions as one of their "life coaches."
What the video above doesn’t mention, is that the majority of their team/ admins are also members of the Church Of Union. I did some digging and found that nearly every one of their admins (those by the user names of Jose Sanchez, Nayna, Lau, Master Ender, Chrissy Emerick, and several others. Some users were redacted to respect their privacy as they are not in a leadership position within the organization, and thus their names are not easily viewable to the public) were part of the Facebook group for The Church Of Union, and have made several posts for it. You can see the imgur album linked at the bottom of this post for proof. So, Divine Gaming is run by members of the cult, and is funded by the Church Of Union just as the video states. For those that don’t know, NightmareCraft has allegedly received a total funding of roughly $500,000 dollars over its development from the Church Of Union, and includes numerous references to this cult, its leader, etc. At this point, my goal was to figure out what their purpose was, because no for-profit company drops half a million dollars on a project like this without a hope for a return on investment.
I joined their Discord and questioned their dev team. Considering that the Youtuber in the above video was banned for mentioning the church, I opted to talk to the dev members who didn’t seem to be affiliated first. As I suspected, they knew nothing about what was going on, and didn’t have much useful info as a result. I have thus excluded the screenshots of my conversations with them to respect their privacy. Next, I contacted one of the NightmareCraft owners, Nayna. You can see the full conversation in the imgur album. She repeatedly deflected some of my questions and eventually directed me to speak with their lead dev and founder; Master Ender. Instead of messaging them directly, I pinged them in their “ask the devs” channel in the NightmareCraft discord and mentioned the church to gauge their reaction. My message was deleted within 3 minutes of posting it and I received a DM shortly after from Master Ender. Low and behold, Master Ender turned out to be Jeff Divine himself: Founder of Twin Flames Universe and The Church Of Union.
I questioned them as to why they had made attempts to hide their affiliation and what the purpose of Divine Gaming was, which he again deflected. It is a trademark behavior for cult leaders to be manipulative, friendly, and gaslight people; which is exactly what he did. As the video by Farrel McGuirre suggested, I was suspicious at this point of a cult investing half a million dollars on a project like this without a return on investment, and suspected they had other plans for the future to bring in revenue. The revenue from Curseforge download points would only cover a fraction of it.
And so that leads me to the reason for this post. All evidence I have gathered points towards Divine Gaming being a platform from which to recruit more members for this cult through subliminal messaging and grooming. Currently the only direct link to The Church Of Union is through the project’s Patreon page, who’s highest tier includes a link to DivineDish and a request to gather info from the user after subscribing. DivineDish is a meal plan site affiliated with the organization. You can view McGuirre’s video on the purpose of this site, it’s a little disturbing if what he claims is accurate, but it acts as a funnel towards The Church Of Union as a subscription to its service includes coaching with one of the church’s members. The Divine Gaming group does not openly post about the cult due to the recent backlash and bad publicity that articles and documentaries have brought to them, but I believe this is only the beginning. Should things die down and nobody takes notice, there are numerous methods the organization can use to further spread their propaganda, including partnerships, advertisements, not so subtle links such as those found on their Patreon page, subliminal messaging such as that already found in their mod/modpack, and more. The fact that they have kept this secret from their own dev team and actively suppress the connection on their server speaks volumes. The disturbing part of all of this is that they are targeting the MC community, which is predominately made up of children and young adults. If you know anything about cults, you’ll know they love indoctrination through subtle means. And children are nothing if not impressionable.
Final Comments
The community has the right to know who these people really are. If you haven’t already, go and watch the video, or even the Netflix documentary. Take a gander at the Wikipedia page. Some people may not think it is that big of a deal, but these things very quickly get out of hand if ignored. We’re talking about an organization that is likely worth millions of dollars (if their claims on the cost of NightmareCraft are accurate) hiding inside the Minecraft community, known for abusive and manipulative practices, interacting with kids on a daily basis. I am not saying not to play NightmareCraft, as I will admit it is one of the highest quality adventure maps I have ever seen, and I doubt the CF points from its downloads would contribute much to their organization compared to the massive investment made in it. But I do want to caution people in dealings with this group. And I personally do not think children should be playing it or joining the Discord server. Below is a link to an imgur album where I have compiled screenshots of my conversations with the Church Of Union members, proof of connections, their affiliated organization, etc.
A reminder before people potentially go ham with this information. Members of a cult, even those in leadership positions, are often manipulated into perpetuating the content that was taught to them. Please respect the people mentioned in this post and do not doxx them or engage in other potentially illegal activity, as many of them may be victims themselves.
Except the founder Jeff Divine. You deserve no respect.
by Tempest051