Is this verification more possible nowadays, or less possible?
If some charismatic person claims that God spoke to him/her, how can this be verified or debunked?
The thing about Wiccans (and many other neopagans sects) is that by and large, each and every one has had some sort of Divine Revelation, or thinks s/he has. It’s a group of people who believe that they have the power and ability to talk to and hear the Divine each individually, themselves, without the need for a central authority or Priest/ess to intervene on their behalf, explain old texts or tell them what God/dess wants of them. (In fact, it’s considered pretty damn rude and presumptuous to tell someone what God/dess wants of them, unless they’ve asked you for such intervention.)
Priest/esses are often teachers and lead group workings, and are often leaders in a practical sense (scheduling, planning, setting up, cleaning up, fundraising, etc.), but they’re not needed to interpret Divine messages. You can do that yourself. Use a pendulum, cast herbs, interpret smoke trails, lay Tarot cards…we have many, many ways of receiving direct Divine wisdom. Sometimes it’s confirmation of what you thought/believed already, and sometimes it is indeed traumatic and life-changing.
So it’s not that Wicca lacks claims of Divine Revelation…it’s that we have far too many of them to centralize! 
I would pick Bill Nye for spokesperson and beatify Richard Feynman.
It’s tricky to rule out a religion just because it’s an offshoot of another religion. In fact, most religions seem to be, and the ones that don’t seem it, it’s probably just because we’ve forgotten the religions they’ve shot off from. Christianity, for instance, certainly originated as an offshoot of Judaism (with some influence from Mithraism and Zoroastrianism), but it’s generally considered a completely separate religion nowadays.
L. Ron Hubbard, not Heinlein. And yes, it was widely reported that in the late 40s, Hubbard told some people that if you really wanted to make it big, you should found a religion. Then he had a long “fact” article in John Campbell’s Astounding (later Analog) Science Fiction magazine on Dianetics. I don’t know if Scientologists actually use that term, but I do know that it is the basis of Scientology. I read the original when it first came out in, IIRC 1951. I was a regular reader of SF (still am, obviously). The basic idea was that all our problems stem from our memories of trauma. If you could trace those trauma, analyze them, “clear” them, why all our neuroses would vanish. And these traumas start in the womb; in fact, I think the actual fusion of egg and sperm was the first one. Obviously we don’t remember the early ones and it requires special methods to clear them. That’s where Scientology comes in. I’d best stop here before I get into IMHO territory.
Another recent faith is the Nation of Islam which was founded in 1930 by Wallace Fard Muhammad. I was reminded of it by the mention of dianetics, which the NOI is now promoting. It’ll be interesting to see if the Church of Scientology and the Nation of Islam manage to pull off the first cult merger.
How about these, for starters:
The Watchtower does not consist of men’s opinions.
The Watchtower, January 1, 1942, p. 5
Jehovah had a work for them to do… He put his “words,” his message, into the mouth of his servants for them to proclaim earth wide.
Survival Into a New Earth (1984), p. 109
You will be interested to learn that God has on earth a people, all of whom are prophets, or witnesses for God. In fact, they are known throughout the world as Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Awake! June 8, 1986, p. 9
I knew several people who were into this in the mid-80’s and later, although some also claimed to be devout catholics at the same time.
Oooommmmmmm…
It had its own founder (Lenin), its own “theology” (dialectical materialism and the golden age to come), its clergy (political officers, ministry of information), and its own enforcement (KGB). The religious rites were also interesting-big parades, huge posters of the Communist “saints”, mandatory “re-education” for dissenters, and mental hospitals for those who refused conversion.
Happy Science, a movement well-known within Japan but little outside, was founded by a man with quite the claim to fame.
You will note that yes, he is claiming to be of Greek mythology in a past life. It is a bizarre religion where the founder is thought to be a savior of the world. Really weird revelations. It was founded in the mid 1980s, so it’s pretty new.
They have a claimed membership of several million. They have a political party which received 450,000 votes in a recent election, so they could be close to or over the million mark.
My exwife was an adherent, and yes, that’s a major reason she’s an ex. Thanks for asking.
Having a few elderly JW in the “second tier” of our family, I can attest that they are totalitarian in their expectation of faith… something I find wholly delusional.
While JW believe that a certain 144,000 “elders” will go to heaven and the remaining “loyal witnesses” will live with peace on Earth, they do indeed maintain that you are either with them or you will not be saved. But to think that the no other person of any religion - regardless of their actions as a human - can have their “paradise”. That is arrogance of the highest order.
Interestingly, they do not believe in Hell, lake of fire, etc… just that you will die and rot… which ironically for as much of a cult as I think the “religion” is, we do agree on that aspect!
But, seriously, I think the Happy beat the Raelians for the WTF crown, and that’s saying a lot.