“Pastor David Taylor: Jesus’s Best Friend Loves You”

0:00You may have heard of the sex cult NXIVM and the famous actress who went to prison for her involvement, Alison Mack. But she's never told her side of the story, until now. People assume that I'm like this pervert. My name is Natalie Robamed, and in my new podcast, I talk to Alison to try to understand how she went from TV actor to cult member, and what she thinks of it all now. How do you feel about having been involved in bringing sexual trauma to other people? I mean, I don't even know how to answer that question. Alison, after NXIVM from CBC's Uncover, is available now, wherever you get your podcasts.

0:42The month of August in Tampa is muggy. Intensely muggy. They say August is the month your soul is safe, because even the devil won't set foot in Florida then. And last August was no exception, as Tampa logged its third warmest since 1890. But the heat was on in another way, too, as FBI agents raided a 10-bedroom, multi-million-dollar mansion. What they found was a scene fit for MTV Cribs, or The Vow. Seven luxury sedans topped with jumbo red gift bows. Several life-size statues and pillars ready to be installed on the mansion's grounds. A collection of actual gold bars worth half a million dollars and 50-some people living on the premises.

1:38A$10 million mansion in the Avila gated community of North Hillsboro, raided by the FBI in late August. The Justice Department taking people from the mansion with their hands zip-tied. At the very same time, a website connected to the owners of the mansion was broadcasting a live stream video on a continuous loop. The banner at the bottom of the screen read, Call for Your Miracle.

2:12This is The Opportunist, an original podcast from Podcast One. You're listening to a story told in one episode called Kingdom of God Global Church. Jesus' best friend loves you. I'm Sarah James McLaughlin. In this episode, we follow the story of David E. Taylor, a 53-year-old self-described gangster turned minister. He built a persona around hardship and used it to draw people in. He had a presence. He knew how to make his message land. And he often claimed he'd had more than a hundred personal encounters with Jesus. Whether anyone believed those stories, or why he leaned on them so heavily, is where things start to get interesting.

3:21What we know about Reverend David E. Taylor's early life comes from the online videos and promotional material on his website and his YouTube channel. He says he grew up with humble beginnings in a Memphis Baptist church. As a teenager, he claims he was a drug-using gangster, A piece of his origin story he repeats to his followers constantly. I grew up in a very Christian home. My mom and dad loved God. They didn't know what I was doing out there. I was in gangs. I was smoking dope. He credits Jesus Christ for appearing to him in a dream, saving him from the streets. For the first time, I had saw this man that my mom and dad told me about.

4:12I saw his beautiful brown hair. He was in a white robe. And there was such light and glory coming off of him, hitting me, touching me, and washing whatever was in me away. Taylor claims it was in this dream world that Jesus handed him the keys to heaven. And at 19 years old, he was back on the streets. this time to evangelize.

5:11Taylor had turned his life around, and this redemption story spoke to people. Here are a few of Taylor's followers recording testimonials that were posted on TikTok and YouTube. Apostle Taylor is the realest man of God, the realest Christian I've ever met in my life. Over the past few years, I had gone through some stuff, but you know what? Apostle made sure that every need that I needed was taken care of. So hallelujah. So I just want to thank God for Apostle Taylor, the best friend of Jesus and the most amazing spiritual father on earth.

5:53Eventually, Taylor made his way to the St. Louis area. Even without a physical church, he managed to build a name for himself through a mobile ministry and a steady stream of television broadcasts.

6:23He held miracle crusades in venues around the world, dressed in Sgt. Pepper-style suits with gold buttons and braided cording across the chest. Backed by a group of female singers, he'd perform praise songs in front of packed auditoriums. Theatrical lighting washed the crowd in a deep indigo while people stood with their hands raised, cheering and singing along. He claimed to sort of have a personal, physical relationship with Jesus, like he would tell people that God was physically standing next to him. This is Ryan Krull, a journalist who has written about Taylor for St. Louis magazine. That was kind of part of his stump speech or this kind of regular preaching that he did.

7:14St. Louis has its fair share of megachurches. So at first, Taylor and his congregation didn't seem too out of the ordinary. We're in Missouri, right? We're in the Bible Belt. It's a pretty religious area. I think in general, it's a place where these kind of mega churches, these big faith-based events at places like where professional sports teams play and that sort of thing. They're not uncommon. They usually are not very high profile. Like people who are in the church are obviously very tuned in, very aware. But for the most part, they don't have much reach beyond that. But however, like if a religious convention come into town, fill the place where the football team used to play or where the hockey team plays, that's not at all uncommon in St.

7:58Louis. Taylor and his ministry were known for their larger-than-life presence. Their reputation was just kind of a charismatic religious group, or a religious group with a charismatic leader that's saying a lot of sort of wacky, but ultimately not particularly harmful things. But when he preached, he drifted into some pretty out-there territory. At one point, he even claimed that he'd raised people from the dead.

9:00Across the highway from the St. Louis airport, there used to be an eye-catching billboard of Taylor, dressed head-to-toe in white, walking through a field of empty wheelchairs and abandoned crutches. I think he said something like seven million souls healed or something like that. He was definitely someone who claimed to not only tend to people's spiritual needs, but that he could also like physically heal them in a way that to a lot of people just seemed kind of ridiculous. But obviously some people really believed it.

9:36Some people believed it. Others straight up bought into it. Because Taylor wasn't just asking people to accept Jesus into their hearts. He was building an empire on the backs of his followers. At first, it looked like the usual church outreach, like collecting donations for building wells in impoverished communities. But the money was actually going somewhere else entirely.

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11:19Within the crowded religious landscape, it took years for David E. Taylor to carve out a place for himself and his mobile ministry, now called the Kingdom of God Global Church. He built his profile through a steady stream of TV broadcast, miracle crusades in auditoriums around the world, and sales of his book, Face-to-Face Appearances from Jesus, The Ultimate intimacy. Taylor always dreamed big for his ministry. Here he is speaking in front of a church crowd. I'm telling you something. This church is going to expand. After this, this church is going to expand. I'm telling you about the Holy Ghost.

12:04Because God needs more mega houses. We think because other pastors that are whatever got a a smaller ministry than us or whatever, we think that all that is something. It's nothing. If you can have that big a church and you can't change the city,

12:27you are powerless. And it is pathetic. Taylor didn't become more well-known in a general sense, though, until the mid-2010s. He was trying to purchase the site of a decrepit mall for his church, in a northern St. Louis suburb. The long-awaited demolition of Jamestown Mall is finally finished. After more than a decade of sitting vacant, St. Louis County leaders say the site is now clear and ready for the next chapter. Here's Ryan Krull from the St. Louis Magazine again. He's saying that he wants to turn this old mall into an arena, and he did that because God came to him in a dream and said, I'm going to give you a global base.

13:12And he thought that this global base would be this old mall. Taylor submitted an architectural drawing of the vision for his global base to the St. Louis County Port Authority. The drawing outlined a religious complex complete with a convention center, an arena, and a hotel. But after some back-and-forth political squabble involving the St. Louis City Council and Port Authority, Taylor's plan fell through. So he made a new one. Since the old mall site didn't work out, Taylor started rounding up mansions for the church instead. He claimed that they provided housing for his full-time missionaries and students.

13:57At least nine properties in total became operated by his church. The majority of them were in or around St. Louis. I think St. Louis could make an argument that we were sort of the HQ of the organization. When the mansions entered the picture, people finally started getting suspicious. Some of these people I talked to who lived in the same neighborhood as these houses that were owned by the church, they would say that they would see whole families being dropped off and that kind of thing. There was definitely a steady stream of people coming in and out. Here's the owner of one of the houses previously owned by the church.

14:40I was told at the time there were about 12 to 13 people staying in this house all the time. Parties till 3, 4 a.m. And people were not, there were cops coming to this house all the time. One of the first to call Taylor out publicly was gospel recording artist Vicki Yohe. She did it in her memoir entitled, All You Have Is a Voice, Free From a Hidden Cult. Vicki met Taylor when she sang at one of his services, and they soon began a sexual relationship. It lasted over a year, she said. In a TV interview, she said she really believed he loved her at the time. But eventually, she realized he was using her to reach her large social media following.

15:31I have like$1.2 million on my Facebook page, my platform. He would have me promote his book. If I didn't promote his book every day, it was like the end of the world. Like, you know, he did not love me. He did not, because it was all about what I can do for him. Vicki claims that in a span of just three weeks after she spoke out about Taylor, over 100 women reached out to her to say they were romantically linked to him as well. I would come to his meetings and I would say, David, these women here are so beautiful. I mean, beautiful women. And he said, yeah, they are. They have a lot of nice-looking women here.

16:10But come to find out, found out that he slept with all his spiritual daughters. I wasn't the only one. When Vicki went public about her relationship with David and the manipulative tactics he used, people brushed her off. They called her a woman scorned. But then others started speaking out too, including another pastor. Sherelle Barrera started this Facebook group for victims of David E. Taylor and his second-in-command, Michelle Brannon. There's been several women that have said that he promised them cars, homes. He told several different women that they were his wife. Despite the backlash, Taylor still had the support of his mobile and mansion-based congregations to fall back on, what he called his in-time army.

17:09He also had a partner in all of this, Michelle Brannan. In a cell phone video recorded for Taylor's ministry, Brandon appears on camera with dyed blonde hair, a fresh baby pink manicure, and the phone propped behind the steering wheel of her car.

17:43set free through Apostles life and ministry and they have seen Jesus face to face because our whole ministry is based on Jesus it's based on the intimacy of Jesus of getting to know our risen Savior in a more intimate closer relationship a way that we hadn't before 56 year old Brannon the executive director of the kingdom of God global church handled the church's finances while she lived in the Tampa mansion. So she, this is what's alleged, at least, she was like the top lieutenant in the church. Less is known about her for sure, but she was involved for a long time in the church's goings-ons.

18:32I believe there's some video of her, you know, preaching, testifying, that kind of thing, but her public profile was, in general, much, much lower than Taylor's. Here's Brannon preaching about money, standing behind a podium, mic in hand, gesturing with confidence. First of all, we have a lot of people who pay their tithes, but even more so, listen, don't get clammed up whenever people talk about money. You should be excited. Anytime there's that door open, the window of heaven is open. You should be running to pay an offering and a tithe. So put your offering in and let it be sacrificial. Don't be stingy to God because he ain't stingy with us.

19:17But too many times people take that and be like, okay, that's, they earn money. I got a living. I got to pay these bills. I got to, no, you got to pay God. Brandon was skilled at pressuring people to give money to the church, but the money wasn't headed to any divine cause. It was going to Jesus's best friend funneled through his so-called miracle hotline. You remember that on-screen banner on Taylor's live streams? Call for your miracle? Odds are, many of the people answering those calls were his own followers working out of makeshift call centers inside the mansions. They would do, I guess, essentially like Facebook Live kind of thing.

20:00They broadcast on the internet, right? A lot. And it was a lot of people in these call centers who I suspect were kind of doing that work. Seekers could call in and ask for prayers, and then they'd get responses framed in Bible language. The church also offered dream interpretations from a Christian perspective. They even had a searchable online dictionary of dream symbols and their supposed biblical meanings. Here's Taylor discussing the importance of dreams. God speaks in five or more different languages. Dreams is one of them. The mission that God has given me for this dream movement is restoring mankind to hear the voice of God in their dreams today.

20:47It is time that we know the importance of dreams and what God is saying through them to preserve our life. God is speaking every day across the world to somebody in a dream. What is yours? Call in today and tell us. Though these dream interpretation services were advertised as free, there was an underlying expectation that callers would pay by making a donation to the church. Since 2014, Taylor's ministry has raked in close to$50 million. Here's one self-described laborer explaining what she learned from Taylor. He gives us such deep revelation and really breaks down the Bible and to give us understanding to be rapture ready, which is where we're at now in this world, to be rapture ready.

21:37We get true understanding of the scriptures. Amen. And so that way you can relay those to the people that you're talking to. So they can also be rapture ready for when God is coming back. Our food is free. Our housing is free. Our tuition is free. and all we have to do is just love the Lord and be able to go out and reach other souls. And the minds of the laborers working inside the call centers was doing the Lord's work. The law, though, would say otherwise. They were bringing in a ton of money and it would seem to be on the backs of these people who are working these call centers. Whether or not it was actually on the phone talking to people or DMs, it's not totally spelled out, but it probably ultimately doesn't matter.

22:25It's the same kind of system.

22:29So where did the money from the call centers go? Not toward building wells in poor parts of the world, as the church leaders claimed, nor to Taylor's personal servants or those he called armor bearers. Those armor bearers waited on him constantly. They even transported women to him from ministries and airports. and afterward made sure those women took plan B. And it definitely didn't go to the people working those call centers. They were putting in long hours with no pay at all because that's what Taylor ordered. So they were definitely sort of raising money under false pretenses, allegedly, according to the government.

23:16And that was kind of the M.O. of the operation where they would cold call people, send messages and that kind of thing, and solicit donations for these charitable causes. If call center workers didn't hit Taylor's daily donation quotas, they were punished, enduring public humiliation, forced sleep deprivation, restricted food, and even threats of eternal damnation. It seems pretty hellish according to the indictment. I mean, people were working like 20 hours a day. And in some cases, Taylor would send out messages saying like, hey, we need to raise whatever it is, 33 grand by midnight or no one's going to sleep until we raise this amount.

24:01So it was really just like a kind of pressure cooker in the worst way. If a laborer's family questioned Taylor or the church's morality, Taylor and Brannon demanded that the laborer cut ties. These were all cult tactics. He will say something like, in all caps, judgment, these numbers are bad, you know, referring to the amount of money coming in. Seven of the top closers need to go into the garage in Tampa now, all exclamation mark. I want food taken away. Michelle, deal out consequences to all the closers that are not bringing in their amount. And then there's another one where he says, from the apostle, warning, tent and garage judgment starting tonight for seven days.

24:47if after 7 to 14 days there is no change. It's the public shelter for one solid month, meaning that he was going to send, allegedly, these folks to live in a homeless shelter. They would be kicked out of the house if they didn't bring in the amount of money he wanted. Instead of funding charitable work, the millions from the call centers went towards luxury cars, ATVs, jet skis, and a boat. More than$10 ,000 went toward 100 pounds of crab legs. A lot of it was just going to line these two people's pockets. Taylor's and Brannon's pockets, that is. Many of the call center laborers were sleeping on the floor of a single room and sharing one bathroom.

25:36They could only leave the property if Taylor or Brannon gave permission. And while Brannon did live in the Tampa mansion, her setup was far from ascetic. She had her own suite, with a large TV, workout equipment, walk-in closets, a fridge, a microwave, a workspace, and an attached bathroom. A bathroom with four vanities and two showers. When the FBI raided the Tampa mansion last August, it probably blindsided everyone involved. But Ryan says that federal cases like this often take years to play out. Not to be glib, but there was like a lot of smoke around this guy. So whenever I wrote about him, even three years ago, I'd have people who clearly like had Google alerts out for him contact me immediately.

26:33and just sort of put all this information on my radar. We don't know all the circumstances of how the call center was finally exposed. I don't think there was any shortage of potential ways that he could have gotten on the government's radar.

26:57When Reverend David E. Taylor's plan to turn an abandoned mall into his global ministry headquarters fell through, he had to rethink how to expand his reach. And his new idea? Using mansions as ministry houses. On the outside, the mansions looked like a modern-day castle. In fact, the Tampa one was beside a golf course and country club, and complete with its own private saltwater pool. But inside, the ministry's laborers were living in terrible conditions under Taylor's and Brannon's endless demands. The Tampa mansion wasn't the only one raided last August. other properties tied to the Kingdom of God Global Church were hit as well.

27:48The raids were part of a national takedown of the Self-Identified Religious Leaders Organization. They resulted in the arrest of both Taylor and his executive director, Michelle Brannon, with a 10-count indictment against them.

28:06Last fall, Taylor pled not guilty to the charges, but a judge still denied him bond. The courtroom was reportedly packed wall to wall with his followers, with a crowd gathered outside, too. Dozens of supporters lining up outside the federal courthouse in protest after self-proclaimed apostle David E. Taylor was denied bond, wearing shirts that read, I am not a victim, free David Taylor, holding signs with phrases like, we are a church, not a cult, and chanting the same message. Free Apostles now! Free Apostles now! Brannon, at least for now, got off a little easier. She was granted a$10 ,000 conditional bond and ordered to have no contact with Taylor or anyone tied to the church.