How Do People Become This Evil? The Twisted Faith of the Kingdom of God Global Church

When I read the Miami Herald article about the FBI raid on a Florida mansion connected to the Kingdom of God Global Church, I sat there stunned. Fifty-seven people—fifty-seven—were rescued from forced labor inside a mansion owned by a man calling himself an “Apostle” and his so-called “executive director.” According to federal officials, David Taylor and Michelle Brannon ran a decade-long operation that looked a lot more like human trafficking than holy work. They allegedly built an empire of call centers across multiple states—Michigan, Texas, Florida, and Missouri—forcing followers to work long hours with no pay while collecting millions in “donations.”

The FBI found that while Brannon lived in luxury—seven Mercedes, two Bentleys, gold bars, and life-sized stone statues decorating her Tampa estate—her followers were crammed into tiny, makeshift rooms, forbidden to leave without permission. These weren’t parishioners. They were victims. And all of it, the government says, was done in the name of God.

It’s hard to know which part makes me sicker—the exploitation, or the audacity of pretending it was holy. Taylor reportedly told people he’d had “face-to-face meetings with God” and was “Jesus’ best friend.” Because of course he did. He controlled every aspect of his followers’ lives, right down to when they could sleep, where they could go, and how much money they could raise. When they didn’t meet his ridiculous donation goals, he punished them with humiliation, exhaustion, and threats of “divine judgment.” Imagine being told that if you don’t meet your fundraising quota, God will strike you down with illness or eternal damnation. That’s not faith. That’s psychological warfare wrapped in scripture.

I’ll never understand how people can become this evil—or how others can fall under their spell. But I do understand fear. When you’re scared, sick, desperate, or searching for meaning, it’s easy to cling to anyone who promises answers. These predators know that. They weaponize hope. They twist trust into obedience and call it devotion. The victims probably thought they were serving God. Instead, they were serving a man who saw divinity as a brand and salvation as a business.

As someone who’s lived most of his adult life with sarcoidosis and heart failure, I know something about faith. Mine isn’t loud or performative—it’s quiet, tired, and deeply personal. It’s what keeps me breathing on the days my lungs don’t cooperate. Faith, real faith, doesn’t demand you hand over your freedom or your paycheck. It doesn’t demand you worship a man in a tailored suit who drives a Bentley and sleeps on gold bars. Faith doesn’t trap you—it frees you.

But every time I read stories like this, I’m reminded how easy it is for evil to dress itself up in designer shoes and a holy smile. The FBI described a house full of luxury cars, imported statues, and piles of cash, all funded by unpaid labor and fear. I can’t decide what’s worse—the cruelty or the hypocrisy. If there’s one thing we humans seem to excel at, it’s finding creative ways to justify greed in God’s name.

And yet, I still find myself asking: how do people keep falling for this? Maybe it’s because questioning feels unsafe. Maybe doubt feels like betrayal when you’ve built your whole identity around belief. Maybe we’d rather hand over our moral compass than admit we were lost. But silence and blind faith feed the monster. Every time we excuse or ignore this kind of abuse, it grows bolder.

I hope Taylor and Brannon rot in prison. And I hope their victims, after years of manipulation and control, finally get to live free—truly free—for the first time in years. What happened inside that mansion isn’t just the story of two con artists in designer clothes; it’s a mirror reflecting something rotten in us as a society. We crave belonging so badly that we sometimes mistake control for comfort, authority for truth, and charisma for holiness.

Maybe that’s what I’m struggling with most—the realization that evil isn’t always loud or obvious. Sometimes it’s dressed in Sunday best, smiling from behind a pulpit, speaking in tongues about love while quietly taking everything from you.

Faith, the real kind, should never break you. It should lift you up, steady you, and remind you that love—divine or otherwise—doesn’t require submission. It requires compassion.

What do you think drives people to follow figures like this? Fear? Hope? Desperation? I’d love to hear your thoughts—drop them in the comments, or subscribe to stay part of the conversation. Because if we’ve learned anything from stories like this, it’s that silence only helps the people who profit from it.