#2325: David E. Taylor

David E. Taylor is a faith healer who claims that Jesus himself has appointed him to be America’s Moses, in order to help bring the country “deliverance from murder (abortion), drugs, alcohol, homosexuality, lesbianism, gambling, murder/homicides, corruption, and wicked government.” The appointment was apparently confirmed by God’s appearance in a cloud in Canada; indeed, “there are witnesses who can attest to this Face to Face Appearance of the Lord in Canada.” We are sure there are. 

From the cloud, God told Taylor that the US is chosen “to be His representative in the Earth like as was Israel,” and that Taylor was to lead it – the background idea being that “after every 400 years in certain dispensations and generations the Lord God makes a notable appearance by coming down on Earth from Heaven to that nation in that generation for the World” (like Israel ostensibly were in bondage for, well, over 400 years) and “now in your day America has entered her 400th year.” The veracity of the request was apparently proven by the fact that Taylor, at the time (2006), didn’t know that America’s first settlement at Jamestown was established in 1607. “Wow!!”, says Taylor’s promotional materials. 

The cloud incident wasn’t Taylor’s first chat with God. Now, a central theme of the New Apostolic Reformation is that God is directly communicating with newly appointed apostles (in which case He seems to be lying to them with startling systematicity), and Taylor’s official biography states that “[s]ince 1989 from the time that he was 17 years old, he has been granted well over 1000 face-to-face visitation appearances from Jesus Christ personally.”

And Taylor is not a nobody on the fanatic fringe of the religious right. In 2011, for instance, he was Lou Engle’s cohost for The Call: Detroit, which was arranged for the purpose of converting Muslims to Christianity and ‘free’ gays from homosexuality. He is currently head of his own multimillion prosperity church Joshua Media Ministries. Here is a video of Taylor receiving a yacht on his “Miracle crusade against cancer” campaign – yes, he claims to be able to cure cancer, but you need faith (and he needs a yacht), so if your cancer isn’t cured your faith was probably not strong enough; apparently Jesus himself told Taylor to “attack cancer and when thousands begin to see cancer fall, faith will arise again, and other sicknesses will fall!” In 2016 he predictable ended up in some trouble for his almost astonishing – even for a prosperity gospel preacher – level of spineless grifting and greed. After the deposition for his handling of the church’s money in 2016, Taylor once again received some attention in 2019 for having turned his ministries into “a slave labor cult”.

Taylor has written a large number of books, a recurring topic being how to recognize prophecies and God’s messages when decoding your dreams.

Diagnosis: Primarily a grifting piece of pond scum, but he does, indeed, seem to be genuinely delusional on top. His whole existence is a sad tragedy for us all.