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The split would lead him eventually to a much larger destiny, in a compound just outside Waco that he called Ranch Apocalypse. Howell was formally "disfellowshiped" from the Tyler congregation in April 1983, a formal rejection by the church. When it happened again on the very next Sabbath, the deacons confronted Howell and told him, "We would like for you to leave, and if you're not willing to leave on your own, if we have to carry you out, we will," Tapp said. One Sabbath, Howell forced a showdown, striding to the pulpit and launching into a long-winded Scriptural harangue. He confronted church leaders again and again, arguing over everything from whether the church should buy a new organ to how Scripture should be interpreted.

The church grew increasingly wary of Howell, whose intensity was as unsettling as his hold over the young. I said you can call it anything you want, but what you are doing is wrong. "His response to me was that she was already his wife in a Biblical sense. After Howell insisted that God had given him the girl, church deacon Hardy Tapp said he confronted him about the situation. When Howell was 20, he tried to use the Bible to justify a romantic relationship with the 15-year-old daughter of a prominent church member. Demanding of attention, he used the Bible to justify his sexual appetite and he had a worrisome ability to hold the church members' children in thrall. But soon he proved resentful of the church's authority. His name was Vernon Howell, and when he first arrived in 1979 he seemed genuinely hungry for spiritual guidance.

In the beginning, the members of the Seventh-Day Adventist congregation in Tyler, Tex., were intrigued by the handsome young man who returned to the faith after years of straying wildly from its strict moral code.