A prosecution witness on Tuesday painted a chilling picture of how controversial preacher Paul Mackenzie allegedly twisted scripture to lure his followers into a deadly fast.
Testifying before Shanzu Law Courts Principal Magistrate Leah Juma, the witness recounted how Mackenzie repeatedly cited a passage from the Book of Revelation, chapter 13, verse 11, about a pregnant woman hidden in the wilderness for 1,260 days to escape a seven-headed dragon.
According to the witness, Mackenzie gave the ancient text a dangerous, self-serving meaning.
In his sermons, the preacher is said to have taught that the seven-headed dragon represented Satan and his agents, whom he called wamataifa, worldly powers.
The pregnant woman, he claimed, symbolized his church and its faithful, the wateule or chosen ones.
The child in the vision stood for their faith, while the wilderness was none other than the remote Shakahola forest in Kilifi County, where Mackenzie’s followers retreated after he shut down his Furunzi church.
The witness explained that Mackenzie interpreted the 1,260 days mentioned in Revelation as three and a half years, a prophetic countdown to the rapture.
As the supposed deadline approached, followers were urged to fast to “beat the clock,” from the date their sojourn to jangwani (Shakahola) begun in 2020 believing the world’s end was imminent. Another pastor, identified only as George, allegedly reinforced Mackenzie’s apocalyptic teachings.
During an earlier application in 2023 to extend the suspects’ detention, Assistant Director of Public Prosecutions Jami Yamina Submitted to the court that the suspects in police custody and the rest at the Sajahanad rescue center, Kilifi, were not engaged in a genuine hunger strike to vindicate their rights but that it was a fasting in disguise to meet the deadline to heaven.
All were thereafter transferred to prison custody under orders to facilitate force feeding and treatment to save their lives. Tuesday’s testimony, Yamina noted, “appears to confirm that the followers were racing against the 1,260-day countdown.”
The court also heard from another witness, identified as E.I., who recalled how his own father pressured him to join the fast, warning that his peers were “already with God” while he was wasting time, risking damnation in “babeli,” where Satan would rejoice at recruiting him.
E.I. added that Mackenzie eventually turned to intimidation, threatening to “force people to heaven through blows and kicks” if they resisted his directives.
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