A Kenyan High Court in Mombasa sentenced cult leader Paul Mackenzie to 200 years in prison on Friday, Nov. 6, for the deaths of 191 people in the Shakahola forest in Kilifi County. Most of the dead were children.
The judge imposed 100 years on each count of starvation-related murder, and a further term on the separate homicide counts, with the sentences running together. Prosecutors had asked for the death penalty. The judge declined, saying capital punishment is discretionary and reserved for the most exceptional cases. She named retribution, denunciation and deterrence as the purposes of the sentence, given the scale of the crimes and the suffering of the families.
Mackenzie was convicted on Oct. 19. Twenty-eight others were convicted with him, and they were sentenced Friday to various prison terms. Prosecutors allege that he told followers to fast until they died so they could meet Jesus, and that children were among those starved. Investigators dug up graves across the forest. The case is now counted among the worst mass killings tied to a religious movement in Kenya's history.
Two hundred years is a sentence no man can serve. It is the court's way of saying that some wrongs cannot be measured out in years. Kenyan authorities have said the work of identifying the dead and returning them to their families has been slow and painful.
The wolf comes dressed as a shepherd
I will not dress this up, my friend. A man stood before trusting people and used the name of Jesus Christ to lead them into the woods to die. Parents gave up their children. They did it because someone with a Bible in his hand told them it was holy.
The Lord saw this day coming and warned us about it plainly.
"Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves." (Matthew 7:15)
Notice the wording. The wolves come in sheep's clothing. They carry the right vocabulary and often a Bible. A preacher's confidence does not prove he is right, and neither does a crowd. The test is what the Word of God says, and what the fruit of the man's life shows.
Now look at what the Shakahola preaching taught. It said that death is the door to God and that starving yourself earns your way in. The gospel says the opposite. Christ did not ask His people to starve themselves into heaven. He gave His own body at Calvary so that nobody would have to earn it. Salvation is a gift, finished at the cross, and no fast or sacrifice of ours adds to it.
"The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." (John 10:10)
Any teaching that ends with graves is the thief's work, whatever name it uses. Christ came to give life. Life is His to give, from the womb to the last natural breath, and no teacher has the right to spend it for him. That is why this nation and every nation must guard the weak and the small, the child most of all. These children had no voice in the forest, and the court has now spoken for them.
Justice has been done in a Kenyan courtroom, and that is right. Honor the judge for holding a man to account. But hear the lesson for your own house. Open your Bible. Read it for yourself. Put every preacher, however gifted, under the Book and never over it. Be a Berean in your own pew.
And for the families of Shakahola, the Lord has not forgotten their children. He said, "Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God." That is His word, and it is sure.