Kenyan Cult Leader Who Told Parents to Starve Their Children Is Convicted of 191 Murders. Scripture Named His Lie Long Ago.

The facts come first below. My reflection follows in the section marked as opinion.

A Kenyan court on Monday found self-proclaimed pastor Paul Mackenzie guilty of murdering 191 people, all but one of them children. He had ordered his followers to starve their children so they could "meet Jesus," the BBC reported.

Twenty-eight other leaders of his group were convicted alongside him. Delivering an eight-hour judgment in the port city of Mombasa, the judge said Mackenzie's followers believed he was "Jesus's mouthpiece." Sentencing is set for Nov. 6. Kenya's Capital FM reported that the victims included 190 children, and that the court rejected the defense claim that they "voluntarily fasted to death."

What happened in Shakahola

Mackenzie founded Good News International Ministries in 2003 and broadcast his sermons from Malindi on his own television station. According to the BBC, his "End Days" preaching called education "evil," described healthcare as "against the doctrine" and called digital ID cards "the mark of the devil." The main church closed in 2019, and he moved his followers into Shakahola forest near the Kenyan coast.

Prosecutors said he "initiated and directed" extreme fasting on an 800-acre ranch there, Al Jazeera reported. They described a "structured hierarchy of death" in which children were to die first, then teenagers, then women, then men. Burials in the forest were called "weddings," and the dead "were celebrated as having wedded with Jesus," the judge said, according to the BBC.

Mackenzie was arrested in 2023 after more than 400 bodies were found in shallow graves in the forest. Al Jazeera reported that he had been arrested twice before and released. Capital FM noted that Kenya's national human rights commission documented 448 deaths in a 2024 report. The commission also faulted state agencies for ignoring earlier warnings about him.

The families

Stephen Mwiti lost all six of his children in Shakahola. His former wife was among those convicted. "I'm a happy man, that all persons have been convicted," he told the BBC. Before the verdict, holding a family photograph, he said, "I only found and buried the remains of my son Samuel." Al Jazeera reported that Francis Wanje lost eight relatives, two grandchildren among them.

Peter Shukrani, 23, survived. He fell ill in the forest, and his mother threw away his medicine "because she believe that only God could heal me," he told the BBC. "I would have died if I wasn't rescued from Shakahola forest." Even so, he still calls Mackenzie "a good person who cares for me." Mackenzie's own son, Dan Paul Mackenzie, who once worked as a cameraman in the church, said before the verdict that his father "is a murderer of mass killing."

Mackenzie still faces other cases, including terrorism, radicalization and denying children an education, the BBC reported.

Opinion: A false shepherd, and the Shepherd he lied about

What happened in Shakahola was not Christianity gone too far. It was not Christianity at all. Paul told Timothy that "in the latter times some shall depart from the faith," and he described what they would teach: "forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving." Nearly two thousand years ago Scripture named this exact lie and called it a doctrine of devils.

Fasting is a real Christian practice. A man may humble himself before God by going without a meal. But no Christian fast has ever meant starving a child to death. The Lord Jesus said "Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not," and He fed them. He also gave a warning for anyone who would harm one of these little ones: "it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck." A Kenyan court has now done its part, and it was right to do it. The rest belongs to the Judge of all the earth.

Nor does the gospel teach that medicine is evil. Luke, who wrote the Gospel that bears his name and the Book of Acts, was "the beloved physician." Dock Line wrote about him this weekend in Feast of St. Luke: The Beloved Physician Who Wrote Luke and Acts. Paul told Timothy to "use a little wine for thy stomach's sake." Christians pray for healing and go to the doctor, and they see no contradiction in that.

The deeper lesson is for every congregation. Jesus warned of false prophets "in sheep's clothing" and said, "Ye shall know them by their fruits." A preacher who cuts his people off from their families, their schools and their doctors, and asks them to trust him alone, is showing his fruit. Peter Shukrani still defends the man whose teaching nearly killed him. That is how deep a false shepherd can sink his hooks. Pastors here and everywhere should teach their people to test every sermon against the Book, including their own.

Pray for Stephen Mwiti, for Francis Wanje, and for the hundreds of Kenyan families who buried children they should have watched grow up. Pray for survivors like Peter Shukrani, that he will come to know the true Shepherd, who laid down His life for the sheep instead of asking the sheep to die for Him.