Bridge of Reason

  Cult victim found alive after three days in Malindi grave ‘ Detectives under the homicide unit have found one person alive after exhuming a grave linked to Shakahola church members.’ It’s a shocking headline, hardly believable, but there it was in the Star of Kenya . The story has been unfolding on our screens, in our news feeds, across the world as we have looked on incredulously at the horror unfolding . How does it come to this? Who is Paul Nthenge Mackenzie and what drove him to insist his followers go to such extremes of fasting that it brought many to the grave? P aul Mackenzie, pastor of Good News International Church, is widely reported to have encouraged his congregation to extreme fasting in order to ‘meet Jesus’ or go to heaven. As with all such things, this ‘starvation cult’ has an origin story. Mackenzie is said to be a devotee of William Branham’s ‘the Message’ cult, having been radicalised by the Latter-Rain version of Branham’s message . Branham referred to ...