Willie R. Tubbs, FISM News

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Police in Kenya said on Monday that they’d exhumed 73 bodies from the property of a cult leader who appears to have encouraged his followers to starve themselves to death in order to earn their way into heaven.

Reuters was first to report that Kenyan authorities had arrested Paul Mackenzi, who had headed a perversion of Christianity known as the Good News International Church, which he housed on a massive 800-acre piece of property.

“This horrendous blight on our conscience must lead not only to the most severe punishment of the perpetrator(s) of the atrocity on so many innocent souls, but tighter regulation [including self-regulation] of every church, mosque, temple or synagogue going forward,” Reuters quoted Interior Minister Kithure Kindiki as saying.

The case broke in early April when police rescued 15 members of the cult, four of whom died in the hospital.

“We have shown the graves to the police, and in addition, we have saved the life of a woman who only had a few hours left, otherwise she’d also be dead,” said Titus Katana, a former member of the church who is assisting the police.

Mackenzi is said to have refused to eat or drink since being arrested. The property where the bodies were discovered has been cordoned off by police and has been designated as a crime scene.

AUTHOR’S BIBLICAL ANALYSIS

The most galling aspect of this story is that Mackenzi purports to be a Christian. He is, to be blunt, a heathen with a message cultivated in the fires of hell.

And yet, for many tortured and misled souls, he represented hope; a false hope that led to destruction, but hope nonetheless.

It’s impossible to understate the danger of faulty Biblical teaching, which is no Biblical teaching at all. But, it’s also important that we appreciate the importance of spreading the authentic Gospel.

We know from 1 John that we are called to test the words we hear from those who claim to speak for God.

Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. – 1 John 4:1

But, both then and now, how is the unsaved person, the backslider, or the weakened Christian to discern God’s Word from man’s imagination when Satan’s man is so committed to the lie?

About 85% of all Kenyans profess to be Christian, and yet it is a nation as prone to cults as any on the globe.

What part of God’s Word is not finding its way into the hearts of so many? What essential truth of the Gospel is being forgotten or ignored?

A person rooted in the Gospel will, or should, know that there is no earning our way into Heaven. It’s Jesus or nothing. How, in a nation steeped in Christianity, is this most fundamental of truths lost? Certainly, it is lost on those who do not regularly spend time reading the Bible for themselves.

Before any of us get too comfortable tut-tutting our Christian brothers and sisters in Kenya, we might ask ourselves the same question, then shutter at the thought of how divorced large chunks of professing Christians have become from the true Word in the United States.

The Word of God cannot be defeated by even the cleverest of men, and Mackenzi (indeed most cult leaders) is not the most clever.

They have an inch-thick, mile-wide, and spindly framed message that wilts under the slightest application of even worldly skepticism, much less the righteous glow of Bible-based scrutiny.

Cult leaders have enough salesmanship to get a foothold in the poor souls of lost people, a position which they gradually exploit, but nothing resembling an ironclad argument.

Contrary to the messages sent by popular culture, where streaming services create documentaries that all but lionize cults, these groups do not succeed because of the unique charisma of a cult leader or the air-tightness of their messages.

They succeed because of the void left when Christian believers cease to share the Good News.

The draw of a cult is that it offers those who are desperately searching for something that feels like the truth. And, for a person who is young in the faith or wholly unfamiliar with Scripture, a cult that is particularly committed to its heretical message might even seem divinely inspired.

This is why we must redouble our efforts to spread the true Word of God as far and as loudly as He has empowered us. The alternative is to wait and watch as more lost souls are marched down the path to destruction.

As sad as the death of four dozen (and counting) people in Kenya is, the story should startle us more than it depresses us. America is as apt to cult thinking as anywhere else.

But there is hope found in the work Christ can do through us if we allow Him. Boldly proclaiming the truth is a necessary step.

And [Jesus] said to them, ‘Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned.’ – Mark 16:15-16