Global shock has been caused by the news that heresy in Kenya led its members to death by starvation, because they thought that this was how they would go to Heaven.

Authorities have already located the bodies of 83 people, including small children, in an 800-acre area of ​​Sakahola forest near the coastal town of Malindi, where the head of the International Church of Joy sect, Pastor Paul Mackenzie Dhenge, had its headquarters.

Mackenzie has been calling on its members to starve to meet Jesus, and for the past three days, the Kenyan authorities they exhume bodies from mass graves and search for survivors cultists in the forest.

The final number of victims is expected to be higher. The Kenyan Red Cross has announced that more than 200 people have been reported missing at its office set up for the purpose at a local hospital.

Who is the leader of the sect, the “servant of God” Paul Mackenzie Dhenge

Pastor Mackenzie, right, with some of his followers at a court in Malindi, Kenya on Monday, April 17, 2023

On the website of his organization it is stated that the church “was founded on August 17, 2003 by the servant of God P.N. Mackenzie.” Having established branches in many parts of Kenya, the International Church of Good News is estimated to have more than 3,000 members – 1,000 of them in Malindi.

Paul Mackenzie Dhenge was a former taxi driver who in 2003 declared himself a “pastor”.

Police, in a statement on April 14, initially said local authorities intervened after being informed that “innocent citizens were starving to death believing they would meet Jesus, after being brainwashed.”

That same night Paul Mackenzie Dhenge, knowing he was wanted, surrendered to the police. He has since been detained and will appear in court on May 2.

He himself, in an interview with local media after the discovery of the mass graves, appeared satisfied and pleased with himself and even burst out laughing when he made claims about a conflict between law and faith.

Sermons about the end of the world

Dhenge broadcast a program called “End of the World Messages” in which he referred to “the teachings, sermons and prophecies about the end of the world commonly called eschatology.”

He claimed that he “brings the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ free from the deception and wisdom of man.” In 2017, he also started a YouTube channel, where the sermons he preached at his church in Malindi were shown.

Among other things, he warned believers not to follow the practices of the “demon”, such as not wearing wigs and dealing only with cash.

His extreme preaching led to his arrest twice in recent years.

In the same year (2017) he was arrested for the first time on the charge of “radicalization”, because he preached not to send children to school because schooling is not recognized in the Holy Bible.

He stated that he closed his church two years later and settled in the village of Sakahola, in the forest.

A few days later he was arrested again, on suspicion of the death of two children who starved to death on his orders. He was released on bail of 100,000 shillings (about 670 euros).

A few weeks later, following a tip-off, the police found his first victims in the Sakahola forest: 15 skeletal believers, four of whom died on the way to a hospital.

This is how the horrific story began to unfold, which still continues.

However, so far 34 followers of the sect have been rescued, who were taken to the hospitals almost half-dead from starvation, in a miserable condition.