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Shakahola: The Bible verses at the heart of a massacre

Monday, October 19, 2026

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High Court Judge Diana Kavedza.

Photo credit: Billy Ogada | Nation Media Group

By Brian Ocharo

Correspondent

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According to the judge, passages such as Ecclesiastes 12 and Timothy 6 had been misinterpreted to influence Mackenzie's followers.
The judge added that Colossians 2:8 warns against deceptive philosophies and human traditions that undermine sufficiency of Christ.

Three years ago towards the end of March, the ground in Shakahola Forest began giving up its dead.

One body after another was pulled from shallow graves, some wrapped in blankets, printed cotton cloths (lesos) and nylon sheeting.

The subsequent trial against preacher Paul Mackenzie and his co-suspects was like no other, with the Bible and the Constitution quoted in almost equal measure to support the arguments of the opposing sides.

For a first-time observer, it was easy to mistake the murder trial for a theological discussion, with lengthy explanations of scripture, competing interpretations and arguments over where freedom of worship ends and criminal responsibility begins.

The courtroom became a place where faith, law and the limits of religious freedom collided, with each side drawing on its own interpretation of scripture and the law to advance its case.

On Monday, while delivering the judgment in a case about the deaths of 191 children, High Court Judge Diana Kavedza gave an in-depth analysis on the Bible chapters used to brainwash believers.

Pastor Paul Mackenzie when he appeared before a Mombasa court on November 10, 2025.

Photo credit: Kevin Odit | Nation Media Group

She compared Mackenzie’s mechanisms to the late Sheikh Abuod Rogo Mohamed, a religious leader who converted an Islamic preaching platform into a radicalisation recruitment pipeline in Kenya.

According to the judge, passages such as Ecclesiastes 12 and Timothy 6 had been misinterpreted to influence Mackenzie's followers against education. She stated that if properly understood and applied, they actually caution against elevating human knowledge above the word of God.

“They do not condemn education itself,” Justice Kavedza stated.

The court noted that Dr Oscar Kivua, a witness, observed that Mackenzie combined written materials and sermons to aggressively condemn and forbid formal education.

Applying the devoted actor framework, he explained that followers adopted the apocalyptic sacred value of meeting Jesus at all costs because the world was regarded as evil, making it difficult to persuade them that education had any benefit.

“Their moral and spiritual convictions were consequently regarded as superior to state directives on education rendering school attendance unacceptable and strictly prohibited. Having gone through scholarly writings and theological literature, the court agrees that Mackenzie deliberately misinterpreted the scriptures. It is the respectable view of the court that Mackenzie 's interpretation of the Bible was skewed to achieve an ulterior purpose,” she said.

The judge added that Colossians 2:8 warns against deceptive philosophies and human traditions that undermine sufficiency of Christ. On the other hand 1 Timothy, urges believers to guard the truth of the gospel against false teaching and speculative knowledge that contradicts it.

High Court Judge Diana Kavedza.

Photo credit: Billy Ogada | Nation Media Group

Turning to Ecclesiastes 12, the court said it cautions against the endless pursuit of human knowledge as though it could by itself answer life's deepest questions. Read in context, the passage recognises the limit of human wisdom and directs the reader towards fearing God and keeping his commandments.

The judge said it does not prohibit reading, learning or formal education but it warns against treating human knowledge as a substitute for divine truth.

Further, the court stated that Acts 4:13 describes Peter and John as uneducated and ordinary men but the description does not establish that they were wholly illiterate or that formal education was contrary to God's will.

“Christ’s teaching of his disciples through direct instruction, practical experience and shared life demonstrates that education takes different forms. The passage therefore cannot properly be relied upon to discourage or deny formal formal schooling,” the judge said.

She added that Deuteronomy 11:19 expressly directs parents to teach God's commandments to their children. According to the court, the scripture consistently places on parents the responsibility to guide, instruct and nurture their children.

“Therefore, what began as a teaching that education was worldly and contrary to God's will culminated into a system of belief in which formal education was recast as a danger to salvation, teachers as agents of Satan and the removal of children from school as an act of religious obedience. In the setting, the close belief system propagated by Mackenzie not only deprived the children of education but also deprived them of an alternative source of knowledge and authority,” the court stated.

Read: From prisons officer to cult follower: How devoted family man quit job to join sect

Apart from education, followers of the cult were also radicalised to denounce modern medicine, healthcare extending from childhood vaccination and antenatal care to hospital treatment generally.

It was observed that during Covid-19, Mackenzie attacked government vaccination programs. The teaching then moved from vaccination to the medical profession itself.

Mackenzie claimed that doctors working in hospitals are witches and killers pharmaceutical companies are controlled by illuminati and free masons and that medicines are made by Satan for the purpose of turning people away from God.

Scripture was relied upon to legitimise the teaching. For instance, Jeremiah 17:5 was invoked to show that reliance upon medical practitioners and medicine was reliance upon man and not God.

James 5:14 was applied to mandate the followers to seek prayer and anointing by church elders rather than seek treatment from hospitals. Luke 8:43 was used to portray physicians as financially exploitative and medically ineffective, while Matthew 24 was presented alongside imagery linking doctors and medicine to the occult.

“The practical effect of the teachings aptly demonstrated by the testimony of the survivors amongst others testified that the settlement lacked essential health facilities since Mackenzie commanded his followers to rely solely on their faith in Jesus whenever they fell ill,” the judge said.

It was established that the indoctrination was so severe that some rescued victims continued to resist sustenance and medical care after being rescued from the forest, insisting that salvation was a higher spiritual pursuit than nourishment.

The scripture was misinterpreted

The court found that the accused persons in their defense heavily relied on the book of Maccabees to justify their conduct. An analysis of the books of the Maccabees discovered that they are valid for their historical account of the Jewish martyrdom and the background to the New Testament, but are not regarded as divinely inspired scripture or authoritative sources of Christian doctrine.

Justice Kavedza explained that the evangelical teaching maintains that Christian doctrine and practice must rest on the canonical scriptures rather than historical writings. She added that the Maccabees cannot be relied upon as an authoritative basis for directing Christian conduct, particularly where such an interpretation departs from established biblical teaching.

The Biblical scriptures were also used by Mackenzie to repackage his sermons to predict the imminent end of the world, emphasising that the ‘wateule’ (chosen ones) must prepare to isolate themselves.

The in-group of Wateule was restricted from interacting with an out group of ‘Mataifa’, who were portrayed as demonic, wicked and agents of the Antichrist. This supplied Mackenzie the justification for severing family relationships, relinquishing employment and retreating geographically into Shakahola.

The resulting social enclosure removed outside scrutiny and left the followers immersed in the group's worldview, where the accused persons placed emphasis on dreams and visions as a means of communicating with God.

Read: Chilling call that lured Siaya couple to Kwa Bi Nzaro, costing six children's lives

“Although Joel 2:12 recognises dreams and visions as possible means through which God communicates, it does not require believers to accept every claimed revelation as divine. Such experiences must be tested against scripture. Dreams and visions cannot therefore serve as an unquestionable authority for directing the lives of believers, particularly where their interpretation contradicts scripture or produces fear, confusion, and harmful practices,” the judge stated.

The court found that the absence of spiritual accountability within the GNI ministries would leave followers vulnerable to teachings and personal interpretation that could neither be independently scrutinised, challenged or verified.

The doctrinal separation from the world ultimately found physical expression in the relocation of the followers to Shakahola where human roadblocks in form of guards and internal structures ensured that the distinction between the ‘Wateule’ and the ‘Mataifa’ was no longer merely a matter of belief but a lived and enforced reality.

In the wilderness, the scripture was misinterpreted to convince the cult followers to fast to death.

Scriptures such as Romans 12:1 which calls upon believers to present their bodies as a living sacrifice to God in response to his mercy were used as a justification for fasting to death.

Others cited were Matthew 4 which records 40 days of fasting by Moses, Elijah, and Jesus Christ, and Hebrews 13:34 which recounts the suffering endured by faithful believers.

The court said each scripture has a distinct spiritual context. The accounts do not establish fasting to death as a Christian practice, rather, fasting is presented as a spiritual discipline, not a means of deliberately bringing about death.

“GNI's practice of fasting to the point of death is therefore inconsistent with the biblical accounts upon which it purports to rely on,” the judge said.

“The foregoing analysis clearly shows that what transpired at Shakahola was not a case of parents making an unusual religious choice for themselves. Indeed, radicalisation had infiltrated, treated the most intimate and ordinarily protective human relationship and inverted its priorities. The parent who should have provided food, safety and who should have comforted a dying child watched the child die in pursuit of a promised spiritual reward,” she added.

Justice Kavedza stated that through Mackenzie’s authority, the parental instinct to preserve the child's life was not merely weakened, but was turned against the child.

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