What's Coming: Doomsday Or World Peace?

The leader of a Christian doomsday cult in Kenya went on trial on July 8, 2024 on charges of terrorism over the deaths of more than 440 of his followers. A self-proclaimed pastor, Paul Mackenzie appeared along with 94 co-defendants. The 55 men and 40 women also face charges of murder, manslaughter, as well as child torture and cruelty in separate cases.

Pastor Mackenzie is alleged to have encouraged men, women and children to starve themselves in order to "meet Jesus", in one of the world's worst cult-related massacres. Autopsies have found that while starvation appeared to be the main cause of death, some of the victims -- including children -- were strangled, beaten, or suffocated.

Court documents allege that in early 2023, Pastor Mackenzie told his followers in the forest that Jesus and the end of the world were coming soon and they must prepare themselves through extreme hunger to death.

Now this starvation cult accused of being responsible for the deaths of over 400 people is still active in Kenya officials fear, as new graves suggest many believers escaped a police round-up two years ago.

Kenyan police have uncovered the bodies of dozens of new suspected victims in recent days, including some seemingly buried long after officers claimed to have smashed Pastor Paul Mackenzie sect.

Officials have now told the Telegraph they believe some of the Pastor's followers escaped the crackdown and continued to operate nearby, potentially prolonging one of the worst Christian cult-related mass deaths ever recorded. Police have exhumed 37 more bodies from a site about 12 miles south of Shakahola Forest, near Mombasa, where Pastor Mackenzie ran his Good News International church.

The breakaway group is thought to consist of those who fled police raids in early 2023, and also brainwashed members who have been unable to escape its extremist teachings.Some vulnerable members are thought to have fallen back under its spell after they were initially rescued.

Josphat Biwott, Kilifi county commissioner, told the Telegraph: "This is the very same sect.

"We suspect so because some of the people we have arrested at Kwa Binzaro are the same people we rescued from Shakahola two years ago." He said: "We have arrested 11 suspects so far. Investigations indicate the leader of the current group at Kwa Binzaro is a woman."

Pastor Mackenzie has been accused of encouraging his followers to starve themselves to death to achieve redemption and to meet Jesus who will soon return.

Pastor Mackenzie has been in custody since May 2023 and last month went on trial along with 28 others for 191 counts of murder. Mackenzie, his wife and 91 other defendants face a separate trial for the manslaughter of 238 people.

In the aftermath of the 2023 police raids, locals described a chaotic police attempt to roll up the church. Some members simply fled deeper into the forest and were not pursued.

One attempt to gauge the scale of the cult in 2023 estimated some 1,200 people from across Kenya were missing. The Kenyan state has already faced questions over how it allowed this Christian church to operate, despite years of warning signs, large numbers of complaints and several police investigations.

The majority of Christians, Jews, and Muslims do not believe that all of humanity is moving closer and closer to a catastrophic Judgement Day. The minority who do think that Judgement Day is coming soon share the usual negative, fear-filled views of most end-times thinkers: Christians, Jews and especially Muslims, who do believe that: "The hour (of Judgement) is near" (Qur'an 54:1); and ˹The time of˺ people's judgment has drawn near, yet they heedlessly turn away." (Qur'an 21:1)

According to a 2012 poll by the Pew Research Center, at least half of Muslims in nine Muslim-majority countries believe that the coming of the Mahdi is "imminent," and could happen in their lifetime. Sadly these end-times thinkers always see pre-ordained threats of cataclysmic world wide doom; and not just warning of the consequences if we humans do not repent and change our behavior.

It is true that there's a 40% chance that the world will get so hot in the next five years that it will temporarily push past the temperature limit the Paris climate agreement is trying to prevent, meteorologists said. A new World Meteorological Organization forecast for the next several years also predicts a 90% chance that the world will set yet another record for the hottest year by the end of 2025; that the Atlantic will continue to brew more potentially dangerous hurricanes; meteorologists say large parts of land in the Northern Hemisphere will be 1.4 degrees warmer than recent decades, and the U.S. Southwest's drought will continue.

Yet there is always good news that you probably have not heard about. For example, Dengue fever cases have been cut by 77% in a "groundbreaking" trial that genetically manipulates the mosquitoes that spread it. The World Mosquito Program team now says it's a solution to a virus spreading worldwide.

It is also true that human society has changed more rapidly, violently, and fundamentally in the last century of the second millennium than ever before in history. Doctors saved the lives of millions. Dictators sacrificed the lives of millions. Populations exploded and birthrates declined. Technology produced both worldwide prosperity and pollution at the same time.

Knowing all this, should we look upon the first century of the third millennium with optimistic hope or with fatalistic trepidation? Are the world and our society heading towards a wonder-filled new age, or toward a doomsday; or are both occurring concurrently because breakdown is always a prelude to breakthrough?

Many who believe in the Biblical vision of a Messianic Age use the insights of the Prophets of Israel to provide guidance in understanding the social, economic, scientific, and cultural upheavals sweeping society. Usually, it is the dramatic dangers of the pre-Messianic tribulation that are emphasized. I will focus on the positive signs developing throughout the world that accord with the Messianic vision of the Biblical Prophets.

In most non-Abrahamic religious traditions, redemption is defined only in terms of individual enlightenment or personal salvation. However, the Abrahamic Prophets conceived of redemption as a transformation of worldwide human society that would occur through the catalyst of the transformation of the Abrahamic religious community. This transformation, which will take place in this world at some future time, is called the Messianic Age.

The transition to the Messianic Age is called the birth pangs of the Messiah. The birth of a redeemed Messianic world may be the result of easy or difficult labor. If everyone would simply live according to the moral teachings of his or her religious tradition, we would ourselves bring about the Messianic Age. But, if we will not do it voluntarily, it will come through social and political upheavals, worldwide conflicts, and generation gaps. The Messiah refers to an agent of God who helps bring about this transformation.

The Jewish tradition teaches that this agent of God (and there will be three or four such agents) will be a human being, with great spiritual leadership qualities similar to Prophets Moses or Mohammed. For Jews, the Messianic hope helped them to survive many years of oppression and evil. For Christian and Muslims the Messianic hope will be the second coming of Jesus/the Mahdi, leading up to God's Judgement Day vindication for righteous believers; and the establishment of God's kingdom on Earth...

The arrival of the Messianic Age is what's really important, not the specific personality of the agents who bring it about since they are simply the instruments of God, who ultimately is the real Redeemer.

Prophet Isaiah, 2,700 years ago, predicted that someday there would be a radically new world in which Jerusalem would be fulfilled with joy for "no more shall there be in it an infant that lives only a few days." (65:20) Now improvements in human health are unprecedented in human history. Truly we will be coming close to Isaiah's prophecy, "One who dies at 100 years shall be reckoned a youth, and one who fails to reach 100 shall be reckoned accursed." (65:20) such radical change will necessitate major changes in the way we think and act when faced with decisions about life and death.

Yet who among us would want to return to the high mortality rates and early deaths of previous centuries? The challenges we now face are not those of survival, but of opportunity. The fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy has thus gone unnoticed and uncelebrated. But even when the events are rapid and dramatic, people rarely connect them to their Messianic significance for very long.

The amazing rescue 30 years ago of 15,000 Ethiopian Jews in an airlift lasting less than 48 hours stirred and inspired people for a few weeks. Subsequently, the difficult problems the newcomers faced (similar to those of the 900,000 Soviet immigrants) occupied the Jewish media. Now both are taken for granted. The miracle has become routine.

But if you had told the Jews of Ethiopia two generations ago that they would someday all fly to Israel, they could only conceive of this as a Messianic miracle. If you had told Soviet Jews a generation or two ago that the Communist regime would collapse, the Soviet Empire disintegrate, and hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jews would emigrate to Israel, they would have conceived it only as a Messianic dream.

In our own generation therefore we have seen the dramatic fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy: "I will bring your offspring from the (Middle) East and gather you from the (European) West. To the North (Russia) I will say 'give them up' and to the South (Ethiopia) 'do not hold them'. Bring my sons from far away, my daughters from the end of the earth." (43:5-6)

Where does the Messiah fit in with all of this? He will still have lots to do when he arrives. Now that a large part of the Jewish people have returned to the Land of Israel, and resurrected a Jewish State, one might think that rebuilding a temple of the site where Solomon originally built one almost 3,000 years ago, would be relatively simple.

And it would, except for the fact that a Muslim Shrine called The Dome of the Rock presently occupies the Jerusalem Temple site of Prophet Solomon. Often erroneously called the Mosque of Omar, it is not a mosque and it was not built by Omar. It was built in 691 by Abd-Al-Malik and it is regarded by Muslims as the third holiest site in the world. Any attempt to replace the Dome of the Rock would provoke a Muslim Holy War of cataclysmic proportions.

There is, however, open land on the Temple Mount, and a small Jewish broadcast studio could be built adjacent to the Dome of the Rock, and 600 feet north of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, provided that Muslims would cooperate. Then a Prophets Micah states: "Many nations will come and say, "Come and let's go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of (Prophet) Jacob, So that He (God) may teach us about His ways that we may walk in His paths." For from Zion will go forth the law, And the word of the LORD from Jerusalem." Then: "How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, 'Your God reigns!'" (Isaiah 52:7)

Most observers agree that anyone who could arrange such Jewish-Muslim cooperation would really be the Messianic Ruler of Peace (Isaiah 9:5) Christian support for such a cooperative venture would also be very important, and anyone who can bring Jews, Christians, and Muslims together in mutual respect and cooperation would surely fulfill the greatest of all Messianic predictions: "They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning knives; nation shall not take up sword against nation, they shall never again teach war." (Isaiah 2:4)

Indeed, such Jewish/Christian/Muslim cooperation would not be possible without great spiritual leadership in all three communities. Thus, each community could consider its leadership to be the Messiah and this would fulfill the culminating verses of Isaiah's Messianic prophecy as enlarged upon by Micah (4:3-5),

"They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning knives. Nation shall not take up against nation, they shall never again teach war, but every man shall sit under his grapevine or fig tree with no one to disturb him, for it is the Lord of Hosts who spoke. Though all peoples walk each in the name of its God, we will walk in the name of the Lord our God forever and ever."

And "In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria. The Assyrians will go to Egypt and the Egyptians to Assyria. The Egyptians and Assyrians will worship together. On that day Israel will join a three-party alliance with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing upon the heart. The LORD of Hosts will bless them saying, "Blessed be Egypt My people, Assyria My handiwork, and Israel My inheritance."...(Isaiah 19:23-5)