He had unlimited confidence in his own spiritual powers – and paid for it with death. James Sakala († 22) from Zambia was pastor of the Zion Church in the city of Chidiza in the southeast of the country. He believed that he had supernatural powers.
So he let his church members bury him alive and promised them that he would be resurrected in three days – just like Jesus Christ.
Standing in front of the hand-dug grave, he supposedly spoke in a strange voice, as if he had been captured by the Holy Spirit. He ordered his followers: “You of little faith, bury this Sakala, whom you see now, and he will rise from the dead and breathe fully again from free lungs!”
“Dry like an old sugar cane”
Convinced of his courage, the initially skeptical members of his congregation dug the pit in which their pastor had laid himself. In the days when the pastor was underground, his followers sang hymns. After three days they opened the grave – only to find him dead there. All attempts at resuscitation were unsuccessful.
“The pastor was dry like old sugar cane,” writes the news portal cameroononline.org. According to media reports, the pastor’s white robe was stained with slime and blood from the agony. (ct)