Church Service Blocked For A Second Sunday In A Row Over Devil Worship Claims.

A section of the AIC Makongeni faithful outside their church on Sunday during the standoff on devil worship allegations within the church.

For a second Sunday in a row, the faithful of the African Inland Church (AIC) in Makongeni Thika blocked their pastors from conducting service because of what they claimed was devil worship practices and recruitment among a section of their leaders.

In a heated debate that lasted for over five hours, Pastor Joshua Nthawa who is the pastor in-charge, had a very difficult time convincing his congregation that they had nothing to hide as church leaders.

Among the believers’ bone of contention was in the irregular manner one of their ministers, Pastor Zachariah Mwema, was transferred to Ithanga. According to them, Pastor Zachariah’s transfer was a form of cover-up to conceal the identities of the culprits since he had come out in the open to fight the scourge.

“Pastor Zachariah was transferred because of his stand against devil worship cult and his previous sermons that he enlightened us about how to identify signs associated with the cult and how to avoid them. The church top hierarchy was not happy about his vigour in fighting the enemy within and therefore they decided to unceremoniously transfer him,” said Abednego Maweu, the church choir leader in the church.

He added that even after so many people questioned some weird incidences amongst them, the senior pastor never took any action but instead threw out church committee members who were opposed to his handling of affairs.

The faithful also claimed that, for last few years, they had been facing very weird and fatal incidences that raised eyebrows.

“We have been experiencing very many suspicious deaths among the members of this church for the last few years. In fact, many young mothers have had premature miscarriages and deaths of infants and their mothers,” said Abed, as he is popularly referred to.

Another faithful explained to us that the situation got out of hand in January when one of the church members gave an account of how his daughter was recruited into the devil worship cult by a known church leader. A teens camp hosted by the church in December last year brought to the light more revelations from the youth who brought to the fore, the magnitude of the matter with several of them confessing to being recruits of the cult.

Within the school that is sponsored by the church, she reviewed a series of incidents where pupils would suspiciously get attacked by ‘evil spirits’ that caused them to act demonic or in some instances faint and claim to have seen illusions of devilish images.

“As a mother myself, it pains me so much to see your child get lost in such a cult, and worse still if the culprit happens to be one of the senior members of the church. We are therefore ganging up as the church to demand that all the suspicious elements in within the church are thrown out,” she said.

Pastor Zachariah, who has ministered in the church for the last eight years, admitted to receiving reports of devil worshipping within the church as early as August last year. He claimed that after discussing the matter with his senior pastor, nothing much happened thereafter.

“I opted to have a one-month series of sermons about devil worshipping after several parents came to me expressing their fears and in some instances, their children openly confessing to have being recruited into the cult. During last December’s youth camp here within our compound, several youth came to us and either confessed to being recruits or accused their peers of having suspicious behaviour that was wanting,” said pastor Zachariah.

However, Pastor Nthawa dismissed these allegations and arguing that there was no tangible evidence that devil worshipping practices were rife in the church.

“These are just allegations which have not been confirmed yet,” he said.

Even though he admitted to witnessing a member confessing to the practice, he vehemently denied any involvement by members of the church hierarchy, arguing that even the deaths that had been witnessed by the members of his church were just normal deaths.

“How do you tell a devil worshipper? All these deaths have been normal, nothing suspicious. The cases witnessed in the school culminated from family issues and may be some family members had engaged themselves with some form of rituals,” he argued.

Efforts by the Thika AIC Regional Chairman Rev. Urbanas Syuma to arbitrate in the matter hit a snag when the faithful sent him away, accusing him of being the architect of the unprocedural transfer of Pastor Zachariah.