Pastor Died While Trying to Imitate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ

Photo byGordon Griffiths / Open Grave / CC BY-SA 2.0

22-year-old pastor James Sakara of the Zion church has died after convincing his congregation that he would be resurrected like Jesus. Not only did his congregants bury him alive, but they were also shocked to find him dead after digging him up three days later. Though reports do not suggest that the pastor suffered mental health problems, he nevertheless persuaded three of his congregants to help him dig a grave and then have him tied and buried for three days.

Pastor James hailed from Chadiza, a town in the Eastern province of Zambia. Generally, Zambia is a Christian nation according to the country’s constitution, and Christians amount to almost 95% of the population. However, the country’s constitution guarantees religious freedom and prohibits discrimination against minority Muslims who total 2.2% of the population. Moreover, Zambia also has a very small community of Jews and Hindus that combined amount to 0.2 % of the population.

Sadly, before Pastor James got himself buried alive in attempting to redo the resurrection of Jesus, he read and quoted from the bible the exact instructions that Jesus Christ gave his disciples. For Pastor James, when Jesus instructed his followers “do this in remembrance of me,” on the night he was betrayed, pastor James thought Jesus Christ was referring to the intended resurrection of Pastor James.

Despite this, none of the pastor’s followers warned him or found his decision suspicious and tried to stop him. As a result of the pastor’s death, one of the three congregants who helped Pastor James turned himself over to the authorities while the other two were on the run. We will never know Pastor James’s state of mind, but his hubris has cost his young pregnant wife, her husband, and his unborn child a father.