CHUELE, Kenya - "Heaven" is a small field in the foothills of Mount Elgon in western Kenya, where "God" lives with 25 wives, 70 children and around 400 followers.
The man who calls himself Jehovah Almighty God Wanyonyi is uncompromising in his beliefs.
"I am the one who created Adam and Eve. I made their bodies and their blood," he proclaims. "I still use human beings by speaking through them, like I spoke through Jesus Christ until he went to Heaven."
But Wanyonyi's cult could be living on borrowed time. Wanyonyi was given the land by an elderly couple who joined the cult, but a Kenyan court ruled earlier this month he had to return the land to their sons.
The same court said Wanyonyi could stay on the land pending an appeal -- but the day of reckoning is approaching for the "lost Israelites of Kenya."
"GOD" IN HIS PAVILION
Wanyonyi's camp is a five acre (two hectares) field off a dusty road, boarded by a handful of huts and a dozen flags.
Saturday is the Sabbath in Heaven, and Wanyonyi's followers spend hours praying, marching, playing musical instruments and singing hymns in his praise, to taped musical backing.
Wanyonyi looks on imposingly from a throne beneath the frayed canvas of a pavilion. Dressed in a red gown and a hat embroidered with his name, with a wig braided with silver coins, he claps and sways his head in time with the music.
Wanyonyi, who claims to be 80 but is probably nearer 50, looks to have benefited from a plentiful diet in contrast to his gaunt-looking followers.
He occasionally lets out a full-throated laugh which shows an almost perfect set of teeth except for a gap where two bottom teeth should be, giving his baritone voice a distinctive lisp.
"I do not deal in miracles. I have given those powers to Jesus Christ. My only duty is to select the good for Heaven and the bad for Hell. How can I perform miracles like going to the moon, like making bombs that destroy the whole world?," he said.
His followers, who call themselves the lost Israelites, rarely smile. A mixture of elderly men, women and children, they wear simple white or striped costumes. Wanyonyi says they are the direct descendants of the Biblical Jacob.
ENRICHING HIMSELF?
Wanyonyi is one of dozens of self-proclaimed deities throughout Africa who have persuaded followers to hand over money and property for false promises of heaven on Earth.
His many detractors in the area say he is a simple con-man, who has been luring people to follow him since the early 1970s.
"What he did is he made people sell their property, then they all came to camp at his place thinking he's God. And he said he will provide everything to them," said Dixon Masika of the nearby Forgiveness Church.
Masika says followers work in the fields all day, then give all they earn to Wanyonyi, who gives them back perhaps a tenth of their earnings.
"Unfortunately, he has subjected his people to himself and, by so doing, has been using them as instruments of his enrichment," Masika said.
But Wanyonyi is also capable of inspiring fear. He is rumoured to have an uncanny ability to predict the weather, and his enemies say he uses charms and witchcraft.
Patrick Wafula Busolo is a former follower who is now pastor of the Victory Church, situated a stone's throw away and dedicated to helping more of Wanyonyi's disciples break away.
A polio victim, Busolo discovered as a young boy that Wanyonyi was not an all-loving God.
"He said that disabled are not allowed to enter the sanctuary," Busolo said. "I was attending the meetings from outside the window, which made me unhappy.
"Then, I said there is no need now of looking for God if God does not want disabled. Then, I discovered the truth: that Jesus loves every person," he said.
FEARS FOR CHILDREN
Kenya's constitution guarantees freedom of worship, but local officials say they are keeping an eye on Wanyonyi.
They have serious concerns about his unwillingness to send the children in his cult to hospital or to school, and are monitoring the camp after an outbreak of typhoid four years ago.
Some officials say Wanyonyi's powers are waning and that hundreds of people have deserted him in the last few years.
But Busolo is worried. In neighbouring Uganda, around 1,000 followers of the Movement for the Restoration of the 10 Commandments of God died last year in what was first thought to be a mass suicide but was then seen as mass murder.
Wanyonyi has claimed the word will end in 1995, 2000 and, most recently, in 2002, and Busolo says he fears for what the cult's followers might do.
"If he can give a command like committing suicide, they can do it," says Busolo. "Because they believe him. They believe he's God. And what God says must be done."
Wanyonyi appears unconcerned. For the time being, he asks visitors for the money he says he needs to build a stone house and buy a four-wheel drive jeep.
He also asks his guests to pass on letters addressed to the British Queen Elizabeth II and the Pope, instructing them to gather together world leaders and prepare for the end of their rule on Earth.
22:05 09-16-01
Copyright 2001 Reuters Limited.