homeWorld

Pastor who fed congregants with live snakes pleads to celebrity preacher for deliverance

A South African pastor who fed live snakes to his congregants is asking a Nigerian preacher to deliver him from the bizarre practice. | Pixabay/Huskyherz

A controversial South African pastor who once fed live snakes to his congregants came to a popular Nigerian preacher to seek deliverance from his bizarre actions.

Penuel Mnguni, the pastor of End Time Disciples Ministries in South Africa, was arrested in 2015 for feeding live snakes, rats, underwear and hair to his church members, The Citizen reported.

The pastor also drew other major controversies by driving a car over his congregants, locking one of them in a deep freezer for over thirty minutes and telling them to strip off their clothes during church service.

On Sunday, Mnguni stated he had realized that what he practiced in his church was wrong after watching Nigerian preacher T.B. Joshua of Synagogue Church of All Nations (SCOAN) on TV.

"I started watching Emmanuel TV and listening to Pastor TB Joshua, and I came to realise that what I was doing was not scriptural," he said in his testimony during a service at SCOAN.

The controversial pastor said that he began his bizarre practices in his church after misinterpreting several passages in the Bible, such as Mark 16:16-18, which states that believers shall "take up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them."

According to Times Live, Mnguni asked Joshua for deliverance "from the spirit that pushed him to engage in such bizarre, inhumane actions."

"It was a shock to many," Joshua wrote on his Facebook page. "Penuel told the congregation that he had read certain scriptures such as Mark 16:17-18, which led him to believe he could feed his congregants with strange items to prove the power of God," he added.

Newsweek reported that Mnguni was arrested in 2015 following a complaint from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SCPA), but the case was eventually dropped due to lack of evidence.

Joshua, one of Nigeria's most popular pastors, is also viewed as a controversial figure. He has faced legal battles in court after a guesthouse owned by SCOAN collapsed in 2014, killing at least 115 people.

He had hosted miraculous healing events, claiming to make blind people see and deaf people hear again. He also claimed to possess the gift of prophecy and predicted the death of a president of south African country in 2012. The Christian Post noted that Malawi President Bingu Wa Mutharika died two months after the prediction.

In 2016, Joshua predicted that "a woman" will win the 2016 U.S. presidential election, which has been proven to be incorrect.