Priest Buried Alive For 3 Days Dies; Wanted To Rise Like Jesus Christ

In a bizarre incident, a Zambian priest was left tied up and buried for three days in an attempt to recreate Jesus Christ's resurrection, but ended up losing his life.

According to Daily Star, James Sakara, the 22-year-old priest of the Zion church in Zambia, told his congregation that he could resurrect in three days, and asked them to bury him alive.

He took help of three church members to pull off the "resurrection." Before getting buried, he quoted from the Bible and explained that Jesus Christ’s instruction to his disciples to "do this in remembrance of me" referred to his resurrection, and not just the use of wine and bread at Holy Communion.

Sakara's three aides tied his hands together and then buried him beneath the earth, and left him there for three days. When the three men returned to dig him up, they found him dead, and tried to hold spiritual rituals to bring him back to life. But when they couldn't revive him, his followers realized his attempt to recreate Jesus Christ's resurrection had failed.

While one of the three men who assisted the priest with the experiment turned himself in to the police, the other two are believed to be on the run from cops, according to London News Today.

Sakara reportedly left behind a wife who is pregnant with his child.

Many netizens found his experiment to be a foolish one. One Twitter user asked what was the point of resurrection if he was already alive, and said that had he been dead, then it would have made sense. But what he did, was simply a "foolish stunt."

Another pointed out that there is a thin line between foolishness and wisdom, and that the priest should have first asked for the 39 lashes on a bare back as a test to see if he was able to handle the task of emulating the one he claimed to have followed. Another called the priest "delusional," and said felt that he should have been in a mental hospital.

Another Twitter user laughed it off, and said that there's a little bit of insanity involved when it comes to something like this.