Pastor dies after attempting to fast for 40 days like Jesus Christ

According to numerous media accounts, a pastor in Mozambique died after attempting to fast like Jesus did in the Bible for 25 days without food or water.

The 39-year-old founder of the Santa Trindade Evangelical Church, Francisco Barajah, passed away on Wednesday at a hospital in Beira, the capital of Mozambique, according to The BBC.

According to the publication, he had been trying to imitate Jesus’ 40-day fast described in the Bible.

The BBC reported that by the time Barajah received medical attention, his digestive system had malfunctioned and he had been identified as having acute anemia, which occurs when the body lacks enough healthy red blood cells to transport enough oxygen.

After 25 days of his fast, Barajah’s family and supporters noticed that he had become ill and demanded that he be sent to the hospital, where he was given serums to become rehydrated, according to The BBC.

According to Noticias Online, a Portuguese-language news source in Mozambique, staff at Hospital Central do Beria tried to restore liquid meals to Barajah’s diet, but his organs were in such a horrible condition that it pained when he tried to eat.

According to the outlet, Barajah had also lost so much weight that he was unable to stand or take a shower.

According to The BBC, Barajah passed away in the hospital.

His brother, Marques Manuel Barajah, said Barajah had fasted, but claimed that he suffered from low-blood pressure, objecting to the medical diagnosis, wrote the outlet.

It’s not immediately clear how Barajah survived for 25 days without water. The Guinness World Record for the longest amount of time a human has survived without food and water is 18 days, when an Austrian teenager was put in a holding cell in 1979 and forgotten by police.

The Bible also doesn’t explicitly state if Jesus abstained from water during his 40-day fast. In their accounts of the “Temptation of Christ,” the gospels of Matthew and Luke say Christ was “hungry” and “ate nothing.”

Barajah isn’t the first devout Christian to die in an attempt to fast like Jesus. In 2006, a 34-year-old woman in east London died after going 23 days without food or water while trying to mimic Christ’s fast.