Sometime in 1979, while Álvaro Theiss was fasting, he came to believe that he was Jesus Christ reborn. He received a divine message in the form of a voice in his head, and, in the days that followed, he decided to permanently shed his former name and refer to himself as “INRI Cristo,” a tribute to the inscription “Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum” that the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate inscribed on the cross on which Jesus was crucified.

INRI now lives with 12 of his disciples—three men and nine women—in a compound surrounded by barbed wire and an electric fence outside of Brasília, Brazil, in a town he has named New Jerusalem.

He explained his life story and teachings to photographer Jonas Bendiksen,