Cape Town — The Eastern Cape apostle who was to have been buried on Saturday after predicting his own death was still breathing on Monday, a church colleague confirmed.

And his undertaker has voiced concern over who will pay for his grave, which has already been dug.

Fifty-eight-year-old Freddie Isaacs, a builder and one of eight apostles of the Reformed Apostolic Church, had a vision in September that his time on earth was over.

He reportedly stopped eating last week, and the Cradock town hall was booked for his funeral on Saturday.

Hundreds of members of the church came from all over the country for the ceremony -- which never took place.

Isaacs was on Monday still at his home in this Eastern Cape town, attended by other apostles, or elders, of the church, and shielded from outsiders.

Asked if Isaacs was still alive, an apostle who gave his surname as Arends, told Sapa: "All that I can say is, he is going home."

Asked whether Isaacs was still breathing, he replied: "Yes."

He declined to give any more information. "Come let us wait until everything is over, then we can talk together nicely," he said.

Daniel Stemmet, an employee of the firm of undertakers approached to make the arrangements for Isaacs' final journey, said: "I was there today; they say he still lives."

Stemmet said he had been sent by his employer to ask for payment for the gravediggers.

"They said don't worry about that, there will be a funeral," he said.

He said the grave was dug nine feet deep to allow Isaacs' wife to be laid to rest on her husband's coffin when she dies.

The coffin chosen for Isaacs was still at the undertakers.

Police acting station commander at Cradock Superintendent Eugene Olivier said he also went to the Isaacs home on Monday morning.

"They said he's still alive, but I didn't see him this morning, They didn't want to let me in," he said.

Police have expressed concern about the possibility of assisted suicide, but Olivier said this would just be kept in mind "for the day he really dies".

Praying for someone to die would not count as assisted suicide.

"You have to do something physically," he said.