Yahoo! Singapore reports the following:
Video of City Harvest Church founder Kong Hee’s sermon ignites online outrage
[UPDATE on 30 July: Adding details about when Kong could have delivered his sermon]
City Harvest Church founder and senior pastor Kong Hee has found his way in controversy again — this time for a comment he made in what appeared to be a sermon at a church conference held in Australia last year.
In a video posted on YouTube by user anointedforworship on Sunday, Kong, who is accused of criminal breach of trust and misappropriating church building funds, claimed that God apologised to him for his struggles.
“‘Father, Father, why, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me and thrown me to the dogs?'” he was recorded as saying, after relating the experience of Jesus Christ on the cross at his crucifixion and sharing that he identified with that kind of suffering.
“For the first time in eight months, God, I heard Him cry. And he said ‘My son, Kong, thank you. Thank you for going through this. I need you to go through this alone, so that you and City Harvest Church can be the man and the ministry I call it to be. I’m so sorry, but you need to go through this by yourself, to bring a change to your generation,” Kong said.
Applause was heard from the congregation, and Kong continued, “I hear God saying for the first time in eight months, ‘I love you, I love you, I love you’. Waves upon waves of God’s love, the love of the father just saturated me… and I know everything’s going to be all right. Everything is going to be all right.”
Watch the video here:
Kong seems to have delivered the sermon in question at the 2012 C3 Presence Conference, held in Sydney in April last year. This would have happened before the news that he and five other church leaders were being investigated for embezzlement broke in June last year, although it later emerged that investigations by the Commercial Affairs Division (CAD) began in 2010.
According to a blog post dated 7 August 2012 by megachurch watchdog C3 Church Watch, the same excerpt of Kong’s speech was quoted ad verbatim with a link to the official video of his full sermon.
Watch it here:
Reaction to the video was overwhelmingly negative. Since the video excerpt was first uploaded on Sunday, it was thumbed down 750 times, compared to less than 30 thumbs up, and received more than 230 comments, most of them scathing.
Raising particular ire was Kong’s seeming suggestion that God apologised to him for his having to endure the challenges of past months, during which court charges for misappropriation of funds were made against the six accused.
“I thought comparing himself to Jesus was presumptuous,” commented a 24-year-old student who declined to be named. “Saying that he heard God apologising to him for his legal troubles was completely shocking to me.”
“I don’t think there’s anywhere in the Bible that said God said sorry for crucifying His son,” added another Baptist Christian, who did not want to be named. “His (Kong’s) doctrine is all wrong.”
Some City Harvest churchgoers think Kong’s sharing might have been misinterpreted or taken out of context, however.
A 23-year-old worshipper, who attended the church in her younger days and only recently returned, told Yahoo! Singapore the sermon was about how God empathises with Kong’s plight and is reassuring him.
“From a spiritual point of view, and from my own relationship with God, the God that I know and have a relationship with is assuring Kong that He knows the struggles that Kong is going through,” she said. “God is coming from a position of love and assurance. He puts us through fire to purify and to strengthen us, so that we will come forth as gold.”
Tuition teacher Kellyn Low, who also attends the church, added that she hopes secular people don’t get the wrong idea from the video, even though she acknowledged there was cause for misunderstanding, noting that he could have expressed himself better.
“I don’t think that people should interpret it as God saying sorry to Pastor Kong. He just means that he has to go through tests like Jesus did to share his faith with the world,” she said.
Separately, Chew Eng Han, one of the six church leaders currently on trial, announced his exit from the church last month. Chew was a board member and fund manager for the church, who played the leading role in its $100 million investment into Suntec Singapore. He also channelled millions of dollars in church funds into Xtron Productions, the firm that backed Kong’s wife Sun Ho’s music career.
In a series of posts on a blog, Chew, who also withdrew all affiliations his company Business Breakthrough Group Limited had with the church, alluded to disagreements he had with the top brass of its ranks by referring to issues relating to the “manner of conduct of some of (City Harvest’s) pastors and senior leaders”.
Responding to Chew’s exit and accusations, however, the church’s management board said in a statement two days later that following “appropriate reviews” since the Commercial Affairs Division’s investigation, they had “satisfied” themselves that the church’s leadership is upright and honest.
“We wish to reiterate that… we have full trust in the integrity, honesty and spiritual standing of the pastoral leadership of City Harvest Church,” wrote Lee Kiam Hiong, secretary of the church’s management board.
Yahoo! Singapore has contacted City Harvest Church for comment in response to reaction to Kong’s video.
Additional reporting by Melissa Law and Elizabeth Soh
Source: Jeanette Tan, (Additional reporting by Melissa Law and Elizabeth Soh), Yahoo! Newsroom (Singapore), http://sg.news.yahoo.com/video-of-city-harvest-church-founder-kong-hee%E2%80%99s-sermon-ignites-online-outrage-174425261.html, 30/07/2013. (Accessed 31/07/2013.)
We have written the transcript and analysed what Kong Hee said in the above article in an older article here.
C3 Church Watch 