Lindsay Lim Shares Her Testimony about Her 18-Year Journey with New Creation Church (1993-2011) & Joseph Prince’s False Teachings (Dated 2 November 2020)

George Ong’s Comments:

Lindsay Lim is a brave lady who takes great risk of sharing her story with honesty. She has done what many wouldn’t even dare. She is doing this not for her own sake but for the sake of warning others to stay away from Joseph Prince’s false and deadly teachings and New Creation Church.

Lindsay Lim’s Testimony

“I am Lindsay Lim and I attended NCC regularly for 18 years (1993 – 2011). My previous church prior to New Creation Church (NCC) had a very work-based and legalistic environment. Naturally, it was so easy for me to be drawn to NCC as I saw it as a breath of fresh air. I was very regular in my care group attendance and attended all their worship services as well as mid-week Bible Study services faithfully. I bought almost all of Joseph Prince’s Sunday and mid-week services sermon cassette tapes, CDs and DVDs until my whole bookshelf was full of his teaching materials. I was involved in NCC’s Young Adults Ministry. In 2003 – 2006, I also led a care group. Eventually, I had to step down due to work commitments and also to spend more time at home with my mum who was at the final stage of her illness.

After some years with NCC, I began to notice how repetitive Joseph Prince’s sermons had become. It is always about God’s grace, God’s righteousness, faith and confession teaching, and how God wants us to be blessed, etc. It was very common for my care group or NCC members to give credit to Joseph Prince’s teaching when good things happened to them. Through the members’ words, it appeared that we often glorify Joseph Prince and his teachings unknowingly. Care Group meetings became a time to exalt Joseph Prince’s teachings and also to declare and proclaim all the good things we wanted to see happen in our life. As Joseph Prince taught us not to focus on or confess or talk about our negative situations, the members found it hard to share openly about problems and trials they were facing as they feared being seen as negative.

Joseph Prince also became bolder in making degrading remarks about other churches or ministries which were smaller than NCC or those churches and ministries which continued to preach about the need to follow God’s laws. Joseph Prince also said he has the best bible teaching in town, even better than those bible schools. He often told us that listening to his teaching is as good as attending bible schools, and listening to his teachings is good enough, and it is all right even if we don’t take time to read or study God’s Word for ourselves.

The final straw came about when I was in a relationship with this guy who kept finding fault with Joseph Prince’s teaching and he even warned me that Joseph Prince was teaching wrong doctrines. At that time, I still could not see the danger of Joseph Prince’s teachings and started to defend Joseph Prince blindly though my only unhappiness with him at that time was with his oft-repeated sermons. We often argued over Joseph Prince’s teachings and over my blind allegiance to him. We eventually broke up and I went into my worst depression ever. It was only when I went through my worst depression and many prolonged trials at home that caused me to examine my own life again. It was there and then in my own time of reflection, the scales fell off my eyes and I began to see all the bad fruits in my life (insecurity, anger, hatred, jealousy, lust and sexual compromise and immorality) as a result of sitting under and believing in the wrong teachings of Joseph Prince. Nobody wants to go through a major depression to find God eventually. However, I thank God He allowed it to happen so that I could really come to the end of myself and take time to examine my whole life.

It was during this period of time of intensely seeking God for answers that God showed me how dangerous Joseph Prince’s teachings are. I immediately obeyed Him and threw out all the materials, and CDs and DVDs of Joseph Prince’s messages that I had purchased over the years in NCC even though they cost me thousands of dollars. I just wanted to obey God with a grateful heart after He brought me out of my depression. I began to understand the importance of following His laws (moral laws) and living a pleasing and obedient life as a child of God. God wants me to obey His laws not because He is a difficult God but it is for my own good. From then on, I found a new love for God and His Word. I truly thank God and praise Him for His deliverance from all the wrong teachings that I have picked up from Joseph Prince and NCC in my life.

All this while when I was in NCC, I could not detect Joseph Prince’s wrong teachings even though they were clearly false. It was only after I left the church, that God began to reveal to me slowly but surely. I believe this had to do with the dark spiritual forces (sin of witchcraft) that blinded me from the truth when I chose to remain in NCC then.

At this point, I wish to share some key teachings of Joseph Prince which I believe can destroy a believer’s life. There are so many I can share but due to the practicality of space, I will highlight some:

The first aspect of Joseph Prince’s heresies is that Christians should just confess ‘we are the righteousness of God in Christ’ whenever we are tempted or when we have fallen into sin. This is a toxic teaching as just by the use of a simple illustration, I would reveal how false such a teaching is. If a child does something wrong that hurts his parents and all the child does is going around to confess ‘I am right, I am right’ all day long instead of saying sorry to his parents, people around him would say he is a spoilt brat and I believe his parents would be heartbroken as well. This boy would be seen as rebelling against his parents by doing what he is doing.

Likewise, by teaching Christians to confess ‘we are the righteousness of God in Christ’ when we sin against God, Joseph Prince is in fact encouraging us to be rebellious and ignoring God’s feelings when we break His laws and His heart. If we are living in rebellion and don’t want to be reconciled to our Abba Father, how can we continue to walk with God? In fact, the Bible gives a very serious warning about outright rebellion and how it leads to the work of witchcraft in our life and in the church. “For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry…” (1 Sam 15:23) So Joseph Prince by his teaching is actually encouraging his followers to rebel against God.

The next item I would like to discuss is that suffering, trials and tribulations were rarely preached in my 18 years in NCC. Joseph Prince would only boast that he has suffered for righteousness’ sake when he was being criticised each time he preached and taught radically on his ‘hyper-grace’ message. Joseph Prince believes that a Christian who believes rightly in his doctrines would not have to suffer or go through trials and tribulations. I often witnessed how my NCC friends and members would frown in disapproval when they hear the words ‘suffering, trials and tribulations’. They have been brainwashed by Joseph Prince that if they have enough faith or have believed rightly in Joseph Prince’s teaching, they would see God’s breakthroughs in their life and they won’t have to go through sufferings, trials and tribulations. 

But this is a plainly false teaching as there are plenty of verses in the Bible that clearly show that sufferings, trials and tribulation are part of God’s plan to perfect our faith in Christ (Jn 16:33; 2 Tim 3:10-12; 1 Pet 4:12-19; Phil 3:7-11; 1 Pet 5:8-10; Jas 1:2-4, 12; Rev 2:10). We don’t have to be fearful of them and avoid them at all cost. Suffering, trials and tribulations definitely have nothing to do with our right believing and having enough faith or the lack of it as Joseph Prince falsely teaches. God uses sufferings to make us more like Christ (1 Pet 3:13-17; 1 Pet 4:1-6; 2 Cor 4:16-18).

Holy Communion is the next issue I wish to highlight. Joseph Prince falsely teaches that the partaking of the Holy Communion is for the healing of our bodies and blessings to our life, such as the blessing of youthfulness. I have literally seen how some NCC folks took the Holy Communion as they were taking medication, irreverently, treating it as some sort of magic potion. And when they didn’t see any healing or results, they got angry with God. Some even left the faith when they did not receive the healing they believed they would receive after partaking the Holy Communion. You must be saying to yourself that you only hear about the fantastic testimonies of healing and victory stories in the pulpit of NCC that are often shared by Joseph Prince. The reason is Joseph Prince wouldn’t dare to announce such negative stories (and there are plenty) for fear that his false teaching on the Holy Communion would be exposed. 

Prayer is the next issue. NCC neither holds prayer meetings nor encourages its members to fast and pray. This is totally contrary to the scriptures as prayer is an important teaching in the Bible (Isa 56:7; Matt 21:13; Acts 12:12; 2 Chron 20:3-4). In fact, Joseph Prince teaches against fasting, a biblical discipline that is taught not only in the Old but also the New Testament. As a result of the near-zero emphasis on prayer and fasting, my prayer life had taken a toll, and in fact, fizzled out when I was in NCC, as we were only taught to focus on confessing ‘selected passages in God’s Word’. This is devoid of intimacy with God when we just keep confessing selected portions of the Bible when there is no prayer life. Christianity is relationship with the Father. Does God want us to confess some verses mindlessly as believers instead of walking in the truth and in the light as proof of evidence of our love for Him? 

A related point is that it was very common to hear those who went for counselling in NCC to receive advice that they should just keep listening to Joseph Prince’s teaching on videos or audios until they receive their breakthrough from God. They were not encouraged to seek God in His Word or prayer at all. They just need to listen to Joseph Prince’s teaching long enough and God will do a miracle for them. Can you now see why Joseph Prince’s CDs and DVDs are selling so well?

My next doctrinal point is on sanctification or holiness. Joseph Prince can claim all he wants that he believes in sanctification or holiness. But he accepts sanctification or holiness only as part of Christian living but not as an essential component for salvation. By doing that, he goes against the scripture in Hebrews 12:14, “… without holiness no one will see the Lord.” Joseph Prince keeps defending himself that he is not against holiness, but the truth is, he does not emphasise on sanctification or holiness at all in his teachings. In all my 18 years when I was in NCC from 1993 to 2011, I have never heard him preach a whole sermon on sanctification or holiness, and consequences of sin on a believer’s life. What Joseph Prince keeps harping on in his teachings is that we are justified by the righteousness of God, which is true but only half of the truth.

My last doctrinal point and the most crucial is that many people have been deceived by Joseph Prince that he is preaching the true grace doctrine of Martin Luther. But he isn’t. What Joseph Prince preaches is Antinomianism – a false grace gospel that Martin Luther fought against during the Reformation. Martin Luther described Antinomians as those who teach that since salvation is a free gift of God’s grace, the need to obey God’s moral laws is abrogated. By Martin Luther’s definition, Joseph Prince is clearly an Antinomian. In all my many years in NCC (and even today), that’s what Joseph Prince had been teaching – Antinomianism – the teaching that the moral law is no longer relevant to New Covenant believers by virtue of grace. This is the core of Joseph Prince’s grace teachings. You would have to take my word for it as I had been in NCC and listening to Joseph Prince’s sermons week in and week out for many years. Yet, Joseph Prince has gone on to deny in his books and video and audio teachings that he is an Antinomian. I agree with Rev George Ong, who states that “for an Antinomian such as Joseph Prince to deny he is an Antinomian, just as a thief who denies he is a thief, is not only a blatant lie but hypocrisy of the highest order.”

(Click to view an important video: “Joseph Prince Preaches Antinomianism, A Heresy That Martin Luther Fought Against”)

Joseph Prince frequently trumpets the fact that NCC is really a church that glorifies Christ. But the reality is that it is merely an organisation that exalts a mere man, Joseph Prince. He always uses his growing church as proof of the endorsement from God. But the endorsement of a man’s ministry is not in the numbers but in the lives transformed and given to serve our Lord Jesus with simplicity and gratitude, and not with the covetous attitude of asking God for more and more blessings. Joseph Prince’s version of the gospel is all about indulging one’s flesh and making one feel and look good in this world. Nothing about taking up the cross and following our Master’s footsteps – to live a surrendered life and having an attitude of servanthood with godliness and great contentment.

Joseph Prince also never shared about those who died before their time (which, according to his teachings, shouldn’t have happened) or live defeated lives under his ministry. Here I am talking about those long-timers and ardent fans of his who take his teachings seriously. What Joseph Prince is good at is only bringing out those positive testimonies that exalt his grace teaching and it is never really about exalting the Jesus of the Bible. He sweeps all negative testimonies under the carpet and has the audacity to say these folks do not have their breakthroughs yet, as they do not have the correct revelation of God’s grace.

The only desire for me to share my story is that those who attend NCC or follow Joseph Prince’s teaching will take time to examine God’s Word for themselves before it is too late. I am thankful that our Lord Jesus has led me out of NCC as I have gone through a period of seeking Him due to a personal crisis. It was when I read and studied His Word for myself, I began to see how dangerous a false teacher Joseph Prince is. Joseph Prince is a master at twisting God’s Words and taking verses out of context to teach his heresies. I see a man full of himself instead of being reliant on God’s mercies and grace. I will continue to warn my friends or anyone who has ears to hear to stay away from Joseph Prince’s teaching and New Creation Church. We are living in very dangerous times and deception is at an all-time high. The Bible already warns even the elect will be deceived (Matt 24:24).

Many have told me that Joseph Prince must be right since he is blessed by God as he has the biggest church in Singapore and one of the biggest ministries in the world right now. But I have to disagree when I read the passage from Matthew 4:1-11 as Satan can also bless anyone with fame, popularity and wealth when this person chooses to worship him and do his biddings.

More importantly, I hope that Pastors and Elders of churches will take the threat of Joseph Prince’ heresies seriously, and teach and warn their members to keep away from them. How many more sheep need to be lost before the spiritual leaders of churches wake up from their slumber and inaction of not acting against Joseph Prince’s heresies? If every Pastor and Elder take courage and action to firmly speak against Joseph Prince’s false teachings, the influence of Joseph Prince on the unsuspecting sheep would definitely be curtailed. This is so important as my experience has been that once they are drawn into New Creation Church, getting them out would be tremendously difficult. As I have shared earlier, this has to do with the dark spiritual forces (sin of witchcraft) that can blind them, as they had blinded me (for 18 years) from the truth and keep them under the bondage of Joseph Prince’s heresies.

Lastly – thanks to Rev George for all that he is doing to expose Joseph Prince’s teaching and warning as many people in the church as possible. Though he has to face tremendous odds and opposition, and of all places coming from the church, praise God that he has continued to persevere unwaveringly for the last three years. I will continue to pray for God’s protection to be upon him and his household as he exposes the work of Satan through these false teachings of Joseph Prince in these last days. If there is anyone who needs support and prayer, it is Rev George Ong as he is at the forefront of the battle against the Satanic heresies of Joseph Prince.”

Lindsay Lim

Ex-Server of New Creation Church, Singapore