Joseph Prince’s Frequent Double Talks Regarding Coronavirus – By Rev George Ong (Dated 28 Feb 2022)
A Singapore Cabinet Minister, (who is a Christian), was among the 720,000 people (approximate) in Singapore to be infected with COVID-19 – so what has happened to Joseph Prince’s tagline, “No virus can come near you”? (see below)
(This article was also sent to Rev Dr Ngoei Foong Nghian, General Secretary, NCCS office, and for the attention of the Executive Committee Members.)
In a weekly Sunday sermon on 20 February 2022, 2 Sundays ago, Joseph Prince said; please click here to view excerpts in the 30-second video:
“Recently, I was thinking about this pandemic that we are in. And now, we are in the third year of this pandemic.”
“But we cannot say that God is just watching the whole thing; not being able to do it. You know if God wants to stop it at any time, He can do it. But there must be a greater purpose; there must be a greater good that God is after. And I think that the entire Church world has gone under some chastisement, under a time of discipline even during this time. I’m talking about God’s people – the Church – those who are really born again. Amen.”
In the sermon on 20 February 2022, 2 Sundays ago (not reflected in the video excerpt), Joseph Prince said that God isn’t the one who sends the pandemic and the devil is responsible for it.
But Prince double-talked as he also strongly implied in the same sermon (in the video excerpt), that God who could have but didn’t stop the pandemic, is using it to chastise and discipline “the entire Church world”:
“And I think that the entire Church world has gone under some chastisement, under a time of discipline even during this time.”
Ask yourself, “What is the pandemic all about?
Besides the inconveniences that have encroached into our normal routine, such as attending church services and cell groups or leisure travel, etc, fundamentally and more seriously, it’s about both unbelievers and believers being infected with coronavirus and dying from it.
Is Joseph Prince aware that so far about 430,000,000 people have contracted the disease and about 5,900,000 have died from it?
Joseph Prince cannot claim to be ignorant that out of these, there are millions of believers around the world who have been infected, including many Christians in Singapore and a Singapore Cabinet Minister, which is public knowledge.
Has Joseph Prince the guts to tell this Singapore Cabinet Minister (who is a Christian) that he shouldn’t have been infected with COVID-19 as “No virus can come near him?” Would Joseph Prince dare?
For a small population like Singapore of about 5.4 million, to have about 720,000 people to be infected is a high figure. This is why I have known of Christian relatives and friends who have contracted COVID-19. I’m sure many of you do too. I’m certain it is the same with Joseph Prince, but he is just keeping mum about it. To say that every one of Prince’s 34,000 church attendees and all of his circle of Christian friends and relatives have been spared from the disease would be a near impossibility.
Joseph Prince keeps playing dumb as if he isn’t aware that millions of believers have been infected with the disease and thousands have died from it. This is because the mere mention of these 2 facts, would bring severe embarrassment and total discredit to his Health & Wealth ‘Gospel’.
Assuming a very conservative figure of just 1 percent of those in the entire world who were affected are born-again believers, this means about 4,300,000 believers have been infected and about 59,000 have died from the disease.
Are these 4,300,000 believers who were infected part of “the entire Church world” that Joseph Prince was alluding to?
Are these 59,000 believers who have passed away from the disease part of “the entire Church world” that Joseph Prince was referring to?
Of course, they are. Or else, the phrase, “the entire Church world” that Joseph Prince used would have no meaning.
“The entire church world” that Joseph Prince stated in his sermon must be referring not just to believers who are not infected but also those who have contracted the COVID-19 disease and even died from it.
This simply means Joseph Prince is implying that God (who could have stopped the pandemic but didn’t) is using the coronavirus to chastise and discipline His people (“the entire church world”) by bringing diseases and deaths on them.
And yet in ‘Destined To Reign’ Page 63, Joseph Prince wrote,
“Does God Chastise Us With Sicknesses And Diseases? One of the most evil teachings that I have heard is that God will chastise His own with sicknesses, diseases, accidents and tragedies.”
Joseph Prince is clearly double-talking. He is undoubtedly speaking on both sides of his mouth.
At this juncture, Joseph Prince is bound to rush to defend himself and argue that when he said God is chastising and disciplining believers through the pandemic, he is only referring to believers who have not been infected and died from the disease.
First, if that is what Joseph Prince meant, why did he use the phrase, “the entire Church world”?
Second, going by his own grace doctrine, this simply doesn’t make sense.
Joseph Prince said,
“But there must be a greater purpose; there must be a greater good that God is after. And I think that the entire Church world has gone under some chastisement, under a time of discipline even during this time.”
What? You mean God wants to perform the greater purpose and greater good of chastising and disciplining believers who have not been infected at what cost? – At the cost of allowing millions of other believers to be infected and thousands of them to die from COVID-19?
What greater purpose and greater good could there be when millions of believers were infected and thousands of them have died? Now, let it be clear that I’m not stating my position on the matter, but I’m just highlighting the barefaced contradictions in Joseph Prince’s own position.
Joseph Prince is effectively posturing the idea that God would allow 4,300,000 believers to be infected by the disease and 59,000 of them to die from it just so other believers can enjoy the greater purpose and greater good of being chastised and disciplined through the pandemic so that they could learn a lesson and come out the better.
This would go against Prince’s own grace theology as his doctrine states that first, God can never use sickness to chastise His people. Second, God can never take away a believer’s life because God is a God who doesn’t kill and destroy, and early or unnatural deaths, arising from tragedies and diseases such as COVID-19, can never happen to believers.
Can you see the blatant double-talks and self-contradictions in Joseph Prince’s own words?
Another of his double-talk – we need to ask Joseph Prince about what has happened to his usual and oft-quoted line that “No virus can never come near you”?
It seems that this phrase “No virus can never come near you,” which was commonly used by him before, has suddenly disappeared from Joseph Prince’s vocabulary. Has Joseph Prince conveniently forgotten about it or is he too embarrassed to even mention it now?
Did you realise that in the initial stages of the pandemic, Joseph Prince’s battle cry was “No virus can come near you.” Then, realising the fierce onslaught of the pandemic that doesn’t seem to abate, (and that his doctrine doesn’t seem to work) Prince craftily changed tag, and now his tagline is “God has allowed it to happen.”
How can Joseph Prince say “No virus can come near you,” and then also posture his view in his sermon on 20 February 2022, that God is the one who allows the coronavirus to afflict the world, including disciplining and chastising “the entire Church world”, (infecting about 4,300,000 believers and bringing deaths to about 59,000 Christians)?
Yet, another of his double talk – when Joseph Prince said in a previous sermon at the beginning of this year on 2 January 2022:
“But God allows it (pandemic). And He can allow it if man doesn’t want Him. He can just lift one finger and we are all in a pandemic.”
“… there’s such a thing as people dying an untimely death. God doesn’t want that to happen to you, and God can prevent that. Don’t forget death to God is an enemy.”
How can Joseph Prince say that it was God who allowed the pandemic, and, at the same time, also said that God, who doesn’t want untimely deaths to happen to believers, can prevent that, and that death to God is an enemy?
Isn’t what Prince said a stark contradiction?
If the untimely deaths of people are what God doesn’t want to see happen and if He can prevent that, and death is an enemy to God, why would God allow thousands of believers to die their untimely deaths? Why didn’t God prevent their untimely deaths in the first place?
Finally, the last of Joseph Prince’s double talk is this – who causes the untimely deaths of thousands of believers?
If it is Satan, which is Joseph Prince’s view, then why didn’t God, who is infinitely more powerful than Satan, prevent their untimely deaths? If death is an enemy to God, and if untimely death is something that He can prevent, why did He allow Satan to cause thousands of believers to die their untimely deaths in the first place?
Has God lost His sovereignty? Is Satan more powerful than God Himself that God cannot stop Satan from inflicting untimely deaths to thousands of believers, something which God doesn’t want to see happen and something which He can stop?
Why would God, who doesn’t take away a believer’s life and never kill and destroy, allow Satan to carry out the same evil that He abhors and which He will never do to His own people?
Double-talk after double-talk after double-talk… You see what I mean.
How can the world ever trust Joseph Prince, a so-called preacher of the ‘gospel’ of grace, who frequently and unashamedly engages in double-talks?
You may wonder – what is the root cause of all his double-talks?
In a nutshell, it is because the coronavirus has really messed up Joseph Prince’s Health & Wealth ‘Gospel’ and brought his ‘gospel’ of grace doctrine (which is false) into disarray.
In his vain efforts of trying to repair and explain away the untenability and inconsistencies of his grace doctrine, he gets himself mired up with even more knots of double-talks and self-contradictions.
Rev George Ong