Kong Hee & Joseph Prince: One Repented, One Refused – By Rev George Ong (Dated 7 July 2021)

Yesterday (6 July 2021), in a one-hour video-interview with a Singapore Christian Organisation, I watched Pastor Kong Hee sharing his heart out. This was a moving experience for me.

What touched me most was that Pastor Kong Hee had acknowledged his sins and took full responsibility for what had happened to his life and ministry over the last ten years. That’s a sure indication of a man who has truly repented.

He accepts it is God’s chastisement and that it is his own wrongdoings that have brought about much pain and misery on himself and to others. His honesty and humility to readily admit his faults and failings were evident in the interview.

I thank God for preserving his faith through this most difficult time in prison. Even in prison, he has drawn closer to God and found joy in His word. He now longs to be more Christlike and he wants to take time to enjoy God and live a simpler life.

He also shared that while in prison, he was led to use the Ten Commandments (which Joseph Prince despised and preached against) not in a legalistic way but as a spiritual x-ray to check his inner motives; God used that to reveal the ugliness in his soul, life and thoughts in order to change him.

For those who have been hurt by the way he had managed the church and the ugly turn of events which came about, may I appeal to you to forgive him. It is the true grace of God (not the false grace of Joseph Prince) that empowers us to forgive.

My heart was beaming with joy over the fact that there are fellow pastors in the Christian organisation who have prayed, loved, cared and reached out to Kong Hee.

But would I and others who have watched the video respond the same way if Kong Hee had refused to repent and continued to justify his sinful actions as Joseph Prince did?

While Kong Hee is a fellow brother-in-Christ who has fallen and repented, Joseph Prince is a wolf in sheepskin, who has remained unrepentant till this day.

But no heretic who truly repents should be shunted. If Joseph Prince truly repents like Kong Hee did, he, too, is to be loved, forgiven and restored by the Church. The same love that we show to a brother-in-Christ, must also be extended to a repentant heretic. 

The sad thing is Joseph Prince has remained blatantly impenitent for the past 25 years. Over these many years, many Christian leaders and believers from around the world have tried to reach out to him but he has refused time and again to be corrected over his false teachings.

Many spiritual leaders in Singapore have also met him face-to-face and confronted him over his erroneous teachings. Yet, he has remained defiantly unrepentant to this day, preaching his Pseudo-grace theology with reckless abandon and deceiving the multitudes to their eternal destruction.

Some of you may say, “George, are you telling me there is no place to pray for Joseph Prince? Don’t you believe in the power of prayer that God can change anyone, no matter how bad he is?”

Of course, I do, and I do pray for him.

But there is only one thing I pray for him intermittently – that he truly repents.

I’m not saying this for the first time but I have already stated many times publicly in my emails, website and videos over the last several years that I do pray for Joseph Prince, intermittently.

Anyone who prays for someone’s repentance to save him from eternal destruction could only be doing it out of love.

And if he truly repents like Pastor Kong Hee did, I will greatly rejoice, as his soul, which is headed for destruction, would be saved for all of eternity.

But to be frank, it will be an uphill task for him to turn from his evil ways. For Joseph Prince to repent from one false teaching, simply means he has to repent from all, as most of his teachings are intertwined and interconnected, and plenty of them are patently false.

Is Joseph Prince prepared to repent and publicly apologise to the millions around the world that he has deceived them with his heresies, and see his entire ministry crash to pieces?

But if for any miraculous reason, he is willing to repent, I’m confident that God is able to rebuild his ministry from ashes to glory. 

However, if he chooses to persist in his wayward ways, the battle against his heresies must also continue.

The reason is the Apostle Paul has clearly stated that the role for pastors and elders is not only to teach sound doctrine but they are also to refute false teachings and rebuke heretics (Tit 1:9-16; 2 Tim 4:2). This is more so because Joseph Prince who is influencing the world with his heresies, hails from our own backyard of Singapore. So this is the least we can and must do.

Jude also challenges every member of the church (not just pastors and elders) to contend for the faith and against heresies that can destroy the church (Jude 3-5).

One such believer who has obeyed Jude’s call and continues to contend against Joseph Prince’s heresies is Peter Tok who was previously from New Creation Church.

May I encourage you to watch his YouTube video, “Why I left New Creation Church” (click to watch) and his YouTube channel (Armchair Evangelist).

For those who have missed reading his testimony about his journey with New Creation Church (2014-2020) which was featured on this website some time ago, you can read it here (click)

Rev George Ong