Pastor of Singapore Pentecostal Mega-Church Sentenced to Prison for Misappropriation of Funds

Kong Hee and Yeow Sun

Kong Hee, founder and senior pastor of a Pentecostal megachurch in Singapore, has been sentenced to eight years in prison for misappropriating church funds to support his wife’s pop singing career. Five other church leaders were given sentences ranging from 21 months to six years. The sum misappropriated by the leaders of City Harvest Church (CHC) was a whopping $35 million. Corruption of this magnitude is rare in this city state which has a well-deserved reputation for law and order. Leave it to a charismatic pastor to set the bar of corruption high and make Christianity a laughing-stock before the entire nation! The pop singer, Ho Yeow Sun, was recently ordained as a pastor of the church. She will be able to carry on the family business while her husband is in prison. Michael Scales of New York’s Christian College performed her ordination, speaking the nonsensical words, “I pray when she speaks, fire will come out of her belly.” Ho Sun is a popular Chinese pop singer who lives a pop star’s lifestyle, complete with immodest dress, champagne parties, and very sensual rock videos. A friend who provides information that helps with my research said, “I looked at a few of her videos but could not present them because of their vile content.” A Baptist pastor friend in Singapore wrote, “It was just last weekend that I came to know that her horrible and slutty music video (‘China Wine’) was actually aired live in church at CHC when it first came out. It is hard to imagine any husband willingly showing off his wife in church dressed like a whore, dancing like one, and worse, a pastor’s wife.” Kong Hee and other leaders of City Harvest who have been convicted in Singapore’s no-nonsense courts still proclaim their innocence, though it was proven that they put millions of dollars into sham bond investments and tried to hide their deeds from the law. According to the Gospel Herald for Oct. 29, 2015, the church is standing with its crooked leaders (“City Harvest Founder Kong Hee Thanks Congregation for ‘Grace and Love’ as Wife Sun Ho Is Ordained as Pastor,” Oct. 29, 2015). This demonstrates a lack of integrity across the entire congregation. They have been blinded and morally numbed by a heaping dose of mindless demonic mysticism served up through rock music, charismatic experiences, and false doctrine. Kong Hee follows in the footsteps of many other prominent Pentecostal-Charismatic leaders who have brought reproach upon the name of Jesus Christ before a mocking world, as we have documented extensively in the book The Pentecostal-Charismatic Movements: The History and the Error. Last year, David Yonggi Cho, founder of Yoido Full Gospel Church in Seoul, South Korea, long billed as the world’s largest church, was sentenced to three years for breach of trust and corruption (“David Yonggi Cho,” The Gospel Herald, Feb. 21, 2014). Cho, one of Kong Hee’s mentors, was found guilty of causing $12 million in losses to the church by having officials buy stocks owned by his eldest son, Cho Hee-jun, at nearly four times market value. David Cho’s three-year sentence was suspended because of his age and prominence, but he was ordered to pay a penalty of US $4.7 million, and Cho Hee-jun’s three-year sentence was not suspended.

(Friday Church News Notes, November 27, 2015, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143)

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