Just over a week ago I attended an online sermon from Destiny Church with a few friends. The sermon started off fairly tame, with Brian joking about viewers eating popcorn, so I went and grabbed a bag of popcorn for us to eat while we watched - I figured it was the least a group of heathens could do.

Brian continued a series of sermons he’s been giving for a few weeks now, about Revelation and the End of Days. Hilariously, when I checked the previous week’s sermon on YouTube this morning it came up with exactly 666 views (bottom left):

He’s been telling his congregation that the end is nigh, but not too nigh. In fact, he made the claim that the end could come now, but he’s asked God to hold off - apparently Brian wants to have some "fun" before the end comes, so he’s applied for a time-out.

Brian spent some time talking about money, and how it is an idol that people worship - as he broadcast from his multi-million dollar mansion. He said that he is immune to the dangers of money, because he has money but money doesn’t have him. He went on to talk about other idols that people have, and said that the Sky Tower in Auckland is another idol - apparently it’s shaped like a vaccine needle, and we’re all worshipping this idol at the moment, rather than God. Brian’s message was very anti-vaccine, but at no point did he mention whether he has been vaccinated himself - I have my suspicions that he probably has been.

Eventually Brian, who has given himself promotions from Pastor to Bishop to Apostle, went one further. He talked about how one of the issues with the modern church is that, for all the good work they may do, nobody is willing to take the bold step of proclaiming that they are God - that God is a part of them. And of course Brian spelled out that he considers himself to be one with God - that, in part, he is God.

As a small mercy, viewership of the live stream never even reached 100 people, so it was not a great turnout - although maybe many of these viewers were entire families and possibly some people decided to watch the stream later on rather than streaming it live. But I hold out hope that, when given the choice to not watch Brian Tamaki spread his nonsense without them being spotted, many of his congregation just decided they’d rather have an extra couple of hours in bed!