Lighthouse Evangelism has not only shut down comments on its Youtube videos, it’s also closed up its Facebook group. Now when you get to the group, you’ll see a notice saying “This Facebook page is not an official page of Lighthouse Evangelism and is in no way maintained by any of the staff of Lighthouse Evangelism.” I’m sure the whole world saw while the group was open, that one of the admins of the group was a certain Pacer Tan, and who is this chap, you ask? He’s the youth pastor of Lighthouse Evangelism and according to a report by the Straits Times, the son of Rony Tan.


Could it be Pacer Tan and the other admins of the FB group started the Group without any official sanction from Lighthouse itself?
Kenneth, stop behaving like a vulture please.
The Bible’s condemnation of homosexuality is as clear and plain as the Bible’s condemnation of murder, adultery, premarital sex, kidnapping, lying and idolatry. Further, for me to openly condemn homosexuality theologically makes me no more a “gay basher” than I am an “adultery basher”, “premarital sex basher”, “kidnapper basher” or a “murderer basher”. If you disagree, your argument is with God’s Bible.
@Paul KC: I have no argument with God’s Bible. I have an argument with the way YOU interpret the Bible.
Albert Einstein (14 March 1879–18 April 1955) was a theoretical physicist who is widely regarded as one of the most influential scientists of all time. He is often regarded as the father of modern physics and one of the brightest minds we ever had. It is interesting that Albert Einstein actually think quite highly of Buddhism, unlike many others such as Pastor Rony Tan who made a video mocking Buddhism during his preaching.
Albert Einstein:
“Buddhism has the characteristics of what would be expected in a cosmic religion for the future: It transcends a personal God, avoids dogmas and theology; it covers both the natural and spritual; and it is based on a religious sense aspiring from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual, as a meaningful unity.”
“If there is any religion that would cope with modern scientific needs it would be Buddhism.”
“A human being is part of the whole, called by us ‘Universe’; a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compasion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely but striving for such achievement is, in itself, a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.”
The Rise Of Buddhism In New Zealand
Voxy News Engine, 18 January, 2010
Auckland, New Zealand — What happens when two religions and two world views collide?
That was the question Victoria University graduate Hugh Kemp sought to answer via research that focused on how and why New Zealanders convert to Buddhism.
“Buddhism is gaining traction in New Zealand, so my interest was in what makes a New Zealander become a Buddhist and the variety of pathways they take as they journey towards, and embrace, Buddhism,” says Mr Kemp.
As part of his PhD research, he also focused on the identity that convert Buddhists construct for themselves as New Zealanders.
Mr Kemp interviewed around 70 new Buddhists from all over New Zealand and attended 27 Buddhist events and gatherings. His interviews explored four factors of inter-relationships: practice and ritual, selfhood, belief and involvement.
“It was essentially a qualitative sociology project that tracked why New Zealanders take up the practice of Buddhism and how they continue to find meaning, chiefly in regular practice, ritual and involvement.”
Although Mr Kemp says he was surprised that numbers of New Zealand converts hadn’t increased as much as he’d expected, or as much as overseas trends indicated, Buddhism remained a popular religion here.
“It’s down to a number of factors – the increasing profile of the Dalai Lama, New Zealand’s closer ties with Asia and the fact that we’re quite open to new religions and have a history in New Zealand of people experimenting with new religions.”
Mr Kemp, who also has a Masters of Theology degree, says interviewees’ stories were placed in a social-historical narrative of Arcadia.
“If New Zealand is Arcadia – clean, green, 100% pure and the ideal place to live – then it can be conceived of as a Buddhist Pure Land. Arcadia and the Pure Land come together in notions of ‘home’, offering a new imaginative order for Buddhist practitioners.” Overall, he says his research indicates that new converts overwhelmingly believe New Zealand is a good place to practice Buddhism.
“Buddhists in New Zealand say they will continue to create their own identity and find a turangawaewae or place of identity in which to stand.”
One of Mr Kemp’s supervisors Professor Paul Morris says, “Dr Kemp’s pioneering work, which is the first systematic study of New Zealanders who become Buddhist, tells us both about religion and spirituality in our country and the specific manifestations of Buddhism here.” Mr Kemp graduates with a PhD in Religious Studies and is hoping to teach Religious or Asian Studies. His supervisors were Dr Rick Weiss and Professor Paul Morris.
In reply to Paul KC:
People are alway ready to quote the old testament on man lying with man, but ignore a lot of the other inconvenient stuff. In the new testament, Jesus never mentioned the subject, nor did any of the four gospels. In fact in gospel of John, he has a male disciple , “the one that he loved” lying on his breast at the last supper, that he asks his mother to accept as her son when he’s dying on the cross. Paul has been shown to be talking about something other than what we understand as homosexuality, and he was no Jesus by a long chalk in any event. So it is not “fact” that the Bible condemns homosexuality, just someone’s opinion or interpretation, as with so much else in this book.
By the way, Paul said preferably EVERYONE should be single and never have sex (How natural is that? And how long before extinction?) but that if Bishops feel they absolutely have to, they should limit themselves to one wife.
Personally I find Jesus himself a far more inspiring source of love and wisdom than anything Paul wrote, or any of these modern day theatrical so-called pastors who take large amounts of money from the gullible. And on this subject of gay love and sex there is not one condemnation, or even mention by Jesus. So why are some Christians so obsessed with lying about and condemning gays? It’s just their own prejudice coming out.
On the causes of sexual orientation, for your information, the Royal College of Psychiatrists, UK, states:
“ Despite almost a century of psychoanalytic and psychological speculation, there is no substantive evidence to support the suggestion that the nature of parenting or early childhood experiences play any role in the formation of a person’s fundamental heterosexual or homosexual orientation. It would appear that sexual orientation is biological in nature, determined by a complex interplay of genetic factors and the early uterine environment. Sexual orientation is therefore not a choice. ”
Submission to the Church of England’s Listening Exercise on Human Sexuality, Oct.2007.
In other word, the cause of homo- or hetero- sexual orientation is genetic and/or hormone levels in the womb during pregnancy.
Your position would deny all gay people the opportunity to have a happy, fulfilling physical and emotional relationship with the person they love. Doesn’t sound like a very loving (or Christian, as I understand it) position to me.