Follow Up to Sleazy Silent Night
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From the Hillsong Silent Night video
Michael Brown recently wrote this article for Charisma News:
Hillsong, Silent Night and the Danger of Judging by Outward Appearance
Dr. Brown is one of the most respected members of the Christian Charismatic world; he's a brilliant debater, an actual Biblical scholar and someone who has been warning (to some extent) about false teachers in the Church. In this article he says that he, too, was appalled by the worldly and obnoxious Silent Night video that has gotten so much attention, but he refrained from making a judgment about it until he could get more information. But after he saw a Twitter comment from a pastor at Hillsong he could understand why they did the song the way they did.
There are a couple of really interesting things to note from this article: First of all, Brown makes a pretty amazing statement about how he couldn't talk to anyone from Hillsong, because he didn't have an "open door to interact directly with Hillsongs leaders (despite my attempts to do so in the past)." Please take note, everyone who says something like this: "You shouldn't say anything bad about pastor so and so until you talk to him face to face! Have you met with him and heard his side of the story?? Well then stop judging him!!"
Even Dr. Michael Brown can't talk to the "powers that be" at Hillsong. Hmmm.
Another amazing thing about this article is how he has "differed with some of Hillsong's methods and message over the years…" but he still needed to get the true story from a reliable source before he could make a judgment. How have you differed with Hillsong, Dr. Brown? Have you spoken out against the blatant Word of Faith heresy that Brian Houston continually puts forth as Christianity? That's kinda important… but it gets side-stepped in his article.
Here's the really disappointing part of this article: Brown believes he is able to make a correct judgment about this whole thing because he sees a Twitter comment made by a Hillsong pastor in Australia, and he accepts everything this guy says with no further inquiry:
Here's the big fat lie (intentional or not) in that Twitter comment: "This video was not released by Hillsong, nor would this number ever be an item on it's own." Except that the video was released by Hillsong... as an item of it's own… on Hillsong's own YouTube channel!
After Chris Rosebrough shared the video on Facebook and it started getting thousands of views (and negative comments) Hillsong quickly pulled it off their channel with no explanation, but we had made a copy for Vimeo (knowing that Hillsong would probably do the very thing they did). So now when everyone sees the Vimeo copy, Hillsong can claim that "somebody posted it out of context!" That's correct Hillsong, somebody did post it out of context-you did.
So, we now have a "sort of" official explanation as to why they made this "Sleazy Silent Night" and it does make more sense than before. This situation is still pretty irritating and here's why:
It seems Michael Brown (and lots of others) will let the heresy at Hillsong continue. That word, heresy, is not too harsh-it's an accurate statement made after a thorough evaluation of the teaching at Hillsong. Here are a bunch of programs where Chris Rosebrough has played Brian Houston's sermons and compared them to the Bible. Houston twists, distorts and mis-handles God's Word all the time! Here's an article that documents the history of covering up abuse by Brian Houston and his friends: Church Watch Central. And here's a very disturbing Australian TV Investigative News Show called Inside Hillsong.
And almost nobody cares-because Hillsong is famous! Brian Houston is famous! Everybody loves Hillsong's praise music! Tens of thousands of people love and attend Hillsong! So we showed their ridiculous Silent Night video to draw attention to the problem… but now we are the bad guys because we didn't understand the correct context for the video (that Hillsong published without explanation and then silently removed). Fine.
We are sorry to have not made such a fuss over that video.
Now can we talk about the false-teaching, Bible-twisting, power-grabbing, money-loving, pedophilia-ignoring cesspool of corruption that is brewing at Hillsong??!
Along these same lines, here's an important article from our friend J. D. Hall at Pulpit and Pen: