The NZ herald has a campaign going against Brian Tamaki. He preached before the last earthquake on the nature of such natural disasters as a sign of God’s punishment, his iniquity. In it he discussed how Christchurch had been a corrupt city, how its MP had campaigned for Gay marriage, and that it had a high murder rate.

I think his exegesis — he bought in the earth crying out about the blood of Abel, the first murder victim — is shabby. But I’m not his audience.

Destiny is a very Maori church, in South Auckland. He is the local version of those Black Pentecostal preachers who have done much — for good and for ill.

But he has offended the elite. They have signalled their virtue, by asking the government punish the by removing their charities registration.

Meanwhile a petition to strip Destiny Church of its tax-free status has gained more than 116,000 signatures of support.

Brian’s sermon, just hours before the devastating 7.8 magnitude Kaikoura earthquake at 12.02am on Monday, blamed gay people among others for natural disasters.

Tamaki later hit out at media for sensationalising the sermon and tried to back track on RadioLive saying it wasn’t just gay people who were being punished for their sins, but adulterers, child abusers and anybody indulging in “extra-sexual behaviour”.

This week Peter Dunne echoed calls from the public to strip Destiny Church of its tax-exempt status.

On Thursday Dunne tweeted: “I do not favour taxing genuine churches & real charities, but as Destiny is obviously neither it should pay taxes like any other business”.

As Internal Affairs Minister, the United Future leader oversees the registration of charities. But a spokesman for Dunne’s office said removing the church’s tax-exemption status wasn’t within his power.

Tamaki is Maori, but as he is a Pentecostal he can be mocked. The traditional culture is seen as sacrosanct. However, when a church does some good, and there are changes…but if they offend the pieties, then he must be punished. Being the people of the land is not enough. You must be a neo pagan, a professional victim, and give up being a child of God.

Tamaki’s exegesis was sloppy. His teaching, however, was not heretical. It was, instead, unacceptable to those who will not consider that we don’t control what happens on this planet.

I am in close contact with an American that was there, and here is “the rest of the story” that I have condensed and written up.

In the minutes immediately after the quake, a few people who had been inside the town walls came to the town square, saw the catastrophe, saw the heavily damaged bell tower of the city hall looming above them, knelt, and started praying the Rosary. Over the next few minutes, a steady stream of locals trickled into the square until there were a couple hundred people present. The monks of Norcia, all up the hill just overlooking the town, looked down and saw huge plumes of dust engulfing the town and saw the Basilica’s bell tower was down. The three young priest monks in the community manfully grabbed their stoles and sped down the hill as fast as they could, fully expecting casualties. Within a few minutes, having to enter the city literally climbing over piles of rubble that were once churches, the three young priest-monks, upon entering the town square at a dead sprint, were ready to give the Last Rites to the grievously injured and dead. Two of them split off and began helping the firemen search and clear buildings, with the main challenge being getting elderly people out of the buildings and houses. The other priest stayed in the square and manfully SCREAMED in Italian at the people there present to kneel and pray. All the while, severe aftershocks were coming every few minutes.

And here is where it gets sad. The people already praying were either foreigners who were there in Norcia because of the Monks (as in the American source of this information), or Italians who were there visiting the Monks. This handful of people had started praying the Rosary quietly in Latin. The priest monk, screaming at the locals in the square, knelt down and began the Rosary in Italian – loudly. Yelling the prayers, in fact.

NONE OF THE LOCALS JOINED. NONE OF THEM KNELT. NONE OF THEM PRAYED. THE AMERICAN SOURCE OF THIS ACCOUNT DID NOT SEE A SINGLE LOCAL SO MUCH AS MAKE THE SIGN OF THE CROSS.

And bear in mind, magnitude 4 aftershocks were happening every few minutes, with the city hall bell tower looking like it could fall on them at any moment. Their city destroyed, having experienced literally the Wrath of God, and having once again dodged death, these ethnic Catholics, steeped and saturated in Catholic culture, most of them economically dependent on Catholic tourism to one degree or another, casually refused to pray.

Tamaki is correct. The response when Norica fell (note that in NZ we don’t build in stone because everywhere gets Richter 4 earthquakes) is that of the monks. Help those in need. And pray. For some, life ended at Kaikoura. May all have time to find Christ before that end.

And for saying this, he will be hounded by those who worship Social Justice. He need not apologize: it will be seen as a sign of guilt. They will rejoice if his church is destroyed and not take any responsibility for the human wreckage that would follow.

Tamaki is correct. But our elite are converged. The only thing holding them back is the precedents around churches… and that they have disqualified for parachurch ministries already.

Those who consider that speech should be free should stand with him. Those of faith will stand with him. The alternative is to be the elite, or like them, and that is fatal.