You might have heard of a recent hullabaloo involving a Singapore Christian group and the LGBT community this weekend.
What happened?
The initial video that caused the outrage involved local artiste Joanna Theng and City Revival founder Jaime Wong.
It was uploaded on July 22.
The video has since been taken down -- more on that later -- but involved ideas that outraged many.
In the video, Wong and Theng made connections between the LGBT community and Satan. Some of these connections include how there are six colours in the LGBT flag.
Theng asked if that number six, which is the number of the Beast, was a coincidence.
Many in the comments in response to the video said, yes, it probably was.
Other parallels they drew included how Gay Pride "celebrated pride".
According to the now-deleted video, they attributed this celebration of pride to how Satan wanted mankind to celebrate the very thing that God opposes, which is pride.
What happened after that?
The video quickly drew the ire of many.
The usage of satanic parallels to describe an entire community was roundly condemned.
This led to apologies from both Wong and Theng on July 25 to the LGBT community.
In it, Wong said that she identified "the most" with the LGBT community as she was one of them.
Wong talked about how she had come back from the U.S. to Singapore to pursue a woman, but had been rebuffed.
She then apologised that "the video has caused you (LGBT community) to feel this way".
Theng also apologised on July 25 for the way the video was viewed and said that it could have been "phrased differently".
Theng said that she will be taking some time off social media.
What is City Revival?
So what is City Revival?
Here's the description from their "About us" page.
"City Revival (CR) is an inter-generational and inter-denominational Christian community with a desire to train up revivalists to bring transformation to their God-given spheres of influence as a lifestyle. We seek to empower and give Christians the platform, guidance, and resources they need to create content centered around sports, arts, and media to further God's kingdom."
So basically kind of aiming for a youth-driven approach to spreading the Gospel to fellow youths.
If you wonder what that might look like, here's a video showing some of them, including Wong and Theng, drawing parallels to the ridiculously successful Avengers movie.
In it they find some parallels to the most recent Avengers movies, and question if the creators of the movie were "led by Satan" to come up with what they considered "a different ending" to the Bible, asking if the parallels could be a "coincidence"?
Interestingly they also quote Winston Churchill here, like they did for the July 22 video.
Repackaging
Ironically, much like their criticisms of Avengers and the Pride flag, City Revival appears to be repackaging how they "create a meaningful message to further the kingdom of God" without really deviating from the content of the past.
The accusations of pop culture being inundated with satanic imageries and messages are very much the same messages that some put forth when the Harry Potter books were at the height of their popularity.
Ditto the idea of Satanic secret agents.
The backlash against the statements by the wider community have been swift though, with the video being taken down quite quickly.
It was up from July 22 to 25.
Image from City Revival Instagram