Earlier this month, Harry Jackson delivered a rather odd sermon at Gateway Church in Texas entitled “Samson Dies Again – The State of Our Current Celebrity Culture” in which he drew various parallels between the biblical story of Sampson and recently deceased pop star Whitney Houston.
Jackson began by reading the climatic passage from the Book of Judges in which Sampson was brought before the Philistines in the temple and pulled down the pillars, collapsing the temple and killing everyone inside, including himself … suggesting that, in her death, Houston was going to accomplish something similar:
And so I believe that Whitney Houston was someone like Sampson, who was called by God and anointed by God ultimately to be a deliverer of her people to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. But, like Sampson, she veered away in the sin of her life from her original moorings. And because of her veering away, just like Sampson, some tragic things happened to her, as did him, but at the end, God’s mercy is saying I’m going to let you do more damage to the kingdoms of darkness than you did during the rest of your life.
