Brian Tamaki, the head of the New Zealand fundamentalist Destiny Church, gave a sermon on Sunday morning blaming "human sin" – including homosexuality and same-sex marriage – for natural disasters such as earthquakes.

Hours later, in the early hours of Monday morning, a magnitude-7.8 earthquake struck the South Island about 95km (59 miles) from the city of Christchurch, killing two people.

The video in which he gives the sermon is pinned to the top of the Destiny Church Facebook page, with the caption: "As predicted during yesterday morning's service, the recent natural disasters are a sign that 'nature was never created to carry the bondage of our iniquity'."

"The Earth can speak," Tamaki told church followers in his sermon.

"Leviticus says that the Earth convulses under the weight of certain human sin... It spews itself up after a while: that's natural disasters. Because nature was never created to carry the bondage of our inequity," he said.

Tamaki went on to say that a "stubborn and ignorant human race" is going in the wrong direction and hurting nature.