Claims Of Prophetic Fulfillment

A poor and underdeveloped country like the Philippines will look at religiosity as power. It is not surprising therefore to find out that "mystics" in Filipino parlance will have super powers like the ability to heal (as faith healers) or a special capacity for seeing things (like our "seers"). It is not surprising too that another trait of the Filipino -- personality worship -- when mixed up with religion, becomes the seed bed for cults centered around personalities. This latter is reinforced by the charismatic leaders who beguile their followers into believing that they are fulfillments of certain prophecies in Scriptures. Jose Rizal, for example has become a center of a cult, called the Rizalistas and is considered a reincarnation of Jesus Christ.
When I hear members of the Iglesya ni Cristo (of Diliman, Quezon City fame) talk about their founder Felix Manalo as the fifth angel in the Apocalypse (the one who stops the four winds from blowing), I laugh, knowing that the bible passage on which that claim is based will not support it. When I hear members of Ang Dating Daan proclaiming that Eliseo Soriano is the poor wise man in Qoheleth, I laugh too, knowing that the passage cited is not prophetic in nature. But when someone like Apollo Quiboloy comes up on his 54th birthday and proclaim that he is the Son of God, then I am shocked. No prophecy is involved here, just the consciousness that one IS the Son of God. Surely this is madness! When the Lord still lived among us, demons called him "Son of God"; he never proclaimed himself as the Son of God. And when demons did address him as "Son of God" he'd tell them to keep quiet. Apollo Quiboloy is doing the contrary: he even proclaims that all authority in heaven and on earth, all riches, has been given to him by his Father in heaven. But isn't this blasphemy? Yet there are people who believe in his claim. No doubt Quiboloy has gone mad. We might still see another Jim Jones in a Philippine setting.

Nationalistic Churches of the Sola Scriptura

After the rise of the Aglipayan Church, the first nationalistic church in the Philippines, it was followed by the currently still prominent Iglesya ni Cristo (a Corporation Sole registered Church) founded by Felix Y. Manalo. And from this latter church came other denominations that are anti-Catholic and fundamentalistic, of which Eliseo Soriano's Ang Dating Daan is numbered. The Pentecostal outbreak in the Philippines brought in by American charismatics also spawned other "ministries" that are markedly fundamentalist. Of these are to be numbered the Church of Davao's Quiboloy and the group of Presidential candidate, Eddie Villanueva.

While the Born Again groups and the Aglipayan Church are not openly hostile to the Catholic Church, the Iglesya ni Kristo and the ADD have become famous because of their open hostility towards the majority Church int he Philippines. Born Again groups have a particular approach: they invite Catholics to their free Renewal meetings, smother them with love and affection, move them to an emotional high and then tell them about alleged atrocities of the Catholic Church, all in the spirit of love and concern for their salvation. This honeyed approach has helped them effectively brainwash people. Quiboloy, for example, can now preach that he is the Son of God for these times to the applause and approbation of the crowds he draws.

The Iglesya ni Cristo and the Ang Dating Daan groups have become prominent through the air waves and other means of mass communication. While it is true that the Iglesya ni Cristo seems to be more concerned now about the "Paham" of Ang Dating Daan, they still manage to attack the Catholic Church in their programs, especially when dealing with topics touching on the Divinity of Christ and the Trinity. This they do more because there are already ex-Catholics in their midst who would like to get out of their Church and return to the Catholic fold.

Eliseo Soriano's Ang Dating Daan has also been attacking the Catholic Church but only because it seems he has to keep up the appearance that the Catholic Church is in the wrong. His main target at the moment is the Iglesya ni Cristo which has piled lawsuits against him for his Ang Dating Daan program. I must admit however that compared with the three stooges of Network 54's Ang Tamang Daan fame, I am more inclined towards Soriano's explanation of the Scriptures. When attacking the Iglesya ni Manalo doctrines, Eliseo Soriano ably uses the Bible and shows a particular sensitivity to the intent of the author, to the literary nature of the sacred page and respect for the immediate and greater context of a particular passage. He drops all these however when criticizing this or that Catholic doctrine as evidenced by this blog.

Except for the Aglipayan Church and the Born Again groups, I'll be dealing more with the latter two groups in these blogs. I'll be monitoring them here because my special interest is in the way they use the Scriptures in legitimizing their claim as the true Church. The fact that there are many churches using the "sola scriptura" principle and calling each other false is evidence that the one faith and one communiion that the Lord intends for His Church cannot be based on that principle. Hence, in this blog, I won't be dwelling too much on whether ministers practise what they preach; I would however be studying the Scriptures as the INC and Eliseo Soriano explain them and show in these blogs where they are wrong or right.

A Rough Draft of "Ulat Pinoy"

The difficulty of writing in Filipino has kept me from updating the "Ulat Pinoy" blogs that I created with the intention of answering the doctrinal allegations made by certain religious charlatans against the Catholic Church. This blog will serve to be a kind of "rough draft" for my replies written in the language I am more comfortable with before I translate what I would like to say to them in Filipino.
I am not an apologist. My intention here is not really to answer objections and rebutt arguments. What I do is simply to expose a wrong interpretation of a scriptural passage based on the rules of proper interpretation. Normally, I watch a TV program or listen to a radio program run by the above mentioned charlatans and take note of the way they attack a doctrine or practise of the Catholic Church. When scriptures is involved, I take down even the passages cited and how their argument is developed. This way, I also learn the stock biblical passages they use for a particular theme.
While I have succeeded in the past to directly type my criticism of a particular line of reasoning, there were other instances still where I was not able to complete a post in Filipino because I couldn't fint the right term or the right phrase to use. Besides, I often find myself scrounging for the same Tagalog bibles employed by those false teachers (Ang Biblia and TPV sometimes) to get a citation right. For this reason, I will stop trying to express myself directly in Filipino but write in English first for a quicker and more convenient way of responding.