A Mother's Prayer

The circumstances by which my mom’s prayers were answered was told in a blog (http://sunnimoreno.blogspot.com/2010/06/my-blessed-testimony.html) that I wrote more than a decade back. What was lacking in that account was the other side of the miracle that happened many years earlier. 

In the year 1986, my dad passed away, and since mom was left in Iligan City all by herself, she decided to move back to where she lived and grew up prior to her marriage and migration to Mindanao. In Manila, she had a sister who was also widowed and she reckoned that at their age they might work out a way to enjoy the last years of their lives together. My sister was also doing her residency in Pediatrics at a hospital there, which was a perfect set-up for that moment.

Mom was 63 years old then and needed to socialize with people of her age to keep active and happy. It so happened that there was a group in Christ Commission Fellowship (CCF) at Pasig City that was organized for this purpose to which mom’s sister belonged and so mom decided to join them. At this point in the story the only information that reached me in Mindanao was that mom was attending some Sunday activity, that she had an accident while riding on a horse during one of the out-of-town sorties and that she was happy and contented with her life. I didn't have any idea that my Seventh-day Adventist mother - a pioneer in the SDA educational work and a pastor’s wife was regularly attending Sunday worship in Manila.

In the Mid-1990s I decided to bring her back to Mindanao to live with me in the school campus of Mountain View College - the school that she and dad helped pioneer and where they retired after serving for so many years. This place is the bed-rock of SDA education in the central and southern Philippines and it is here where the doctrines of the church are aggressively guarded. 

Mom was very discreet with the new beliefs. The only thing that was apparent was her frequent communication with someone by the name of Danny De Guzman. A name that was the addressee of the regular letters that she asked me to mail for her. She also received mail and parcels of reading material on a regular basis from the same guy. Another thing that could have given her beliefs away was when she would sometimes wash her clothes on a Saturday - the adventist holy sabbath. I thought that maybe she was just mixed up with the days of the week and forgot that we should not wash on the sabbath. I also noted that she wasn't particular about the food that we ate in the restaurant - if there was shrimps or pork, etc. But all in all I never suspected that she had a change of heart in terms of religious doctrine. 

In retrospect, I think that she was hesitant to open up to me due to my position and employment and it could be possible that I would react negatively towards her.

In the year 2000 mom passed away and 3 years later I had that moment of divine calling that I mentioned in my other blog. About a year from that fateful day I happened to visit Manila to attend a work-related convention, and I took the chance to visit my mom's sister. It was there that I told her of my conversion and the trouble that it was causing my family and the institution that I was serving. My aunt was ecstatic and said that the prayers at CCF were finally answered. She invited me to the Wednesday night service while I was there and after the meeting she took me backstage to meet someone - Pastor Danny De Guzman. All she said to him as introduction was "...meet Sunny Boy," and pastor said "a-te Priscy's son?" When auntie answered yes and added that "he's already born-again" Pastor Danny exclaimed - "a mother's prayer has been answered. Hallelujah!"

Mom prayed and cried and prayed for her children - there's no doubt about that, and I know she had that peace and confidence that her prayers would be answered even if the answer came after she passed away. 

Excommunicated!

Today – October 14, marks the 8^th year anniversary of this writer’s fall from the roster of the Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) church.

The Mountain View College Alumni Church unanimously voted his demise from their ranks based on the SDA Church Manual, which stated this:

Their decision and action on this fateful day based on their second bible proved a few things:

1. They believe that they have been “conferred the power to act in Christ’s stead.” In other words they believe that they are the Vicar of Jesus (A vicar is a representative, deputy or substitute; anyone acting "in the person of" or agent for a superior (compare "vicarious" in the sense of "at second hand"). This is akin to the Catholic Church’s claim for the Pope.

2. The church manual states that their decision “will be ratified in heaven.” This means that the collective action of a group of people who after following the guidelines of a church can determine who will be saved or not.

3. They believe that their authority to bar persons from heaven is based on the verse in Matthew 16:19 (“And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”)

The reader will be spared the details of this particular case. It will suffice to know that the root cause for the church’s action was based on this writer’s straightforward interpretation of this particular bible verse: “Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day.” Colossians 2:16.

For the information of the reader, this church believes and teaches that eating or touching of the foods deemed “abominable” in the ancient Israelites’ covenant at Mt. Sinai is also binding for the present-day Christian, so is the Sabbath observance.  They also teach that the ‘breaking’ of these old covenant laws will exclude one from heaven.

The SDA church can never accept this verse at face value, because in doing so it would shatter the very foundations of its establishment. They would rather make a 180-degree turn against the truth in this verse and judge one member with regards to food, drink and the Sabbath day.

My Blessed Testimony

I write this testimony while jobless in Bangkok, Thailand. If it were not for this thing called “born again” I should still be enjoying a very good paying job with benefits and a handsome retirement package, and a prestigious position in society with a lot of friends and associates.

I’m a fourth generation Seventh-day Adventist (SDA), a PK (preacher's kid) of a father who was one of the early educator missionaries to the island of Mindanao, Philippines. He was also a president of Mountain View College. My mother was one of the authors of the SDA elementary text books in the 50’s through the 70’s.

I am a physician for 25 years and was employed by the SDA church to manage one of its health facilities situated in the beautiful campus of Mountain View College, an Adventist Theology school. This job I held for 17 years. My sister and only sibling is also a doctor and married to an SDA doctor who was also an administrator in another SDA health facility [Davao Adventist Hospital]. My two children and wife are Adventists and so are the clans of my mother and father. Due to my parents’ prominence in the SDA church hierarchy we are well known among the Adventists in the central and southern Philippines.

Five years ago, at the age of 47 I realized that the specifics of my salvation were not clear to me and in a sense hereditary, so to speak. I determined one night to get the details from the Bible and so I sat down at the dining table with an old KJV bible in my hand. It was then that I realized that I didn’t know where to start. So I said a simple prayer that God would put my hand to the exact page where I should begin. After praying I opened the Bible at random and there was Romans Chapter 1 right before my eyes. I didn’t see any importance why God would direct me to that page until I was into chapter 2 when I realized that I could understand everything very clearly just like I was reading a kid’s book. I read through the whole book of Romans twice that night before retiring to bed. The following morning I woke up with the same ecstatic feeling of the absolute assurance of salvation and it was only then that I realized that I was possessed by the Holy Spirit.

The months that followed were the most trying times in my life. I just couldn’t keep the truths to myself and I was seen almost every day talking with the instructors of the School of Theology. It was not long before the Church Board had to convene to officially question me and get my stand in faith. After that meeting there was no question in their minds that I no longer believed in the church’s doctrines. My wife who was an administrator of the school and my two children who were in college were caught in the crossfire, and they blamed me for all the trouble that was taking place, while telling me to shut up and abide by the church’s doctrines. It came to the point where my daughter ran away from home and my son threatened to burn my Bible. My wife threatened to leave me three times and finally she resigned from her office without consulting me, packed her things and moved to the city of her mother with my two children. I was forced to move with them too but I didn’t resign from my work and kept up my presence in the campus on weekdays and while spending the weekends with my family.

After a year my daughter couldn’t stand it any longer and asked me to sit down and point out from the Bible my beliefs. In an hour she believed and immediately received the Holy Spirit. Her conversion was so dramatic that her brother took notice and soon also asked to sit down with me for Bible study. In that same moment he too received the Holy Spirit and that left only my wife who stood firm in the SDA faith for the next two years in spite of our prayers and soft talk with her.

Two years later she developed an ovarian cyst that immediately required surgery. The doctors removed her uterus and both ovaries and she was discharged after nine days. Three weeks after that operation she developed abdominal pain and started throwing up. We took her to the hospital where the doctors reopened her and resected six inches of her intestines, which was gangrenous after being trapped in the stump of her uterus.

On the second post-operative day she called me to her bed and told me that she wanted me to pray for her. After three years of estrangement she finally allowed me to pray for her. I told her that I have been praying all the time for her and that God was just waiting for her to surrender her spirit to Him. She said that she was so confused and didn’t know how to pray for herself so I told her to repeat my prayer out loud so that God would hear it from her lips. She did and at that moment the Holy Spirit seized her and we become a family united in one spirit.

After some time the Church became alarmed because there were some students and faculty members who were already secretly meeting with me to study the Bible. They finally decided to disfellowship (excommunicate) me from the church, which they succeeded but without the use of a single Bible verse, because they just couldn’t find the right verse to use against me. Two months later they also found the alibi to kick me from my job and I had no other course but to leave.

I praise God for all the years of testing and trials that has firmly bound us as a family. I also thank Him for miraculously opening jobs for my wife and two children in a country – Thailand, where I could work as an independent missionary to the poorest of the poor. We now reside in Bangkok and fellowship with God’s children at the Evangelical Church of Bangkok.

My mother became a born-again Christian before she died. My sister, her husband and their four children eventually found the truth after vigorously trying to dissuade me from my decision, and they too left the SDA church and are now worshiping with the Baptists in Bakersfield, California. My father, who passed away in 1986, would never know that his family would see the truth and leave the church.

I offer this testimony to the author and finisher of my faith, my savior, Jesus. To God give all the glory, honor and praise. (written in 2008)