Why is the Appointed Son of God Blessed?

People who get acquainted with the Kingdom of Jesus Christ only in recent years think that the ministry is just an overnight sensation. Some say it’s “media hype,” a fly-by-night congregation that just sprouted out of nowhere.

Little did they know that everything that we see in the Kingdom Nation today is a result of the ministry’s progressive growth whose humble roots trace back to some flooded days during the rainy season in the slums of Agdao, Davao City.

One night, in the middle of his regular fellowship with the Kingdom workers in Villamor, Pastor Apollo noticed the floor started to be filled with floodwater. There was a heavy downpour. He could not stop the fellowship midway so Pastor Apollo continued talking until the water reached his seat.

Pastor was unperturbed. He squatted upon his chair and we all followed suit. It seems funny recalling this memory but this scenario lingered in my mind. The same thing did not happen only once but several times. One time, Pastor was jolted awake in the middle of the night when the folding bed he was sleeping on in his office got submerged in floodwaters.

His back was dripping wet!

I remember so vividly that our Beloved Pastor’s office in Villamor served also as his sleeping quarter. He had no bedroom of his own. He would just spread his metal folding bed at night in the tiny office that had no air conditioner or electric fan.

I was a newly baptized member when I saw Pastor in this uncomfortable situation. He had mumps on his face due to extreme heat and poor sanitation in the worker’s house. The toilet would overflow come rainy days and the workers’ sleeping quarters would be submerged in dirty waters. Pastor, together with the workers, would personally drain the floors dry.

This was the kind of life our Beloved Pastor was living the time the Almighty Father called me to be with him in the full-time ministry. The pioneers of the Kingdom Nation had to put up with this kind of living
condition for years before the Father started to bless the ministry.

But just like the Israelites in the wilderness, the faithful pioneers of the Kingdom Nation didn’t grow weary. Their clothes and their shoes of faith, loyalty, commitment, and dedication didn’t get old.

Why did the Almighty Father subject His Appointed Son to the anvil of suffering, poverty, and affliction for one year in Kitbog and 5 years in Tamayong? It is because one day, He would bless him beyond measure. Had the Son not been tried and tested before being entrusted with such a glorious ministry, he would have turned the other way and got disillusioned on his way to the top. To be lifted to such an exalted position as the Appointed Son of God would be too much for a man whose love still rests in material and superficial things.

Lucifer was once an angel of light who was called the sun of the morning, but iniquity was found in his heart. He was entrusted with the mountain of God but he eventually felt like he could be greater than God, and even topple Him down from His throne.

He carried out a mutiny in heaven. He convinced 1/3 of the angels to rebel against God. Michael and Gabriel the Archangels who were once his brothers in the spirit stood against him and so the war started in heaven. Lucifer and his minions were cast down on earth. Pride caused Lucifer’s downfall. Pride and ego must first be extricated from man before he could be entrusted with everything. It all comes with repentance – the surrendering of one’s human will to the Will of the Almighty Father.

In testing the Appointed Son’s mettle, the Almighty Father had to check and search the innermost chambers of his heart. He had to make sure that iniquity, pride, and ego were no longer found in him. He had to subject our Beloved Pastor to utmost humiliation wherein he should bow his head in humility and submission to His Will.

He trained the Son how to be above and how to be below; how to be a servant and how to be a master; how to be a vessel of honor and a vessel of dishonor; how to be a masterpiece display in His house and how to be a doormat everyone steps upon.

All along the Almighty Father taught His Appointed Son that in relationship with Him, the terms and conditions no longer depend on him, but depend on what the Father wills and pleases. The Son has learned absolute obedience through the things he suffered from.

If the Almighty Father did not train our Beloved Pastor, his love would have been transferred from the spiritual to material things and the blessings that come with the parcel of being the Appointed Son of God. But because he was tried, tested, and proven true and genuine in poverty or prosperity, whether he sleeps on a makeshift bed or in a mansion, or wears the same pair of pants every single day or elegant suits, his love for Him remains the same.

Our Beloved Pastor would walk the villages and sitios of Samal Island from Babac to Peñaplata for days without food. He only had two white rabbit candies in his pocket as his sustenance. He was skin and bones. He
had no car of his own. He would smell the freshly cooked dinurado steamed rice wafting from the houses but he had nowhere to stop by and take his lunch.

His eyes remained single, focused only on the Father’s Will. He said in his latest preaching, “When you set aside the Father’s Will, you are Lucifer in the making.”

This holds true to the life of the Appointed Son of God and every son and daughter who aspires to follow in his footsteps. Our Beloved Pastor had to go through the rigmarole of proving himself worthy of all the entrustment
that will one day be given to him. It wasn’t served before him on a silver platter in one sitting. It was a gradual progression of trust day after day, year after year. It was only on April 13, 2005, that the Kingship was bestowed upon him.

He went from strength to strength, lifted to the vortex of spiritual entrustment until everything was given to him and he was found worthy of all the Father’s blessings.

I leaf through old diaries, journals, and photo album pages and I cannot help but sometimes cry for never in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine that the same Pastor who would preach unperturbed in the middle of a flooded room in the slums of Agdao would be this highly exalted man that we see today.

Whenever people come and say, “Why is Pastor Apollo Quiboloy rich?” My answer remains the same. He did not ask to be made rich. It was the Father Almighty who made him rich, powerful, and famous.

It is not because he longed for it, but because it was given to him as a gift for when the Almighty Father looked into his heart, he saw nothing but a sincere and pure-hearted man whose love and devotion is in doing His perfect Will no matter what.

Sometimes, our Beloved Pastor would watch the ebbing tide late in the afternoon from his well-appointed veranda on Samal Island. Sometimes he would remember the young Apollo walking the rugged roads of Peñaplata carrying with him nothing but his old Bible and two white rabbits in his threadbare pants we’d bought from the ukay-ukay.

Sometimes he would recall that while he was an unknown preacher with a few followers, his love and faithfulness to the Almighty Father remains just the same now that he has millions of followers worldwide and has everything he could ever ask for.

And if you ask me why the Appointed Son of God is blessed, I hope you now know the answer.