Speaker 1: Also media.
Speaker 2: You see Costco be like, hey man, we don't sell.
Speaker 1: That, we don't sell that baby oil.
Speaker 2: Okay, hey, look, don't be speaking on my name. Don't
Speaker 2: be speaking keep my name out your fucking mouth.
Speaker 1: I can't believe you tried to throw fucking uh Costco
Speaker 1: into the back.
Speaker 3: Costco is like, hold up, hold up, this shit you
Speaker 3: got going is not with us. That is true. To
Speaker 3: keep my name about your mouth.
Speaker 1: See if I if I was dead to rights and
Speaker 1: only lying about Costco could get me off, I would
Speaker 1: I would take the fall for Costco.
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, what did Costco do to you?
Speaker 1: Except for Costco's Costco has done so much for me exactly,
Speaker 1: mostly provide me with olives.
Speaker 4: But you know, I feel like if there's somebody that
Speaker 4: you don't go after in America, it's Costco.
Speaker 1: I feel like it's it's it's the closest thing. We
Speaker 1: have Costco in the post office. Like that's what we
Speaker 1: have as like beloved institutions in this country.
Speaker 2: Yeah, honestly, yes, Like you what what have they done
Speaker 2: wrong except for provide to us everything that feeds our decadence?
Speaker 2: Like this is all this is, It's the most American thing,
Speaker 2: Like you know what I'm saying, like, Hey, you want
Speaker 2: some mayonnaise, why don't you get a drum of it?
Speaker 4: Personally, I don't. I don't enjoy going to Costco because
Speaker 4: the aisles are really high, and as a person who's
Speaker 4: very short, I'm like, this feels like a bad way
Speaker 4: to go, like the fear of this argument. M hmm.
Speaker 4: Plus it's just there's too many.
Speaker 2: Fucking people anywhere where you could buy some dickies and
Speaker 2: like you know, wild caught salmon in the same place.
Speaker 2: I'm like this, this is American man.
Speaker 4: I often just think about that man that got that
Speaker 4: shirt made of the sticker for the barcode for the
Speaker 4: rotisserie chicken. You know what I'm talking about? Yes, Okay,
Speaker 4: I think about I think about him quite often. Like
Speaker 4: I hope you're well, sir.
Speaker 3: It's a hero, bro Robert, we've been recording.
Speaker 4: This entire time. Are we keeping this Costco conversation? In
Speaker 4: I I.
Speaker 1: We're not allowed to cut the Costco conversation? Yeah, prop
Speaker 1: we're talking about the Jeffrey Epstein of the Philippines. His
Speaker 1: name is Apollo Cloid. Anyway, Cold Open's fucking done. Oh
Speaker 1: we're back, boy, we really just kind of dropped media
Speaker 1: res into this. Motherfucker didn't we didn't We Are the
Speaker 1: kids learning words like that anymore? Do they have that
Speaker 1: on the tiktoks? I assume if it's not on the tiktoks,
Speaker 1: the kids aren't learning it anymore. I've become one of
Speaker 1: those old men who's angry at the kids for not
Speaker 1: having read the same things I read when I was
Speaker 1: in high school, coming like the great Gadsby.
Speaker 2: I feel like you were a you've been you've been
Speaker 2: an old man since you're junior year of high school.
Speaker 1: It is, it is, yeah, it is, it is.
Speaker 3: I have nothing to say.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 3: My brother was like that.
Speaker 2: He was just like I was, like when he turned sixteen,
Speaker 2: we were like, you're forty. Yeah, you are a forty
Speaker 2: year old, sixteen year old mm hmm.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think a lot of us are
Speaker 1: like that. And my knees have always been forty. Jason Petty,
Speaker 1: host of Hood Politics, also guest on Behind the Bastards Today.
Speaker 1: Prop Yeah, buddy, we go back a bit at this point.
Speaker 1: You and I have been friends friends for a spell,
Speaker 1: and this year, you know, I've called on you a
Speaker 1: couple of times for some real tough episodes, the Bobby
Speaker 1: Lee episodes, and the Thomas Jefferson episodes, not easy ones.
Speaker 1: And I was like, I want to do something fun
Speaker 1: for my friend Jason when he comes back on the show.
Speaker 1: We're not going to do, you know, some fucking slaveholding
Speaker 1: monster from American history. We're not going to do. You know,
Speaker 1: We're gonna We're gonna steer clear of the United States entirely.
Speaker 1: We're gonna do a fun one. I'm gonna find him
Speaker 1: like a nice cot beater or something. Anyway, I fucked up,
Speaker 1: and we're doing the Jeffrey Epstein of the Philippines. It
Speaker 1: was not Jeffrey Epstein. If it was just a guy
Speaker 1: named Jeffrey Epstein in the Philippines, that would be probably
Speaker 1: responsible of me.
Speaker 2: You just got me a ballique Bayon box of trash
Speaker 2: that you just brought over. That's shot out to all
Speaker 2: my penoise y'all, I'm gonna throw just tell y'all right now,
Speaker 2: my stepmom's Filipino.
Speaker 3: You know she's beside it. She's from Domaghetti.
Speaker 2: My best friend who I toured forever, DJ Fectol Rest
Speaker 2: in peace, Filipino. I'm from the part of town that's
Speaker 2: like a good forty percent Filipino, So there's gonna be
Speaker 2: a gang of Filipino jokes. I'm gonna drop in here.
Speaker 1: That's good, that's good.
Speaker 3: So many references that I'm gonna drop in this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I yess yeah. Well, I guess there's nothing
Speaker 1: to do but get into it. The guy we're talking
Speaker 1: about today as a man, I'm gonna guess most Americans
Speaker 1: have not heard of, although he committed a decent number
Speaker 1: of his crimes in the United States. His name is
Speaker 1: Apollo Kiboloi, which I checked on Google. Right before this.
Speaker 1: I listened to two different pronunciation videos that both said
Speaker 1: it differently. Hopefully that's right. But I did just my
Speaker 1: background research here.
Speaker 3: We could call him, we could just call him the
Speaker 3: like weird.
Speaker 2: Yeah, anyway, it is.
Speaker 1: This is finally an Apollo episode I've been wanting to
Speaker 1: do ever since a Greek man punched me out at
Speaker 1: a Delhi, I've been wanting to do an episode on
Speaker 1: men named Apollo. Unfortunately, this is not a Greek Apollo,
Speaker 1: nor does the name have anything to do with Greek mythology.
Speaker 1: That's a little bit weird at least it I don't
Speaker 1: think it does.
Speaker 4: Okay, that's not. The weird part is what happened right
Speaker 4: before you said that you got punched.
Speaker 3: Why you get.
Speaker 1: A lot of deli's So yeah, that's just what happens
Speaker 1: at a deli. If you're someone who feels about cured
Speaker 1: meats as strongly as I do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like there's some sort of there's some sort of
Speaker 2: accidental insults you did.
Speaker 1: Oh it was purposeful.
Speaker 3: Oh never mind, Okay.
Speaker 1: No, he that his saying is wrong. Yeah, yeah, we
Speaker 1: had a scrap. So I'm not gonna say a whole
Speaker 1: lot about Jeffrey Epstein in these episodes. I bring this
Speaker 1: up because like that is what a lot of people
Speaker 1: write when they've been doing articles. As a spoiler, A
Speaker 1: bunch of shit blew up with Apollo very recently. His
Speaker 1: life has collapsed this year, and so when because his
Speaker 1: story is crazy, news media all around the world wants
Speaker 1: to cover it because it's just the kind of thing
Speaker 1: you got to cover. But because it's a Filipinos story
Speaker 1: and most people are not familiar with this guy. He's
Speaker 1: very famous within the Philippines, but most people are not
Speaker 1: familiar with this guy, you know, in other countries. The
Speaker 1: touchstone that the news has picked is he's the Jeffrey
Speaker 1: Epstein of the Philippines, and I can say, you know, look,
Speaker 1: that's a little bit you know, grow but also I
Speaker 1: want your clicks too, you know, I'm not too proud
Speaker 1: to go for those clicks. Right, Listen, listen, listen.
Speaker 2: When you can neatly package something that it may be
Speaker 2: a little rough around edges, I'm maybe cutting out a
Speaker 2: lot of factual things, but it's but it's a digestible pill.
Speaker 3: I'm with you, Yeah, absolutely with it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's the way. And it's also there's something
Speaker 1: appropriate in terms of like we're never going to give
Speaker 1: Jeffrey the punishment that he deserved because he punched out early,
Speaker 1: but making his name like he really has in very
Speaker 1: short order. He's not like a Hitler level, but in
Speaker 1: terms of like name that is a recognizable shorthand for evil,
Speaker 1: he's gotten shockingly close in a very short period of time.
Speaker 1: You'd be like, yeah, that guy's a motherfucking Epstein. Everyone's like, oh,
Speaker 1: I know what you mean. Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally, I
Speaker 1: love it. He's a proper now now, you know, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I love it. And that's appropriate, That's that's what he deserves.
Speaker 1: So wow, we Yeah, that's a reference. Was it's a
Speaker 1: it's a TV show kind of a game. Anyway, google
Speaker 1: it one day.
Speaker 3: Wow. We it's a fun time.
Speaker 1: I want to go to the Philippines, especially now that
Speaker 1: our former Bastards Pod alumni Uhrigo to Terte is no
Speaker 1: longer running things there. Always wanted to see it but
Speaker 1: haven't been. It doesn't enough.
Speaker 2: Yeah, my dad, my dad said he's gonna move with
Speaker 2: with with my stepmom to the Philippines.
Speaker 3: And I was like, brother, no, you not. I'm just
Speaker 3: looking at him, like, you're not leaving the city. Your dad,
Speaker 3: your dad, my dad?
Speaker 2: Yeah, my dad. I was like, Sir, I get it.
Speaker 3: I feel you. He's like, man, I'm retired.
Speaker 2: He's like, bro, we got it, son, we got Helsa.
Speaker 2: Guy like two cows. I was like, so you're gonna
Speaker 2: move to the Have.
Speaker 1: You taken care of a cow? Because he's not as
Speaker 1: fun as I was like, Dad, you from I grew
Speaker 1: up with a lot of cows and they are a
Speaker 1: mixed bag. You are a.
Speaker 3: City boy, Okay.
Speaker 1: I don't think you're ready for the amount of poop
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to deal with. Great for heat, sir,
Speaker 1: this is a jungle. Yeah, anyway, So Apollo carry on.
Speaker 1: Kibbeloi was born on April twenty fifth, nineteen fifty, about
Speaker 1: you know, four years out from the end of the
Speaker 1: US withdrawal from the Philippines. Right, so you know, the
Speaker 1: World War two happens, right, Japan is like, hey, we'd
Speaker 1: like the Philippines, and the US is like, here's Douglas MacArthur.
Speaker 1: He'll stop you. And then Douglas MacArthur's like, no, I
Speaker 1: won't actually, And so Japan, Japan has the Philippines for
Speaker 1: a little while, and then we come back, right, and yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the that's the way it goes, you know, eventually
Speaker 1: we leave anyway. Kind of. So his hometown Apollos was
Speaker 1: de Vos City, which is where Rodrigo ju Terte got
Speaker 1: his start as mayor, right like, that is where he
Speaker 1: kind of you know started his political career too. And
Speaker 1: these two men are very strongly tied together, right. Terte
Speaker 1: is the guy who killed thou probably of drug users
Speaker 1: and associated people during his time as this brutal authoritarian
Speaker 1: president he did leave office, so not really dictator, but
Speaker 1: very bad strong man type president. And Apollo in here
Speaker 1: very close, so I'm not bringing him up just because
Speaker 1: like he's the other guy from the Philippines we've covered
Speaker 1: so far, right, Yeah, I know two guys from the Philippine. No,
Speaker 1: he is directly tied in this story. So Apollo, the
Speaker 1: youngest of nine children, was named again, not after the
Speaker 1: Greek god or the much more impressive Apollo Creed, but
Speaker 1: after Mount Oppo, a dormant volcano that, at almost ten
Speaker 1: thousand feet above sea level, is the highest peak in
Speaker 1: the Philippines. I should note here that I read on
Speaker 1: Apollo's churches website that he had been named after a mountain,
Speaker 1: and when I went to look up the first result
Speaker 1: for Apollo Mountain, I found this book, which has nothing
Speaker 1: to do with the story, but it made me laugh.
Speaker 1: Mountain min Eventswood Valley, Aaron Havoc. That can't be a name.
Speaker 1: So if you're trying to imagine what young child Apollo
Speaker 1: CIBOLOI looks like, this is exactly I'm assuming this is.
Speaker 3: A picture of him. Yeah, yeah, totally nice soul.
Speaker 1: Yes, So yeah, anyway, I pointed this out. I put
Speaker 1: this up also to point out that Google is just
Speaker 1: really knocking it out of the park these I don't know,
Speaker 1: great results always relevant to my search queries.
Speaker 2: Like if there's anybody that say, hey, let's do something
Speaker 2: good and then start not doing it good and see
Speaker 2: if y'all stick around.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it would be like if I started a podcast
Speaker 1: about all of the worst people in history and then
Speaker 1: at a certain point pivoted to just doing ads for
Speaker 1: the Church of Scientology, just long extended ads for the Scientology.
Speaker 3: Why is you doing this?
Speaker 1: Even wanted to clean Tom Cruise's house. Well, there's a way, sorry, anyway.
Speaker 1: Decade after his birth, the website for the cult that
Speaker 1: Apollo would come to lead said this about the day
Speaker 1: that he was born at home quote.
Speaker 2: Hey, holdo, holdo, hold on, you slipped in the cult
Speaker 2: he was about to lead that no point was there
Speaker 2: a warning.
Speaker 1: That this was he had a cult? I did not.
Speaker 1: I think I might have mentioned he had a cult.
Speaker 1: He's got a cult.
Speaker 4: You said no, no, no. You said you were going
Speaker 4: to try to find a nice little cult episode.
Speaker 3: For produde, and then you said you failed.
Speaker 4: You failed that.
Speaker 1: Well I failed at it being nice because those.
Speaker 3: Wait time out.
Speaker 1: But it is a cult episode.
Speaker 3: I appreciate getting the cult.
Speaker 1: Yeah I did. There's a certain point at research it
Speaker 1: which you can't turn back around and pick another topic.
Speaker 4: I feel like you we're doing it. You just give
Speaker 4: a politicians answer, but us Okay.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Sophie. I'm getting ready for my big presidential run.
Speaker 1: Uh And I just want to let you guys know
Speaker 1: I'm not going to be responsible with the nukes. That's
Speaker 1: my promise. You're not going to have nowhere about it nevermore.
Speaker 2: I've never been more convinced to not vote for somebody
Speaker 2: than if Robert was running.
Speaker 1: Like, I think this is going to go well with
Speaker 1: a lot of people because look, you know Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: who knows what he's going to do with the nukes, right,
Speaker 1: Joe Biden, Oh, sleepy Joe. We just don't know much
Speaker 1: about his mind state. Me. You know I'm going to
Speaker 1: use them, and you know I'm not going to use them. Well,
Speaker 1: that's a promise. You don't have to worry about it anymore.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I feel you know, some people you
Speaker 2: want cooking, some people you won't, cleaning.
Speaker 1: Some people don't dropping the H bomb on Lake Superior. Okay, anyway,
Speaker 1: he's the script. So from the club site for his cult,
Speaker 1: this is what it said about the day that he
Speaker 1: was born night. I should say that he was born
Speaker 1: at home. The knight suddenly turned to day moments after
Speaker 1: his birth, and a huge eagle had perched in the
Speaker 1: trees outside their home and had stayed there until he
Speaker 1: was born. So let's you know, God turned night into
Speaker 1: day and eagle watched over him. All the good stuff
Speaker 1: on some.
Speaker 3: Found.
Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, so yeah, his family had was poor, or
Speaker 2: at least that's kind of what the stories say.
Speaker 1: You get the feeling maybe they were closer to I mean,
Speaker 1: the middle class was not really a big thing in
Speaker 1: the Philippines at this time, but I don't think they
Speaker 1: were as poor as he kind of likes to portray
Speaker 1: them as. But his parents may have been prior to
Speaker 1: having him. They had immigrated from the family's ancestral home
Speaker 1: in Lubao after World War Two in order to find work,
Speaker 1: which is what brings them to Da Vos City. By
Speaker 1: the time Apollo came into the picture, they seem to
Speaker 1: have been solidly working class. His biography claiming that though
Speaker 1: the family was poor, they were happy. Now, I found
Speaker 1: what appears to be a picture of his family from
Speaker 1: a news report. It's into Galog, it's not translated, but
Speaker 1: from what I can tell it looks like the kid
Speaker 1: in the middle because it zooms in on him is
Speaker 1: the our center. So and you can see just looking
Speaker 1: at the hair, you can tell to own a cult
Speaker 1: like that, that kid winds up a cult leader. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: Kid on the left probably not kid on the right,
Speaker 1: maybe you know, but kid in the middle, that's a
Speaker 1: cult leader. Yeah. For so you can just tell.
Speaker 3: You can look at all of his days in Quias
Speaker 3: he was.
Speaker 1: Although that baby in the back looks kind of like alive,
Speaker 1: not alive. Maybe that's a doll. I can't really tell.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I love the very incense skin
Speaker 1: tones there. That baby does not look well.
Speaker 3: Right, maybe the.
Speaker 1: Flash was on. So it's a little unclear to me. Again,
Speaker 1: just how to characterize the family socioeconomic status. Because his
Speaker 1: parents became pastor leaders at a Pentecostal church in Defoul
Speaker 1: early on. His dad had been raised Protestant, like mainline Protestant, right,
Speaker 1: which which put because obviously like Pentecostal church is a
Speaker 1: Protestant denomination, but it's also kind of it's not mainline,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't say, And this kind of put them in
Speaker 1: the fact that he kind of moves to the Pinna
Speaker 1: Costal faith puts them in line with a big post
Speaker 1: war trend in the Philippines. American missionaries had brought Pentecostalism
Speaker 1: to the country, but it was spread largely by these
Speaker 1: kind of swashbuckling and these guys are Filipinos, swashbuckling like
Speaker 1: pioneer church planters who are like Johnny Apple, seeds of
Speaker 1: Pentecostal churches. And they're I mean, the term they use
Speaker 1: is planting churches and these like settlements in the frontier
Speaker 1: that are established in the jungle. Right yeah, Now, if
Speaker 1: you're not aware of a lot of this, Pentecostalism is
Speaker 1: a strain of Protestant Christianity that emphasizes charismatic practices like
Speaker 1: speaking in tongues and what's called baptism in the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 1: These are the kind of folks. They don't just believe
Speaker 1: in miracles. They believe that God often bestows miraculous ability
Speaker 1: and powers on members of churches during worship sessions.
Speaker 3: Right. Yeah.
Speaker 2: My argument is, like I've always argued that, like Philippine know, y'all,
Speaker 2: y'all black is hell. I don't care what you say,
Speaker 2: like you are black Asians. Yeah, somehow they're black and
Speaker 2: Latino at the same time. Like, so to me, the
Speaker 2: idea that it's like yeah, and then as a Pentecostal church,
Speaker 2: I'm like, of course it is, because y'all black.
Speaker 1: Is hell, they're also there's like a I'm not obviously
Speaker 1: qualified to comment on that, but the fact that there's
Speaker 1: a huge American influence on the way worship works there,
Speaker 1: right yeah, yeah, you see here in this because i
Speaker 1: mean we were there for quite a while.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, totally.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So his father must have been a man of
Speaker 1: some ability and personal magnetism, because he does very well
Speaker 1: in the Pentecostal faith as it is kind of sweeping
Speaker 1: the country. And it seems that a skill for like
Speaker 1: preaching and you know, like that kind of charismatic preaching
Speaker 1: ran in the family because Apollo's older brother, Jose eventually
Speaker 1: becomes the assistant general superintendent of the largest Pentecostal organization
Speaker 1: in the Philippines. Now, one noteworthy fact about the Kiboloi
Speaker 1: family is that they seem to have rejected there's a
Speaker 1: lot of like in the area they're growing up in
Speaker 1: kind of the rural area, and like the slums, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of communist organizing when he's a little kid
Speaker 1: that is sweeping through the surrounding communities, and they are
Speaker 1: very much against it. This is a very conservative anti
Speaker 1: communist family. We get very little here. This is something
Speaker 1: I've kind of read in between the lines and also
Speaker 1: just kind of based on stuff that happens later. But
Speaker 1: due to a vaguely defined hardship that may have been
Speaker 1: related to a conflict with like these local communist groups,
Speaker 1: which are insurgent organizations. Apollo is moved away from home
Speaker 1: as a boy to live with his older sister. I
Speaker 1: don't know why. Just some of the stuff I've read
Speaker 1: make me think it may have been tied to some
Speaker 1: political conflicts in their hometown. I don't actually know, though.
Speaker 2: It's also like, what's interesting this may I don't know
Speaker 2: if this is going to play in later, but I
Speaker 2: feel like it probably will because of, like you said,
Speaker 2: the communist thing. Like while Pentecostalism might be very theologically
Speaker 2: on the fringes, like it fringes a strong word, but
Speaker 2: like theologically liberal, they're actually very socially conservative. It's very like, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know very much about like your performance of holiness.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying. And that holiness is something
Speaker 2: that you'd like. They don't drink, they don't smoke, they
Speaker 2: don't you know what I'm saying. They're they're not free
Speaker 2: with what you know folks will call like their liberties.
Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: It's very much like you know, with for us, like
Speaker 2: you know, that's the older generation for.
Speaker 3: A lot of like black people.
Speaker 2: So it's like you don't listen second music, you don't
Speaker 2: watch rated our movies, you know what I'm saying, because
Speaker 2: you're supposed to be holy, you feel me, and a
Speaker 2: lot of that has to do what you being filled
Speaker 2: with the holy ghost, you know what I'm saying. So
Speaker 2: so to hear that like the play of like communism
Speaker 2: may be in a thing, it makes sense to me
Speaker 2: of those two things being together in that sense.
Speaker 3: It may not play in later, but I think it's.
Speaker 1: Oh it does. No, no, no. As an adult, he is
Speaker 1: going to have some dealings with his local commune that
Speaker 1: are very much not pretty. So this is I'm not
Speaker 1: bringing this stuff up for nothing, and I do kind
Speaker 1: of because of some stuff he's going to say later.
Speaker 1: I do suspect that like this is part of the
Speaker 1: kind of why he's uprooted as a little boy, you know,
Speaker 1: but I don't actually know that to a point of
Speaker 1: certainty either way. He gets moved away when he's like
Speaker 1: a kid to live with his oldest sister. His official
Speaker 1: biography claims it was there that he learned the hard
Speaker 1: lessons of responsibility through the rule of the stick. You
Speaker 1: don't get a feeling, Yeah, you don't get a feeling.
Speaker 1: She was a nice aunt, right, not on literally, but yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah. For eight years he attended school and worked
Speaker 1: at his sister's bakery. He became, as he would later claim,
Speaker 1: and again this is a liar, a diligent student. And
Speaker 1: that quote. When he became a teenager, he forget all
Speaker 1: about having friends or having fun because there just wasn't
Speaker 1: time for that in his life. Again, maybe that's true.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Between the lines a bit, we can
Speaker 1: probably assume that he was not a happy boy, separated
Speaker 1: from his family and used as free labor by his sister.
Speaker 1: At age fourteen, he had his first vision from God,
Speaker 1: a hallucination about the end of the world, with fire
Speaker 1: raining from the sky igniting the gasoline depots near his
Speaker 1: sister's home. Quote. People tried to escape into the sea,
Speaker 1: but even the water was a flame, there was nowhere
Speaker 1: to go. No, obviously, I don't believe this guy is
Speaker 1: the prophet of or you know, would he's he's actually
Speaker 1: going to claim the literal son of God. But I
Speaker 1: also that's specific enough that I would believe that that's
Speaker 1: an actual nightmare he had as opposed to he made up,
Speaker 1: Like that's really the whole Igniting the gas depots near
Speaker 1: his sister home is like such a specific thing to
Speaker 1: bring up that that strikes me as like maybe something
Speaker 1: something that was at some point came into his head
Speaker 1: as opposed to something he made up later to justify
Speaker 1: starting a cult, or night after night, the dream repeated itself.
Speaker 1: Apollo would graduate and attend a Bible college, where he
Speaker 1: finally came to realize that his nightmares weren't nightmares. They
Speaker 1: were visions of the Second Coming. This, he would later write,
Speaker 1: allowed him to make peace with the upheaval and difficulty
Speaker 1: of his childhood. Quote he realized that his childhood was
Speaker 1: all part of the father's orchestration. His sister was only
Speaker 1: an instrument, a tool that the father had used to
Speaker 1: mold him in the principles of discipline and responsibility that
Speaker 1: made him into a vessel ready for the Father's incredible
Speaker 1: calling in his life. Now clearly yeah.
Speaker 3: God turned around for good. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: A lot of this is this part I think is
Speaker 1: made up after the fact to justify the cult that
Speaker 1: he starts. But I do find it interesting that he
Speaker 1: describes his sister as just a tool meant to mold
Speaker 1: him into shape. That's part of how you could see
Speaker 1: like there must have been a real conflict here. That's
Speaker 1: a very mean way to describe your sister.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and also very Pentecostal, yes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes yeah. And it also it kind of does
Speaker 1: mirror the fact that his sister seems to have used
Speaker 1: him as like basically a tool for free.
Speaker 3: Labor, right for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 1: On his church's website, Apollo or one of his followers
Speaker 1: makes it clear that he didn't want to go to
Speaker 1: Bible school. His real dream was to be a pilot,
Speaker 1: but ultimately the fact that tuition and room and board
Speaker 1: were free are what swayed him. This was his first
Speaker 1: chance at independence from his sister, and he took it.
Speaker 1: As he continued to pray, he was visited by God
Speaker 1: in dreams and he was told that he had been
Speaker 1: anointed to spread the gospel. Quote the gift was so
Speaker 1: extraordinary that Pastor Apollo had to check himself every now
Speaker 1: and then to see if he was still sane, if
Speaker 1: what he was saying still made sense, if he had
Speaker 1: not after all, gone mad.
Speaker 2: Now, okay, yeah.
Speaker 3: Am I tripping?
Speaker 2: Like y'all listen, listen, Yeah, tell me if I'm tripping.
Speaker 2: It might be to ube, It might have been a
Speaker 2: bad bull of Denuguan. Am I tripping? But I'm pretty
Speaker 2: sure an angel was in his room last night. Now
Speaker 2: I might be tripping.
Speaker 1: I think I might be here to bring about the apocalypse,
Speaker 1: you know, anybody.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, like, look, stop me at any time.
Speaker 2: But like, I'll pull the post down. I'll pull it
Speaker 2: down if I need to delete it. But like I
Speaker 2: think I am the pale horse.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, look, a lot of us think we're
Speaker 1: the pale horse. There's nothing crazy about that, you know. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you think you're the pale horse, just keep riding, baby,
Speaker 1: Just keep riding.
Speaker 2: You know, you won't have to do much about it.
Speaker 2: You'll you'll do what you're doing, whether you try to
Speaker 2: do or not.
Speaker 3: If you're a pale horse.
Speaker 1: Maybe start on the East coast though, do me a
Speaker 1: solid huh okay anyway, So I think Apollo is a
Speaker 1: savvy man, and he's smart enough to pay attention and
Speaker 1: see that by nineteen seventy two when he graduates Bible College,
Speaker 1: American style charismatic churches are spreading everywhere, not just in
Speaker 1: the Philippines, the most sophisticated of them. Because we've talked
Speaker 1: about on our TV Joshua episodes, how this is a
Speaker 1: lot of this is happening in parts of Africa too,
Speaker 1: right around this period of time, a little later in Africa,
Speaker 1: in like Central Africa, the most sophisticated of these churches
Speaker 1: had embraced the radio and increasingly television as a way
Speaker 1: to reach more people than could ever fill a physical church.
Speaker 1: And he is someone who sees this happening. He's fairly insightful,
Speaker 1: and he understands there's a lot of money and power
Speaker 1: in making myself one of these men. And you know,
Speaker 1: furthering on that point, he has a gift for preaching
Speaker 1: that he finds that is, you know, seems to to
Speaker 1: some extent be something that is in his family, but
Speaker 1: that he's clearly got. He is special in this church. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's got the juice. His bio claims he could preach
Speaker 1: as much as seven times a day because he had
Speaker 1: to get all those words out of him. He had
Speaker 1: a full schedule all year round, and such was his
Speaker 1: passion and zeal that even if woken in the middle
Speaker 1: of the night to preach, he would get up and go.
Speaker 1: He became a famous evangelist because of this. He earned
Speaker 1: the nickname preaching machine. I've actually heard this before. In
Speaker 1: the US. I talk a lot about a documentary called
Speaker 1: Marjoe that's about a guy, Marjo Gordner, who back in
Speaker 1: like the fucking forties, is the youngest preacher in the
Speaker 1: United States. Ary together travels, yes, yes, his parents, who
Speaker 1: are very abusive, are like taking him around, and he
Speaker 1: does a documentary as an adult, just kind of about
Speaker 1: the actual gritty underside of this like traveling preacher industry.
Speaker 1: And he is the kind of person who because he
Speaker 1: does it a few times, it's like a party trick.
Speaker 1: He can just lapse into a twenty minute sermon that
Speaker 1: is this like big fire in Brimstone shit rhymes like
Speaker 1: he's great at it. Like yeah, some people like and
Speaker 1: this is you know, it's both there's a degree of
Speaker 1: like natural talent, and he works at this right like
Speaker 1: you do have to. There's it's this is not you know,
Speaker 1: purely talent. There's a lot of skill here too. You
Speaker 1: know that is crafty.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would.
Speaker 2: I would say that, like that's something that you know,
Speaker 2: the the craft. Obviously, again I keep bringing up the blackness.
Speaker 2: O don't know, I keep bringing it up, but like
Speaker 2: I think the craft of preaching is something that you know.
Speaker 2: In our culture, we do see as this is a
Speaker 2: spiritual gift, like like God has given you this gift
Speaker 2: and all you really need is just the training in
Speaker 2: the actual text. And like once you know the text,
Speaker 2: you got the gift. You called to be a preacher,
Speaker 2: but you can't. But you can't help the call. Like
Speaker 2: God has given you this gift, so like it would
Speaker 2: be irresponsible for us to not let you use it.
Speaker 2: And then oftentimes because this person is just so gifted
Speaker 2: down be knowing what they talking about, and you can
Speaker 2: get away with so much because you so gifted, you
Speaker 2: know what I mean. So I'm always like whenever anybody,
Speaker 2: especially around like when people fall for some sort of
Speaker 2: like charismatic speaker and it ends up being a cult
Speaker 2: like it's as silly as that is, as far as
Speaker 2: like you're not having your antennas. Like some people are
Speaker 2: just really good communicators. And it's like if you, if you,
Speaker 2: if you like snap out for a second and just
Speaker 2: suspend reality, fam you fall for it.
Speaker 3: Too, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, And that's like that, that's that's
Speaker 1: where this guy is. He is the kind of person
Speaker 1: who can just make a crowd lose themselves, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: really like listening to him. So yeah, he made waves
Speaker 1: within his local church, and in nineteen seventy three, one
Speaker 1: year out of Bible College, he was sent to an
Speaker 1: expo in Soul, that's South Korea for Pentecostal youth activists,
Speaker 1: which he attended as part of because, like again, the
Speaker 1: Philippines a political situation at the time. He attends as
Speaker 1: part of the American and Canadian delegations. He is the
Speaker 1: only Filipino at the event. He is the only Asian
Speaker 1: in his delegation of one hundred and eighty six people.
Speaker 1: We can again infer that this is yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: obviously there's of course people in Korea, American and Canadian delegations. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we can infer that this was a lonely time for Apollo,
Speaker 1: given how many times he stresses being the only non
Speaker 1: white kid in his group, And it is here that
Speaker 1: he claims to have first heard the voice of God
Speaker 1: clearly give him instructions announcing his divine plans to use Apollo.
Speaker 1: So Apollo naturally goes to the adult leaders and chef
Speaker 1: ruins for his group and it's like, hey, God just
Speaker 1: told me he's got some big old plans for me.
Speaker 1: And their response, I don't know if it tells you
Speaker 1: that like the rest of the charismatic movement is more grounded,
Speaker 1: you know, at this point than it is today, or
Speaker 1: just that they're racist and they're not willing to listen
Speaker 1: to this, this torpedo kid, but a b.
Speaker 3: Fam tell you experienced. Buddy's a byway, take your pick. Yeah.
Speaker 1: After listening to him, the American missionaries gently but firmly
Speaker 1: told him, you know, when you pray that it's you
Speaker 1: talking to God. But when you hear God talking to you,
Speaker 1: there's something wrong. You need to see a doctor.
Speaker 2: Oh no, no, they just yeah, because that's that doesn't
Speaker 2: that's yeah, yeah, no, no, y'all racist, because Pedecosa needed
Speaker 2: you supposed to.
Speaker 3: You can't.
Speaker 2: You can't in charge until God speaks. So like that's
Speaker 2: why charge be last and set outs. We got to
Speaker 2: wait until we got to tarry to the Lord.
Speaker 3: I'm saying, So, no, y'all just racist.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you have to try it. I think
Speaker 1: you have to pronounce it as like oh no, no, no,
Speaker 1: no no. When you pray, that's you talking to God.
Speaker 1: But when you hear God talking to you the exactly wrong. Yeah,
Speaker 1: every pict it ben ends with the Lord told me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So like, no, fam No, I just think that's fair.
Speaker 1: What else is fair, prop is the prices of the
Speaker 1: products and services that support this podcast. You know, if
Speaker 1: you can find a better deal, I will personally slash
Speaker 1: the tires of the CEO of that company.
Speaker 2: Hopefully, so hopefully, hopefully hopefully Goldilocks is the sponsor again,
Speaker 2: another fili final joke right there, Azusa.
Speaker 3: Sorry, it's a it's like a bakery.
Speaker 1: Anymore, slash of bakery's tires.
Speaker 3: I don't know, right, not.
Speaker 1: Man, what you.
Speaker 4: Know what I'm saying, Yeah, for legal purposes, he's joking.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe definitely. Anyway, we're back. Oh my gosh, everyone's
Speaker 1: having a good time. I'm not, uh who, Well, fine,
Speaker 1: all right. So Apollo at this point is like, well,
Speaker 1: these guys don't believe what I'm saying, but you know,
Speaker 1: I'm going to keep listening to these voices and keep preaching.
Speaker 1: And things go well for him. The very next year,
Speaker 1: he has adopted national president for the organization that like
Speaker 1: the largest Pentecostal organization in the Philippines. And soon after
Speaker 1: this he meets an American girl and he starts dating her.
Speaker 1: Effect I only bring up because he brags about it
Speaker 1: quite a bit in his biography of quote, he was
Speaker 1: the apple of the eye of his denomination. He had
Speaker 1: a beautiful American girlfriend that they wanted him to marry.
Speaker 1: His career path to the top was clear. People loved him.
Speaker 1: Wherever he went. He was treated like a prince. The
Speaker 1: detail that they wanted him to his denomination wanted him
Speaker 1: to marry this American.
Speaker 3: That's interesting.
Speaker 1: There's a lot there that I may be I'm definitely
Speaker 1: not the right person to analyze, but that is interesting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Nah, that's that's good.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: There's a there's a phrase in Spanish that it may
Speaker 2: not necessarily be the same concept. It's called advance the race, right,
Speaker 2: so like, uh so, like what that What they're basically
Speaker 2: saying is like, get you a white person, Joe saying, so,
Speaker 2: get you an American white person, and it advances us.
Speaker 2: So it's like, you're you're pushing our culture forward, you're
Speaker 2: pushing the family forward, You're pushing on well forward. So
Speaker 2: like so when you get you somebody like light skin
Speaker 2: or an American white person, then this is like the
Speaker 2: best thing for us, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: So it's possible.
Speaker 2: I don't know if this is what he's going at,
Speaker 2: but it's possible that like that's kind of a vibe
Speaker 2: where it's like, oh yeah, no, yeah, no.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, they want me to marry her. I don't know.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying, like, is what we're doing.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying, I'm advancing. You know, it's
Speaker 2: a flex. It's a flex to pull, to pull an.
Speaker 3: American yep, yep.
Speaker 1: The next lines in his biography are that these American
Speaker 1: missionaries who are jealous he kind of infers her jealous
Speaker 1: that he's dating this American girl, are also become jealous
Speaker 1: of his success, and they decide to sabotage him, and
Speaker 1: he claims that this is what eventually set him on
Speaker 1: the path to creating his own denomination and church. And
Speaker 1: it's here that I finally do have some evidence to
Speaker 1: the contrary to bring up, because we are when it
Speaker 1: comes to the rest of this stuff, we are kind
Speaker 1: of reliant upon his recollections of his early life. Here
Speaker 1: we have some outside information. So his claim I started
Speaker 1: having conflicts with the broader Pentecostal denomination in the Philippines
Speaker 1: because these American missionaries didn't like me, didn't like that
Speaker 1: I was seeing this girl from their country, didn't like
Speaker 1: how good I was. That's not the whole story. Residents
Speaker 1: from the mountainous rural region of kit Bog, where Apollo
Speaker 1: claims to have had some of his greatest revelations, recalled
Speaker 1: to a local newsmagazine, raptler dot Com, that back in
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies, Apollo was a young preacher and basically
Speaker 1: acted as a sidekick to a government employee, Major Sanchez,
Speaker 1: who had been sent by the resident to look into
Speaker 1: the issues facing the indigenous communities in the area. Now,
Speaker 1: this is particularly worth noting because the president at that
Speaker 1: point was Ferdinand Marcos. So if your name is if
Speaker 1: everyone calls you Major Sanchez, and you are sent by
Speaker 1: Ferdinand Marcos to look into issues. Yeah yeah, facing indigenous
Speaker 1: communities and a part of the Philippines in the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 3: It's not agree.
Speaker 1: You're not doing anything good. It's not good.
Speaker 3: This is bad news man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, today, the Philippines is it does not rank well.
Speaker 1: I don't like to reduce countries to like where they
Speaker 1: are and like the corruption index, right, but today they're
Speaker 1: at about one sixteen out of one eighty, and things
Speaker 1: are worse when Marcos is the dictator, right y. Marcos
Speaker 1: is famous for awarding his cronies with you know, the
Speaker 1: basically like you would get like a job like this.
Speaker 1: The purpose of a job like this is to reward
Speaker 1: someone who was lower to you by letting them go
Speaker 1: rob a bunch of people blind, you know, with ribes,
Speaker 1: with like giving contracts different companies to let them like
Speaker 1: strip mind shit. Right, yeah, that's what Sanchez is doing
Speaker 1: in this area, right in kind bog these are licenses
Speaker 1: to embezzle and rob people blind. And the fact that
Speaker 1: Apollo is like following Sanchez around is kind of his
Speaker 1: tame preacher, where Sanchez is like, hey, these people are
Speaker 1: religious as hell, I'm going to be strip mining their
Speaker 1: lives away. You keep them entertained, right, yeah, that's yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the insinuation. Yeah yeah, yeah yeah. About our boy Apollo,
Speaker 1: what he is doing at this point, as opposed to
Speaker 1: he's just so good at preaching that these Americans are angry, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: As a sidekick of the Major, we can assume Apollo
Speaker 1: made connections to other corrupt figures of the Marcos age
Speaker 1: and put aside more than a little bit of other
Speaker 1: people's money for himself, because that's just how it worked.
Speaker 1: Whatever these specific details, it was bad enough what he
Speaker 1: did with this major. We don't know exactly what he did,
Speaker 1: but it was bad enough that the entire like the
Speaker 1: Pentecostal Church in the Philippines, this fellowships him in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy nine, specifically because of his relationship to the Major,
Speaker 1: which is an extreme measure, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, don't you don't give somebody a left
Speaker 2: handed fellowship. But yeah, unless it's like real.
Speaker 1: So his claim the Americans didn't want me there because
Speaker 1: you know, they were jealous, the actual information, the actual
Speaker 1: like reporting, suggests he was kicked out by his own people,
Speaker 1: because he was hideously corrupt and involved in a figure
Speaker 1: associated with this regime that, by the end of the
Speaker 1: seventies was not very popular. He does that it's not
Speaker 1: that bad for him, because he gets to make a
Speaker 1: public apology and is accepted back the next year. So
Speaker 1: we are whatever his involvement was, it was not hideous
Speaker 1: enough that like someone's going to murder his ass in
Speaker 1: the street or whatever. But it was bad, right. Apollo
Speaker 1: is reassigned after he gets let back into the church
Speaker 1: to head up a church in Agdow, where he developed
Speaker 1: a habit of ranting angrily about his colleagues, who had
Speaker 1: kicked him out of the church briefly. By nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 1: this had caused enough problems that he was at risk
Speaker 1: of being kicked out yet again. Now you have the facts,
Speaker 1: this is clear the story of a corrupt asshole who
Speaker 1: got a second chance he never deserved. This is not
Speaker 1: how Apollo would later tell the story. Quote his heart
Speaker 1: was so sincere, passionate and hungry for the Lord and
Speaker 1: to follow what was written in his word, but he
Speaker 1: could not see the same thing in his denomination. He
Speaker 1: felt heartsore and disappointed. God really wants me robbing these
Speaker 1: indigenous people.
Speaker 4: For Marcos heart was so sincere, passionate and hungry for
Speaker 4: the Lord. It's like a bad Christian mingle. Bile, it's
Speaker 4: a bad Christian mingle, bye said.
Speaker 2: But listen, listen, consider it a blessing when they lie
Speaker 2: and persecute you. Blessed is he was persecuted for my
Speaker 2: name's sake.
Speaker 3: Listen.
Speaker 2: I was bringing the Gospel and I got persecuted for it.
Speaker 2: So I'm in the fellowship of the suffering of our Savior.
Speaker 2: It's doing the work of the Lord.
Speaker 4: And yeah, literally, it's like there's like this prompt and
Speaker 4: all the diating apps that are like how would your
Speaker 4: friends describe you? And then they write it themselves and
Speaker 4: He's like, his heart was so sincere and passionate and.
Speaker 1: Hungry for I'm going to create a dating profile on
Speaker 1: my grinder in Portland for this guy, just using quotes
Speaker 1: from his and see how it does. See how it does.
Speaker 4: Quote Robert, Let's find you some love.
Speaker 1: I just feel some love.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because your your heart was so passionate and hungry
Speaker 4: from the Lord.
Speaker 2: I'm going to be dress. Yeah, drop that nuke. I
Speaker 2: dropped that nuke with a good heart.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly exactly. You know, it was a
Speaker 1: loving nuke. So he writes that quote what he saw
Speaker 1: in his denomination was politics and a failure to follow
Speaker 1: what the father wanted. The cry in his heart was,
Speaker 1: is this all? I want something more? And when you
Speaker 1: think about all the bribes he was taking, I think
Speaker 1: that that sentence is has a little bit of a
Speaker 1: different field to it.
Speaker 3: Come on, come on man.
Speaker 1: On September one, nineteen eighty five, Apollo was scheduled to
Speaker 1: have what you might call a come to Jesus meeting,
Speaker 1: a literal come to Jesus meeting with his superiors at
Speaker 1: the church, where they were going to grill him on
Speaker 1: the fact that he had been telling his congregation all
Speaker 1: of the other pastors were quote unqualified and ignorant, basically like,
Speaker 1: and you have to stop talking shit about the VisiC call.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like I had a mission this, sir. I need
Speaker 3: you to sit down for a second.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we are unhappy with you. Yes, yeah, so yeah.
Speaker 1: Instead of making that meeting, Apollo's like, well, fuck this shit,
Speaker 1: I don't need I know where this is going to go.
Speaker 1: I don't need to sit for this. I'm going to
Speaker 1: start a cult.
Speaker 2: It's time road of vipers. Yeah, lost your ways?
Speaker 4: What else can I I do?
Speaker 3: I have to obey the Holy Spirit, the Spirit. Am
Speaker 3: I gonna listen to man?
Speaker 2: Or?
Speaker 3: Am I gonna listen to God? Yeah?
Speaker 1: That's right?
Speaker 4: And what else was he supposed to do?
Speaker 3: Cult? Obviously that's the only option.
Speaker 2: I have to follow the spirit, and the Spirit is
Speaker 2: leading me to do because the Lord said, And that's
Speaker 2: what's that's the in some senses as bonkers as Pentecostal
Speaker 2: church is they My mama used to say this. Everybody
Speaker 2: that does say it the Lord. The Lord ain't thus
Speaker 2: say My mama used to say that. So like, so
Speaker 2: at least they going fam listen. The other Filipinos was like,
Speaker 2: by day, you ain't here from God. That's not what
Speaker 2: you're saying is not factual.
Speaker 3: That's funny.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, so they yeah, they're like, you know, he
Speaker 1: has this meeting that he bounces on, and his version
Speaker 1: of events, he claims that he decided to skip the
Speaker 1: meeting because an anonymous man visited him and told him
Speaker 1: they should meet up at a hotel later that night
Speaker 1: so he could share a mission from God. Now listen, folks,
Speaker 1: if this ever happens to you. Do not make that
Speaker 1: meeting list. That is something terrible is going to happen
Speaker 1: in that hotel, Sir, They're gonna make light of it.
Speaker 1: I'm just going to say, you know the bad thing
Speaker 1: that'll happen in that hotel, root du Yeah.
Speaker 4: You.
Speaker 3: Turn you into a noble bro like you like.
Speaker 4: Do not.
Speaker 1: Do not go to that Yeah. Now here's how he
Speaker 1: describes the meeting that follows. When he got there, the
Speaker 1: man surprisingly told him nothing except to sleep there in
Speaker 1: the room, since the hour was late. It was twelve
Speaker 1: oh one in the evening. But as he lay down,
Speaker 1: he was catapulted suddenly into a vision. He saw the
Speaker 1: ceiling open up to the night sky, showing the stars twinkling,
Speaker 1: clear and bright. He did not know if he was
Speaker 1: a sleeper awake, but he knew it was the open heaven.
Speaker 1: One bright star was growing bigger and bigger, drawing down
Speaker 1: slowly closer, until a hand with a white sleeve was
Speaker 1: revealed to be holding a heavy, shiny bronze cauldron. The
Speaker 1: hand held the cauldron before him as though just a
Speaker 1: few feet away, and turned it and Pastor Apollo immediately
Speaker 1: read the words written on one side strive to rhyme
Speaker 1: for unity. When the hand turned the cauldron the other way,
Speaker 1: he saw words written there, not in any language he knew,
Speaker 1: and as he read it, a voice said, these words
Speaker 1: are for you only tell no one, and Pastor Apollo
Speaker 1: has kept those words secret to this day. Wow, I
Speaker 1: don't know, yea.
Speaker 2: The whole Like he's there's so many things in there
Speaker 2: that like require a level of nerdery.
Speaker 3: Like there's a he's invoking. I think it's Barsk Corinthians.
Speaker 2: He's invoking image and that's all talked about being brought
Speaker 2: into the third heavens. When he was like, Lord put
Speaker 2: me to sleep. I don't know if I was awake
Speaker 2: or asleep, I can't tell you, but I saw this
Speaker 2: vision and I was given I was shown an image
Speaker 2: that I still can't utter. So he's like, he's he's
Speaker 2: like really invoking some like Apostle Paul type, like I
Speaker 2: am starting a church imagery, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: That makes sense, That makes a lot of sense. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what he's involing, specifically what he's bringing in because
Speaker 1: I just I just found this very familiar to my
Speaker 1: experience being invited into a hotel room by someone who
Speaker 1: told me they were going to show me God, and
Speaker 1: then the hallucinations that I had later, And I have
Speaker 1: kept the words I heard that day secret, but for
Speaker 1: a very different reason.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Anyways, yeah, the.
Speaker 3: Words, the words. The words you got was from the
Speaker 3: lsd in this and the dude saying.
Speaker 1: It was from a copy of that Terence mckinna book
Speaker 1: about mushrooms.
Speaker 4: The voice, the voice said, never stop podcasting.
Speaker 1: That is right. I hear that voice every second of
Speaker 1: my life, Sophie, every second of my life.
Speaker 3: That's just me, I.
Speaker 1: Believe, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the voice is like, so what are you guys
Speaker 2: talking about next week?
Speaker 1: God?
Speaker 4: God?
Speaker 1: Just yeah, yeah, there there there are different kinds of
Speaker 1: beliefs systems around the world that like believe that you
Speaker 1: literally sing the world into being and there has to
Speaker 1: always be somebody like singing in order to like keep reality,
Speaker 1: you know, like like humming along. And I I am
Speaker 1: that for podcasting, right. As long as I'm podcasting, you know,
Speaker 1: the firmament will will stay above us, but it will
Speaker 1: collapse and bring about a thousand years of fire.
Speaker 2: The instaart I stop. You are the Greek of podcast Yeah,
Speaker 2: so keep listening.
Speaker 1: Folks.
Speaker 4: Yes, and speaking of listening, it's time to listen to
Speaker 4: these ads.
Speaker 1: You're right. So you're right, dude, that was speaking of Yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3: That was good.
Speaker 4: How was icy of me?
Speaker 1: Very We're back. So Apollo has abandoned his church and
Speaker 1: act out and he's taken and a core group of
Speaker 1: loyal followers about fifteen people, and established his new totally
Speaker 1: independent church, the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, Thy name above
Speaker 1: every name, which is every word of that is capitalized.
Speaker 3: That's a lot of a no abbreviation of it.
Speaker 1: KOJC is usually what you get for the which is
Speaker 1: a lot easier to say that is a that is
Speaker 1: a heavy, heavy nas. He sets it up in a
Speaker 1: slum nearby where his old church had been.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: And as soon as he's got this church of his own,
Speaker 1: he starts preaching to his first followers, and again there's
Speaker 1: like a little over a dozen of them. He tells
Speaker 1: them that, hey, this is not your daddy's pentecostal faith,
Speaker 1: and I'm not just a preacher. I am now the
Speaker 1: quote appointed son of God, Now what does that mean?
Speaker 1: Prop Because he's not saying I am like this coming,
Speaker 1: no man of God. Yeah, he said, it sounds to me,
Speaker 1: and maybe something is lost in the translation here, although
Speaker 1: he does he does preach a lot in the English.
Speaker 1: Is he saying that like appointed? Like God was like,
Speaker 1: you know what, You're not my born kid, but you
Speaker 1: and I are so tight. I signed the papers, right,
Speaker 1: I have adopted you officially, you were like the son
Speaker 1: of God because I picked you.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not like that Jesus guy. Just get by in
Speaker 1: his blood.
Speaker 3: You feel me?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you just you were born in that's nepotism. No,
Speaker 2: there is an idea. There are two ideas. Yeah, there's
Speaker 2: two ideas in there. They're like the idea of salvation
Speaker 2: is an adoption into being the sons of God. Right,
Speaker 2: so there's like there's that concept, right, But then what
Speaker 2: he's saying is again I'm pulling on like the idea
Speaker 2: of the Pentecostal idea of being the anointed one, which
Speaker 2: is like there's the capital anointed one that's Jesus, and
Speaker 2: then there's anointed as in being set apart, being chosen
Speaker 2: by God for this particular time. And what he's or
Speaker 2: like like the old folks who say for such a
Speaker 2: time as this, you know what I'm saying. So what
Speaker 2: I feel like what he's invoking is like I am
Speaker 2: God's chosen for this moment in this season. I am
Speaker 2: the anointed one for now. So it's like lowercase anointed.
Speaker 2: I'm thinking that's what he's saying. That makes sense, That
Speaker 2: makes sense. Yeah, I could see that being it.
Speaker 3: But now I.
Speaker 1: Should also note that appointed son of God. You'll hear
Speaker 1: that a lot. That is not close to his only nickname,
Speaker 1: his I supposeer for where this goes FBI indictments that
Speaker 1: he notes that he also went by sir Pastor ACQ.
Speaker 1: Not really sure where that one came from. I think
Speaker 1: that's just maybe his nick like his initials and yeah,
Speaker 1: that's got to be his initials. And one of his
Speaker 1: favorite nicknames on his church website is the extremely unwieldy
Speaker 1: man who was chosen when the Father's hand of appointment
Speaker 1: came upon his life and he did not fail him.
Speaker 1: Woo howdy howdy. That's a nickname.
Speaker 3: That's a nickname.
Speaker 1: This is the has clauses. You may editor.
Speaker 2: Listen, oh man, they say so because like still like
Speaker 2: you know you for like you go to church with
Speaker 2: your grandma, Like when a pastor walks in, they say, man,
Speaker 2: of God. You know what I'm saying, Like, you address
Speaker 2: the pastor as the man of God, you know what
Speaker 2: I'm saying, So like there is an element of like
Speaker 2: sort of this hierarchy that kind of exists in that denomination.
Speaker 2: And then there's the level you talk about, which is like,
Speaker 2: oh words, So you you the Man of God Plus?
Speaker 3: Like, you know what I'm saying, You the plus streaming series.
Speaker 3: You feel me?
Speaker 2: Like you get We're we all just got we all
Speaker 2: just got the free trial version.
Speaker 3: We got the seven ninety nine.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying, You got the Poteen ninety
Speaker 2: nine version of the Anointing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's he's a double stuffed oreo of whole dumble stuff.
Speaker 3: He got a double portion any one of those new.
Speaker 1: Coke flavored oreos. I don't know, you know, I'm not
Speaker 1: a theologian, you know, I think I think religious scholars,
Speaker 1: rabbis and the like could debate over that.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the next decade and change are a busy time
Speaker 1: for Apollo. He continued to accumulate followers at a startling rate.
Speaker 1: He is very good at building an organization. He has
Speaker 1: a robust media operation that spreads videos of church sessions
Speaker 1: where he would speak in tongues and perform miracles, and
Speaker 1: as he brought in followers, obviously, so came money. He purchased,
Speaker 1: like any good cult leader, a forested compound on the mountain.
Speaker 1: That was his namesake. Right, he's got his mountain compound now.
Speaker 1: In one TV interview, he claimed that this mountain compound
Speaker 1: is proof that God had restored the Garden of Eden. WHOA, yeah,
Speaker 1: I got the Garden of Eden. You can come.
Speaker 3: It's nice.
Speaker 1: It's nice. There's worse picks for a location. That's how
Speaker 1: it is.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm saying, go up there in the mountains,
Speaker 2: get that, Get that a hundred year old lady, give
Speaker 2: you the tattoo.
Speaker 3: Right, That's that's some Garden of Eden type stuff.
Speaker 1: I feel you sure. I don't know how apples do
Speaker 1: over there, to be honest, but they got other fruit.
Speaker 1: They got other fruit. So God apparently also really liked
Speaker 1: the idea of shotgutting a shitload of money to Rodrigo
Speaker 1: du Terte, who at this point becomes the mayor of
Speaker 1: du Vos City in nineteen eighty eight after the People
Speaker 1: Power Revolution. Du Terte was Apollo's most prominent political friend
Speaker 1: of the post marcos Era right, and ju Terte would
Speaker 1: later claim to owe some of his rights to power
Speaker 1: to the fact that Apollo's church gives a shitload of
Speaker 1: money to him at the start of his political campaign.
Speaker 1: So again he gets jump started in a big way
Speaker 1: by Apollo Kiboloi's cult. Now, given the corruption endemic to
Speaker 1: du Terte's regime and the fact that Apollo's already been
Speaker 1: caught up in some shady shit, you might assume maybe
Speaker 1: is there some like sinister quid pro quo here?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Is he backing this guy? So this guy is going
Speaker 1: to like once he's mayor help him get away with
Speaker 1: some crimes. Don't worry, Rodrigo Duterte would never do that
Speaker 1: sort of thing, of course not, And in an interview
Speaker 1: for The Inquirer, he assured the world that this was
Speaker 1: never the case. Quote it was ju Terte himself who
Speaker 1: said that the wealthy preacher doesn't have other friends, I
Speaker 1: mean a friend he can really trust, stressing this as
Speaker 1: the reason that KABOLOI has been giving him expensive gifts.
Speaker 1: No no, no, no, this corruption and just needs a friend.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: Look, trying to be there for my body when.
Speaker 2: You exist in our stratosphere, like in the in the
Speaker 2: social sphere that we exist, and it's hard to have
Speaker 2: people that trust you.
Speaker 3: You think everybody.
Speaker 2: Needs some right, right, so you just it just gets lonely,
Speaker 2: you know, and like I just wanted to do something
Speaker 2: nice with the Humes.
Speaker 1: Right, right, exactly exactly. You know what, we should all
Speaker 1: be grateful that there are people like Rodrigo Jutte out
Speaker 1: there who are willing to be friends with a poor,
Speaker 1: you know, lonely cult leader with three to seven million
Speaker 1: followers around the world. Right, you know, no one is
Speaker 1: lonelier than a man like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can be alone among millions, man, that's right,
Speaker 3: alone as beautiful prop that's beautiful.
Speaker 1: Yes, anyway, the poet so the ko JC quickly spreads
Speaker 1: to become one of the largest Pentecostal churches on earth,
Speaker 1: somewhere between three and seven million followers. I've heard both numbers.
Speaker 1: Most of these are in and around Manila, but you
Speaker 1: know a lot. He has people in multiple countries around
Speaker 1: the world. He has like sub churches dedicated to the
Speaker 1: KOJC and multiple countries including the United States.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: Now, unlike most pastors, Apollo tells his growing flock it's
Speaker 1: not enough just to show up on Sunday to hear
Speaker 1: me preach. You have to put your money where your
Speaker 1: mouth is. With a steadily increasing yearly tithe that by
Speaker 1: two thousand and four was more than twelve hundred dollars
Speaker 1: a year in a country where the average salary is
Speaker 1: less than ten thousand dollars a year, gott a tie.
Speaker 3: That is a game lesson tithe?
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, its yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: You know, I will not give unto God that which
Speaker 2: costs me nothing.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. And memorandums sent to followers about the annual tithe,
Speaker 1: but with the signature office of the Son of God.
Speaker 1: So you really, that's not just like your local tax
Speaker 1: department or whatever. You know, that's not the fucking Department
Speaker 1: of Water and Power are sending you a bill. You
Speaker 1: really gotta get on that one.
Speaker 2: You gotta like listen, listen. You don't collection worth his wages,
Speaker 2: you know what I'm saying. Will a man rob God?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Will a man rob God?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah? So money he's hitting all the high points, man, right,
Speaker 3: he hit all.
Speaker 1: He really is. Now money is not the only thing
Speaker 1: flowing Apollo's way. He began to get access to women
Speaker 1: as well. Many of them very young and desperate to
Speaker 1: forge some sort of connection to a man they believed
Speaker 1: might bring salvation. It is unclear precisely how when when
Speaker 1: Apollo started sleeping with his followers, but by no later
Speaker 1: than two thousand and two, he and his most trusted
Speaker 1: aids had built a system within the church entirely designed
Speaker 1: to funnel young girls up towards him. His church referred
Speaker 1: to these people as pastorals, which was not an extant
Speaker 1: term in the faith, and referred to girls as young
Speaker 1: as eleven and basically never older than twenty five. An
Speaker 1: FBI indictment from twenty eighteen notes pastorals prepared defendant Kiboloy's meals,
Speaker 1: cleaned his residences, gave him massages using lotion, and traveled
Speaker 1: with him on trips throughout the world, to include the
Speaker 1: United States. Pastorals engaged in sex with defendant KIBOLOI on
Speaker 1: a schedule determined by defendants. That is happening again.
Speaker 3: Yes, it always gets to a dick.
Speaker 1: It's always, I like, because that's why people do this.
Speaker 1: That's why people make cults one way or the other.
Speaker 1: Usually every now and then you get like ol Ron
Speaker 1: Hubbard's cult. You know, it was purely about being able
Speaker 1: to absolutely control the lives of a bunch of people
Speaker 1: and make the power dig for dig for treasure. You know,
Speaker 1: he wasn't focused on the sex primarily, but most of
Speaker 1: them are. You know, that's that's a big thing for
Speaker 1: a lot of them. Yeah, pastorals engaged in sex with
Speaker 1: defendant KIBOLOI on a scheduled determined by defendants and what
Speaker 1: was referred to by pastorals as night duty for some
Speaker 1: past nights duty, night duty. I know that that's a
Speaker 1: bad one. I don't like that at all. And you
Speaker 1: know the FBI notes for some pastorals, night duty began
Speaker 1: before the pastoral reached the age of eighteen. Now, these
Speaker 1: girls had all been not all but usually been raised
Speaker 1: in the church, which is a lot worse because these
Speaker 1: are girls who are raised to believe this is the
Speaker 1: literal son of God and like the Man of God. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he wants you close to him. He wants you to
Speaker 1: He has chosen you, sister, to like you know, help
Speaker 1: him and help him with his great work.
Speaker 3: And that includes me some of his annoying.
Speaker 1: They move along, and this is again not all that
Speaker 1: why not completely dissimilar from how Epstein did it right.
Speaker 1: Massages are kind of a key because it gets you, know,
Speaker 1: it gets them in the room with you, and then
Speaker 1: things can proceed from there. The difference here is that
Speaker 1: these girls had spent their lives being told this man
Speaker 1: was divine. Right now, the coaching to become a pastoral
Speaker 1: does seem to have taken some time, and a big
Speaker 1: part of the organizational structure of the church was set
Speaker 1: up to train and funnel these girls upward so that
Speaker 1: there's a steady supply of them. Sometimes it took years
Speaker 1: to get them ready for night duty. But they were
Speaker 1: informed that night duty was a privilege and that the
Speaker 1: obedient would be rewarded, and they were KIBOLOI paid them
Speaker 1: and stays at luxury hotels. These are often very poor
Speaker 1: women and girls. Uh. He paid them in trips to
Speaker 1: tourist hotspots with annual cash rewards. For the the people
Speaker 1: who didn't want to accept this, he had a stick
Speaker 1: to go with the carrot, and that stick was hell.
Speaker 1: Refusing the pastor meant being set sentenced to eternal damnation.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 1: And again, this is the son of God.
Speaker 3: Man of God. Yeah, that's the thing.
Speaker 2: It's like, you want to you want to get close
Speaker 2: to the anointing. You want to get close to whatever
Speaker 2: gift gift does God's given him. Lord has chosen you.
Speaker 2: This is your reasonable service to the man of God
Speaker 2: who's given his life for our development.
Speaker 3: I mean this service.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. Now, many of these girls, as I stated,
Speaker 1: have grown up very poor in rural slums, not unlike
Speaker 1: where Apollo it's spent much of his childhood. Some of
Speaker 1: them had parents in the church, but others were targeted
Speaker 1: by Apollo's agents who were sent out into the poorous
Speaker 1: neighborhoods to look for teens and young adults who had
Speaker 1: like either had left their families or who could be
Speaker 1: convinced to abandon their families. So like, go find kids
Speaker 1: on the margins and bring them in, promise them food,
Speaker 1: and then we can either turn them into laborers if
Speaker 1: they're not someone that Apollo wants to have sex with,
Speaker 1: or turn them into pastorals. Now the bulk again, the
Speaker 1: bulk of the people that are grabbed and are not
Speaker 1: kind of are trafficked. Are men, right, because these are
Speaker 1: He also needs workers, right, And these people are inducted
Speaker 1: into the church, they're made to separate tize with their
Speaker 1: family and they're told that they now have to pay dues,
Speaker 1: and the fact that these are street kids who have
Speaker 1: no money is unimportant because there's a way for them
Speaker 1: to pay dues, as this article from the Philippine Daily
Speaker 1: Inquirer in two thousand and five notes. To support their church,
Speaker 1: the members are reportedly to sell church products door to
Speaker 1: door during the annual month of Sacrifice, which lasts from
Speaker 1: November to January, which you may note is longer than
Speaker 1: a month.
Speaker 3: I was like that, do you mean November thirty?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it does seem longer than a month.
Speaker 3: Yeah, longer than a month.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now that is Yeah. So Apollo also just doesn't
Speaker 1: let his followers off with just that small amount of sacrifice.
Speaker 1: He also required people to sell rice cakes, another branded crap,
Speaker 1: year round to fund the construction of a network of
Speaker 1: seventeen radio stations and a satellite television station that could
Speaker 1: reach forty cities in the Philippines. Growth of this sort,
Speaker 1: the kind that was experienced by the KOJC is an
Speaker 1: exits is an exponential thing, and by two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: Apollo was ready to expand into the United States, particularly
Speaker 1: towards the large Philippine expat community. That existed in Southern California.
Speaker 1: It was only one problem. The kind of followers he
Speaker 1: might get in the US are likelier to have an
Speaker 1: understanding of their rights to understand, like there's law enforcement
Speaker 1: they can go to to understand, there's media they can
Speaker 1: go to to have like money that makes them less
Speaker 1: vulnerable to you know, kidnapping like this. Right, So maybe
Speaker 1: the locals aren't going to be the best picks for
Speaker 1: past storals. But he's not going to spend all of
Speaker 1: his time in the fucking palace that he's going to
Speaker 1: get for himself in Southern California without sex slaves. Right,
Speaker 1: He's not that kind of fellow. So there's only one
Speaker 1: way to make these two things work out. And that way,
Speaker 1: my friend, is a massive immigration scam. And that's what
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about when we come back for
Speaker 1: part two.
Speaker 3: Problems.
Speaker 2: Amazing, how you're feeling. I am not happy, and also
Speaker 2: I'm not happy period saying but also because the like
Speaker 2: Southern California, like Filipino community, and I know that, like
Speaker 2: Sophie can attest, is like such a big part of
Speaker 2: growing up out here, you know what I'm saying that, Like,
Speaker 2: you know, even in the part of town I was in.
Speaker 2: It was like they you default with Filipinos when they
Speaker 2: get here, they default to either being black as hell
Speaker 2: or like Mexican adjacent because they end up in our hoods.
Speaker 2: So like, you know, I remember there was the like
Speaker 2: in my neighborhood, it was all these cholos. There was
Speaker 2: all these like Mexican gangs, and then there was these
Speaker 2: like other cholos that kind of like they talk like
Speaker 2: black dudes, you know what I'm saying, But they dressed
Speaker 2: like like cholos, but then they look Asian, and I
Speaker 2: was like, what what are y'all? But y'all go to
Speaker 2: the same church as we go to because again they Pentecostal.
Speaker 2: And then it's like, oh, so Manila Sunset, So that
Speaker 2: restaurant that's not that's not Mexican food, you know what
Speaker 2: I'm saying. Like, so I'm just saying all that to
Speaker 2: say it's been such a community that we are so
Speaker 2: intertwined with.
Speaker 3: To know more of.
Speaker 2: This past is like, well, I'll be, well, I'll be
Speaker 2: you know, it sucks, but it's just like, dang, that's
Speaker 2: what y'all been going, y'all.
Speaker 3: Y'all was going there the whole time. Well, we was
Speaker 3: going through the war on drugs. That's what was happening
Speaker 3: with y'all.
Speaker 2: You know. Anyway, all right, everybody just out here selling Jesus' color.
Speaker 2: Monthsie just hollow, hollow for Jesus. Anyway, I'm going to
Speaker 2: sell something. I don't know what, but you know what,
Speaker 2: Sophie's going to be angry. And that's the note to end.
Speaker 3: On yep, it'scuche.
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