Matthew Stuckey here, and I wanted to make a quick video just kind of highlighting how
the Filipino heroes were actually anti-Catholic.
The Filipino heroes were actually anti-Catholic.
If you were to visit Rizal or Luneta Park, which is a very famous place here in the Philippines
in Ermita, in the heart of the city of Manila, you're going to find two statues there.
One statue is of Jose Rizal.
At one end of the park is the statue of Jose Rizal, who was actually anti-Catholic.
And at the other end, what you're going to find is the statue of Lapu Lapu, who was also
anti-Catholic.
And these are perhaps the two biggest heroes in Philippines' history.
And so, quick little information about Lapu Lapu.
And Lapu Lapu and his men are actually the ones who killed Ferdinand Magellan.
Now, a lot of people have this wrong idea that Ferdinand Magellan circumnavigated the
globe, that he sailed around the entire globe and he was the first person who was actually
killed in the Philippine Islands.
Some of his men, not most of them, because most were actually poisoned to death and didn't
make it.
But some of his men actually went back from the Philippines and they did go around the
world.
However, Ferdinand Magellan, he was actually killed in the Philippine Islands and killed
by Lapu Lapu.
Now, Ferdinand Magellan was doing this mission on behalf of Spain and they were bringing
Catholicism here and they were going to conquer and, you know, Catholicism spread by force
and they were going to force everybody to be Catholic.
And so, a lot of people went along with it in the Philippines.
A lot of the different tribes that were kind of, there's tribes here and there, various
different tribal leaders.
And the reason why they went with it was just because of the fact Ferdinand and Magellan
and his men were too powerful.
Or in the case of Rajaju Mabon, I believe he went along with it just as sort of a ploy
to get him to fight against Lapu Lapu, which was sort of his enemy at the time.
But Lapu Lapu and his men rejected the Spanish rule and rejected Catholicism.
And what ends up happening is Ferdinand Magellan figured he could just force Lapu Lapu and
they just came in and they weren't prepared.
And he was killed along with many of his men.
And so, Ferdinand Magellan is the Catholic bringing Catholicism.
Lapu Lapu was said to be a mixture of Islamic beliefs along with native beliefs, it's kind
of hard to tell.
But he certainly wasn't, you know, of the Christian realm, he wasn't Catholic.
And Lapu Lapu was a hero and he killed the Catholic who brought Catholicism here to the
Philippines.
And yet, Ferdinand Magellan's the bad guy, even though he brought Catholicism.
And what's interesting is you're going to have people that are Filipinos, the vast majority
of people are Catholic, and they believe in Catholicism.
And yet Ferdinand Magellan was the bad guy when he brought Catholicism here to the Philippines
as he did it by force.
And they don't have the religion of Lapu Lapu in today's world, in most Filipinos.
They have a religion of Ferdinand Magellan when he was the bad guy.
So it's just kind of very interesting.
And I'll tie this together here at the end.
Besides Lapu Lapu, the other big national hero is José Rizal.
And you know, he was killed, you know, a little bit more than 100 years ago.
And it was when they had the Catipunan, and then they had the big battle with Spain and
everything like that, and he wrote a lot.
And so there's actually a religion, there's actually various denominations of the religion
where they worship José Rizal as a god here.
He's probably the biggest hero here.
And you know, there's there's definitely questions in terms of whether or not he was for or against
the Catipunan.
And I have my opinions about that, but it's really outside the scope of this video.
But he wrote a couple major books, and one was called El Filibusterismo, and then another
one was Nolimé tan Jarre.
And these were books that were written in Spanish.
And Spanish was really kind of the language of sort of the elites, or the very well educated
at the time.
And he wrote these books in Spanish, and they were very heavily anti-Catholic.
These books are actually required to be read in school.
And you would think since he was anti-Catholic, that the Catholics would not want you to read
these heavily anti-Catholic books.
However, they're very clever, because they don't read them in Spanish, because very few
people speak Spanish here in the Philippines today.
But they're translated into English and Tagalog.
And when they are translated, a lot of the material is still there.
But it's very much changed from the original intent of what José Rizal wrote.
And just a little bit of a change changes everything.
Just like when people change the Bible, and it changes the entire meaning.
But what happens is, people read it thinking, you know, oh, he was anti-Catholic.
And then they walk away saying, oh, yeah, he wasn't crazy about the Catholic Church.
He had some complaints, but he wasn't really anti-Catholic.
And people are being deceived because they've actually changed the writing from the original,
you know, what it said in Spanish.
But he was definitely very anti-Catholic.
He stood against the Catholic Church.
You can find plenty of quotes of him, basically criticizing the Catholic Church.
And yet he is the big hero here in the Philippines, José Rizal.
You know, another example in the modern day is a guy by the name of Manny Pacquiao.
Manny Pacquiao was at one time the most famous boxer in the world.
And some people say the greatest pound for pound boxer of all time.
And boxing is one of the big national sports along with basketball.
And so Manny Pacquiao is famous.
And when he started his career, he was actually a Catholic, and he wasn't living a very godly life.
By his own admission, you know, he says he was very anti, you know, godly and not really following God at all.
Back when he was Catholic, in terms of drinking, committing adultery, and things such as that.
And he ended up converting to evangelical Christianity.
Now, in terms of what he actually believed, he still believes you have to repent of your sins.
He still believes you can lose your salvation.
That's outside the scope of this video.
However, he is no longer a Catholic.
And Manny Pacquiao oftentimes will speak at Baptist conferences,
and for pretty much any Christian denomination because of how famous he is.
And yet he's anti-Catholic now.
Now, he doesn't really, as far as I know, strongly just say the anti-catholic is, the church, the Catholic Church is wicked.
But he's not Catholic anymore.
And yet he's the big national hero here in the Philippines.
So you have three people, the two throughout history, Lapu-Lapu and Jose Rizal,
who are perhaps the most famous Filipino national heroes, and they were anti-catholic.
And then Manny Pacquiao today, he is not Catholic.
And yet this is a very heavily Catholic country.
Even the president of our country, President Duterte is, he is anti-catholic.
He will criticize the Catholic Church a lot of times, and for good reason.
And he is the president.
So it's kind of bizarre.
You think, why would it be that 80% of this country is just very devoted to Catholicism,
and yet the president's not Catholic.
Our current national hero, Manny Pacquiao, who could be the future president, is not Catholic.
The two biggest heroes in history are not Catholic.
And it's kind of interesting.
It's kind of bizarre.
But what it kind of shows you is that people here in the Philippines,
they do have a heart for God.
They do want to serve God.
They do want to do what's right.
They have a strong tie to family and a lot of old-fashioned values and things such as that.
And they want to do what's right.
And quite honestly, they just don't know what is right.
And the truth is that many of these Catholics are very devoted to Catholicism
because they don't know any other way.
And what they do not realize is how easy the message of salvation is.
And so it's just kind of interesting that the big heroes here in the Philippines were not Catholic.
And yet it's a very heavily Catholic country.
But I think it also goes to show that in terms of the average person here living in the Philippines,
that they want to know the truth.
It's just a matter of us as Christians going out and spreading the gospel
throughout the entire country of the Philippines.
Thank you and God bless.