My first audible voice experience

The ministry of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ came to me as a revelation. The Father called me when I was yet in the denominational church that my whole family and I belonged. I did not know of any other calling because I thought that as I was already preaching the Word of God as an evangelist in my Christian denomination, so the Father must already be using me as an instrument to deliver His words.  But I learned later on that my time in the denomination was just a stage for the greater calling that awaited me.  

While I was in South Korea many, many years ago, our church was caught in the middle of a crisis.  I was there with the International Youth Corps of our denomination for which I represented the Philippines.  As it happened, we had been distributing a tract inviting Koreans to our gatherings.  Unfortunately, the tract offended the Koreans because on it were printed the words, ‘If you are tired of dead religion, try Pentecost’ and below it was a drawing of Buddha.  We did not know that the wife of the President of Korea was a leading member of the Buddhist religion.  She demanded our apology.  We became heavily guarded after that and could not get out of our hotel.  And even before the printing of that tract, there were already incidents of persecution and violence in some of our denomination’s churches in Korea. 

Our superintendent gathered us into the hotel ballroom and told us to pray very hard that we would be able to get out of that situation.  It was while we were praying that I heard the audible voice of the Father speaking to me for the first time. The voice that I heard said three times, “I will use you.”  I thought that it was one of the American superintendents talking to me very close to my ear.  So I turned to see who it was.  But when I looked around, no one was behind me because everybody was on his or her knee praying.  Everybody was crying and praying so loud that it was a miracle that I heard anybody speaking to me at all.  So that incident became a wonder in my heart until I went back to the Philippines.

Soon after that, the attentions of the Buddhists were taken away from us because the President was assassinated.  We were able to escape Korea and I was able to go back to the Philippines.  I thought that I would never again experience what I had experienced in the hotel ballroom, but I was mistaken.  Soon after that many miracles that I have never seen or heard happen before happened to me and I was amazed.  I am just like you, an ordinary guy and although I was preaching, I had never heard God’s audible voice in my life.

In the vortex of a spiritual calling

I did not tell anybody about my experience. But the miracles continued until I found myself in the middle of a situation that I could not avoid.  It seemed that there was an unusual power propelling me to go a certain direction whose future was hid from me.  I wanted to go the way of my denomination because this was the natural direction that my life was taking and it was natural for me to accept what they were offering me, which was much in my limited eyes.

When you are a Filipino and you are offered a post in the United States with a good salary, and allowed to marry your beautiful American girlfriend, and promised to be sent again to the Philippines later on as a missionary, you cannot refuse.  I lived in a Third World country and the Philippines is poor and when heaven and earth is opened and offered to you like that, naturally, you would grab the opportunity.  I wanted all of these things because it seemed to me that I had already reached the peak of blessings that God could give.  Back then, nothing else could compare to what was being offered to me.

In the midst of all that was happening around me, I found myself in the vortex of a powerful force that I could not control.  I did not want to go that way but this unusual power was creating a circumstance in my life propelling me forward in that direction.  I could see myself trying to pull back, trying to go back to the natural direction but I could not. 

A parallel in the life of Moses

I see in this a parallel in the story of Moses who grew up in a palace where he was a prince. He lived a life of privilege, affluence and prosperity being the son of Pharaoh’s daughter.  If you read Exodus 2, you can review how he was found and adopted by the princess. 

Moses grew up in the courts of Egypt, but there was a calling in His life that one day, he also found himself in the middle of a situation that made him flee from Egypt and into the wilderness.  He was bewildered in his heart at being taken from his princely life and into life as a sheepherder.  But one day, he saw a burning bush, and as he drew close to it, a voice that came from God said, “Take off your shoes Moses, because the ground that you stand on is Holy ground.”  Then he knew that his calling came from God.

That was the beginning of Moses’ school of the spirit experience in the backside of the wilderness.   It cost him forty years of his life, being taught by God before he was sent back to Egypt to be the Savior of God’s people.  At that time, the Israelites were under terrible Egyptian bondage and were crying out for their liberty and freedom.  I saw myself in Moses experience. The voice that I heard telling me, “I will use you” was the unseen power that brought me to a remote mountain in Mindanao, called Kitbog, where all I had for company were natives that were so tribal that they did not even know the laws of the Philippines. They had their own laws.   

They had never seen a guy like me. They had never seen an airplane. They had never even seen a jeepney or a car or simple things like shoes, or toothpaste or a toothbrush.  When they saw me brushing my teeth, they all gathered around me curiously. They did not know what I was doing. So I asked them, “Do you want to try?” One of them got my toothpaste and ate it. Bubbles in the mouth and all!  They smelled like elephants. 

A year among the natives

That is where the Father brought me. I spent one year in that mountain.  And this unusual, spiritual, tangible experience from the Father’s spirit continued on. I would see something, I would feel something, I would smell something that ordinary people would never have the chance of experiencing, as that audible voice of God I heard in Korea.  In Kitbog, I heard the Father speaking to me almost every day.

You may ask me why I stayed for a year in that mountain. Because I was a skeptic! I could not easily believe what I had seen or experienced. I had to ask God the Father.  Is this really You talking to me? Or am I going crazy? Is this really You or is this the devil trying to trick me? Tell me because I have so many question marks in my head.

As a man from the denomination, I had this set Christian mentality that I knew Christ.  I believed I knew the Word of God because I had been taught that in the Bible College.  And so these experiences were very new to me.  The Bible School of our denomination had not taught me that I would be able to hear the audible voice of God.  This was an out of the ordinary experience. I wanted to know who this spirit.  

So for one year, the questions in my head were answered one by one.  A miracle would happen and I would be amazed, but after a week, the memory of that miracle would fade and my mentality would revert to my old ways and I would say again, “I will go back to our denomination’s headquarters in Makati and resume my evangelistic work.”  But then, another miracle would take place suddenly and supplant that miracle I had before.  It would stay with me a little bit longer and I would once again be attracted to that calling.  I would muse over that miracle for a time.  This went on for one whole year, each miracle staying a bit longer than the last one, until finally, my mentality was completely changed.  While this cycle was happening, the Father was telling me, “It is I.  I am calling you.”

Testing my sanity

In fact one of my American missionary friends came to me and asked, “I heard that you are hearing voices?” I said, “Yes!” He said, “The voice of God?” I said, “Yes!” “You really hear the voice of God?” I said, “Yes!”  He looked at me, and shook his head sadly from side to side.

Now, I looked up to missionaries, especially American missionaries as men of God! I respected them.  I looked up to them as though they were angels.   So it was my turn to ask him, “What about you brother? Being a missionary, do you hear the voice of God?” He said, “No!” And it was my turn to look at him and shake my head. You are a missionary and a leader, but you do not hear the voice of God!  In these modern times, when you pray, that is talking to God. But when God talks to you, the modern man would say, “Go see the doctor.”   

I was about to see the doctor. I became a psychiatrist to myself. Why do I keep hearing these voices and seeing these visions.  Some of them were naked eye visions.  My eyes would be wide open when all of a sudden the scene in front of me would completely change in seconds.  I would ask myself, maybe I was going crazy!  I tested myself by asking myself questions.   What’s your name? I would say Apollo C. Quiboloy. Oh! I’m still all right! I took off my shoes and asked myself, where is the left and where is the right. When I still knew one from the other, I said, “I’m not going crazy after all.”

The ball was in my hands

To make the story short, after one year in that mountain, I really knew from the bottom of my heart without a shadow of a doubt that it was the Father calling me and offering me a new ministry, a new calling in my life. I had no more reason to doubt. All my reasons were taken off by that one-year experience in that backside of the wilderness.

When I finally understood that it was the Father really calling me for this ministry that I have today, all of a sudden, all of the miracles, the audible voices and visions just stopped. I would go to bed at night wishing for another audible voice but all I would hear were the crickets of the mountain singing their song, all the insects making an orchestral presentation at night. My eyes would be wide-awake waiting for an open-eye vision. But all I would see is the thatched roof above me and the lizards clicking their tongues. No more audible voice! Nothing! The Father was telling me. “Now that you know I am the one calling you, the ball is in your hands now.  Will you follow me or not? It is up to you now. Use you freedom of choice to follow me. If you want to go back to your denomination as you have wanted to do for one year, go back! I will not stop you as long as you know that I am the one calling you.”  So I really had to weigh this in the balance of eternity.  Which path would I follow? 

The denomination’s arms were still open to me.  Their offer still stood.  My girlfriend was writing me everyday. And I mean everyday! That is not an exaggeration. She loved me very much. You know how she looked like? She was more beautiful than Brook Shields!  Back in those days, there were no computers.  There was no Internet, but I was getting mail every single day!  It was not me who got to read them because I was on the mountain.   I was told that the letters piled up, so many of them!  She wrote over and over, “I love you! I love you! When will you come back to me?” But I came down from that mountain with a decision in my heart.  I said, “Father, I will weigh all these things carefully.”  And I thought, “If I failed the calling of the Father in my life, I would live to be 70 years old. I would grow old. My girlfriend who would become my wife would also grow old.  We will die and expire from this earth and then we will face the Creator.  What will I tell Him when I faced Him?”  He would say, “I offered you one eternal lifetime to serve me but you refused.” 

Surrendering my will completely

So I said, “Father, I will leave all of these behind. I will follow you. Help me. Give me strength to follow you.” I knew that when I followed the Father’s calling in my life that I will be persecuted; that I will be lonely; that I will be mocked because I will be bringing a different message than what Christianity had already given. This was going to be different in the sense that the Father was going to implant His seed within me.  So I surrendered completely to His will and I said, “Father, right now I surrender my will and my spirit to You. Not my will be done from now on, but Your will be done in my life.”

When I did that, I was in fact, already fulfilling what the Father had already prepared for me in the plan of salvation—that He is going to pick one from among us sinners; one from among us descendants of the fallen Adamic race who would surrender his life voluntarily to God.  Then the righteous seed will be implanted in us. As soon as that disobedient serpent seed, which we have inherited from Adam and Eve from the creation is surrendered, then the Father will be able to follow up His plan of salvation using someone from among the fallen Adamic race to preach the true Word of God, which is the Gospel that was delivered to the first chosen people. But they rejected it.  Now He has come to us and He is going to appoint one among us as His Son.  That Son will not be forced to do it, but would voluntarily surrender himself to God, accept that calling and say, “Father from now on, not my will but Your will be done in my life.”

I came down from the mountain with that decision in my life.  My denomination thought that I was going down to go back to them. So they welcomed me. I did go back to them, but they were surprised.  They told me, “Your body is the same, your face is the same but you are a different Apollo…” that was because the sentiments of my heart were different.

This was the will of God so that I could fulfill this mission.  He led me to surrender my life so that He could dwell in me.  I understood that the Father, our Lord Jesus Christ, was seeking a residence, a human body, a descendant of the fallen Adam, a man completely surrendered to the Father, so He could dwell with His people.  This was how salvation was going to be completed, in the life of His Son in the gentile setting.

(Read Part 2 >>)

Quotes:

I saw myself in Moses’ life. The voice that I heard telling me, “I will use you” was the unseen power that brought me to a remote mountain in Mindanao, called Kitbog, where the Father dealt with me for one year.