First hand experience with doomsday

December 21, 2012 has come and gone. And we are still around. The Mayans, if they were that great at predictions, should be the dominant race by now.

In the early 70's I was teaching fisheries and general science in the Dinagat Fishery High School. I was 19 when I first taught and left after two years. See here for the reason I quit.

I was living with Mano Boning and Nang Tolang and their twin children; an older son was studying in college somewhere I cannot remember now but probably Cebu City. Manong Boning was a utility man of the school while the wife was an elementary school principal.

One evening the couple asked me to go with them and the twins to the big house of Mayor Ecleo. They said that a big earthquake would happen that night and the only safe place would be the home of   the Mayor which was then newly finished and located on a ridge of a hill which had a good view of the Dinagat harbor.

Out of courtesy to my hosts, who treated me like a son, I went. At any rate, I was also curious to see the interior of the mansion. I found assembled there the top aides of the Mayor and other government officials including the DepEd school supervisor. I asked him, in amusement,  what the heck the two of us were doing there as we were not members of the sect founded by the Mayor. And, by all means, we did not believe that doomsday was indeed coming.

After midnight we were told that it was already safe to go home. Somehow the calamity was abated.

Surmising now, I think the supervisor was just there to show his support for the Mayor as I was just for Mano Boning and family. But I was pretty sure then that there was no great calamity coming because  it was still to be in 1975 as taught by Herbert W. Armstrong, the leader of the Worldwide Church of God to which I belonged.

Armstrong had this booklet 1975 in Prophecy which shaped the thinking of church members about doomsday. It was the reason that in 1968 I chose to study fisheries in Zamboanga City instead of accepting the offer of my father to send me to FEATI (then one of the better technological schools) to take up electronics engineering. 1975 was coming and the world - society, not the earth - was coming to its end. I took the two and half year fishery curriculum which would give me ample time to prepare before 1975 came. All members of the Worldwide Church of God were supposed to become rulers in the world tomorrow after the crisis of 1975 and should be prepared to be leaders. Whew!

The Armstrong church has since split into many branches. I left the church, a few years after the death of Armstrong, having learned of its cultic nature first here and in many other places. This site is highly recommended for an in-depth knowledge of the cultic practices of the original Armstrong group.

I forsook religion altogether and its many doomsday predictions. And what a relief it has been ever since. Alas, the 1975 booklet is still reproduced here. This is one of the typical illustrations from the booklet:

Been there, done that!

This reminds me of great company

I was reading the column Viewpoint of Juan L. Mercado and was struck by the familiar ring in this paragraph:

“Then and now, it is still the poor who bear the brunt.” One recalls a Grade One teacher who checked why a child was crouching below her desk. She didn’t want us to see her eat her breakfast of green papaya soaked in salt and vinegar.

After two years of teaching high school in Dinagat Island I decided to go back to Cebu to find another job nearer my mother and siblings. We lost our father two years before in a political murder in Zamboanga del Sur where we were living at the time. We were settled with our grandfather in Cebu when I found the teaching job in Surigao.

When one year passed and me still jobless I enrolled in an electronics course at the former Cebu School of Arts and Trades. I had to scrimp on everything because for my expenses I relied on my mother, a public school teacher, and my grandfather who was a small-town councilor.

During lunchtime I would seek out a vacant room. I would go to a corner, arrange an armchair to face the wall, and proceed to arrange my food on the arm of the chair. The food which I prepared was almost always corn, fried sayote, and soup from the morning's inun-unan.

The first time I did that ritual I heard, halfway through my poor baon, noises from behind. When I turned to find out, I saw three other poor students arranging their food on the armchairs. Each was facing the other corners of the classroom. Great company!

I presume they are now better off than I am since I had a little hard time getting a good job after leaving CSAT while many of my classmates immediately made it to the big companies which were then sprouting up in the new Mactan Export Processing Zone.

Why Nations Fail

The new blog I am following and recommends: Why Nations Fail. I hope to have some spare money after buying law books and buy the book.