Eunuch for Life: the Sacrifice of Bro. Eli Soriano

Posted on May 28, 2010

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This story is about the song said to be persistently being searched for by Bro. Eli. It says a lot about what the preacher is undergoing today: hatred despite his love, treachery despite his benevolence.

By Beana Jao

Bro. Eliseo Soriano had a girlfriend named Naty. He would be bringing her to bible studies. In his late teens, Bro. Eli was already a promising preacher, and he knew what to do with life. But then one day, despite his Naty, he would declaim to people, “I am not getting married.”

It was Bro. Nicolas Perez, his superior at that time, who had asked him to prepare that declamation piece acted out before the congregation. Whether it was to test his ward or not, Bro. Perez was said to tell the young Eli, “And now you have to fulfill that!”

Marriage was something Bro. Eli had to give up in order to respond fully to the call of preaching. In 2006, when he had to go on exile for religious persecution, he had asked his brethren what they thought of him marrying a non- Filipino, an African to be exact. There was the question, but as the congregation knew all along, Bro. Eli had his heart fully tied to the ministry.

In all of his life, Bro. Eli expressed love to the brethren as a whole. At the same time, if he questions that love, it is questioning why that love has turned sour for some. More or less, the question is addressed to those who have turned traitors to him without him having done anything to deserve the hatred. These are but a few though who have allowed themselves to be willing tools to satan.

This story is about the song said to be persistently being searched for by Bro. Eli. It says a lot about what the preacher is undergoing today: hatred despite his love, treachery despite his benevolence.

I’ve read of a song posted in the Internet for some time.  It lacked lyrics and the writer was inviting those who knew to please provide. I read about the call in Twitter and in other sites. That was many months ago then. I guess it had been already over a year that the site had been waiting for a completion of the song, but then there was no more sign of it being accomplished. I remember well a blog titled, Ang Resulta, where I found the notice. It was handled by technical men.

In these days of information highways, no one would be keeping musical records or diskettes of songs or even songhits. The fast-pace generation can be tied down with compact discs at the least where retrieval can be easy. There is no need to memorize the lines of songs. In 2010, who would bother to be keeping records of old songs?

I casually added what I knew to the bare lines in Ang Resulta – lines that were simply remembered by a son from a dear mother who kept singing the song at his tender age. Bro. Eli’s mother used to sing this song. The melody remained with the hearer but the lines were bare like tattered rags this time. Lines, nothing, nothing, lines, nothing. Wide, gaping hole, lines, period.

After my few additions, mails came to me to please help. I learned then that it was a Bro. Eli who needed the lyrics.

I tried the Internet and true to their words, there is none available in the Internet. It was an old, old song in the 30’s and 40’s perhaps, or even decades earlier. There was only a piano piece available, they said.

The title, they said, was Love and Devotion by Louis Drumheller. Perhaps for the piano piece. I checked the Internet and this was what often showed for Love and Devotion –

O-la o-la o-la o-la hey, o-la o-la I want you baby, I want you baby,
O-la o-la o-la o-la hey, o-la o-la I want you baby, I need you baby.

Love and devotion, baby
I can’t get enough of all that love and devotion in my life.
Love and devotion, baby love and devotion,
You are the sunshine of my life.

But this o-la o-la hey version was not the interest of the preacher. The song that Bro. Eli was said to be looking for began with a slower beat that was maintained throughout.  It starts with “In a quiet village” but the words, “love and devotion” are not found in the whole song. All the more, it was very difficult to find it, because there was no popular singer attached to it, and the period involved was uncertain.

After I received another notice from one who I thought was a yaya (nanny), I figured the song was really needed. I asked someone in Mindanao, south of the country, to ready his bike and go find an old-fashioned lady who was in possession of some songhits. I knew the lady kept some possessions of his dead brother who was a guitarist.

Hoping to find results, I banked on emails but I didn’t get any: there was none. The messenger returned and instead talked about finding someone left behind the times. “Old fashioned, timid woman, more like an hermit,” he said. The lady had become a Baptist and now believes that singing songs is evil. She had changed religion. It was then that the lady burned all the precious collections of his brother.

I then thought of my elder brother, John, and begged him to find the lyrics of the song in his town. He bragged to me that this was the very first piece he played with his accordion. After a time, he had produced the lyrics but only up to what I already knew. There was still a stanza missing.

One day, I received a text message from a high school classmate named Ben. It was a surprise that he was able to connect with me. Politics brought him to my brother’s place. He was campaigning for his friend for the position of governor. This classmate of mine who I thought was a nuisance to my life proved to be otherwise.

Back to the lyrics of the song, I felt that help could only be among singers who kept the lyrics in their memory. I grew up in a high school where we had American teachers for English. They transported their English songs to our school. Our cheering songs in high school were also borrowed from foreign schools with the same name. “In a quiet village/many miles away/there I had a sweetheart/ known as my little mate…” These were not any different from, “When it’s springtime in the rockies, I’ll be coming back to you” and “Oh, Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling.”

I turned then to Ben to locate people who loved to sing, those engaged in serenading at dormitories at night. Perchance there were those who could remember the lyrics. We talked about tracing some of them through their relatives. One time I received an email from a child of a music teacher. I got some lines but with a little lapse of grammar. A day after, another notice came. This time it was from Ben. He said he got the missing stanza from his brother Norman. The rendition was a much improved piece from the child.

When I read the last stanza, I was struck by the words. Yes, very true. The very same people who ate out of the benevolence of the preacher are now the very ones hitting him from behind. The very same people who would invent all lies and twist everything after they went to another camp. “Another camp” refers to the Iglesia ni Cristo (INC) that for some time had been at odds with Ang Dating Daan. Records show that most of those excommunicated from Soriano’s group went to this church, albeit with much difference in beliefs beginning with the man-christ doctrine of the INC. But there were others too, who, out of ambition, formed their own group, believing that preaching is something to earn from. They, too, contributed in providing lies.

In fact, at first, I thought Bro. Eliseo Soriano, the presiding minister of the Members Church of God International (MCGI) or Ang Dating Daan, was married and that he knew nothing but sing along the videoke. That was one of the lies being foisted on innocent people. I remember a TV anchorwoman of a giant network sometime in 2001 who tried hard to present the preacher as just an ordinary being – far from the Bible scholar that Bro. Eli is, and a hard-hitting preacher who doesn’t budge when he encounters a false teaching. I saw the preacher facing a monitor, and like a fool, he was singing, yes, but not presented the way he uses songs for his work.

In that episode, Bro. Eli was interviewed. As the story closed, the camera flashed and a vintage image of Beth Soriano Razon with two young children were shown. Any viewer would find this insertion very much suggestive.

And who is this Beth? It was no other than Bro. Eli’s sister and the mother of Daniel Razon, the vice presiding minister of MCGI, and nephew of Bro. Eli. So, this Beth is Bro. Eli’s sister and not his wife, and the two children presented with this Beth is Bro. Daniel and her sister. They were not the children of Bro. Eli. The preacher had sacrificed his whole life to preaching and had foregone marriage.

Again, people can be fooled if they don’t watch out. Bro. Eli appears to be the target of many sectors now. The more he advances with his ministry, the more enemies he gets. Fabrications come day in, day out. If we don’t watch out, we can be fooled by them.

When Ben came to learn that the song that needed to be completed was for Bro. Eli, he got so excited – but not before he was able to access the missing myrics.  In his text message, he described Bro. Eli thus:  “He is an out-of-the-box preacher! Extremely fascinating! A maverick in his own right!” Ben is the youngest son of a bishop of the Philippine Episcopal Church.  Ben comes from a family of bishops.

Songs play a very important role in the preaching of Bro. Eli. He would use them to emphasize a point, to differentiate things, to evoke memories,  to provide a pause in his teaching.

By this time, I was ready to go back to Ang Resulta to report what I found, but the notice was deleted. This is the song for now -

Love and Devotion
By Louis Drumheller

In A Quiet Village
Many Miles Away
There I Had A Sweetheart
Known As My Little Mate
Once We Had A Quarrel
That Drifted Us Apart
Though She Knew I Loved Her
She Knew I Loved Her
And Yet She Broke My Heart.

Why Are You Cruel My Darling
Why Did You Cast, Cast Me Aside
Think Of The Days When You Loved Me
When You Were My Promised Bride.

Many Years Have Passed By
Since I Saw Her Last
Midst a Crowd of People
I Recognized My Bride
Dressed In Wedding Fashion
A Man Stood By Her Side
Oh, She Knew I Loved Her
She Knew I loved Her
And Yet She’s Broken My Heart.

by Beana Jao

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Posted in: enemy interventions, Faithful messenger, moment of decision, True preacher