In late June, controversy erupted in the Filipino evangelical corner of the internet.
The subject: a sermon posted on YouTube by influential megachurch pastor Ed Lapiz, in which he claimed that the God of the Old Testament (Yahweh) is distinct from—and in opposition with—the God of the New Testament (El Elyon), the father of Jesus.
News of the teaching spread after The Bereans Apologetics Research Ministry posted an article titled “Ed Lapiz and His ‘Jesusness’ Teaching: The Making of a Cult” on June 25. In it, the author, who goes by the pen name Justyn, claimed that the 69-year-old pastor misread John 8:44 and goes so far as to infer that Yahweh is Satan.
The post received more than 12,000 views that week, causing the site to crash, said Justyn. CT agreed to not use his real name out of concern for retribution from the subjects of his articles on various cults. From there, Christians began analyzing Lapiz’s sermons and Facebook posts, debating in the comment sections and filming critiques of Lapiz’s theology.
“I don’t have anything against [Lapiz],” Justyn said. “[Christians] are free to disagree in terms of nonessential doctrines, but since he’s already attacking a major doctrine … then I don’t think that is something we can ignore.
In response to the controversy, the country’s major evangelical body, the Philippine Council of Evangelical Churches (PCEC), decided to investigate Lapiz’s teaching. While his church, Day By Day Jesus Ministries, is not a member of the PCEC, Lapiz has a huge influence in the Filipino evangelical community, as he is a pioneer in contextualizing Christianity to Filipino culture and has a large following through his radio show and online videos.
In November, PCEC’s theological commission produced an eight-page position paper pointing out what they saw as errors in Lapiz’s teaching. The paper used Scripture to explain God’s consistency throughout the whole Bible and to clarify the relationship between Jesus and the Law.
Rather than quelling concerns, the paper riled up new controversy: Some Christians, like Justyn, called out the commission for calling Lapiz’s teaching “erroneous” rather than “heretical” and not directly naming Lapiz in the body of the paper, only referring to him in the footnotes. Aldrin Peñamora, executive director of the commission, noted that the PCEC carefully chose the wording to keep the door open for future conversations with the pastor, as Lapiz had said he was still studying the topic and had not settled on a conclusion yet.
At the time of publication, Lapiz and Day By Day had not responded to Christianity Today’s inquiries.
The controversy has raised questions for the Filipino church about how to safeguard doctrine in an age when independent churches shun authority, pastors are “canceled” by an online jury, and Christians are shaping their theology based on online preaching. Peñamora and Timoteo Gener, chairman of the commission, hope their response can both clarify doctrine and show fellow Christians a better way to resolve conflicts.
Peñamora noted that for some Christians, it may be easy to call Lapiz a heretic. However, once that’s done, “do you still have a play left for him to be transformed?”
Creating an Indigenous Filipino Christianity
In the realm of Filipino evangelicalism, Lapiz is a figurehead. Originally from Bulacan province near Metro Manila, Lapiz became a Christian through a college fellowship and later served as a youth-camp director and radio announcer for Youth for Christ Philippines.
In the ’80s, Lapiz moved to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, for work. In 1985, he and two colleagues started a Bible study group, and within two years, it had multiplied into 37 groups that collectively held seven worship services a week. In 1991, he brought Day By Day to the Philippines, opening a church in Quezon City. To fit the church’s growing numbers, it moved to a large auditorium in Pasay City, where an estimated 6,000 people attended each week as of 2017. Day By Day also has branches around the world, including the Middle East and North America.
Lapiz is known for indigenizing or “Filipinizing” Christianity. (Evangelicalism came to the Philippines through American colonialism and is still deeply influenced by the West.) By using kakanin (sticky rice) for communion, folk dances and native instruments for worship, and Taglish—a mix of English and Tagalog—for preaching, Lapiz hoped to “make the Christian faith more Filipino,” noted Gener, who is friends with the pastor. “He’s a proponent of redeeming culture.”
When Gener was the president of Asia Theological Seminary, Lapiz spoke to his students several times about contextualized theology. Lapiz has a doctorate in Filipino studies yet has never studied theology, which Gener noted may be his “weakness.”
Justyn noted that one reason for Lapiz’s popularity is his ability to preach on relatable topics. “Whenever he preaches, you can easily apply the Scripture to a day-to-day practice,” the blogger said.
Lapiz’s advice on relationships, finances, and positive thinking often goes viral for its in-your-face approach, combining sarcasm, sass, and Scripture references. He speaks in the lingua franca, which only broadens his appeal, as he sounds more like a concerned friend than a preacher.
“A piece of advice to those head over heels for someone: If the person really doesn’t like you, there’s nothing you can do to make that person fall for you,” Lapiz said in one sermon that went viral on TikTok. “By pushing yourself to the person, you risk being disliked and disavowed.”
Pitting Yahweh against El Elyon
Lapiz’s influence and storied history in Filipino evangelicalism, as well as his insistence on keeping his church independent from groups like PCEC, have made it difficult for Christian leaders to determine what to do when his teachings stray from orthodox belief.
Starting 2023, members of PCEC churches approached Peñamora to report that Lapiz’s teaching had begun to focus on Jesus filter, a term that calls believers to follow the “spirit, essence, example, and teaching of Jesus” and rejects teachings in the Old Testament that Lapiz said do not conform with this vision of Jesus. Yet initially Peñamora didn’t have solid evidence that the teaching had strayed outside of the large theological tent of the PCEC.
Then the Bereans post on Lapiz’s March 22 sermon led to a flurry of online activity, with netizens calling on the PCEC to make a statement. In the sermon, titled “Of Legal Age Na Sya” (He is of legal age), Lapiz taught on John 9:1–39, where Jesus heals a man born blind. “The God of those who are in the Law is different from the God Jesus was referring to, since if it was the same God, they should be in agreement,” preached Lapiz. “But why were [the people in the Law] the ones who are primarily against Jesus and caused him to be crucified?”
Quoting Amos 5:18, Zephaniah 1:14–15, and Psalm 97:1–2, he argued that “Jesus comes as light, and the day of Yahweh is darkness.”
The Bereans post pointed out the similarities of his teaching with the heresy of Marcionism, named after the second-century theologian Marcion. The son of the bishop of Sinope, Marcion rejected the authority of the Old Testament, as he believed the God depicted in those books was legalistic and wrathful and fundamentally different from the gracious and loving God of the New Testament. He was excommunicated from the church of Rome around AD 144 for his heretical beliefs.
Justyn and other Christians critical of Lapiz’s teachings noted that they didn’t fall completely into the category of Marcionism, as Lapiz appears to still believe in God the Father and the Pauline Epistles.
In August, Far East Broadcasting Company, the radio station that hosted Lapiz’s show for the past 45 years, stated that it had ended its partnership with Day By Day Christian Ministries, but it didn’t explain why.
Investigation into Lapiz’s teaching
As accusations swirled online, Peñamora felt the theological commission needed to settle the doctrinal confusion. This wasn’t the first time the PCEC investigated an influential nonmember. In 2021, the group published a statement about an independent church in Manila, Faith in Jesus, as its leaders were preaching universalism, the idea that hell does not exist. The church had a wide reach due to the popularity of its worship team.
In August, PCEC national director Noel Pantoja released an open letter stating that the commission was examining the teaching of a “very well-known and influential pastor” and asking Christians to pray for the group and “demonstrate restraint in your discussions.”
Later that month, Peñamora and other theologians met informally with Lapiz to discuss his teaching. For ten and a half hours, the group talked about their lives, about their ministries, and about doctrine. Peñamora noted they didn’t want to be seen as interrogators but as fellow ministers.
In that conversation, Lapiz stated he wasn’t fixed to his perspective but felt it was important for him to personally explore the nature of Yahweh and El Elyon, Peñamora said. He remembered Lapiz saying, “I need to understand it very deeply; I don’t want to parrot what I learned from others.”
The theological commission explained how God is constant throughout the Scriptures and that Jesus came to fulfill the Law rather than abolish it. “He was not committed to saying, ‘Well, I’m a Marcionite’ or ‘I don’t believe in the Old Testament,’” Peñamora recalled. “He was saying that he’s still in the journey and that evangelicals were already crucifying him for being in this journey of seeking the truth.”
Yet the consequences of Lapiz’s exploration are concrete: One of his mentees, Rolando Garcia of Awakening Church, had since taken Lapiz’s teaching one step further by saying that the God of the Old Testament was the Devil, Peñamora said. In the theologians’ meeting with Lapiz, he distanced himself from Garcia’s teaching.
After the meeting, Peñamora noticed that Lapiz stopped publicly posting his analysis of his sermons on his Facebook page. The commission hoped to have a formal meeting with Lapiz to see if he had come to any conclusions, but Day By Day stopped responding to the commission’s requests. Once Peñamora started to realize that a second meeting wouldn’t happen, PCEC decided to publish the position paper.
“We should tolerate theological differences [in the PCEC], but on the other hand, part of the call of the church is to ward off false teachings and to keep the deposit of faith,” Gener said.
Heresy versus erroneous teaching
The position paper states that its purpose is to respond to “an erroneous teaching about the nature of God the Father, Jesus Christ, and Law and Gospel that recently surfaced online.” A footnote linked to a Facebook post by Lapiz as well as the YouTube video of his sermon.
It stressed the need to judge the church’s teaching with “utmost concern and care” but also to address errors and heresies in the spirit of love. They differentiated error, a misconception or mistake in understanding and practice, from heresy, a teaching that negates the gospel of Jesus.
The document uses verses to explain that the gospel comes from the whole Bible rather than only centering on the New Testament. “The story of the Scriptures determines the shape and content of the gospel, not a presupposed doctrinal system based on mere proof-texting of Bible references disengaged from the gospel story.” It then goes on to state that God is the same from Genesis to Revelation, that Yahweh and El Elyon are names for the same God, and that both the Law and Jesus’ salvation plan reveal the love of God.
The response to the paper was mixed. Some commenters on PCEC’s Facebook page thanked the commission for its clarity, while others claimed the paper was “watered down” for not calling the pastor a heretic. Justyn of The Bereans noted that it seemed “very soft.”
“If they acknowledge that his teaching is not faithful to Scripture, then why bother to say it’s just erroneous?” Justyn noted that if Lapiz is indeed still studying the topic and has not yet finalized his position, “then how come he … made public this preaching?”
Justyn argued that, with that sermon, Lapiz was trying to separate himself from the evangelical world, claiming that he had discovered the truth while calling the rest of Christians “Yahwistic.”
Justyn said he understands that the PCEC has to “walk on eggshells” to have a good relationship with Lapiz and that it wants to reach out to him pastorally. However, “they really have to be bold enough to call out Ed Lapiz and label the teaching as heresy, not just an erroneous teaching, so that the body of Christ will be warned.”
Peñamora noted that the commission made that call because, unlike the Faith in Jesus pastors, Lapiz wasn’t defending his position. Instead, he was asking for space to think through the issue and come to his own conclusion, Peñamora said.
Peñamora hoped that by being gracious, PCEC can keep the communication channel open and that Lapiz would be willing to speak to the commission or other theologians on the topic.
Many of the Christians “screaming for blood” online are younger believers, Peñamora noted. “Just saying the truth itself—that it is erroneous, it’s wrong doctrine—and to be in the posture of still hoping and praying for the person, I think that is the more Christlike way to handle a conflict.”
Local church reaction
The effects of Lapiz’s teaching have trickled into local churches. Derick Parfan, the pastor of Baliwag Bible Christian Church, noted that when he critiqued Lapiz’s posts on Facebook, some of his church members pushed back in the comment section, claiming that Parfan was misinterpreting what Lapiz was saying or arguing that Lapiz knew what he was talking about, as he’s been pastoring for decades.
“That’s the reason why I really have to address this issue to our church,” Parfan said. As the pastor of a 150-member church, “I’m responsible for the flock God entrusted to me. When they hear teaching that’s novel—although not novel to those rooted in early church history—we pastors felt we really have to protect our flock from this teaching.”
It encouraged Parfan to teach church history during his church’s adult Sunday school class, covering early church fathers as well as heretics such as Marcion. He is also currently preaching through Exodus, and in his sermons, he emphasizes why the Old Testament is just as important as the New Testament.
God, he teaches, is the God of both justice and love and is consistent throughout all time. While Parfan hasn’t mentioned Lapiz in his preaching, he said he believes God has used this experience to build up his church and to get people talking about theology.
“We need to preach from the Old and the New Testaments for [believers] to see that we have one book—not one book for Israel and one book for the church,” Parfan said. “No, the whole Scripture is Christian Scripture.”
Additional reporting by Caleb Maglaya Galaraga
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