Kingdom of Jesus founder — and some would say “cult leader” — Apollo Quiboloy yesterday reminded us that while earthquakes continue to rock Mindanao, it would’ve been a lot worse if he hadn’t quickly, graciously commanded the tectonic plates in the earth’s crust to stop shifting — twice!

Read: Another strong earthquake hits Mindanao

In his regular two-hour religious TV program “Give Us This Day,” which aired Oct. 30, the Davao City-based Quiboloy recounted in Filipino, “When it quaked yesterday I was there. I said to the quake, stop! And it stopped.”

“Another one came at around 11[pm], it quaked again, I said stop. And of course, it stopped. So you have to me thank [for that].”

While it’s unclear if the poker-faced religious leader was joking or dead serious, he went on to repeat the claim, saying, “You should thank me. If I didn’t make [the earthquake] stop, a lot of you would have [suffered] a building collapse; you’d all be dead.”

He also claimed that there were witnesses to his alleged earthquake-halting powers, although he failed to name them, and put a cherry on top of the earthquake-halting cake by also laying down the law to a shaky lighting fixture.

“When the chandelier moved, I told it to stop! And it stopped immediately. I did the same for the second one. So you should all thank me for stopping the earthquake. But I won’t say this because I’m bragging.”

(Really he’s not.)

“You might say I’m bragging, If that’s your interpretation, then you’ll be sorry.”

If you didn’t already know who Quiboloy is, he happens to be a close friend of another loose-lipped public personality, President Rodrigo Duterte, who has previously admitted receiving valuable gifts from the televangelist, including cars and properties when Duterte was still mayor. He chalked up the donations to their three decades of friendship (so y’know, don’t worry about corruption or conflicts of interest or nothin’).

Last year, Quiboloy was briefly detained in Hawaii over guns and US$350,000 cash that were found in his private plane. But a certain Felina Salinas, a member of his church who was also on board the aircraft, claimed that the cash was hers and was arrested and charged with attempted bulk cash smuggling.

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