The town of San Jose, along with the rest of the rugged island of Dinagat, is a modern-day Noah's Ark to thousands of members of the PBMA. From various parts of the country, they trek there for their spiritual salvation, giving up property and abandoning their roots.

They believe that the end of the world will come in the year 2015. San Jose is their promised land, and whoever will be there at the appointed time will not perish but will be "saved." One man led them all there—and his body now lies in the cavernous building on the hill.

The building is Ruben Ecleo Sr.'s mausoleum. Nearby are the PBMA conference center, a circular stadium, a miniature dam, a lagoon, the beginnings of a structure that is to be the PBMA international office, and the unfinished mansion of the present Divine Master, perched on the hilltop.

Residents also climb to the park, with pails and buckets, to collect drinking water from the dam. The irony of it all is that the town badly needs water, but instead of a water system it has an awesome complex of buildings and infrastructure that honor a dead man, his family and the organization he founded. The vice-mayor says P45 million is needed for the water system. The mausoleum alone, residents say, costs P26 million.

Today, PBMA members still keep a round-the-clock vigil in the mausoleum, praying to the miracle man who began the PBMA and who, followers believe, healed them of sicknesses. To them, Ruben Ecleo Sr. was the Divine Master, the redeemer, the reincarnation of Jesus Christ as well as of Jose Rizal.

The elder Ruben, many of those who know him say, was overflowing with charisma. This was not a product of education, for he dropped high school in his second year. Neither was this influenced by wealth, because he came from a poor family. Born in 1933, Ruben was barely 15 when he lost his father, who was an arbularyo, or herbalist, known to practice folk medicine.

Accounts say Ruben was accused of rape while he was still in high school. He immediately left the island and became an itinerant, eventually joining a roving carnival group as a barker. He was a glib talker and could easily lure people into the carnival.

Ruben journeyed through parts of Mindanao and the Visayas. Somewhere along the way, he is said to have discovered that he had faith-healing powers. By most accounts, he founded the PBMA in the 1960s, in the town of Aloran, Misamis Occidental, where he started with 12 apostles. The group traveled extensively to take in new members. As his following gradually began to build up, Ecleo returned to Dinagat to set up his first faith-healing clinic, where thousands of people flocked to consult him. Records show that the PBMA was registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission in 1965. By 1988, the PBMA was reporting a total membership of 6,687 to the SEC. In interviews at that time, Ecleo Sr. aimed a membership of more than 20,000.

Missionaries were assigned to recruit members from as far as Luzon and from the nearby islands of the Visayas and Mindanao. Apart from seeking spiritual healing and the salvation of their souls, migrants were attracted to Dinagat island by things temporal, mainly the prospects of earning a living. A large part of the island is mining reservation, declared in 1939 by President Manuel Quezon. It is rich in chromite and gold, and to this day residents thrive on small-scale gold panning and chromite mining.

In 1990, the Bureau of Mines and Geosciences entered into 25-year production sharing agreements (MPSAs) with the private sector, among them cooperatives like Minahang Bayan/Dinagat. Under an MPSA, lies and cooperatives pay license fees and excise taxes to government to engage in mining.

"Chromite has been proven to occur at almost any elevation," says a December 1993 study on the geology and mineral deposits of Dinagat island, conducted by Graciano Yumul Jr. of the University of the Philippines National Institute of Geological Sciences. Chromite, a critical and strategic resource, is essential in three major industries: metallurgical, chemical and refractory. Japan used to be the biggest buyer of chromite from Dinagat island.

Parts of Dinagat island were also covered with forests. Data from the Forestry Management Bureau are sorely inadequate, but reports from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources say that some settlers on the island were engaged in small-scale illegal logging, cutting trees and converting them to charcoal, which was then sold in nearby areas. Ecleo had his own charcoal-making venture. More recently, former Governor Moises Ecleo was charged by the DENR in 1992 with illegal logging, particularly transporting illegally cut timber. The PBMA successfully prevented the arrest of Moises Ecleo by forming a human barricade outside the governor's office.

The wealth of Dinagat and most of Surigao del Norte lies in its bosom, in its natural resources, mainly in its mines and forests. But with the forests depleted, mining is the remaining source of wealth. As in most parts of the country, access to natural resources and control of their exploitation is limited to the elite, those with money and connections to power, or those who hold power themselves.

In the case of Surigao del Norte, political contests have not been waged on the sole basis of gaining control over the province's natural resources. Political families like the Ecleos, Navarros and Serings have interests outside of natural resource-based businesses. The Ecleos are into labor recruitment and printing, among others, although they maintain a stake in mining. The Navarros are a landed family, while the Serings are in rural banking.

The wealth to be obtained from natural resources is not in itself a strong impetus for fierce and contentious political battles. In a sense, it is still the traditional forms of patronage that define political goals. For members of Congress, these forms include the power of the purse strings, the power to appropriate money from the Countrywide Development Fund, the power to dispense pork-as the example of Glenda Ecleo clearly indicates. This power to disburse funds explains why a high premium is placed on membership in the ruling party.

In addition, a political position opens doors, providing access to offices that would otherwise be difficult to penetrate. For one, it facilitates the issuance of licenses to exploit natural resources.

While the case of Surigao del Norte leans heavily on the traditional, the presence of a cultist group gives it a different twist. Fighting the battle for dominance of the province means entering the realm of the spiritual, capturing adherents to a faith that thrives on the passed-on charisma of the late Ruben Ecleo Sr.

Members of the PBMA are usually poor, uneducated. The majority are migrants in search of a better life. Academics who have studied spiritual associations in Mindanao have found out that many of their mem bers have been violently uprooted from their own provinces because of wars waged by the New People's Army and the Moro National Liberation Front. One such study conducted by local historian Luz Almeda in 1992 notes that poverty, insecurity, lack of education and religious ignorance are common enough conditions of adversity that drive many people to embrace membership in spiritual associations. In the case of the PBMA, the reasons for joining include the promise of salvation, the cure for ailments and the expectation that the PBMA can help alleviate poverty. Lack of education, limited wealth and low status in society were not considered deterrents in seeking a better life. The PBMA gave people hope. Furthermore, "belongingness" and acceptance by the, group were highly regarded as benefits by its members.

The Luz Almeda study concludes that people join organizations like the PBMA because of mixed reasons, ranging from economic, political and religious to socio-cultural and educational. She writes that these reasons are interrelated: "Whenever the element of brotherhood and the promises of eternal salvation are present, people are always attracted to join….Those members who have little or no education would try to compensate for their inadequacy by affiliating with the spiritual associations in the hope of learning from the association."

For Father Florio Falcon, a Catholic priest who infiltrated the PBMA from 1975 to 1978 to study its inner workings, the PBMA "reflects the worldview of an agricultural people subjected to the awesome forces of nature, chained to a way of life by the socio-economic structures they could not understand, and kept ignorant and exploited by a few."

Local historian Fernando Almeda Jr. sees similarities between the PBMA and the Colorums of the 1920s because of the character of the membership, mostly from the peasantry. However, the similarity ends there. The PBMA is not a militant organization. The character of the Colorum movement may be gleaned from a 1924 incident in which Philippine Constabulary soldiers attacked a fishing village in Surigao on suspicion that residents there were fanatical Colorum rebels out to overthrow government. The villagers resisted and succeeded in crushing the soldiers. "The dam broke loose," Almeda Jr. writes in Surigao Across the Years (1993). "Numerous brutalizing pressures were brought to bear upon the peasantry, which produced a spontaneous violent reaction from this aggrieved sector."

The PBMA is also unlike the Lapiang Malaya, whose members staged an uprising in 1967, armed with amulets and bolos, and proclaiming they were fighting for equality, freedom and justice. More recently, in 1992, a group called the Good Wisdom for All Nations massed at the gate of Camp Aguinaldo asking for jobs. Most of them came from Zambales, a province that had recently been devastated by the eruption of Mount Pinatubo.

While the PBMA membership may be poor, its leaders belong to the rural elite and even hold political power. Patronage is also displayed in the PBMA, with strong leaders attending to the material as well as spiritual needs of their followers. The faith-healing side of the PBMA dominates the organization, and there is a remarkable absence of discussions on government abuses. What the organization officially stresses is self-help, as shown in the way it is supposed to have developed the town of San Jose, with little assistance from government. Self-help, however, may have been true in the early years of PBMA, when Ecleo Sr. was not yet in politics. After he became mayor and part of government, outside help came to the towns where PBMA members lived. In orientation, the PBMA may be closer to the Iglesia ni Cristo, a religious sect, bound by a strong leadership, that openly participates in elections as a solid entity. In the PBMA, what the Divine Master wills, the organization does. It has one vote, one voice. The difference is that, unlike in the INC, PBMA leaders themselves run for office.

Although the PBMA is fortified by its belief in Ruben Ecleo Sr.'s' faith-healing powers, it refuses to be called a religious cult. Instead, it claims to be a non-sectarian humanitarian and charity organization. To support this claim, members parade their platitudinous goals in their primer.

These stated goals include service to humanity; attainment of national unity; harmony and progress regardless of national leadership; promotion of international peace and unity; maintenance of harmonious relations with all nations, irrespective of creed and religion; attainment and maintenance of free, orderly, honest and good government; upliftment of the economic, social and moral conditions of its members; and establishment of community centers for its members.

Membership is of three kinds: missionary, stationary and ordinary. Missionaries, who belong to the highest level, travel to any part of the country or abroad to do charity work and recruit members. Stationary members, as the term implies, stay in the confines of their chapter and are assigned duties similar ro those of the missionaries; they are considered reserve missionaries. Ordinary members, the lowest on the totem pole, merely participate in the PBMA's charity work. The PBMA accepts members from all religions or sects.

Since the PBMA says it is not a religious sect, it does not present a systematic doctrine. But the group has certain beliefs that show its intense cultist character. For one, Ruben Ecleo Sr. is the Divine Master. Tales and myths have been woven around the immense powers, as well as the origins, of the Divine Master.

In various records of the PBMA, Ecleo. claimed he was a two-star American general before his rebirth in 1933 to Aglipayan parents. But in later stories, Ecleo maintained that, like Christ, he was conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of his mother. He claimed other similarities to Christ, saying that he taught at the age of 12 and that he cured people and instructed them to lead moral lives. Thus, he claimed to have two natures: a man who, at the same time, was like Jesus Christ.

But there were two standards of morality within the PBMA. Ecleo demanded from his followers a spartan life, without vices. He disallowed smoking, womanizing, drinking of alcohol. But he did not practice what he preached. He smoked, drank imported whisky, and had relationships with women other than his wife Glenda. PBMA members accepted their Divine Master's errant behavior, justifying this as a privilege granted to their leader. Besides, they also thought that it was their leader's way of testing his followers' steadfastness.

Ecleo also appeared to have a curious obsession with America. He even promised dollars to members of the PBMA, part of the rewards of staying with the organization. In a tape-recorded message supposedly made in 1976, Ecleo claimed that another person-a foreigner by the name of Dr. Hugh Tovar-was speaking through him and gave details on the greenbacks. In the same recording, Ecleo claimed to be the medium of the spirits of Dr. Hugh Tovar of Canterbury, Gen. Adriano de la Concepcion, and Captain Caple Jury.

The recording has Tovar purportedly saying that he and Ecleo deposited USS19 billion in the name of Ecleo in 1936—"for the people of Dinagat island and the development of Dinagat." By 1986, members of the association could withdraw the money, the stranger purportedly said. No such deluge of US dollars came to Dinagat in 1986, but that promise seemed to have been forgotten by that time.

The PBMA gives no details on who Hugh Tovar and Caple Jury are. Gen. Adriano de la Concepcion, said to be one of the "spirit guides," is regarded as the leader of a group that fought the Americans with a nativistic and nationalist orientation. At the beginning of the century (1902-03), Concepcion led the local resistance in Surigao against American rule. The uprising was crushed by the new colonial powers. Concepcion was captured and executed.

But even with Concepcion as Ecleo's "spirit guide," PBMA literature does not contain anti-US or anticolonial rhetoric. Its texts do not include discussions on social injustice or inequitable distribution of wealth as ills of society.

One of the stronger myths about Ecleo was that, as a medium, he had the capacity to know everything happening within the PBMA, even the misbehavior and well-kept secrets of his followers. Thus, PBMA members feared their Divine Master because they believed that suffering and punishment could come to their family should they betray their leader.

"Fear of physical harm exerted a tremendous pressure on the members," says Father Florio Falcon.

Another way that PBMA members are made vulnerable is through the teaching that physical sickness is the result of sinfulness. They can only be cured if they have faith and are without sin. If a patient is not cured, he is advised to renounce his evil ways, increase his faith in the Divine Master, and observe PBMA rules more faithfully. Ecleo, therefore, could not be faulted for any inability to cure the sick. The burden lay with the patient.

Once, Ecleo was asked by an acquaintance, a non-PBMA member, what the secret of his healing power was. Ecleo admitted that if the patients did not get well, he told them that they lacked faith. So all he did was admonish them to be better PBMA-ers. "He had nothing to lose," observes Osorio Calejesan, a retired government employee who watched Ecleo closely.

Just like their Divine Master, members of the PBMA believe they, too, can heal. This divine power is their source of empowerment. They wear rings, follow their libritos, or manuals for curing, and use "operating needles" said to have magical powers to cure diseases. In an essay in the book Filipino Religious Psychology (1977), Father Falcon gives the following eyewitness account:

"The needles are small and bent like a number 7, hence the password for the initiated: 'Have you a number seven?' During rituals for curing, members mumble cryptic words, believed to have healing powers. The language is mysterious, unrecognizable, but it appeals to the simple folk as a means of communicating [with] a mysterious reality."

The spread of the PBMA bothered the Catholic Church in Surigao del Norte. Ecleo's group was a real threat, attracting members from among Catholics. In 1977, the Bishop of Surigao, Miguel Cinches, issued a pastoral letter warning Catholics about the "erroneous teachings" of the PBMA: "This sect promotes practices which capitalize on the ignorance and gullibility of our people." The tone of the letter was mild and stressed the Catholic Church's concern for the flock.

However, as the PBMA continued to accept members from the Catholic Church, a second pastoral letter came in 1978, this time imposing sanctions on violators: denial of membership in any of the Church's organizations; refusal of Catholic burial; denial of sacraments like the Holy Eucharist, baptism and matrimony; and denial of the right to stand as sponsors in weddings and baptisms. To show that the Church meant business, Bishop Cinches refused to give Glenda Ecleo communion when she attended Mass.