Seares: Pilar Pilapil, former movie-TV star and 1967 Bb. Pilipinas, prays for Cebu City Council members, reminding them, in person, about Rapture, the end-time event for Christian believers. Tells councilors there's still time to 'repent, be saved and not left behind.'

Pilar Pilapil, in 2023, at the Cebu City Council, with secretariat chief Atty. Charisse Piramide (left), and the movie actress in the eighties. (Contributed photos)
Pilar Pilapil, in 2023, at the Cebu City Council, with secretariat chief Atty. Charisse Piramide (left), and the movie actress in the eighties. (Contributed photos)

FORMER entertainment star and beauty queen Pilar Pilapil whose full name is Pilar Delilah Veloso Pilapil-Penas -- was unlike most other private citizens who appear and speak before the City Council. She addressed the Sangguniang Panlungsod Wednesday (May 10, 2023) during its regular session.

Pilar Pilapil -- her full name: Pilar Delilah Veloso Pilapil-Penas -- didn't represent a business interest or private group seeking a favor from the City Government, usually exemption from a tax or no-objection clearance for an enterprise. She came and talked with the councilors “for the Lord,” as a "missionary evangelist," since 1995, particularly in Cebu, her native province. She was "standing" in front of Sanggunian members, she said, "in obedience to His command."

MULTI-MEDIA STAPLE. Pilapil led "a highly publicized life" and was a "staple of multimedia" from the 1970s to 1990s. Now she is evangelist, first and foremost. She appeared before the City Council to personally invite Vice Mayor Raymond Alvin Garcia and his colleagues to a "Concert Crusade," entitled "Urgent Call," "a night of worshipping the Lord Jesus Christ" this Saturday, May 20, at Plaza Independencia. Pilapil, 72, a native of Liloan, Cebu, told the Sanggunian members, it will be a night of "sharing the good news of salvation, repentance, and giving our lives to Him that we might all be saved and not left behind while there's still time."

Pilapil -- whom Councilor James Cuenco introduced as guest of Vice Mayor Garcia and a cousin of his late father, congressman and former city councilor Antonio Cuenco -- didn't talk of the City Council's latest slip or shortcoming in a major project. She praised the City Council members for loving Cebu: "You have chosen to be public servants and that is a very noble job." Serving the people is actually loving God, she said.

'GREAT TRIBULATION.' Pilar Pilapil talked of public officials helping during calamities, aside from taking care of the needs of their constituents. After the pandemic, "there seems to be no end" for one disaster after another, she warned: It will only get worse, read the Book of Revelations. And remember Rapture, both in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, when "the Lord himself will come down from the heaven with a loud command, with the voice of the Archangel, with a trumpet call of God," summoning the dead and the living "to meet the Lord in the air" (Thesalonians, 4:16).

After the Rapture will come the Great Tribulation, Pilapil said, "seven years of pain and suffering described in the Book of Revelations." She said, compared end-times horror and devastation, the present calamities -- earthquakes, plagues and floods -- would be just like child's play ("mora'g mga bata lang nagduwa"). Rapture, Pilapil told the politicians, is God's mercy for those who sin but repent. It will come as many biblical prophesies were fulfilled, she said, such as the Euphrates River drying up, Israel becoming a nation in one day, or Israel rebuilding its third temple.

NO QUESTION came from any of the City Council members, not even to know when the Son of Man would come, relying on Pilar Pilapil's source, Luke 12:39-40, that says like a thief in the night, "He will come at an hour when you do not expect Him." Or when and how the councilors "will meet Him there (at Plaza Independencia) and get to know him more."

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