I’m amazed at how the term Protestant is so loosely applied. Encyclopedias get updated every now and then because errors do enter into historical records. When looking at the history of Protestantism, how many groups are erroneously categorized as Protestant? I remember the entry putting the likes of the Seventh Day Adventists, Mormons (and by the way, Catholic Answers already debunked that idea), Jehovah’s Witnesses, and some people have considered both Aglipayanism (which is diet Roman Catholicism) and the Iglesia Ni Cristo as Protestant? It should be noted that the term Protestant was given to the reformers. The reformers didn’t want to be reformers–they only wanted to be biblical. The term Christian wasn’t even a term of endearment in Acts 11:26 either. Baptists were called Baptists by the enemy, not by themselves.
Why can’t the INC even be considered a Protestant church? An interesting history from Catholic Answers (which I choose as a point of debate instead of the Catholic fake defenders) is this on its founder Felix Manalo:
A litmus test for any religious group is the credibility of its founder in making his claims. Felix Manalo’s credibility and, consequently, his claims, are impossible to take seriously. He claimed to be “God’s messenger,” divinely chosen to reestablish the true Church which, according to Manalo, disappeared in the first century due to apostasy. A quick look at Manalo’s background shows where these doctrines came from: Manalo stole them from other quasi-Christian religious sects.
Manalo was baptized a Catholic, but he left the Church as a teen. He became a Protestant, going through five different denominations, including the Seventh-day Adventists. Finally, Manalo started his own church in 1914. In 1919, he came to America, to study with Protestants, whom Iglesia would later declare to be apostates, just like Catholics. Why, five years after being called by God to be his “last messenger,” did Manalo go to the U.S. to learn from apostates?
The explanation is that, contrary to his later claims, Manalo did not believe himself to be God’s final messenger in 1914. He didn’t use the last-messenger doctrine until 1922. He appears to have adopted the messenger doctrine in response to a schism in the Iglesia movement. The schism was led by Teogilo Ora, one of its early ministers. Manalo appears to have developed the messenger doctrine to accumulate power and reassert his leadership in the church.
This poses a problem for Iglesia, because if Manalo had been the new messenger called by God in 1914, why didn’t he tell anybody prior to 1922? Because he didn’t think of it until 1922.
If one must think about it, Manalo was a false convert in the denominations which he entered. In a sense, Manalo having been baptized Catholic, may make the INC a rebellious harlot daughter of Rome. I’d like to stress that the SDA shouldn’t even be considered a Protestant denomination. The Protestant reformers only continued what their predecessors who opposed Rome started. Even during the Dark Ages, the Church never apostatized as evidenced by groups like the Waldenses. I believe that some groups got smeared as Baptists because they practiced baptism by immersion. Manalo’s claim of the church apostatizing in the first century is something the reformers never claimed. Even worse, the INC claims that Martin Luther was supposedly the second angel in Revelation 14:8–something Luther never claimed or proved. Let’s not put Luther or the reformers on the pedestal, as they are just men.
An interesting note from True Iglesia (a site devoted to debunking the INC’s erroneous claims), that would really show the difference between Protestantism (which I don’t identify myself as a Protestant or Catholic, but a born-again Christian), is this:
If the angel is Martin Luther, the INC is proven false.
Here is the more interesting scenario. Let us say, for the sake of argument, that the INC is correct and Martin Luther is the second angel of Revelation 14:8. This would make Martin Luther a messenger sent from God. Does Martin Luther’s message as a true messenger of God align with the INC’s message?
It did not! Luther taught justification through faith alone and not of works!
Now the true Gospel has it that we are justified by faith alone, without the deeds of the Law. The false gospel has it that we are justified by faith, but not without the deeds of the Law. The false apostles preached a conditional gospel.
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All who say that faith alone in Christ does not justify a person, convert Christ into a minister of sin, a teacher of the Law, and a cruel tyrant who requires the impossible. All merit-seekers take Christ for a new lawgiver.
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We have enough arguments right here to conclude that justification is by faith alone. How can the Law effect our justification, when Paul so plainly states that we must be dead to the Law if we want to live unto God? If we are dead to the Law and the Law is dead to us, how can it possibly contribute anything to our justification? There is nothing left for us but to be justified by faith alone.[2]From the INC’s perspective, how can Martin Luther be a messenger of God if he calls the INC’s teachings a false gospel? If the INC calls him a messenger of God, they call themselves false!
From faulty interpretation to faulty interpretation, which is very typical of cults, the INC can’t even be considered a Protestant by any definition. When the reformers protested, they summarized the truths as Faith Alone, Grace Alone, Scripture Alone, In Christ Alone, and Glory to God Alone to point to the Bible. Felix Manalo added works, church members, absolute obedience to the INC minister, and blasphemously called himself the Good Shepherd of John 10! None of the Protestant reformers such as Luther, John Calvin (Presbyterianism), John Knox (Dutch Reformed), and Huldrych Zwingli made such a claim!
In short, the INC can’t be considered a Protestant church as much as many of its anti-Catholic rival cults. A Protestant church (and I still don’t use the term these days) is a church that holds on to the biblical Five Solas. The Five Solas is a summary of the Gospel. INC, like Rome, teaches another Gospel. The cults naturally hate each other because they declare their lies to be the truth.
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