The first mission to Mindanao was in 1946. A Cebu congregation was built in 1937-the first to be established outside of Luzon, and the first in the Visayas. The denomination's first three ministers were ordained in 1919.īy 1924, the INC had about 3,000 to 5,000 adherents in 43 or 45 congregations in Manila and six nearby provinces. Expansion followed as the Iglesia started building congregations in the provinces as early as 1916. He registered his newfound religion as the Iglesia ni Cristo ( English: Church of Christ Spanish: Iglesia de Cristo) on July 27, 1914, at the Bureau of Commerce as a unipersonal corporation with himself as the first Executive Minister and founder. He was later able to baptize a few converts, including some of his persecutors. He also returned to Taguig to evangelize and preach there, he was ridiculed and questioned by the townsfolk during his meetings. įelix Manalo, together with his wife, Honorata, went to Punta that same month and began preaching. He emerged from his silence three days later with his newfound doctrines and principles. In November 1913, Manalo secluded himself with religious literature and unused notebooks in a friend's house in Pasay, instructing everyone in the house not to disturb him. The chapel is now a museum owned by the Iglesia ni Cristo. Iglesia ni Cristo's first congregation in Punta, Santa Ana, Manila. Plainly displeased with the various branches of Christianity brought to the Philippines by foreign missionaries, Manalo began to mingle with a diverse crowd of atheists and freethinkers who had rejected organized religion.
He was disfellowshipped from the SDA faith in 1913. There Manalo laboured as trusted evangelist before quarrelling with Adventist leaders over matters of doctrine and customary authority relationships between Westerners and Filipinos. He also sought through various denominations, including the Presbyterian Church, Christian Mission, and finally Seventh-day Adventist Church in 1911. In 1904, he joined the Methodist Episcopal Church, entered the Methodist seminary, and became a pastor for a while. According to the National Historical Commission of the Philippines, the establishment of the Philippine Independent Church or the Aglipayan Church was his major turning point, but Manalo remained uninterested since its doctrines were mainly Catholic. He also sought solace in other religious groups. Severely rebuked for privately studying the Bible, Manalo began forthwith to question many basic Catholic doctrines. At the time he resided in Manila with his uncle Father Mariano Borja, a priest assigned to the urban parish of Sampaloc. Late in the 1890s, after a telling lapse of faith, the teenage Manalo rejected Catholicism. During a childhood disrupted by his father's death, his mother's remarriage and the Philippine Revolution, and an adolescence overshadowed by the Filipino-American War, Manalo received only a few years of formal schooling. With their livelihood based on a combination of agricultural work, shrimp catching and mat making, they were humble people who lived on the edge of poverty. He was raised in a rural setting by his devout Catholic parents, Mariano Ysagun and Bonifacia Manalo y Cruz. 2 Establishment of the Iglesia ni Cristoįélix Manalo y Ysagun the Messenger of Iglesia ni Cristo (Popularly known as "Félix Manalo") was born in Barrio Calzada, Tipas, Taguig, Manila province (transferred to Rizal province in 1901 and now part of Metro Manila), Philippines, on May 10, 1886.The official doctrine of Iglesia ni Cristo professes that Félix Manalo y Ysagun is the last messenger of God, sent to reestablish the first church founded by Jesus Christ, which the INC claims to have fallen into apostasy following the death of the Apostles. Manalo, the current Executive Minister of Iglesia ni Cristo.įelix Manalo is the founder of Iglesia ni Cristo, a Christian Church that originated in the Philippines since 1914. Manalo, who succeeded him as Executive Minister of the INC, and the grandfather of Eduardo V.
Followers see Manalo as a prophet and the last messenger of God. "Sugo ng Diyos sa mga Huling Araw" ("God's Messenger in this last days") įelix Ysagun Manalo (born Félix Manalo y Ysagun – April 12, 1963), also known as Ka Felix, was the founder and the first Executive Minister of Iglesia ni Cristo.