chonzskypedia

Where do Mormons live? Most Mormons live in the state of Utah in the United States. There are Mormons elsewhere in the world, but Utah has been their chief home since 1846, when a picked company of 150 Mormons  under their leader Brigham Young, came to the valley of Great Slat Lake in Rocky Mountains with their horses and livestock, their covered wagons filled with provisions, implements and seed grain. Sixteen years earlier the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints had been founded by Joseph Smith (1805-44) at Fayette  in New York State. Joseph Smith claimed to have obtained the Book of Mormon, through a number of  revelations, in 1827.  This book is regarded by the followers of the sec as of equal authority with the Old and New Testament. In spite of persecution, the Mormons increased in numbers and sent missionaries to European countries.  Converts were encouraged to emigrate to the United States and to join the "Gathering of Israel". Persecution...

Introduction of  Islam in the Philippines was brought about by four great Islamite paladins: - Karim-al Makhdum , a noted Arab judge and scholar who arrived in Jolo around 1380 A.D.;  - Rajah Baginda , a prince of Menangkabau (Sumatra), who landed in Sulu in 1390 and carried Makhdum’s work; - Sayyid Abu Bakr , also known as Sahrif ul-Hashim, who reached Jolo around 1450 A.D. and became its first sultan; and - Sarip Kabungsuwan of Jahore, who landed in Mindanao in 1475 and became the first sultan of the island. Muslims in the Philippines advocate equal rights for all.  In 1983, Muslims amounted to 4.3 percent of the total Philippine population. Believers of Islam have two main sources of their faith: - The Qur’an is regarded as the uncreated eternal Word of God and the primary source of all Islamic law and dogma, while the - Sunnah is regarded as the tradition of the Prophet. Muslims also have five primary duties known as the Five Pillars: These...

Islam means surrender to Allah’s supreme will, which determines Man’s fate.  At the Last judgement, men are either rewarded in  paradise or punished in hell for their good and evil deeds. Mohammed founded Islam in Arabia between 610 and 632 A.D. Born in 570 A.D., he became critical of the practice of Idolatry in Mecca, his birthplace.  He thus decided to lead a contemplative life in the desert.  He was convinced, with some encouragement from his wife Khadiji, that  he was appointed by Allah (God) to fulfill the task of reforming religion and society. In 622, Mohammed migrated from Mecca, where he was well accepted.  This year now marks the Muslim era.  Later, in the year 630, Mohammed conquered Mecca.  Followers of Mohammed who are called Moslems, revered him as the prophet of Allah. In the Philippines, a tombstone on Mt. Datu near Jolo commemorates Tuhan Mugbalu, a foreign Muslim.  The tombstone, which has the date 710 A.H. (13...

Although Jehovah’s Witnesses was organized in the 1870s in the United States, it was only on January 14, 1912 that it reached Philippine soil.  On that day Charles Taze Russell, president of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, who was on a worldwide lecture tour, delivered a lecture in English to a largely Filipino audience at the Manila Grand Opera House.  His lecture marked the start of the denomination in the country. Today, the overall direction of the witnessing work comes from the go Governing Body at the World Headquarters in Brooklyn, New York.   From there, representatives are sent out each year to 15 or more “zones” to confer with the branch representatives in each zone.  In the Philippine branch office, there are five (5) branch committees overseeing the work in areas under their jurisdictions.  The area served by each branch is divided into circuits.   A circuit has about twenty congregations, each of which has elders assigne...

Followers of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints believe that their name was given to them by Jesus Christ himself.  “Saints” is the term the church uses for its members and the name of the Church indicated the present-day followers of Christ. The Church was organized on April 6, 1830 in the United Stated by Joseph Smith Jr., whom the believers call the first prophet.  According to them, Smith, at the age of 14, had a vision of Angel Moroni, who told him of golden plates hidden in a hill.  The plates allegedly contain an account of a people in ancient America who fled from Jerusalem after they were warned by God that Jerusalem would be destroyed.  The plates were obtained by Smith when he was 23 years of age. In the Philippines, the Church started in the 1960s.  Missionaries were sent from the United States after they received reports from American servicemen based at the Clark Air Base that some Filipinos were interested in the practices of...

The Iglesia ni Cristo started in early 1914 when Felix Manalo began preaching the Church of Christ in a place called the Sitio de Punta in Sta. Ana, Manila.   There, he started with four or five listeners in a small room at the workers’ quarters of Atlantic Gulf and Pacific Company of Manila Incorporated.   As the listeners began to grow in number, the lightly religious meetings were held in public.   Soon, the first converts were baptized in the nearby Pasig River.   They formed the first local congregation of the Iglesia ni Cristo in the Philippines. In the same year, Manalo, working with Atty. Juan Natividad, filed the Article of Incorporation of the Church with the government. The church was officially registered in the Philippine government on July 27, 1947. As of the year 1970, the number of Iglesia ni Cristo members reached 475,407 (NCSO). Iglesia ni Cristo followers believe in one God, the Father who created the universe.  They believe that the ...

In 1738, Reverend John Wesley started the Methodist movement to infuse pietist enthusiasm into Church of England formalism. In 1773, the first Methodist conference in the United States was held.   It was not until 1968, however, that the United Methodist church was formed with the union of the major Methodist church and the 1946 union of Evangelical and United Brethren churches. The first Protestant service in the Philippines was held in 1898.  Chaplain Geirge Stull, a member of the Methodist  Episcopal Church, came with the occupying forces.  He recorded in his diary the  first service held in an old Spanish dungeon on August 28, 1898 which was attended  by both the Spaniards and the Filipinos. The first Protestant work in the Philippines was begun in March 1899 by one of the missionary societies in the  United States.  Bishop James M. Thouburn, missionary bishop of the Methodist  Episcopal Church which became the  Methodist Ch...

Lutheranism starter when Martin Luther objected to the Catholic doctrine of salvation by merit and sale of indulgence in Germany in 1517. Luther attacked the authority of the Pope, rejected the priests’ vow of celibacy, and recommended individual study of the Bible.   His Ninety-Five Theses, which he posted in Wittenberg, led to his ex-communication. Although Lutheranism started at very early year, it took about 430 years before the Lutheran message of “justification of faith alone” reached the Philippines. The Lutheran Church Missouri Sybod (LC-MS) sent Dr. Alvaro A. Cariño to be the first missionary to the Philippines.  In 1940, Cariño made a survey of the Philippines with Dr. Otto H. Schmidt, the Executive Secretary of the Board for Missions.  The Lutheran Mission to the Philippines was delayed when World War II broke out, but in July 1949 Rev. Cariño finally returned to become the “Father of the Lutheran Church in the Philippines” (LCP). As of the First half ...

Protestantism is made up of several denominations, all of which separated from Rome during the Reformation in the 16 th century.  Led by Martin Luther, “Protestant” comes from the “protestation” issued by the Lutheran rulers in the Holy Roman Empire, against the decree prohibiting ecclesiastical reforms  at the Diet of Speyer in 1529.  The spread of Protestantism was considerably wide during the Reformation that before Luther’s death in 1546, thousands were converted in Europe.  In fact, from 1536 to 1540 Denmark, Norway and Sweden adopted Lutheranism, one of the denominations in Protestantism, as their national religion. The Reformation started at different times in different places.  In Germany, it began  on October 31, 1517, when Luther posted his Ninety-five theses on the door of a church in Wittenberg, denouncing  abuses of the Roman Catholic Church.  The Reformation started 1534 in England when King Henry VIII made himself the head of ...

Followers of Roman Catholicism believe that their Church is the one, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church. The faith of the Roman Catholic Church is said to be identical with that taught by Christ and his Apostles, contained in tradition and in the Bible, to which nothing could be added.   New definitions of doctrines were later declared by Popes, some of which include the Immaculate Conception of Mary (1854), and the bodily Assumption of Mary (1950). The Roman Catholic Church is still the largest Christian organization in the world.  In the Philippines, Catholicism was the first Christian religion introduced by the Spanish colonizers.  It spread so widely that the 1983 Catholic Directory of the Philippines recorded 43,129,303 Catholics and 69 Ecclesiastical territories including the Filipino-Chinese Apostolate and the Military Vicariate. The supreme governing body of the Roman Catholic Church is the Hierarchy, which consists of the roman Pontiff and the bishops j...