 |
| Dennis Trillo, the man behind the FELIX MANALO movie, who didn't even
believe him as the "Last Messenger of God in these Last Days." |
Birth
Felix Ysagun ý Manalo was born in Barrio Tipas, Taguig, Rizal province in Luzon, Philippine islands on 10th May 1886. He was born in Sitio Calzada, a hamlet some 15 kilometres southeast of Manila and along the shores of Laguna de Bay. His name Felix (which means “happy”) was chosen from the roster of saints from that month[1]. He is the first of the two children of Mariano Ysagun and Bonifacia Manalo of Pampanga, who both belong to the Roman Catholic Church. His father was a farmworker and fisherman while his mother, Aling Pacia, was a housewife and a known manang or faithful lay member, a devotee of the patron saint, San Antonio.
Childhood
In 1893, when we has seven years old, he was made to attend public school in Santa Ana, Taguig. He had an old teacher by the name Macario Ocampo, called Maestro Cario. He was taught basic literacy and fundamentals of the Catholic faith in a caton class (cathecism class). He worked as a fisherman with his father in Laguna de Bay. He also worked as a herd boy of carabaos (water buffalos) with his cousin, Modesto Ysagun. They trapped field mice whose meat was good for nourishment. He beat many other boys in a contest to determine who could stay the longest standing barefooted atop an anthill crawling with maddened red ants. Another time he prevailed in a whiplash fight that lasted for hours and made him ill for a week[2].
In 1896, during the Philippine Revolution against Spain, his father died, leaving him and his younger sister, Praxedes in the care of their mother. It is unknown if his father was one of the Katipuneros of Taguig, the secret meeting place of the Katipunan. His primary education was disrupted at this time.
In 1898, General Emilio Aguinaldo proclaimed the independence of the Philippines from Spanish colonial rule. Sometime after this, the 12-year-old Felix and his cousin Modesto left for Manila. There he learned photography from his cousin, Serapio Ysagun, and afterwards became an apprentice to the photography studio of his uncle, Manuel Manalo[3]. He also learned other crafts like goldsmithing, barbering and weaving buri hats. In 1899, his mother married a widower, Clemente Mozo. She bore him five children but only two survived: Fausta and Baldomero. Mozo died two months before Baldomero’s birth. This forced Bonifacia to find work in a small sawali (woven bamboo strips) factory.
The American occupation brought Protestantism in the islands. On 2 March 1899, during the Philippine-American War, Bishop James M. Thoburn of Methodist Episcopal Church delivered the first Protestant sermon in the Philippine islands. Seven months after this, on 6 September 1899, G.C.B. Randall, a religious man, distributed the first batch of Bibles in Manila. In the previous years, the Spanish friars forbid the reading of the Bible by lay people[4].
As a Roman Catholic
In 1899, Felix and his cousin was adopted by their uncle Mariano Borja, a Catholic priest, in an urban parish house in Sampaloc, Manila. A lover of fighting cocks, the priest not only fed and gave them quarters but told them tales of great men which doubtless inspired the two young boys to weave dreams. They helped in lighting the candles among other things. It was in that parish where Felix found a Bible left on a church bench, which he began to read[5]. He was severely rebuked for privately studying the Bible[6] [Reading the Bible is fine. But understanding it and interpreting it privately is dangerous to the soul at we now see in the emergence of the INC™]. Since he was living inside the parish, he attended its seminary[7]. He was then able to compare the teachings and practices of the Catholic church with the teachings in the Bible [The teaching of the Catholic Church and the Bible aren't different. The writer is obviously a Protestant and he may had disregarded the Catholic Church's official source of teaching: SCRIPTURE and TRADITION]. He realised that basic Catholic doctrines such as baptism through infusion, worshipping graven images and making long prayers [Catholics do not worship objects. They revere or venerate images but NOT objects. The Catechism of the Catholic Church is consistent- only God is to be worshiped-- the One God in Three Divine Persons] contradicts the Bible. Doubts rise in his mind and he began to reject the old ritualistic Catholic practices. (In spite of this, he did not join the Philippine Independent Church, also known as Aglipayan Church[8]. He learned that its doctrines were not essentially different from those of its mother church, the Roman Catholic Church). Thus, he decided to leave the Catholic Church, hence leaving also his uncle’s house and his studies in Manila. In December 1902, he went back to Tipas to help his mother twiced widowed and seven months pregnant. There in Tipas, when his relatives and townmates learned that he left his uncle’s house and stopped his studies in Manila, they rebuked his decision. When they learned that he also decided to leave the Catholic religion, they persecuted him and made lies against him, hoping through these he will change his decision. But, the sixteen year old Felix stand firm on his decision never to come back to the Catholic religion because their practices and teachings contradict the teachings written in the Bible.
