The ZCC was founded by Engenas Lekganyane after a revelation which Lekganyane is said to have received from God on the top of Mt Thabakgone, in 1910. After splitting from Lion, Lekganyane used his home village of Thabakgone, near Polokwane (Pietersburg), as the headquarters, with about twenty initial congregations in the Northern Transvaal, the Witwatersrand, and Rhodesia. In 1930 Lekganyane began building a stone church there. After clashes with his chief, Lekganyane was expelled with his church still unfinished. Determined to obtain land, he eventually purchased three farms in the Polokwane area. Maclean Farm near Thabakgone would eventually be renamed as "Moria", the ZCC's headquarters. The ZCC was officially registered in 1962 after the government's reluctance to recognise one of the continent's largest and most influential churches. The early church was strongly influenced by the doctrines of the Christian Catholic Church of John Alexander Dowie, based in Zion, Illinois, in the United States of America, and by the teachings of the Pentecostal missionary John G. Lake, who began work in Johannesburg in 1908.