John Alexander Dowie shook the world at the turn of the century with his passion for truth and zeal for the work of the Spirit. He brought to the forefront divine healing and repentance by shaking up a complacent Church and slaking the thirst of a parched society. He is known as the Healing Apostle of the late 19th century. Untold millions came to a revelation of Christ and the living power of the Holy Spirit through his deep conviction, unwavering faith and expansive vision. Against hypocritical, opposing clergy, fierce slanderous tabloids, murderous mobs, and relentless city officials, Dr. Dowie wore his apostolic calling as a crown from God, and his persecution as a badge of honor. Dowie was a force to be reckoned with.
At twenty-one years of age, Dowie answered that call and began studying under a private tutor in preparation for the ministry. Less than a year and a half later, he enrolled in Edinburgh University to study in the Free Church School. As a student of theology and political science, his professors found him to be full of fervor as he often challenged their shallow interpretations with complete brilliance and accuracy.
While still in Edinburgh, Dowie became the “honorary chaplain” of the Edinburgh Infirmary and it was his experiences there that would begin to shape his ministry forever. As he sat with the famous surgeons of that time, he came to an increasing realization about the primitive state of medicine and its inability to heal. Dowie exposed the lack of knowledge among these doctors and began to develop an intense aversion to the field of medicine. He brought their deceptive methods to light and was able to prove the accuracy of his accusations.
Not long after, Dowie received an invitation to pastor in Australia at the Congregational Church in Alma. Naturally, the forwardness of his preaching created a rift within the church and persecution ensued shortly thereafter. Dowie was unable to stir up passion within his congregation and resentment towards him was openly voiced. So reluctantly he resigned, feeling that it was a waste of time to stay.
Shortly after his resignation, Dowie received an invitation to pastor the Congregational Church in Manly Beach where he was warmly received. He stayed on with the pastorate though he felt frustration over their unyielding spirits to the Word of God. Eventually, his desire for a larger congregation consumed him and that was when God opened another door.
From that point the plague in Newton had lost its power. Not one member of his congregation died from the epidemic and Dowie’s healing ministry began. It was not long after, at the age of twenty-nine, that Dowie married his first cousin, Jeanie. Through many trials and hardships that followed their wedding, Dowie made an extraordinary decision to walk away from the denomination in which he had found such ministry success. He could not tolerate the cold, lethargic state of their leadership as he increasingly longed to proclaim the message of divine healing to an ailing city. He felt constrained by denominational politics and “letter of the law” theology.
In spite of intense criticism, Dowie also had many friends and supporters. The Temperance Society, for example, saw the potential of his influence and urged him to run for Parliament. Initially he opposed the idea, but eventually felt that he might be able to influence more people on a political platform. So he ran but was soundly defeated. As a result, Dowie had disgraced his ministry and hurt his church. Not to mention, made himself the prime target of the local newspapers, who having been damaged by his ministry, waged an all out war against him. Soon things got even worse.
In 1876 he moved to Sydney and became minister of the Newtown Congregational church. It was here that God revealed that healing was still for today. Several members of his church became sick and died during a wave of disease that hit the city. God spoke to Dowie, and showed him that sickness was of the devil and to be resisted. He began to pray for his parishioner, and from that day forward none died. This revelation so impacted Dowie that he left the pastorate, and became a full-time healing evangelist. He moved to Melbourne in the early eighteen-eighties, began to gather a following, and eventually built a church there. He published a magazine about healing called "Jehovah Rophi".
In 1888 Dowie did a preaching tour in New Zealand, and then San Francisco. Two years later to he went to the Chicago world's fair, and had healing meetings outside the fairgrounds. These meetings were so spectacular that the front wall of the meeting room was covered with crutches, braces, and other medical paraphernalia left by those healed in the meetings. Next, he set up his headquarters in Chicago, where he preached to thousands every Sunday. He bought a building so that people who traveled to Chicago, for healing, would have a place to stay. He began to publish a journal called "Leaves of Healing", which went to thousands of people, promoting the divine healing message. Hundreds of people were flocking to his ministry to receive teaching and prayer. Many were healed dramatically. Dowie's congregation fed the poor, were highly evangelistic, and had a major impact on a notoriously corrupt city.
The divine healing miracles that the Lord performed under the ministry of Dr. Dowie ranged from instantaneous cures of every disease and malady from simple broken bones to cancer and gun shot wounds to insanity. One of the most prominent and publicized miracles was the healing of Miss Amanda Hicks of Clinton, Kentucky. She was instantly healed of terminal cancer in the final stage. Miss Hicks was the president of a denominational church college and the cousin of President Abraham Lincoln. Her church authorities summarily dismissed her from her position in their denial and protest against modern day divine healing miracles.
The following is the account of two prominent healing miracles and subsequent legal difficulties early in Dr. Dowie’s ministry in Chicago.
Miss Amanda Hicks "was suffering from a cancerous tumor which had burst and discharged into the alimentary region with adhesions in many places, and had been given up by the doctors to die. Brought to Chicago on a stretcher, a terrible victim of morphine, Miss Hicks made the promise never again to touch the diabolical drug, and prayer was offered by John Alexander Dowie on her behalf. In a moment, the terrible agony of months departed, and later in the evening she arose and walked about, and during the next few days, large quantities of cancerous material passed from her body. She returned home entirely healed, and the Clinton Democrat of March 8, 1894, published her testimony.
By 1894, Dowie’s newsletter, Leaves of Healing, had a weekly, worldwide circulation. True to his form, Dowie never minced words in his writings. He fervently denounced and exposed evil industries and warned readers against lethargic and controlling denominations. He offended the Postmaster General of Chicago, who revoked his second-class mailing privileges, forcing Dowie to pay fourteen times the usual cost. Dowie solicited his readers to write Washington DC and was granted an immediate audience with the Postmaster General in Washington who not only reinstated his mailing privileges, but made sure the U.S. government publicly denounced the Chicago newspaper and its editor, one of Dowie’s greatest persecutors.
While in Washington, Dowie was also granted an audience with President William McKinley. After leaving the office of the president, who warmly thanked him for his prayers, Dowie commented to his staff that he felt the president’s life was in danger. He later asked his followers to pray for the safety of the president who was assassinated on September 6, 1901 in Buffalo, New York.
By the end of 1896, Dowie had gained great influence over the city of Chicago. His enemies were all either dead, imprisoned, or silent. The police department and political officials were considered as friends. Few in the city had not heard the Gospel as a result of Dowie’s outreach, while famous people from around the country received miraculously healings through his ministry. He literally ruled the city of Chicago for Jesus Christ moving the great Zion Tabernacle into its largest auditorium filling its six thousand seats at every service.
Dowie was extremely antagonistic towards government officials and the medical profession. He regularly preached against using doctors. Some medical professionals rose up to stop his work, by suing him for practicing medicine without a license. At one point, he was taken to jail almost every day over this issue. The publicity from these arrests only served to draw more attention to his ministry and increased size of his congregation. In fact, later, Dowie "declared war" on the medical profession, so that the publicity would cover his activities of purchasing land outside of Chicago.
Dowie also attacked any church that he preceived didn't support him, even those that believed in Divine Healing. He attacked denominational churches and told people that they needed to leave them. He spoke against A. B. Simpson and the Christian and Missionary Alliance, as well as the Salvation Army. He particularly attacked D. L. Moody and R. A. Torrey in their work of the Moody Bible Institute and Chicago Avenue Church. In 1898 that battle moved to an all out war. Dowie declared that Moody would die because of his criticism against him. When Moody did die in 1899 Dowie declared it was the judgment of God. The battle continued and Dowie took up the war with Moody's successor, R. A. Torrey. He declared that Torrey, like Moody, would die under the judgment of God. (Torrey would go on to hold some of the most successful evangelistic campaigns up to that time and live 20 years beyond Dowie.)
Dowie was drawing people by the thousands, but there were some major cracks in the spiritual foundations of Dowie personally and of his family. He began to envision an new church similar to the Catholic church, where he was the pope. In 1896 he organized the Christian Catholic Apostolic Church in Zion. In 1901 he founded Zion City, about 40 miles from Chicago. He was the owner of all the property, and tenants leased the land they built their houses on. Their savings went into the Zion bank. He visited New York and took a European tour in 1903. He then traveled to New Zealand and Australia in 1904. These trips were taken using Zion bank money, even though the bankers assured him that the bank could not support the drain.
Things began to crumble, and Dowie declared himself "Elijah the Restorer" or Elijah III. (First Elijah, then John the Baptist, then himself) He walked around dressed in an Old Testament-like priest's outfit. In 1905 he had a stroke and traveled to Mexico where he bought a large tract of land for a "plantation paradise." In April 1906, the community and his family had finally had enough. Zion City was in financial ruins, his daughter had died, and his marriage had disintegrated. His wife claimed that he was promoting polygamy.
Tens of thousands of people were touched by the truth that God still heals, but Dowie was a seriously flawed messenger. He brought Divine Healing into the national cansciousness, but also tainted it with the deception he fell into. The greatest legacies that Dowie left were the lives of the men and women of God who carried the truth of God's healing power on into their own ministries. These included: John G. Lake, F. F. Bosworth, Martha Wing Robinson, Raymond T. Richey, Lilian B. Yeomans, Cyrus B. Fockler, and many others
Dowie had a second stroke, which immobilized him. He was removed as the head of Zion, and lived a broken man for a few more months, until his death on March 11, 1907. At his request his grave was filled with concrete, after his coffin was put inside, to stave off anyone taking his body and suggesting he had miraculously arisen. (An idea reportedly promoted by Dowie himself).
The Church And You Talks About The People And The History Of The Church.
God's General: "John Alexander Dowie".
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