If you remember in a previous podcast, “Why You Can Expect Powerful Healing Moves of God” we briefly mentioned a man named Edward Irving. Edward Irving was a minister of the Scottish Church in London who began calling for a new expectation for the miraculous. He questioned the cessationsists thinking that the age of miracles is past. The result of that call and that questioning? By 1830, Irving’s congregation began to experience supernatural healings as well as ‘speaking with other tongues.’ That’s 1830, approximately 75 years before Azuza. But that may not have been Irving’s greatest contribution to the healing gospel of Jesus Christ. His teachings were exposed to a young ministry study attending the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. The student’s name? John Alexander Dowie. We are going to be talking about modern-day healing evangelists in this week’s Light on Life. Why You Need to Know the Story of John Alexander Dowie.

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We can certainly learn lessons, positive and negative by looking at the lives of the men and women who have walked with God. Pick-up a good biography this week. Read it and ask the Spirit of God to show you what lessons are that persons for you.

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About Emery

Emery committed his life to the Lord Jesus Christ over 40 years ago and has served as both a full-time pastor and an itinerant minister. Both he and his wife Sharon of 35 years emphasize personal growth and development through the Word of God. The ministry of the Holy Spirit is both the focus and the hallmark of their mission. Read more about them here.

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Podcast Notes

The Story of John Alexander Dowie

• John Alexander Dowie was a household name around the turn of the 20th century.
• Quoting from Gordon Lindsay’s biographer of Dowie, he says of him…

The story of Dowie is that of a man with an amazing mission – a mission that in its scope took in nothing less than the entire world. It is an account of a reformer who, fighting against the greatest of odds, single-handedly challenged the apostasy of his time, and succeeded in bringing to the attention of the church visible, the message of the Gospel of healing – a message of deliverance for the whole man, spirit, soul, and body.

Against overwhelming opposition, a hostile press, bitterly opposed clergyman, antagonistic city officials, unscrupulous lawyers, who hired by the combined opposition, used every loophole of the law and legal technicality to stop him, he fought for and maintained the right to pray for the sick. Despite fierce persecution, numerous illegal arrests – as many as one hundred in a single year – he outwitted and foiled his enemies, and succeeded in bringing to the attention of the world, the great truth the Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever and established the right for the minister of the Christian church to obey Christ’s command in the Great Commission to lay hands on the sick for healing.

Dowie’s Work Ethic for God

• Dowie’s work was prolific.
• In the midst of the persecution against his life, Dowie flourished.
• His convictions by the lower court for laying hands on the sick, he appealed and won.
• The higher courts overturned the crooked convictions of the lower courts.
• Through it all, Dowie gained publicity.
• Publicity so strong, that he was able to fill the largest stadium in Chicago preaching the gospel to thousands of people Sunday in and Sunday out.
• So, what the enemy meant for bad, trying to stop the healing gospel of Jesus Christ, God turned for good.

Romans 8:28 (KJV) — 28 And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.

• Dowie organized the Christian Catholic Church whose membership numbered in the thousands.
• This was in 1896.
• Megachurches then were rarer than they are today.
• Dowie purchased 6,600 acres near Lake Michigan, 40 miles north of Chicago and built a Christian city there which housed 10,000 people.
• And he was just getting started.

Ecclesiastes 9:10 (KJV) — 10 Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.

• Dowie was working with all of his might, using all of his talents, and skill to build up the kingdom of God.
• He planned one enterprise after another, laboring with feverish intensity.
• There was a man mentioned in the Gods Word who worked at this same pace of intensity.
• Epaphroditus was his name.

Philippians 2:25–30 (KJV) — 25 Yet I supposed it necessary to send to you Epaphroditus, my brother, and companion in labour, and fellowsoldier, but your messenger, and he that ministered to my wants. 26 For he longed after you all, and was full of heaviness, because that ye had heard that he had been sick. 27 For indeed he was sick nigh unto death: but God had mercy on him; and not on him only, but on me also, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow. 28 I sent him therefore the more carefully, that, when ye see him again, ye may rejoice, and that I may be the less sorrowful. 29 Receive him therefore in the Lord with all gladness; and hold such in reputation: 30 Because for the work of Christ he was nigh unto death, not regarding his life, to supply your lack of service toward me.

• The name Epaphroditus means handsome.
• He was probably like his name, a handsome man.
• But, he didn’t just depend on his good looks.
• Epaphroditus was a worker, a laborer.
• He wasn’t just a talker.
• Epaphroditus was a doer.
• He put his money where his mouth was.
• This man put the gospel first.
• He put God’s servant’s first.
• Epaphroditus put Paul first, ahead of himself.
• Are there believers in your life who have even a sense of urgency about the things relating to the Spirit?
• How many people do you know in the church who are so devoted to Jesus that they would literally work themselves almost to the point of death for the sake of the Kingdom?
• You know the scripture speaks of this kind of sacrificial lifestyle.

Philippians 2:17 (ESV) — 17 Even if I am to be poured out as a drink offering upon the sacrificial offering of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all.

• Paul lived this way for the church.
• He poured his life out like you would pour water out of a glass unto the ground.
• He wasn’t by himself.

1 Corinthians 16:10 (ESV) — 10 When Timothy comes, see that you put him at ease among you, for he is doing the work of the Lord, as I am.

• Paul said that Timothy was working for God just like he was, pouring himself out.
• In fact, at one point Paul bemoaned the fact that he didn’t have another person like Timothy, dedicated, committed stuck to the things of God, the whole way.

Philippians 2:19–21 (ESV) — 19 I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you soon, so that I too may be cheered by news of you. 20 For I have no one like him, who will be genuinely concerned for your welfare. 21 For they all seek their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ.

• This is more of what we see in today’s American believer, people who seek their own, not the things of Jesus Christ.
• It is the spirit of the age in which we live.

2 Timothy 3:1–5 (ESV) — 1 But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. 2 For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, 4 treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people.

• John Alexander Dowie was like these men in this regard of pouring his life out for God.
• He planned one enterprise after another, laboring with feverish intensity, as a man working against time.¹
• He organized what he called the ‘Seventies’, which, in a methodical way, went two by two, carrying the gospel of Jesus Christ to every home.²
• Later on, he replaced the ‘Seventies’ with what he called the ‘Restoration Host.’
• Dowie waged a three month ‘holy war’ against Satan’s forces in the city of Chicago.
• And, that’s not all.
• Dowies took his war on cessationism to the printed page.
• He found time with all of his other endeavors for God to be the editor of a weekly publication known as the Leaves of Healing.
• Each volume was 800-1000 pages.
• Dowie wrote, he preached, and he built.
• In one of his boldest ventures, he chartered a series of trains which carried thousands of people to New York City. During the day, these people went door to door carrying tracts and information about his work, while in the great night services, he spoke to vast crowds in Madison Square Garden.
• According to Gordon Lindsay, it was a herculean effort, nothing like it since the Crusades had ever been attempted in the church up to that point.³
• Dowie was nor so well known at this point, that congressmen, governors and on one occasion the President of the United States, Teddy Roosevelt, received him.
• Roosevelt left a cabinet meeting just to meet Dowie.

Dr. Dowie knew no rest; not even one day in seven; for after the conduct of the duties of the business week, in the lines of his work in education, in editorial work, in ministerial departments, in Divine healing meetings, in instruction of the public, in public addresses, in leading in difficult affairs in the city, then he went on the platform on the Sabbath day and – speaking many a time from, five, six, eight or nine hours in a single day.⁴

• This was one of the areas where Dowie made a mistake.
• He simply overworked to the point that it affected his sleep.
• And once it did, physical disorders began to accumulate in his life.
• Now there is balance in all things.
• One of the goals in pointing out Dowie’s work ethic is to inspire us in our labors for God.
• Are you playing it safe or are you diligently pursuing the building up of God’s Kingdom?
• That’s one side of the ditch.
• The other side is that we all need to understand how God wired the human body.
• He wired it to have one day of rest out of seven.
• You simply cannot violate laws of nature and get God’s power to work for you.

The Miraculous in the Life of Dowie

The Great Plague and the Greater Healing Revelation

• In 1874, while Dowie was pastoring, a great and terrible plague swept through the area nearby Sydney Australia.
• Dowie officiated over forty funerals during this time and was visiting thirty more members of his congregation who were dying.
• Again, Dowie’s own words declare the story of God’s power.

And there I sat with sorrow bowed head for my afflicted people until the bitter tears came to relieve my burning heart. Then I prayed for some message, and oh, how I longed to hear some words from Him who wept sorrowed for the suffering long ago, a man of sorrows and sympathies. Then the words of the Holy Ghost inspired in Acts 10:38, stood before me all radiant with light, revealing Satan as the defiler and Christ as the Healer… I saw the way of healing and the door thereunto was opened wide, so I said, “God help me now to preach the Word to all the dying around, and tell them how it is Satan that defiles and Jesus still delivers, for He is just the same today.

• So, Dowie had a revelation from the Father God of divine healing right in the middle of a great plague.
• All of a sudden, two people came running and knocked on the door and informed Dowie with tears, “You have to come, you have to come, Mary is dying. Mary is dying.”
• Dowie rushes to her bedside.
• When he got there, white foam and blood were oozing out of Mary’s mouth.
• The doctor, who was in attendance, told Dowie presence that this plague was the mysterious ways of God.
• When Dowie heard that, his anger flashed and he replied with these words.

How dare you Dr. K, call that God’s way of bringing His children home from earth to heaven? No sir, that’s the devils work, and it is time that we called on Hom who destroyed the work of the devil, to slay that deadly foul destroyer and to save the child.

• And Dowie prayed.
• The difference from before and now is that Dowie prayed out of a heart full of the revelation of God’s Word.
• When he did, the girl laid so still until the mother thought that she was dead.
• She asked Dowie that, ‘Is she dead.’
• Dowie said no, Mary will live and the fever is gone.
• He then turned to the nurse and told her to get some cocoa and several slices of bread and butter.
• Then he bent over her, snapped his fingers and Mary woke up and said, “I slept so long and then she reached out her arms to meet her mothers embrace and said to her, ‘Mom I have slept so long and I feel so well.’
• The Lord healed her of that plague and the rest of the congregation too.
• The thirty people that were sick with the plague were all healed.
• Not another person died.

The Healing of Mary Lucy Parker

• Mary Lucy Parker was totally blind in her left eye because of cancer of the eye.
• For thirty-three months she had been under the care of some of the most capable of surgeons in Melbourne Australia.
• There was no hope of recovery.
• She was also pregnant and about to give birth, a birth that the doctor testified would take her life.
• Things looked bad that is until she came to Melbourne Tabernacle where Dowie was ministering.
• She came expecting healing.
• Dowie laid hands on her and prayed and that woman was instantly healed.
• The cancer burst and discharged into two handkerchiefs.
• The swelling disappeared and the opening closed.
• When she opened that eye, she was able to see immediately with perfect vision.
• The internal cancer also disappeared and a few months later she became the happy mother of a happy child.
• You can live and not die when you get a revelation of the mighty healing power of God.

The ‘Radio’ Prophecy

• Dowie prophesied about the invention of the radio on September 5th, 1897.
• Here’s the prophecy.

Am I going to speak to 300,000 people every Sunday afternoon? Why, we are going to do it. Do you know that one day in the big Zion Temple that we have, we are going to have a great big thing to catch the sound and I am going to have them turn on Zion’s to Zions Friends in New York. See! And by the beds of sick and sorrowing, some day, I am going to have them hear the testimonies that they cannot hear except from dying beds. Going to get it some day. It has to be done. It is going to be done, because the mouth of the Lord spoke that a long time ago. Do you know it?

The ‘Television’ Prophecy

• The Spirit of God also moved on Dowie five years after the ‘radio’ prophecy.
• He gave have forth an utterance on the coming of television during a sermon in October of 1904.

I know not the possibilities of electricity. It is possible that it may yet covey the face of the speaker, and by photoelectricity, show the face of the man as he is talking. perhaps a discourse delivered here may be heard in every city in the United States. Some day, that will be so and the Word spoken in Shiloh Tabernacle will be heard even in the farthest corners of the earth.⁵

Dowies Big Mis-step

• I initially read this biography back in November of 1985 right when the church was right in the middle of a strong ‘teaching’ move of the Spirit of God.
• Anointed, I mean anointed teachers of the Word of God were everywhere.
• Many of the leaders of that movement have gone home to be with the Lord.
• I had a different impression of Dowie back then.
• Dowie made a huge mistake near the end of his life.
• One of them was called the Elijah Declaration
• In 1901, he declared that he was the Elijah which is to come.

Malachi 4:5–6 (ESV) — 5 “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the LORD comes. 6 And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.”

• So 33, years later I pick this book back up again.
• And I marvel at his work ethic.
• I admire his standing in opposition against the enemies of the gospel.
• And after all these years, I understand the fallibility of man.
• And how we are just people of like passion.
• Elijah had his down days and the Lord forgave him.
• Peter had his down days and the Lord forgave him.
• And I have had my down days and the Lord has been merciful to me.
• What about you?
• Can’t you say the same thing?
• So, I am not as hard on Dowie as I was three decades ago.
• Because we all should be able to understand that if it wasn’t for grace, where would we be?

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