Pre-Pentecostal Roots

John Alexander Dowie

Dowie amassed a following of many thousands of worshippers by his ministry of divine healing and preaching salvation through Jesus Christ, which began in 1893 at the main admissions gate to the World's Columbian Exposition in Jackson Park,Chicago at 63rd Street and Stony Island Avenue-- just across the street from Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. Soon after the meetings started, a cousin of Buffalo Bill, Sadie Cody, who had been sick for some time, was brought to the services. She was prayed for and received immediate healing. Many others came in faith and were healed as Dr. Dowie laid his hands upon them and prayed.

Dowie's home in Zion, Ill.

Elijah Ave. in Zion, Ill. circa 1930

Dowie's concept, was to build a city of God, where his people could work and play, polarized from the so-called sins of the world. The dream was far-reaching and most ambitious. However, like the Garden of Eden before, with man by nature being sinful, in no way could such a Utopian idea survive for long in a materialistic world. The original motto given by Dowie was, "where God rules, man prospers."

In the beginning there was only one church, the Zion Tabernacle of the Christian Catholic Apostolic Church. It was a wooden structure which seated 8,000. During special worship services the church was filled to capacity on Easter Sunday, at Christmas and during the Feast of Tabernacles -- which was a ten day church celebration every July. The Tabernacle burned to the ground in 1937.

Zion Home. Built as a "Healing Home" for the thousands of people who came to Zion seeking Divine healing.