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Comment: Did Branham preach prosperity?

Erlend Førsund wrote on 15/5/08,

Dear Joseph R. Towns,

In your article about the faith movement you write that "Branham emphasised prosperity". As one who has studied the teachings of Rev. William Branham and as a personal critic of the prosperity teaching I was (to say the least) somewhat surprised to read your statement.

What I know about Rev. Branham tells me quite the opposite. In fact, he preached that Christians should be contented with what they have and that material things are not necessarily blessings from God. He criticized that greedy money-loving spirit that was creeping in among the pentecostal circles. Read this quote from 1963:
"I was speaking at a Christian Business Men one time, down there. I don't know how they ever had me back. I guess, 'cause they love me. But I--I--I don't... I tell them just what I--I know the Lord says. I don't say it to be smart. If I do, I need to be down there at the altar. I say it because I love them. I respect them. One night down there, testifying before businessmen of the world, how many Cadillacs they have, and what their little business. I said, 'Them men don't want that. Tell them about the humility of Christ.' I said, 'You're so much different from the early pentecostal Church. They sold everything they had, and give to the poor, and went out preaching the Gospel.' I said, 'You people trying to say how much you prospered, how much you got.' Not how much you got; how much you can get rid of!"
The movement he left behind, which I am a part of, are shocked by how the faith movement in their rude way propagate their greedy doctrine of prosperity. Such a teaching was never brought by Rev. Branham and it is certainly not found in the Bible.

So, the reason that I write to you is to give you constructive critique on the mentioned post of yours. Rev. William Branham did not emphasize prosperity. These quotes will give you a better reason to believe me. They are collected from Rev. Branham's sermons:

"God doesn't promise ease and prosperity. But He promises grace to endure in every trial. It's the grace that we look to." (1956)
"Prosperity always ruins people. That's a hard thing to say. But prosperity takes a man away from God." (1958)
"Prosperity is not always the sign that God is with you. Many times that's deceiving. The rain falls on the just and the unjust. But it's by their fruits they are known." (1959)
"People think that prosperity is a sign of spiritual blessing. That's exactly contrary." (1962)
"And, usually, prosperity causes sin. Many people look upon prosperity as blessings. It would be, if we could handle it right. But it usually leads to sin, dishonoring God." (1963)
"I was having a meeting. That night when they come back over to the Flamingo Motel, I said,'I'm ashamed of you fellows.' I said, 'It's a disgrace. All you talked about, before all the political leaders and things, and businessmen up-and-down here, was about, 'I had a little bitty business down here, and I got sixteen Cadillacs,' or whatever more.' I said, 'Them man, you can't compare with them.' That's what's the trouble with the church today, you are trying to compare with Hollywood. You're trying to make it like Hollywood. Remember, Hollywood glares; the Gospel glows. You can't go over on their ground; you've got to bring them on our ground." (1964)
http://talkingpentecostalism.blogspot.com/2008/05/origin-of-prosperity-doctrine-part-v.html

In Christian love,

Bro. Erlend Førsund (Norway)

J. R. Towns replied on 15/5/2008,

Dear Erlend Førsund,

Thank you very much for your criticism of my mention of W. M Branham 'emphasising prosperity' in Origin of prosperity doctrine Part V.

I found your quotes informative, and I can see why you were surprised with my statement, "Branham emphasised prosperity as well as healing and taught about the intrinsic power of the spoken word."

Although your quotes do demonstrate that Branham's emphasis was different to those who have later built on his teaching (at least at times), do these quotes show that Branham never emphasised prosperity? In other words, is your knowledge of Branham exhaustive? (that is, is it completely comprehensive?).

By the sounds of things, you know of Branham better than I, and so I can only refer you to my sources, which seem to be reputable and I have assumed to be reliable:

Dwight J. Wilson, (Ph.D., University of California-Santa Cruz. Professor of History, Bethany Bible College, Santa Cruz, California) has made the following comments in his article on Branham in The International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements (Burgess, Stanley M., et. al., 2003, Zondervan.):

"In contrast to the image-minded evangelist, he lived moderately, dressed modestly, and boasted of his youthful poverty. This endeared him to the throngs who idolized him. He was self-conscious about his lack of education, but the simplicity of his message had worldwide appeal. By emphasizing healing and prosperity and neglecting his Oneness theology, Branham was able to minister in Trinitarian pentecostal circles as well... His teaching on the power of the spoken word has been a characteristic of later revivalists. Kenneth Hagin identifies Branham as a prophet."
Leonard Lovett (Ph.D., Emory University. Chief Executive Officer, Seminex Ministries, Alexandria, Virginia) made the following comments in his article on Positive Confession Theology in the same Dictionary:

"...From Quimby, William Branham, E. W. Kenyon, and John G. Lake, a view of God emerged that is currently espoused by Hagin, Copeland, Capps, and Price."
I will follow this up some more, as you may also like to do, and if I can convince myself (or if you can convince me) that Branham did not emphasise prosperity at all (at least in the Trinitarian Pentecostal circles he ministered in), then I am more than happy to revise the statement I've made in this article.

With this in mind, if you'd like a list of Dwight J. Wilson's sources given in his article on Brahman (quoted above) then I can provide this also.

Again, thank you for your thoughtful comment. I always appreciate readers helping me to get the facts right!

Peace in Christ our Lord,

Joe

talkingpentecostalism.blogspot.com | joe towns: christian discussion on pentecost, charisma, pentecostal and charismatic beliefs, the Bible and Jesus; including the origin and history of pentecostalism, baptism in the Holy Spirit, speaking in tongues, gifts and miracles, divine healing and word of faith, prosperity and wealth, praise and worship, guidance and hearing the voice of the Holy Spirit.

The Origin of Prosperity Doctrine Part V: Faith-Formula

Positive Confession and the Word of Faith movement

In 1846 Ethan O. Allen became the first American to make the faith-healing ministry his full-time vocation. By the mid-twentieth century, a hundred years later, a legion of faith-healers had descended from him and others with a developed system of theology that emphasised prosperity and healing as a divine right. Their central message resulted in a new generation of preachers that had at their disposal the enormous funds required to grow international media ministries. By the late twentieth century their radio broadcasts, publications and prime-time television shows had spread prosperity doctrine to hundreds of millions of people across many countries of the world.

The influence of New Thought

The New Thought movement of the late nineteenth century had a profound influence on a number of American leaders in the Divine Healing movement in the first half of the twentieth century who went on to become the fathers of the Positive Confession, or Faith-Formula theology of Pentecostalism.

New Thought was a movement that began after the death of Phineas P. Quimby (1802-66) when a number of his students came together to preserve his teaching. Quimby had developed an alternative system of healing through parapsychology after beginning a career as a mesmerist. Quimby taught that bodily sickness was caused when the mind believed false notions about health, and could be healed by correcting these beliefs in the mind. The movement that sprang from his protégé emphasised, not only health and healing, but also abundance, prosperity, wealth and happiness. The basic presuppositions of New Thought’s system of divine healing are, firstly, God is all reality and in God is no sickness; secondly, man is a part of God and therefore man’s sickness is not a reality; thirdly, healing occurs automatically when men believe the truth about reality.

Quimby labelled his system the ‘science’ of Christ. From Quimby came M. B. Eddy who developed Christian Science as a movement separately from New Thought and founded the Church of Christ, Scientist. From Quimby also came a new generation of faith-healers in the Divine Healing movement, such as E. W. Kenyon, John G. Lake and William M. Branham, who carried the emphasis of Quimby and New Thought into their own Pentecostal healing ministries.

E. W. Kenyon

Essek William Kenyon (1867-1948) pastored several churches in New England and founded what was later known as Providence Bible Institute. Kenyon was a student of Emerson College of Oratory, a breeding ground for New Thought philosophical ideas. He was heavily influenced by the system of P. P Quimby but adapted the ideas of the New Thought movement as he merged them together with the teachings of Divine Healing that came out of the Holiness movement.

Like Quimby, who taught that beliefs in the mind cause bodily conditions, E. W. Kenyon emphasised the combined power of belief and the tongue. He taught that the words of our mouths betray faith or fear in our minds, and the combined affect of positive or negative belief and words cause the positive or negative realities that come into existence. Kenyon’s focus on the “positive confession of the Word of God” earned the doctrine that sprang from his ministry the title, Positive Confession theology. Similar to E. O. Allen and A. B. Simpson before him, Kenyon taught prosperity as a “divine right.” Reminiscent of the laws formulated by C. G. Finney for spiritual success, Kenyon formulated laws of prosperity for daily rehearsal and recital to cultivate a mind of faith that would result in a life of complete health and material wealth.

J. G. Lake

John Graham Lake (1870-1935) was an early Pentecostal faith-healer who, after being ordained as a Methodist minister, chose to pursue commercial business and became very successful and wealthy. His wife experienced a healing under J. A. Dowie in 1898, and soon after Lake became an associate and elder in Dowie’s Zion Catholic Apostolic Church for a number of years. After the birth of Pentecostalism and his wife’s death in 1908 Lake went on to conduct a very influential healing ministry in America between 1913 and 1935. Mirroring the position of New Thought and Christian Science, J. G. Lake taught, “Man is not a separate creation detached from God, he is part of God Himself… God intends us to be gods. The inner man is the real governor, the true man that Jesus said was a god.”

W. M. Branham

William Marrion Branham (1909-65) was another very influential faith-healer in the Divine Healing movement in the first half of the twentieth century. Branham emphasised prosperity as well as healing and taught about the intrinsic power of the spoken word. Kenneth Hagin, an important propagator of the prosperity gospel in the latter part of the twentieth century, identified Branham as a prophet.

Positive Confession Theology

From E. W. Kenyon, J. G. Lake, W. M. Branham and others, the twentieth century saw a Positive Confession or Faith-Formula theology emerge in American Pentecostalism that triggered the current Prosperity movement. This theology stresses that we create reality with the words of our mouths; “what I confess, I possess.”

The key to this new theology is what has become known as ‘Rhema’ doctrine, after the original Greek word rhema, which refers to the “spoken word” (Compared to logos which refers to the “written word.”) This doctrine teaches that whatever is spoken in faith (or fear) becomes immediately inspired with dynamic power that will affect change in whatever situation it is uttered.

Kenyon held to a dichotomy concerning knowledge. He believed that two types of knowledge existed, being ‘revelation’ knowledge and ‘sense’ knowledge. ‘Revelation’ or ‘faith’ knowledge was above the realm of the senses and was the true and higher knowledge of God himself.

Kenyon held to a number of other beliefs that go against mainstream evangelical thought. He believed that Jesus died spiritually, as well as physically, and therefore, after his death on the cross, was ‘born again.’ Many of his predecessors, such as Kenneth Copeland, continue to hold to this position. His basis theological distinctives were preserved in a book published after his death: The Power of the Positive Confession of God’s Word (1977, D. Gossett and E. Kenyon).

The Word of Faith movement

E. W. Kenyon’s theology and the doctrines espoused by J. G. Lake and W. M. Branham inspired the Word of Faith movement of the latter part of the twentieth century. Also known as the Faith movement, or Word movement, it began within American Pentecostalism by emphasising divine prosperity and health through the power of the spoken word. The essential elements of this system are, firstly, that Christ won victory over sin, sickness and poverty; secondly, that believers therefore have a right to health and wealth; and thirdly, that divine health and prosperity are obtained by the positive confession of faith in the Word of God.

Kenneth Hagin, Oral Roberts, Frederick Price, Kenneth Copeland, Don Gossett, Charles Capps and other leading proponents in this movement all directly inherited their theology from Kenyon and his contemporaries. This new generation of televangelists have enjoyed the ability to propagate the Prosperity message by means of extensive and expensive media ministries, fully funded by the giving of their movement in response to their message, thus self-perpetuating the influx of funds.

Kenneth Hagin & Oral Roberts

Kenneth E. Hagin (1917 - 2004) emphasised the power of the spoken word for victorious Christian living after E. W. Kenyon and W. M. Branham. In 1974 he founded Rhema Bible Training Centre for equipping new generations in the Faith movement with Kenyon’s Rhema doctrine. Hagin’s message promised a return on investments made to God that were given to the church.

Oral Granville Roberts (1918 - ), who was considered by Vinson Synan in 1980 the most prominent Pentecostal in the world, in 1956 was circulating his monthly magazine, Abundant Life, to over a million people. In 1969 he was reaching 64 million viewers with prime-time television programs. By 1981 he was able to open his $250 million City of Faith Medical and Research Centre to combine the healing power of faith with medicine. Roberts’ basic presuppositions were, firstly, that God is good; and, secondly, that God therefore wills to heal and prosper his people. Roberts taught that monetary giving to the church was a “seed of faith” that would return a harvest of wealth for those who had complete faith in God.

Kenneth Copeland & Charles Capps

Charles Emmitt Capps (1934 - ) is a current proponent of the Prosperity movement. After being healed by Hagin in 1969 he began teaching that words are the most powerful things in the universe. If spoken in faith, Capps taught, words carry creative power by releasing God’s ability within you. He set out his message in The Tongue, a Creative Force (1976) and in 1980 he was ordained to the “faith ministry” by K. Copeland.

Kenneth Copeland (1937 - ) is perhaps the leading proponent of the Word of Faith gospel today. In his early days, Kenneth Hagin and Oral Roberts had a life changing impact on Copeland. He enrolled in Oral Roberts University while attending Kenneth Hagin’s Tulsa seminars. He also mined the teachings of E. W. Kenyon, which had a determining influence on his theology. In 1973 Copeland began publishing Believer’s Voice of Victory. Like his spiritual fathers, Copeland emphasises complete prosperity – spirit, soul and body – though total commitment to God’s will.

Like John G. Lake, M. B. Eddy and P.P Quimby before them, Copeland’s teaching raises the status of humanity to a God-like level by teaching that believers possess the ability to rescue themselves from trouble by use of their ‘divine right.’ It was Copeland who said, “You impart humanity into a child that’s born of you. Because you are a human, you have imparted the nature of humanity into that born child. That child wasn’t born a whale. It was born a human. Well, now, you don’t have a God in you. You are one.”

Prosperity in Pentecostalism

Although the Word of Faith movement is currently controversial and even repudiated by some sections within Pentecostalism, the key figures who were influential in creating the underlying doctrines of this movement were all Pentecostal. Like the emphasis on Divine Healing within the Holiness movement, which naturally carried over into Pentecostalism when it emerged, the emphasis of Positive Confession theology, which pre-existed Pentecostalism, carried over into the movement from it’s origin because those who were key proponents of these doctrinal emphases became Pentecostals and continued to be leaders within the movement.

Even though many Pentecostals reject some aspects of the foundational doctrines of the Word of Faith movement, general acceptance has occurred of the overall emphasis on material abundance, positivity and the power of the spoken word, and victorious Christian living.

More on this topic

The origin, Part I - Reformation

The origin, Part II - Perfectionism

The origin, Part III - Divine Healing

The origin, Part IV - New Thought

- -

Burgess, Stanley M., et. al., The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, 2003, Zondervan.

Encyclopedia of occultism & parapsychology / edited by J. Gordon Melton, 5th ed, Detroit : Gale Group, c2001.

The Oxford companion to Christian thought / edited by Adrian Hastings ... [et al.], Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2000.

talkingpentecostalism.blogspot.com | joe towns: christian discussion on pentecost, charisma, pentecostal and charismatic beliefs, the Bible and Jesus; including the origin and history of pentecostalism, baptism in the Holy Spirit, speaking in tongues, gifts and miracles, divine healing and word of faith, prosperity and wealth, praise and worship, guidance and hearing the voice of the Holy Spirit.

The Origin of Prosperity Doctrine Part IV: New Thought

New Thought, Mind Cure and Christian Science

New Thought

Phineas Parkhurst Quimby (1802-1866) was a clock maker from New Hampshire who became interested in mesmerism in 1838. After observing the influence of suggesting ‘healing thoughts’ on his patients he concluded that the mind was the limiting factor determining healing potential. Quimby speculated that the mind’s operation on the body produces its physical condition. Sickness came from accepting false notions in the mind that cause sickness. Healing occurred when the mind came to believe true notions about health.

Between 1859 and 1866 in Portland, Maine, Quimby treated up to 12,000 patients professionally. His new method consisted of presenting patients with wisdom, who after accepting the ‘truth’ became well. Quimby wrote down his reflections, which were found after his death when a number of his former students came together and began a movement that preserved and developed upon his system. From 1890 the movement became known as New Thought.

New Thought viewed God and humanity as a unity. The universe is the ‘body’ of God. Humans are spirit dwellers in physical bodies. God manifests in humans as virtues. Mental states manifest in humans as physical traits. Since humans are a part of God, they could produce divine perfection in the body. Perfect health is attainable by means of maintaining a perfect mental state.

Mind Cure

Quimby was the first of a number of alternative healing systems through parapsychology. The most famous of his students, Mary Eddy Baker, transformed Quimby’s metaphysical notions of healing into the ‘Divine Healing’ system of Christian Science after founding the Church of Christ, Scientist in 1879. In the 1880s a number of independent practitioners broke away from Eddy’s movement because of her focus on the Bible and Christianity. These collectively became known to as the ‘Mind Cure’ movement.

Christian Science

Mary Morse (Baker) Eddy (1821-1910) was a patient of P. P. Quimby and experienced some relief from her medical problems through his methods. However her returning symptoms caused her to search for answers in the Bible. After Quimby’s death in 1866 she made a discovery. While bedridden she came to the realisation that illness must be an error in the mind. Since God was the sum total of all reality, she thought, and in him is no sickness, then by deduction illness was not a part of reality; it must be an illusion in the mind. This realisation apparently brought Eddy immediate healing. She developed a new system of ‘Divine Healing,’ which she first outlined in The Science of Man (1870) and more fully in Science and Health (1875).

The Christian Science movement helped to generate a new emphasis on healing within American society in the late nineteenth century. What the positive thinking movement, New Thought, Mind Cure and Christian Science all expressed in common during the second half of the nineteenth century was a new faith in the ability of the will. P.P Quimby’s doctrine, preserved in the emphasis of the New Thought movement, had a profound influence on such American Christians as E. W. Kenyon.

Part V

Kenyon was a student of Emerson College of Oratory, a spawning ground for New Thought philosophical ideas and who went on to become the origin of the Positive Confession (or Word of Faith) movement within Pentecostalism. E. W. Kenyon brought into his Methodism (which after 1906 became Pentecostalism) a new doctrine involving the intrinsic power of faith and words. His 'positive confession theology,' along with the influence of other prosperity preachers such as John Lake, William Branham and Oral Roberts directly inspired such modern day Pentecostal ambassadors of the prosperity gospel as Kenneth Hagin, Kenneth Copeland, Charles Capps and Frederick Price.

More on this topic

The origin of the prosperity doctrine - Part III

The origin of the prosperity doctrine - Part I

What Pentecostals believe about prosperity

Changing views on money

- -

Burgess, Stanley M., et. al., The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, 2003, Zondervan.

Encyclopedia of occultism & parapsychology / edited by J. Gordon Melton, 5th ed, Detroit : Gale Group, c2001

talkingpentecostalism.blogspot.com | joe towns: christian discussion on pentecost, charisma, pentecostal and charismatic beliefs, the Bible and Jesus; including the origin and history of pentecostalism, baptism in the Holy Spirit, speaking in tongues, gifts and miracles, divine healing and word of faith, prosperity and wealth, praise and worship, guidance and hearing the voice of the Holy Spirit.

The Origin of Prosperity Doctrine Part III: Divine Healing

Holiness and the Divine Healing movement

The Holiness movement and the Faith movement that emerged in the late nineteenth century laid foundations for the Prosperity movement that developed in the early twentieth century. The Prosperity doctrine of Pentecostalism emerged in force in the 1950s, but the seeds were sown before the turn of the twentieth century. The doctrinal changes that occurred before the nineteenth century, as far back as the Christian Perfection of John Wesley in the eighteenth century, were pivotal changes that enabled the earliest Pioneers of the Divine Healing movement and the Faith movement to build their doctrine of Prosperity.

The Holiness movement

The Holiness movement spread from England to America in the 1840s and 1850s to preserve John Wesley’s doctrine of ‘Christian Perfection’. Wesley’s Christian Perfection had a profound influence on Charles Finney, Asa Mahan, Phoebe Palmer, Ethan Allen and others in the Holiness movement, from whom prosperity doctrine distinctives began to emerge in the late nineteenth century.

The Holiness movement emphasised purification from sin and the power of the Holy Spirit. Wesley regarded Christian Perfection, or Entire Sanctification, as a second experience of grace, distinct from conversion. From the 1830s under the influence of Charles Finney and Phoebe Palmer this experience came to be viewed as an immediate, instantaneous work of perfection by the Holy Spirit, received through faith.

In the 1850s Phoebe Palmer began to refer to the perfectionist experience as a “baptism with the Spirit and with fire,” or simply as a “Pentecostal baptism.” Asa Mahan approved of this new terminology, noting that power was one of the most significant characteristics of the perfectionist experience. Palmer, in Faith and its Effects, (1854) wrote, “Just so soon as you come believing… come complying with the conditions and claim it… it is already yours. If you do not now receive it, the delay will not be on the part of God, but wholly with yourself.”

By spreading the doctrine of Christian perfection or Spirit-baptism as an experience of purification from sin and endowment with power, the nineteenth century Holiness movement provided the basic theological environment out of which the Faith Healing movement in America grew.

The Divine Healing movement

America’s Faith Healing movement, more accurately known as Divine Healing, was intimately connected with the Holiness movement from its origin. The chief pioneers of the Faith Healing movement were strong advocates of Christian Perfection, such as Ethan O. Allen, who may be considered the father of the Divine Healing movement. In 1846 Allen became the first member of the movement to officially associate the doctrine of Christian Perfection with Divine Healing.

E. O. Allen, like John Wesley, believed that Christ’s atonement provided for purification of the human nature from sin, in addition to justification from sin. Having held that sickness was caused by sin, Allen believed that the experience of entire sanctification, purifying the human nature from sin, would restore complete health to the body.

The fundamental basis of the Divine Healing movement betrays the close connection between Perfectionism and Healing. The basic presuppositions of Divine Healing in the late nineteenth century were, firstly, that sickness was ultimately caused by sin and Satan; and secondly, that Spirit-filled Christians were endued with Pentecostal power. Accordingly, a sanctified believer, who had received power over sin and Satan, also had power over sickness. Full salvation included not only salvation from sin but also healing of the physical body. The movement reflected the same emphasis on instantaneity as the Holiness movement by insisting that healing was available now and was to be received immediately and instantaneously. If not it was due to a lack of faith.

The Divine Healing movement emerged in force in the 1870s at the same time as New Thought and Christian Science appeared. Charles Cullis, the Episcopal physician in Boston, grew the new healing movement more than any other figure by successfully convincing prominent Holiness leaders of E. O. Allen’s doctrine, including John Inskip, A. J. Gordon and A. B Simpson.

A. B. Simpson

One of those healed under the ministry of Charles Cullis in his famous Annual Faith Convention in Maine in the early 1880s was Reverend Albert Benjamin Simpson, a Presbyterian minister who had previously joined the Holiness movement. After leaving his church Simpson became one of the most influencial figures in the Divine Healing movement, primarily because of this theological developments. In 1887 Simpson wrote Inquiries and Answers concerning Divine Healing, followed by numerous other books, including The Gospel of Healing (1896).

A. B. Simpson formalised and stressed four basic doctrines: salvation, baptism in the Spirit, divine healing, and the second coming of Christ, which together became known as the 'full gospel.' Simpson and A. J. Gordon were among those who first began teaching that healing was part of Christ's atonement. Simpson's basic propositions mirrored those of Ethan O. Allen. He taught that sickness was a result of sin; that the atonement reversed the consequences of sin; and thus, healing for sickness was provided by the atonement. For Simpson, healing was a redemptive 'right' which we may simply 'claim' as our purchased inheritance as part of the complete redemption accomplished by Christ's death and resurrection. The promise of healing was there for all, only to be received by faith.

This shift in emphasis culminated in a new 'restoration theology' which taught that Spirit-baptism fully restored to the Christian the spiritual relationship that Adam and Eve enjoyed with God in the Garden of Eden. Consequently, the Holiness movement began emphasising not only faith-healing; now also Spirit-baptism brought 'the higher life in Christ' that would reverse all the physical effects of the Fall, thus enabling believers to take authority over all areas of life. Christians by the same means as faith-healing could live a life of complete abundance and prosperity. The experience of 'victory' in every area of life became the divine right of all believers through faith.

J. A. Dowie

John Alexander Dowie (1847-1907) was another very influential figure in the Divine Healing movement and also an important forerunner of Pentecostalism. An itinerant faith-healer who migrated to the USA from Australia in 1888, he founded and headed the International Divine Healing Association. He based himself in Illinois and began publishing Leaves of Healing. He opened a divine healing home in Chicago, which soon expanded into several homes. In 1895 he founded the Christian Catholic Church. He also founded Zion City, a community built around his vision of a holy society.

Dowie was intensely evangelistic. His two driving foci were holiness and healing. He was fiercely legalistic, insisting that followers abstain from pork and those who sought healing refrain from medicine and exercise unwavering faith. Dowie was hoping for a full restoration of ‘apostolic Christianity’ in his lifetime. In anticipation he announced himself as the prophesied Elijah in 1901, and in 1904 as the first apostle of a renewed end-time church.

Most of Dowie’s followers became Pentecostals when it emerged in America in 1906 because Pentecostalism saw itself as the end-time restoration of the ‘full gospel’ that Dowie had been expecting. Some became prominent leaders in the movement, most of whom affiliated themselves with the Assemblies of God. Those of Dowie’s followers who were still committed to his particular restorationist vision joined the Oneness Pentecostal movement that developed after the early controversies within Pentecostalism.

An important example is John G. Lake. He was an associate of Dowie and an elder in Dowies' church for a number of years. In 1907 Lake experienced 'baptism in the Holy Spirit' one year after the birth of the Pentecostal movement and following went on to make an important contribution to the development of Positive Confession or Faith-Formula theology, a prosperity doctrine that emerged during the twentieth century within American Pentecostalism that triggered the current Prosperity movement.

New Thought and Christian Science

The fact that the Divine Healing movement emerged at the same time as the New Thought movement and Christian Science appeared is not insignificant. Phineas Quimby (1809-66) developed ideas related to health, healing, abundance, prosperity, wealth and happiness. His ideas were preserved in New Thought and developed in Christian Science and sowed the seeds that gave birth to a new generation of evangelists preaching a gospel of prosperity. Particularly, the New Thought movement had a significant influence on E. W. Kenyon (1867–1948) who may be considered the father of twentieth century prosperity doctrine in Pentecostalism.

More on this topic

The origin of the prosperity doctrine - Part IV

The origin of the prosperity doctrine - Part I

What Pentecostals believe about prosperity

Changing views on money

- -

Dictionary of Pentecostal and charismatic movements / Stanley M. Burgess and Gary B. McGee, editors; Patrick H. Alexander, associate editor. Grand Rapids, Mich. : Regency Reference Library, c1988

talkingpentecostalism.blogspot.com | joe towns: christian discussion on pentecost, charisma, pentecostal and charismatic beliefs, the Bible and Jesus; including the origin and history of pentecostalism, baptism in the Holy Spirit, speaking in tongues, gifts and miracles, divine healing and word of faith, prosperity and wealth, praise and worship, guidance and hearing the voice of the Holy Spirit.