Spokane

Spokane has been home to popular faith healer before

Kelly McBride
Staff writer

Spokane _ John G. Lake is a heavy hitter in the history of American Pentecostals.

He founded an entire Christian denomination in Africa. He claimed to have healed hundreds of thousands. To this day, followers read his prolific writings and call him a prophet.

For most of two decades, he called Spokane his home.

He is buried in the Riverside Cemetery. The house where he lived still stands at 1523 W. Indiana.

"He was right out of the heat of the revival early in the 20th century," said Edith Blumhofer, a professor of history and director of the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Ill.

Lake was born in 1870 in Ontario, Canada, one of 16 children. His parents moved to Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., when he was young.

As a young adult, Lake became an associate of Alexander Dowie, the eccentric minister who founded Zion City, Ill., in the wake of the Chicago World's Fair of 1893.

At its height, Zion claimed 10,000 residents who considered Dowie their spiritual leader. That number diminished as Dowie's revelations became increasingly odd, said Blumhofer. Dowie proclaimed himself to be the reincarnations of Elijah and the first apostle of Christ.

Dowie died in 1907, and Lake traveled to South Africa. There, he founded the Christian Catholic Church, which still claims about 700,000 members.

He came to Spokane in 1914, where he built a church, known as The Tabernacle at Sharp and Lincoln, where the Harvest Christian Fellowship now stands.

He also rented office space at 14 N. Howard, where he prayed for individuals who came in search of healing. He called those offices The Healing Rooms.

He frequently traveled on preaching missions throughout the Northwest, founding a church in Portland as well.

Newspaper articles of the late 1920s and early 1930s document the throngs of people who attended his worship services and claimed to have been healed of the plague, tuberculosis, rheumatism and dozens of other maladies.

In 1931, Lake advertised a special speaker at his church -- Abdul Ben Shinandar, an associate of Lawrence of Arabia and "a great Arab preacher and Bible story teller."

Later a newspaper reporter exposed the foreigner as Lake himself, dressed up in robes, a turban and wearing a fake beard.

Lake explained that during his international travels he had registered with the Society of Arab Story Tellers under the name Abdul Ben Shinandar.

Lake died of a stroke in 1935. He was 65. More than 700 people packed into his funeral service.

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