John G. Lake

John Graham Lake (1870-1935) was a "faith healer" and Pentecostal revivalist. From 1908 to 1913, he served as a missionary to Africa, spreading the Pentecostal faith overseas through the Apostolic Faith Mission of South Africa.  In 1914 he started 'The Divine Healing Institute,' as well as  'healing rooms' in the pattern of John Alexander Dowie's Christian Catholic Church.[1]

Lake was heavily influenced by John Alexander Dowie, and evidence suggests that Lake was a fundamental part of Dowie's stage act in the United States from the early 1890s.  Lake was apparently one of the men Dowie used as "witnesses" for the staged healings in his meetings.

By the early 1890s Lake was associated with Dowie – as he noted: 'I knew him from the beginning.' During this exact period, John Alexander Dowie was using fake ministers in his faith healing services in Chicago. Dowie typically began his services by having people testify that he had healed them. On many occasions, he also then brought in ministers, doctors, or lawyers to verify the healing testimonies that had been given.[2]
- Barry Morton

After Dowie died, Charles Fox Parham attempted to seize control of Zion, and Lake joined Parham's side of the schism[3] along with F. F. Bosworth and others.  Convinced that the End of Days was near, the group began performing exorcisms, along with a range of ecstatic and sexual behaviors.[4]  The hysteria that resulted ended in several murders, some of which appear to have been covered up by the Zion coroner.[5]  The Parhamites along with Lake fled Zion.  It was during this time that Lake claimed to have had a series of "visions", which convinced him to leave his wealth and possessions behind and begin his mission in South Africa.[6]  Like Dowie and Parham, Lake claimed to be "Elijah".[7]

Lake returned to the United States in 1913, and attempted to recreate Dowie's empire in Portland, Oregon.  Soon after, Lake was exposed by newspapers in the United States multiple times for fraudulent and criminal activity.  In 1922 Lake and his son were charged with committing securities fraud in a scheme involving his church.  It was then made public that Lake had been using the church as a means for the sale of mining stocks,[8] and had been selling worthless stocks to church members.[9]  A few weeks later, Lake attempted to seize property while impersonating a police officer and was arrested as he left the pulpit in his church.[10]  Weeks after that, he was held on Federal charges of failure to report a communicable disease.[11]  .

Another arrest that Lake faced was for fraud. In 1921 he was arrested for selling his church members worthless securities. As one of these members of his congregation said, Lake 'used his church work to promote his various mining schemes with the idea of first gaining the confidence of people through the common ground of religion and then selling to the congregation stock in which he was interested'. During these same years, Lake claimed to have effected over 100,000 faith healings in the American north-west. Yet a number of these healings were proved to have never occurred.[12]
- Barry Morton