People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 October 1895 — Mere About Divine Healing [ARTICLE]

Mere About Divine Healing

The following is from R. H. Bowen, whose visit to Rensselaer was spoken of recently in these columns. Mr. Bowen lives at Putnamville, Ind., and is a relative of L. E. and I. A. Glaze - brook of this place. To The Editor of People's Pilot. Before we left home we promised friends to give them our opinion of Dr. Dowie’s method of Divine Healing; but we find, after attending quite a number of the doctor’s meetings, that he has no method of healing, but rather teaches people to go to God for healing. He teaches that disease is not God; that God does not afflict his children with sickness; that the body of the Christian is the temple of God's spirit, and God wants that temple healthy, clean and pure; that before the individual can receive any benefit from Divine Healing, he must first give up his sins and become a Christian, and take his body in faith to God for hpaling. He emphasizes very pointedly his assertion that tippling and the use of tobacco are injurious to the body, and hence is a sin against God, and that persons seeking Divine healing must give up those habits; that those who tattle to injure their neighbor, must first set matters right; that you must pay your debts; in short you must repent of sin, and give proof of repentance by forsaking sin, living a holy life. Give up medicine and trust God for the healing, through earnest prayer and faith in God. The doctor prays for the sick, laying on hands, but says “It is God that heals thee.” As a result of his teachings, hundreds of peeple have come to him and God has healed them, at least theevidence shows it. The walls of Zion Tabernacle, where the doctor holds his public meetings, are lined with implements which have been discarded by persons who came there for healing. Some are healed instantaneously, others by “inches.” The blind receive sight, the deaf hear, the lame walk. Persons who have been paralized for years are restored to perfect health. All manner of diseases, after the physicians and surgeons have pronounced them incurable have been healed. The doctor has established homes to accomodate guests, where about 70 can be accom modated. He has established a publishing house in connection with his work, and from this he sends out a paper styled “Leaves of Healing.” By this means persons ate reached in every state in the union and foreign lands who come here for healing. We conversed with a gentleman from Canada, whose wife had been divinely healed of a malignant cancer, after she had been given up by the physicians to die. And scores of others told us hew they had been healed, details of which it would take you a month to publish. No charges whatever are made except for board for guests at the home. The doctor depends entirely on public and private donations to carry on his work. His present quarters are near Jackson Park, and his tabernacle holds near two thousand persons. He is now negotiating for an uptown auditorium in which to hold his Sabbath-afternoon meetings, where he can speak to ten thousand at once. This will require an outlay of $15,000 annually. The doctor has been wonderfully persecuted by the city authorities, charging him with maintaining a hospital without license, but he has thus tar been victorious, and the persecutions only serve to advertise him. Last Sabbath we saw fifteen hundred people in the audience stand up and announce that they had given up their sins and taken God not only for spiritual healing, but for temporal bodily healing, as well. R. H. B.