Program for John Alexander Dowie's 1903 Meetings in New York City

This is a rare item and it sold quickly.  We thought we would post it here on our blog for you intrepid researchers who might want to have a look at it.

Dowie, John Alexander. Program of Meetings to be held in Madison Square Garden, New York City, New York, during the Visitation of Zion Restoration Host Under the Leadership of The Rev. John Alexander Dowie, Elijah the Restorer, General Overseer of the Christian Catholic Church in Zion. Zion City, Illinois: Press of Zion Printing and Publishing House, [1903]. First Edition.

Printed glossy wrapper, light soil and wear, 6 x 9 inches, 96 pp., many portraits from photographs, many adverts for the various Dowie enterprises. Includes hymns and tunes sung at the event. Good. Paperback.  [5174] 

WorldCat records just four locations.

This program describes all of the meetings, lists the messages, and describes in illustrated detail Zion City. It is designed to not only lead the gatherers to experience divine healing, but to lure them to move to Zion City.

John Alexander Dowie (1847-1907), b. Edinburgh, Scotland; d. City of Zion, Illinois. Dowie emigrated to Australia with his family when still a boy, returned to Scotland in 1868 to study at the Free Church School in Edinburgh, afterwards returning to Australia, accepting a call to a Congregational church in 1872. He gained renown as a faith healer and evangelist, began an independent church in Australia, and came to America in 1888. His focus on a healing ministry brought many followers; in 1895 he founded the Christian Catholic Church, and in 1900 began a religious community north of Chicago named Zion City, which grew to about 6,000 members.

"Dowie, meanwhile, became increasingly eccentric. He reasserted his restorationist hopes and announced in 1901 that he was the prophesied Elijah, the Restorer. In 1904 he told his followers to anticipate the full restoration of apostolic Christianity and revealed that he had been divinely commissioned to be the first apostle of a renewed end-times church...Dowie's end-time expectations, his message of divine healing, and his restorationist vision made him an important forerunner of pentecostalism." - Blumhofer, entry in The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements.