Leaves of Healing.
A Weekly Paper for the Extension of the Kingdom of God.
He sendeth His word and healeth them / And the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations
1894--1996? Weekly, then monthly
Chicago, IL. Language: English with occasional forays into Norwegian, Polish, etc.
Publisher: Zion Publishing House.
Editor: John Alexander Dowie; Wilbur Glenn Voliva. Succeeds: Jehovah Rophi (Melbourne); Leaves of Healing: A Monthly Australasian Magazine for the Promotion of Healing and Holiness through Faith in Jesus (Christchurch, N.Z.)
Succeeded by: Published contemporaneously with Blätter der Heilung; A Voice from Zion; Zion Banner 1/1, August 31, 1894-v. 49, 1922, but continued in some fashion at least until vol. 133, 1996. The journal is labeled "n.s."

Dowie had published antecedent journals in the late 1880s before immigrating to the United States: Jehovah Rophi, Melbourne, and Leaves of Healing, Christchurch, New Zealand. 16 pp., $1.00-$2.00 a year. Regular plates of Dowie and his family, small children displaying the crutches they no longer needed, and the movement's various churches and healing institutes. Dowie (1847-1907 ) was a Scot who moved as a child to Australia. He was ordained a Congregational minister and took up preaching "non-cessationist" or "restorationist" (i.e., the survival of Pentacostal healing and other miraculous powers in the Church) after God spoke to him and told him that he could heal by prayer. Upon moving to the United States in 1888, he first settled in San Francisco and then went to Chicago set up in a building near the Columbian Exhibition to preach to and heal the multitudes. In 1896 he formally began his Christian Catholic Apostolic Church in Zion and in 1901 started Zion City on property he owned 40 miles north of Chicago, near Waukegan. His followers were required to tithe and to deposit all their money in his Zion Bank, also owned by him, and to patronize the numerous other enterprises he owned. He proceeded to abuse this financial control by making extensive (and luxurious) travels, building luxurious mansions in Michigan and Chicago, and enjoying other indulgences at his depositors' expense. When he was stricken by a stroke in Mexico in 1905 his lieutenant, Wilbur Glenn Voliva (1870-1942) deposed him,alleging an unauthorized mortgage on Zion City's lake-front property, the theft of millions of dollars--not by any means the first such allegations leveled against Dowie during his ministry -- and the advocacy of polygamy. Dowie responded (issue of March 11, 1905) with a vast General Apostolic Letter, regretting the resignation of the the head of the Zion Stocks and Securities Bureau that invested the groups money, denying any wrongdoing, and claiming a balance of $21 milllion. On the charge of polygamy, Dowie limited himself to denying that he had ever taught it openly -- though there were persistent rumors that he intended to divorce his wife, marry seven young women and set the extended family up in his new Paradise Colony in Mexico. Dowie tried to regain control of Zion in the courts but failed, and died in Zion City in 1907. Voliva assumed control of the colony and the journal and the bank after Dowie's death and proceeded to expand Zion until his own death in 1942, adding advocacy of a flat earth to the church's doctrines. The journal was largely filled in the early years with reports on the growth and prosperity of the church, "Calls to Action against the Powers of Darkness," with Dowie's sermons and lectures, and with letters from those seeking healing or reporting on the wonders he had worked. For our purposes the most notable feature of the journal was its opposition to spiritualism, Christian Science, and mind cure: "'Divine Healing" (Dowie's system) "is diametrically opposed to these diabolical counterfeits, which are utterly anti-Christian. These impostures are only seductive forms of Spiritualism." He had opposed spiritualism as diabolic as early as 1882 when he wrote a long introduction to Thomas Walker's Spiritualism Unmasked, published in Australia. His criticisms extended to Theosophy and to those who sought healing from competing institutions like J.H. Kellogg's sanatarium in Battle Creek. In his last years, Dowie let it be known that he was a direct Messenger from God, the "First Apostle," and that he was, in fact, Elijah the Restorer -- a claim that brought him into conflict with Cyrus Teed ("Khoresh") who also aspired to the title. The journal's rich invective also extended to Islam, prompting Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, founder of Ahmadiyya, to challenge Dowie to a "prayer duel": "both of us will pray to God that whoever is a liar should die first." Dowie died first, though Ahmad followed him the next year. The journal under Voliva's ownership and editorship initially largely ignored Dowie but gradually came use him as a buttress for Zion ("How we cherish his memory!"). Zion survives as a church today in the Zion Apostolic Faith Mission founded by Edward Lion, one of his disciples, and echoes of Dowie and Zion were prominent in the work of Mabel Aber Jackman, General Shepherdess of the Paradise community. New York Historical Society; Columbia University; NYPL; Iona College; Drew University; Wilmington University.

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