The Elijah Merry-Go-Round of Prophets

When John Alexander Dowie’s health began to fail, and his narcissistic control of the communal Zion City began to waver, many people in his cult of personality began to question the End-of-Days scenarios that he painted with his “prophetic” ministry. Many people who lived in Zion had forfeited their entire life savings.

Others saw Dowie’s end of life as a great opportunity. Dowie had built one the biggest religious empires in just a few years, fifteen million dollars from 1892 to 1902, by claiming to be the return of the biblical prophet Elijah. When Dowie stepped down and proxied control of his religious empire through Wilbur Glenn Voliva, Zion City was flooded with new “Elijahs” seeking to replace the proxy.

One such opportunist was Charles Fox Parham, founder of the Pentecostal Faith. Parham told his cult of personality in Topeka that he had received a vision from the Lord informing him that he was Elijah III. Parham traveled to Zion and held revivals on the outskirts of the city, generating votes of no confidence in Voliva, and promised to “win the entire population” as Parhamites.

After being arrested on charges of sodomy of young J. J. Jourdan in San Antonio with witness testimony of similar accusations in other cities, however, Parham was forcibly ejected from Zion.

You can learn this and more on william-branham.org.

John Alexander Dowie:
https://william-branham.org/site/research/people/john_alexander_dowie

Charles Fox Parham:
https://william-branham.org/site/research/people/charles_fox_parham