Page 225 - LD215 History of the Church in Africa A4 final

The Church Returns to the Upper Room

Lake, his wife and their seven children, and four other adults
arrived in South Africa in 1908. The party of missionaries found
that God had gone before them and prepared the way. A lady met
them at the boat and provided them with a house because the
Lord had spoken to her to provide for his servants. (828)

As a result of their faith, miracles began to occur through their ministry.
Lake and colleagues conducted services and scores of people were saved,
healed, and filled with the Holy Spirit. Records indicate many testimonies
of individuals who were touched by the living Lord Jesus Christ. However,
within the first year Mrs. Lake died suddenly while Lake was on a
preaching journey. Lake assumed she died of heart failure.

After a brief visit to England and the United States of America, he
returned to South Africa where he ministered for approximately five
years. Lindsay describes this period of missionary ministry:

The power of the ministry of Lake and Hezmelhach [a fellow
missionary] were such that within five years, the message that they
brought had penetrated the remote areas of the Union of South
Africa; an apostolic revival had burst forth in such intensity that
churches and missions were being established in great numbers
throughout the land. The secret of the success of these men was
of course the fact that they possessed an apostolic ministry in
which signs, wonders and miracles were manifested. (7)

Lake and his colleagues helped establish the Apostolic Faith
Mission that became a powerful Pentecostal force in Southern Africa.
He returned to the United States of America, remarried in 1913, and
enjoyed a meaningful Pentecostal ministry until he died in 1935. In fact,
as Liardon notes, “One hundred-thousand healings were recorded in
five years at the Lake healing rooms in Spokane, Washington” (9). Later,
his grandson wrote:

What gave my grandfather, John G. Lake, his power?… Grandfather
had the power of God in his life because he was utterly consumed
with the prize: A closer walk with Jesus Christ and a better, clearer,
more personal understanding of the nature of God and the purpose
of man’s journey through this world. (quoted in Liardon, 7)

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