John G. Lake in South Africa

Lake was born on 18 March 1870 at St Mary's, Ontario. At Zion City, Dowie's town in Illinois, his allegiance went to Charles Parham in late 1906, Morton writes. Thomas Hezmalhalch had been at Los Angeles and wrote from Zion City by the middle of 1907.

The Pentecost says they were to leave about the first of April, and De Wet has them leave in April. The Pentecost counts thirteen in the party, and Morton and De Wet count seventeen. Lake wrote that his tickets were given and that he left with $3.50, and that a passenger handed him 40 pounds at Cape Town.

An American woman met him off the train at Johannesburg with a furnished house, he wrote, and Morton reads that as arranged beforehand.

His letter of 30 May says that on the Sabbath before five hundred were present and “two hundred and fifty broke out in prayer aloud”. W. J. Kerr's report of 1908 also has the first meetings in “a little Native Church in Doornfontein”.

By 8 June they had been offered the Zion Tabernacle, which became the Bree Street Central Tabernacle and the Mission's headquarters for five years. The first minute is headed Trustees of the Apostolic Faith Mission, on 17 September. Hezmalhalch was its first president and Lake its vice-president, De Wet writes.

Lake's wife Jennie died on 23 December by De Wet's account, and Nel notes that some sources put it later.

A subheading in J. O. Lehman's healing report of the party's first December reads “No Exaggeration”. In January 1909 Louie Schneiderman of the party resigned over “very sad exaggerations in cases of healing”. Morton and Nel both quote the council's minute of 22 January, which found “only too much truth in the letter”. The council resolved “to admit to the public that many mistakes had been made”, as Nel quotes it.

Lake reported that month that he and his fellow workers had been asked to oversee thirty-five thousand native people and five thousand Dutch and Germans in one locality. Confidence said that December that it had withheld “the charges made against Mr. Lake, as we had no opportunity of hearing both sides”, and that G. D. Studd now wrote that Lake had satisfied friends in America that he would keep clear of those things.

In court in November 1910 Hezmalhalch said a man named Bowie was charged because he had facts “that Lake did not want to come before the congregation”, as Morton quotes the Rand Daily Mail. Hezmalhalch lost his office by March 1911. Morton grants that he “was given several opportunities” to bring evidence and failed to do so, and he writes that Lake was “eventually exonerated by his hand-picked AFM leadership”.

Lake left for America after five years and never came back, and De Wet, Nel and Morton give no witness's reason. Le Roux became president that November. Morton writes that Lake later claimed over 100,000 healings at Spokane and elsewhere and was arrested in 1921 over securities. Lake died at Spokane on 16 September 1935.

The first months' baptisms were mixed, Kgatle writes from Horn. That September Lake asked for a place in Doornfontein especially for the coloured people, and De Wet writes that its lease closed the back doors, the water and the latrines to them. On 6 November the trustees “decided that the baptism of Natives shall in future take place after the baptism of the white people”, De Wet quotes.

The next February the Executive required a white superintendent over the black work. On 30 July the Executive wrote, “In future, the baptism of Whites, Coloured and Natives shall be separate”, as Nel quotes it.

Mofokeng and Madise write that from 1917 to 1961 the mission's governing council was whites only.