Smith Wigglesworth- British Missionary Evangelist

Smith Wigglesworth was a British missionary who died on March 12, 1947. He was born on June 10, 1859, and died on March 12, 1947.

Early Life

Smith Wigglesworth was born to a poor family on June 10, 1859, in Menston, Yorkshire, England. As a young child, he worked in the fields with his mother pulling turnips. He also worked in workshops to help his family make money. He didn’t know how to read or write because he didn’t go to school because he had to work.

He used to be a Methodist, but when he was eight, he became a “born again” Christian. Smith’s grandma was a devout Methodist, and his parents, John and Martha, often took him to Methodist and Anglican churches. He was confirmed by a Bishop in the Church of England, baptized by immersion in a Baptist church, and learned about the Bible in the Plymouth Brethren while working as an apprentice plumber for a man in the Brethren movement.

On December 4, 1882, Wigglesworth got married to Mary Jane “Polly” Featherstone at St. Peter’s church in Bradford. When they got married, she was a preacher with the Salvation Army, and General William Booth heard about her. Alice was their only daughter, and Seth, Harold, Ernest, and George were their boys. In 1913, Polly died. After more than 20 years as a missionary in the Congo, their grandson Leslie Wigglesworth was head of the Elim Pentecostal Church.

After he married Polly, Wigglesworth learned to read, and she taught him how to read the Bible. He often said that the Bible was the only book he had ever read. He also didn’t let newspapers into his house because he thought the Bible was the best thing for his family to read.

Wigglesworth used to be a plumber, but he gave up this job when he started teaching because he was too busy. During the Sunderland Revival in 1907, Wigglesworth went to see Alexander Boddy. After Alexander’s wife, Mary Boddy, laid hands on him, he was baptized with the Holy Spirit and spoke in tongues.[6] In Great Britain, he spoke at some Assemblies of God events. He was also ordained as a preacher by the Assemblies of God in the United States, where he preached the gospel from 1924 to 1929.

Ministry

Wigglesworth thought that faith was the key to health, and he was open to different ways of doing things. When the officials in Sweden told him he couldn’t touch people in the crowd, he preached for a “corporate healing” in which people put their hands on themselves. He also spread “prayer handkerchiefs” and used oil to treat people. One of these was sent to King George V. Wigglesworth sometimes thought that bad health was caused by ghosts.

Wigglesworth thought that his success as a preacher was mostly because of his Baptism with the Holy Spirit. He said, “I want you to see that a person who speaks in a language they don’t know makes themselves better or stronger.” Before we can build up the church, we need to be built up. I can’t put a price on what the Holy Ghost way of spiritual growth has done for me. I’m here in front of you as one of the world’s biggest puzzles. Never before had a man on the stage been so weak. Language? None. Can’t do something? Everything in my life says that I shouldn’t be able to stand on the platform and teach the gospel. The Holy Spirit came and brought this wonderful building up of the Spirit. That’s the secret. I was constantly reading this Word as well as I could, but then the Holy Spirit came and took it, because the Holy Spirit is the breath of it, and He showed it to me.

During Wigglesworth’s work, many people said they had been healed by God.[14] Among them are a woman who was healed of a tumor, a woman who was healed of cancer, a woman who was confined to a wheelchair who was able to walk, and many more.People, including his wife Polly, were said to have been brought back from the dead.[16]

Many people said that Jesus Christ healed them of cancer through him. Wigglesworth said that cancer was “a living evil spirit” and that many diseases were “Satanic in origin.”

He often treated people by hitting, slapping, or punching the part of the body that hurt. When people came to him with stomach problems, he would sometimes punch them in the stomach, sometimes with so much force that it threw them across the room. When asked about this, he said, “I don’t hit them—I hit the devil.”

In response to complaints about how he prayed for the sick, Wigglesworth said, “You might think that the way I prayed for the sick made me sometimes unloving and rough, but friends, you have no idea what I see behind the sickness and the person who has it.” I don’t deal with the person; I deal with the evil forces that hold the sick person down.

Wigglesworth once told a sick person, “I’ll only pray for you once. To pray twice is to not believe.” The next night, a man went back to the platform to ask for prayer. Wigglesworth saw him and asked, “Didn’t I pray for you last night? You don’t believe anything! Get off this stage!”

Personal Life

Smith Wigglesword was married to Mary Jane Featherstone from 1882-1913 till her death and had five children together, named Alice, Seth, Harold, Ernest and George. He was a well known Plumber

Death

On March 12, 1947, at the age of 87, he died at the funeral of his close friend Wilf Richardson.