Smith Wigglesworth, the Apostle of Faith
An illiterate Yorkshire plumber who learned to read from the Bible, Smith Wigglesworth became one of the most prominent healing evangelists of the early Pentecostal movement.
Smith Wigglesworth (1859–1947) was born in poverty near Bradford, England. He worked from age six in the woollen mills and later as a plumber. He could not read until his wife Polly taught him from the Bible — and he claimed for the rest of his life that the Bible was the only book he had ever read.
After receiving the Pentecostal baptism in Sunderland in 1907, Wigglesworth abandoned plumbing and travelled the world as an evangelist for the next forty years — preaching across Britain, the United States, South Africa, Australia, India, Scandinavia and Switzerland. His meetings were known for accounts of dramatic physical healings; biographers also credit him with helping carry classical Pentecostalism into the mainline churches that became the Charismatic movement.
He died in 1947. His sermons, published as Ever Increasing Faith and Faith That Prevails, remain in print and are routinely cited in the "God's Generals" devotional tradition that profiles 20th-century healing evangelists.