Faith that does not act is not faith

Smith Wigglesworth was born in Menston, Yorkshire in 1859. He came from a poor family and began working in the fields at age six. He could not read. He was converted to faith early and encountered the Salvation Army in his teens, through which he developed a passion for evangelism that never left him.

He trained as a plumber, married a woman named Polly who was a capable preacher, and ran a plumbing business in Bradford. Polly taught him to read. He used the Bible as his primary text and for many years, by his own account, would not read any other book: he was afraid that reading other people's interpretations might contaminate his direct engagement with the text.

His public ministry began seriously in his forties, after what he described as an encounter with the Holy Spirit that changed how he prayed for others. He began travelling widely, first in Britain and then internationally, preaching and praying for healing. Accounts from his meetings were published by doctors, journalists, and church officials across multiple countries, though the claims vary in their documentation.

His theology was simple and blunt: faith is not a feeling you cultivate. It is a decision you make in advance of the evidence. If God's word says something is true, you act on it as if it is true, before your circumstances confirm it. Waiting for the feeling is, in Wigglesworth's view, a failure of faith rather than an expression of it.

He was not an easy person. He was direct to the point of abrasiveness and had little patience for what he considered half-measures in faith. He died in 1947 at 87, reportedly collapsing at a funeral service. He had apparently told people years earlier that he intended to die at a funeral, as he had always found it easier to raise people from the dead than to mourn them. Whether or not that story is precisely accurate, it captures something real about the way he lived.