Smith Wigglesworth On Spiritual Gifts

What Smith Wigglesworth Actually Taught About Spiritual Gifts

Most people who come across Wigglesworth's writings have either read one or two anecdotes about him healing someone or have never engaged with his material at all. The gap between those two positions is where a lot of confusion lives. His views on spiritual gifts weren't abstract theology. They were formed in the working-class context of early twentieth century England, where he was a plumber before becoming a full time evangelist, and everything he wrote or said about the gifts was tied directly to whether it produced results in real people. I spent several years researching his recorded sermons, interviews, and the biographical accounts that came from people who actually knew him. One thing became clear pretty quickly: Wigglesworth did not treat the gifts of the Spirit as topics for discussion. He treated them as tools. That distinction matters more than most writers on this subject seem to realize.

Core Principles Behind Smith Wigglesworth On Spiritual Gifts

His teaching can be broken down into a handful of practical points that show up consistently across his sermons and the testimonies of those who traveled with him. First, he believed the baptism of the Holy Spirit was a distinct experience after conversion, and that speaking in tongues was the initial evidence of that baptism. This wasn't new to Pentecostal circles in the 1920s and 1930s, but what set Wigglesworth apart was how matter of fact he was about it. He didn't argue the point endlessly. He assumed it and moved on to whatever needed doing. Second, he taught that the supernatural gifts listed in 1 Corinthians 12 were still operative and intended for the church. Not as entertainment. Not as proof of spirituality. As functional expressions of the Spirit's power. Healing, faith, discernment, prophecy, workings of miracles — these were normal and expected, not rare events reserved for special occasions.

Third, and this is where his approach gets uncomfortable for people who like religion to be passive, he insisted that the believer actively receives and exercises these gifts. He was famously blunt about this. He told people to claim their healing by faith, to speak to the sickness, and to expect results. The prayer of faith, he said, would save the sick. He took James 5 literally, which means he took it without any of the softening that modern churches tend to add. Fourth, he had a very practical view of authority. In his mind, the authority to heal and cast out demons wasn't earned through seminary degrees or denominational approval. It was given at salvation and activated by faith. He would tell people who felt inadequate that their inadequacy was irrelevant. The gift works through whoever is willing to use it. This was terrifying to some people and liberating to others. Mostly liberating, from what I've seen in the records. One thing that comes through clearly in his Ministry is that he didn't separate the spiritual from the physical. When he healed someone, he didn't treat it as a metaphor or a secondary blessing. The body was part of the equation. Death itself was treated as an enemy to be defeated, not a mysterious divine plan to be accepted quietly.

How It Actually Works in Practice

I should address something people don't always understand about Wigglesworth's approach. He didn't follow a system. That's the honest truth. There isn't a step by step manual you can apply in sequence and expect identical results. What you have is a posture and a set of assumptions about how God operates, and then a willingness to act on them without hesitation. When Wigglesworth laid hands on someone or even just spoke to a sickness, he did it with what he described as "holy boldness." He didn't pray tentatively. He didn't say "Lord if it be your will." His pattern was to command the sickness to leave or declare healing in the name of Jesus. The underlying assumption was that the work was already finished at Calvary and the believer's job was to appropriate it by faith. This approach created problems. I ran into this myself when trying to apply his method in a ministry setting. A woman came to me with chronic pain that had resisted every conventional treatment available. Following Wigglesworth's model, I prayed and spoke to the condition directly, expecting immediate relief. It didn't happen. Not then. The straightforward application of his method failed in that instance, and the person was left more frustrated than before because the expectation had been so absolute.

The workaround I settled on was less dramatic but more sustainable. I kept the same theological framework — the gifts are real, healing is available, faith is essential — but I allowed the process to unfold over time rather than demanding an instant result. I still prayed with boldness. I still expected healing. But I also recognized that what Wigglesworth experienced in his context doesn't automatically translate to every situation in the same way. The principle holds. The application needs adjustment. That adjustment isn't a compromise of faith. It's a recognition that Wigglesworth himself adapted his methods depending on the person and the circumstance. He healed some instantly. He told others to persevere. He sent people away and they returned healed later. The timeline wasn't the point. The outcome was.

Common Misunderstandings and Where This Approach Breaks Down

There are several misunderstandings about Wigglesworth's teaching on spiritual gifts that keep coming up in conversations with people new to this material. The biggest one is the idea that faith operates like a force field. If you just believe hard enough, nothing can go wrong. Wigglesworth himself didn't teach this. He had people who didn't get healed. He had times when he said he didn't understand why. But the popular version of his teaching that circulates online tends to strip out all the friction and present a version that never encountered failure. That version isn't accurate to what Wigglesworth actually lived. Another common error is treating tongues as the primary evidence of Spirit baptism to the exclusion of everything else. Wigglesworth did teach that tongues were the initial sign, but he didn't stop there. He talked about the fruit of the Spirit, about holiness, about love, about the moral transformation that should accompany the supernatural experience. The gifts and the character were both important. Anyone who focuses only on the gifts and ignores the character is missing half of what he taught.

There's also the issue of using Wigglesworth's stories as performance benchmarks. People read about him raising the dead and then feel like their own prayer life is inadequate because their experiences are far less dramatic. That's a categories error. Wigglesworth's ministry had a specific scope and calling. Comparing your daily Christian experience to his peak moments is like comparing your home cooking to a professional chef's best dish and then deciding you can't cook at all. The approach also breaks down in contexts where people are looking for spiritual gifts as a status marker. Wigglesworth had zero tolerance for this. He was vulgar when it served a purpose, crude in his language at times, and completely uninterested in anyone using the gifts to build a reputation. If you're approaching this material from a place of wanting to be seen as spiritually advanced, you're approaching it from the wrong place entirely. He would have told you that directly.

What You Should Take From This

The practical takeaway from Wigglesworth's teaching on spiritual gifts isn't a technique you can master. It's a framework for understanding how God wants to work through ordinary people. The gifts are real. They're available now. They're meant to be used, not discussed endlessly. Faith is the mechanism. Boldness is the posture. Results are the expectation. But results don't always look the way you want them to. Sometimes the healing comes slowly or not at all in this life. Sometimes the prayer goes unanswered in the way you hoped. That doesn't mean the framework is wrong. It means you're operating in a fallen world where the already and the not yet coexist. Wigglesworth knew this. He just refused to let it paralyze him. If you want to engage with this material seriously, read his actual sermons and the biographies written by people who were there. The abridged versions and the quote collections that circulate on the internet flatten everything into inspirational soundbites. The reality is messier and more interesting than that. Wigglesworth wasn't a theological system. He was a person who thought the supernatural was normal and acted accordingly. That's the whole point.