Reverend Smith Wigglesworth tries a new trick: dropping his invitations from a bi-plane like the propaganda they were! Good thing the company now selling his four-pound "complete sermons" doesn't try that trick…it would be like the time they dropped turkeys from the sky on WKRP.
Anyway, a scarce little pamphlet from the sky which is worth exactly one wiggles worth today…but then find another.
Wigglesworth was a plumber who suffered from glossolalia (the clinical name for speaking in tongues) but it was in the days before medication for schizophrenia, so he became a preacher. This was shortly after meeting and marrying his wife, Polly Featherstone, a Salvation Army preacher. She taught the plumber to read the Bible, and he always said it was the only book he ever read. That is typical of his open-mindedness throughout his entire career.
What a career it was. Wigglesworth raised folks from the dead (!) including at one point his now dead wife Polly! He claimed to have brought no less than three, but maybe as many as twenty-three departed souls back to life. One of those he brought back was a bitter woman who, when raised out of her coffin, slapped the preacher in the face saying she was having a better time in heaven.
He was a "laying on of hands" faith-healer, but when Swedish authorities (onto the ruse) denied him, he cured Swede's illnesses by inventing a technique by which the informed could "lay hands on themselves." He also distributed blessed hankies, but I haven't been able to find out how much he charged for them.
Wikipedia claims Wigglesworth would not sleep at night unless he had saved at least one soul that day. One night he rose troubled from bed and went out looking for a drunk to convince on the spot so he could get some damn sleep.
There is a website devoted to selling Smith's dribbles, but I'm not going to link to them. Why help? I will gladly allow them to use this scarce sky-pamphlet if they can bring either Old Man Smith Wigglesworth OR his wife Polly back to cure my lumbago.
Message from Sky Pilot Smith Wigglesworth. Original "flying tract" announcement circa 1930 Collection Jim Linderman
THIS IS A POST ON THE OLD TIME RELIGION blog as well.
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