Smith Wigglesworth was a plumber from Bradford, England, with a third-grade education and hands roughened by decades of manual labour. He could barely read until his wife Polly taught him using the Bible as his only textbook. Nothing about his background suggested he would become one of the most documented healing ministers of the twentieth century.
The Oil and the Impossible
In 1921, Wigglesworth was called to the bedside of a woman in London who had been given hours to live. Cancer had consumed her body. Her family had already begun making funeral arrangements. Wigglesworth arrived carrying a small bottle of olive oil — nothing pharmaceutical, nothing exotic. He anointed her forehead, placed his calloused hands on her shoulders, and prayed with a directness that startled the room.
Within minutes, the woman sat up. Within hours, she was eating solid food for the first time in weeks. Within days, she walked out of the house that was supposed to be her deathbed. Her doctors documented the disappearance of the tumours they had tracked for months.
Why the Oil Mattered
Wigglesworth never claimed the oil had magical properties. He was explicit about this — "It is not the oil that heals. It is the obedience." For him, the physical act of anointing was a point of contact, a moment where faith took a tangible form. The act of reaching for the bottle, unscrewing the cap, touching the oil to skin — each movement was a declaration that he believed God would meet him in the doing.
This pattern repeated throughout his ministry. Over the next two decades, Wigglesworth documented hundreds of similar encounters. The physical act was always central — not because the substance mattered, but because the willingness to act on belief created a bridge between the invisible and the visible.
What This Means for You
Sometimes faith needs a body. Not because God requires ritual, but because we are physical beings who live in a physical world. The act of doing something — anointing, kneeling, reaching out — can become the moment where what you believe and what you experience finally meet.