Smith Wigglesworth: Jesus Christ the Same Yesterday, Today, and Forever

Smith Wigglesworth was an evangelist and faith healer from Yorkshire, England, who was very influential in the Pentecostal movement. From 1924 to 1929, Wigglesworth toured the United States, ministering under the auspices of the Assemblies of God sect that F. F. Bosworth helped promote and establish. In some of those revival meetings, Wigglesworth toured with Bosworth.

Wigglesworth is infamous among the early faith healers for his brutality on stage. His methods often involved hitting, slapping, or punching the afflicted part of the body. On a number of occasions, his approach to persons suffering from stomach complaints was to punch them in the stomach, sometimes with such force that it propelled them across the room. When challenged on this, his response was, "I don't hit them; I hit the devil".

William Branham appears to have plagiarized key elements from Wigglesworth's history when creating his stage persona, including Wigglesworth's campaign theme, "Jesus Christ the Same Yesterday, Today, and Forever". Some versions of William Branham's stage persona claimed to have been commissioned to heal the sick the day after Wigglesworth died, March 13, 1947, in an attempt to spiritually link his ministry with Wigglesworth's passing and conflicting with previous versions such as the persona described in Branham's tract, "I Was Not Disobedient to the Heavenly Vision".

Both Branham and Wigglesworth shared a similar problem for a "faith healer": Wigglesworth and Branham were unable to prevent the death of their wives. As a result, Wigglesworth claimed to have spoken with his wife, Polly, after her death and Polly informed him that she did not want to return to life on earth. When William Branham altered the historical timeline to include his wife, Hope Branham's death as part of his stage persona, he did so using similarities to Wigglesworth's stage persona. Wigglesworth claimed that when his wife Polly died, he stood by her bedside and brought her back for one last conversation.

William Branham used a similar story in his stage persona after the death of Hope Branham. Unable to heal Hope of tuberculosis, Branham claimed that he spoke to her in either a dream or a vision. According to Branham, he toured the "big palaces" in heaven and Hope told him that his deceased daughter Sharon Rose and she were "better off than you are".

Smith Wigglesworth:
https://william-branham.org/site/research/people/smith_wigglesworth
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