INDIA
AND CEYLON 1926
Report published in Pentecostal Evangel, p. 10 May 29, 1926
BROTHER WIGGLESWORTH IN CEYLON
The campaign began March 5th in a hall capable
of holding a thousand people. From the first night it was
a great success, hundreds being saved.

Smith in Ceylon, 2nd row, 6th from our left
Not a night passed without many standing
up and reaching out their hands to heaven, calling out, “Jesus
save me! Jesus deliver me!” Each night the evangelist
would single out people in the audience who were in pain,
and would pray for them. Immediately after prayer was offered
the suffering ones would testify that they were free, from
pain. If it was a case of stiff limbs, they were made to exercise
them by walking up and down, running, stamping their feet,
or waving their arms about in order to test whether the pain
had actually gone.
One night a woman came up the aisle, walking
in pain, her body all doubled up, and she finally fell on
the floor in front of the platform, the pain was so great.
Brother Wigglesworth jumped off the platform and put his hands
upon her, and said, “In the name of Jesus I bind this
pain and loose this woman.” Immediately she ran up and
down the aisle, free from pain, and then went and sat down
to listen to the message. She was perfectly whole. This demonstration
had a great effect upon the crowd.
Some nights the evangelist prayed for over
five hundred people, many of them coming hundreds of miles
bringing their sick with them - the blind, deaf, dumb, lame,
palsied, consumptive, eaten up with cancer, tumours, epilepsy,
weak-minded, deranged, crippled. God worked mighty miracles;
blind eyes were opened, deaf ears unstopped, stammering tongues
spoke, men on crutches put them over their shoulder and went
away, stiff joints were made supple, headaches and fevers
vanished, asthma was treated as an evil power and cast out
in the name of Jesus.
Handkerchiefs were brought in an ever-increasing
number and piled high upon the platform. So many were brought
(quite 500 some nights) that a fairly large suitcase was necessary
to hold them all.
One night, while our attention was diverted,
a boy stole six new handkerchiefs that had been brought. Two
nights later he came back with them confessing that he had
not been able to sleep since he had taken them. Many wonderful
cures were wrought through this means. One was taken to a
sanatorium and placed on a consumptive boy. The boy is wonderfully
better, is putting on flesh and looking healthy.
Many people were helped by rising from their
seats in faith and saying, “Jesus heal me,” without
the prayers of the evangelist at all. One woman, who had eruptions
on her arms and burning sensations caused by these eruptions,
was healed as she sat in her seat. Truly these were wonderful
days. God’s Spirit was poured out and Jesus was glorified
Walter H. C. Clifford. Colombo, Ceylon.
* * *
INDIA AND CEYLON
March 1926
Report published in Pentecostal Evangel, p. 11 May 22, 1926
BROTHER WIGGLESWORTH IN INDIA AND
CEYLON
Brother Wigglesworth has been with us in
Colombo, ministering for two weeks. He came very late in the
season and found the heat very trying, and in consequence
did not visit India. In Madras we had one meeting as we passed
through Bombay to Colombo. I went to Bombay to meet him. The
meetings were wonderfully attended here. There were over a
thousand listening to the Word nearly every night.
It was a joy to see hundreds of people standing
up with hands outstretched to heaven, asking Jesus to save
them. Hundreds were healed of all kinds of diseases. Owing
to the heat and the strenuous night meetings (some nights
praying for 500 people), he was unable to have meetings for
believers, as we should have liked. However, the visit was
a great success and has brought blessing to many homes. He
has left us now for Palestine, where he expects to stay about
a month, reaching England in time for the Whitsuntide Convention
in London.
The follow-on meetings have been wonderfully
blessed. One woman in the Sunday morning meeting, after Brother
Wigglesworth had left, was healed of three diseases. She came
on the following Wednesday bringing fifteen friends with her,
eleven of whom were saved that night as we gave the altar
call. I had the job of immersing eight in water while Brother
Wigglesworth was here. The youngest being a Singalese girl,
seven years old. She had a wonderful testimony, and on the
morning of her baptism, she had a vision of Jesus. It was
a joy to my soul to take her in my arms and bury her with
Christ in the water.
The Lord has given us another little son,
born on Feb. 9. This makes us four children now. All is well,
for which we praise the Lord. Brother may from Travancore
is here helping me for a little while, and I am very grateful
for his help. We have had strenuous times since Christmas
with two conventions and nine meetings a week in between.
Oh, for some men to come and stand in the gap.
Walter H. Clifford, Colombo, Ceylon.
* * *
CEYLON
March – April 1926
Report published in Redemption Tidings, p. 9 April 1926
SALVATION – SIGNS AND WONDERS
IN CEYLON
CANCER AND 14 YEARS’ BLINDNESS
HEALED
Evangelist Smith Wigglesworth was to have
held the last meeting of his campaign at the new hall in Maradana
yesterday evening, but at the earnest request of hundreds
he has extended it to some days more. He began his campaign
on the 5th instant, from which day his audience increased
daily until during the last few days the hall has been insufficient
to hold the vast gatherings that come to listen to him and
be blessed by him and be prayed for. People have been known
to come from all parts of the Island with sick folk devoid
of all hope of health, and to wait for hours till the doors
were opened; and, if not all, the majority of them went away
sound in body and mind.
As a testimony of the efficiency of prayer
in healing sicknesses, Mrs. Speldewinde, of Kandy, who suffered
from a virulent cancer in the stomach and whose case was abandoned
as hopeless by scientific medical men, on Tuesday confessed
to having been completely freed of the disease by Mr. Wigglesworth’s
prayer. People of all sorts, of all ages and classes, of diverse
religions and professions, have attended Mr. Wigglesworth’s
meetings, and though there have been scoffers among them nearly
all of them have gone away impressed by his words and his
actions.
There is an undoubted spiritual atmosphere
about the hall during the period the meetings last. Beginning
generally about 6 o’clock, by which hour the hall is
quite full, hymns are sung from the conventional sheet published
by the Assemblies of God in Ceylon. Mr. Walter H. Clifford,
of the Glad Tidings Hall, Borella, then delivers a sermon,
which is frequently punctuated with exclamations of “Praise
the Lord” and “The Lord be praised” from
those who have benefited by the campaign. About 7.30 or 8
o’clock, when the assembly has been induced to an atmosphere
of devotion, Mr. Wigglesworth himself begins to speak, and
concludes by calling on the sick and the afflicted to stand.
Most of them
Admit of Cure Straightaway.
Mr. Wigglesworth prays, the ailments ranging
from headaches and pains in the body to rheumatism, catarrh,
blindness, deafness, etc. Not a few children are brought by
doting mothers and women of advanced age by loving relatives,
and if their derangements are not set aright on the first
day they come again and yet again. Confirmed drunkards and
smokers have been purged of the desire for intoxicants, and
persons suffering from consumption and diseases due to dissolute
lives have admitted to have been cured by Mr. Wigglesworth’s
prayer and their own. Many prominent people have been attracted
to the hall, from which none could go away without a profound
impression of Mr. Wigglesworth – his deep voice, his
simple but weighty words, his remarkable personality, and
above all the perfect confidence of his actions, as when he
says “In the name of Jesus, come out of this woman,”
addressing the evil spirit possessing the patient before him.
“Are you healed?” he asks, and if the reply is
in the affirmative, “Praise the Lord” he adds.
The publication of the Assemblies of God
in Ceylon – “Miracles of Healing” –
contains accounts of miraculous cures, and there are many
households attached to this gathering where the need for a
doctor is never felt. Faith in the efficacy of prayer sustains
them in all their actions.
Considering the diversity of races and creeds
in Ceylon the numbers attached to this campaign may be said
to constitute a record, but each day the crowd swells in size,
and yesterday night the compound adjoining the hall too was
filled, some having arrived very early in the afternoon.
Evangelist Smith Wigglesworth’s campaign
continues to draw big crowds nightly to the new hall opposite
the Tower Hall in Maradana. Mr. Wigglesworth has a powerful
voice that lends itself to a variety of inflexions, and although
his gift of holding his audience gets somewhat weakened by
the periods of translation the large gatherings that never
diminish but rather increase from start to finish of each
meeting are indicative of the popularity of his message. Every
night scores go up to the platform to be cleansed of sin and
healed of bodily ill, and a certain number never fail to testify
to the Power whose aid the Evangelist with great fervour invokes.
On Monday night one of those who thus testified was a woman
who had been blind for fourteen years.
A lady resident in Kandy was brought down
to Colombo about two weeks ago. She was suffering from cancer
and was in “extremis,” and the doctors in Kandy
had given up all hopes.
Eminent physicians consulted in Colombo were
also of the same opinion. The day Evangelist Wigglesworth
arrived the relatives of the lady called on him, at the Glad
Tidings Hall at Borella, and asked him to see the patient.
As he was unable to go on that same day he gave them a piece
of cloth, which he blessed, to be placed on the seat of the
trouble pending his arrival on the next day. Immediately the
cloth was placed on the patient, she said she felt relief
and that the agony she was suffering for weeks and the spasms
of pain left her. The Evangelist saw her the next day and
cast out what he termed the “evil spirit with was afflicting
her in the form of a cancer,” and the lady is today
perfectly well and able to get about. She is to testify at
tonight’s meeting conducted by Smith Wigglesworth.
* * *
Report published in Redemption Tidings,
p. 12 June 1926
GOD BEARING WITNESS WITH SIGNS, WONDERS
AND MIRACLES IN CEYLON
By Walter H. Clifford Heb. ii, 4.
The campaign began March 5th, in a large
hall capable of holding a thousand people. From the first
night it was a great success, hundreds were saved, not a night
passing by without many standing up in response to the appeals
of the Evangelist stretching their hands up to heaven, calling
out, “Jesus save me, Jesus deliver me,” and then,
as they stood up, the Evangelist would pray, asking the Lord
to have mercy upon them and save them; then the whole audience
would sing, “I do believe, I will believe, that Jesus
died for me, that on the Cross, He shed His blood, for sin
to set me free.” Every night he would single out people
in the audience, who were in pain and pray for them, and immediately
after prayer was offered the suffering one would testify that
they were free from pain. If it was a case of stiff limbs,
they were made to exercise them by walking up and down, running,
stamping their feet, or waving their arms about in order to
test whether the pain had actually gone or not.
Wigglesworth can be clearly seen in this
Ceylon group photograph, which appeared in the Redemption
Tidings. He is left of centre on the second row up. Next to
him is a missionary, probably W. H. Clifford.
One night a woman came up the aisle walking
in pain, her body all doubled up, and she finally fell on
the floor in front of the platform, the pain was so great.
Mr. Wigglesworth jumped off the platform and put his hands
upon her and said, in the Name of Jesus Christ, I bind this
pain and loose this woman, and she immediately ran up and
down the aisle free from pain, and then went and sat down
to listen to the message perfectly whole. This demonstration
had a great effect upon the crowd.
Some nights the Evangelist had to pray for
over five hundred people. Many of them coming hundreds of
miles, bringing their sick with them – the blind, deaf,
dumb, lame, paralysed, consumptive, eaten up with cancer,
tumours, epilepsy, weak-minded, deranged, crippled, with rheumatism
and many other kinds of diseases. They came an increasing
multitude, and God worked mighty miracles. Blind eyes being
opened, deaf ears were unstopped, stammering tongues spoke
plain, men on crutches put them over their shoulders and went
away, stiff joints were made supple, headaches and fevers
vanished, asthma was cursed as an evil power and cast out
in the Name of Jesus. It was a wonderful sight to see them
coming, and to know that those who had faith, went away rejoicing,
in a Living, Loving, Tender-hearted Saviour, who had delivered
them from the power of the devil that had bound them for weeks
and months, and years, or a lifetime.
Handkerchiefs
Handkerchiefs and garments were brought in
an ever increasing pile, and were piled high upon the platform,
so many were brought, quite five hundred some nights, so that
a fairly large suitcase was necessary to hold them all; all
sorts and conditions of people brought handkerchiefs and garments.
Coloured handkerchiefs, silk ones, white ones, dirty ones,
pieces of cloth, pillow cases, and many other things.
One night while our attention was diverted,
a boy stole six new handkerchiefs that had been brought to
be prayed for; a couple of nights later he brought them back,
confessing that he had not been able to sleep since he had
taken them away; how wonderfully God uses this instrument
to reveal His mighty power!
We know that many wonderful cures have been
wrought in this way, eruptions have vanished, and a case of
insanity was wonderfully helped. The father brought a handkerchief
for his son in the asylum; after it had been prayed over it
was taken to the asylum, placed on the son’s head, and
he at once began to speak like a normal being. Another one
was taken to a sanatorium, and placed on a consumptive boy;
the message brought from the sanatorium says the boy is wonderfully
better, putting on flesh and looking healthy. Drunkards lives
have been changed by these means, desires for gambling have
gone, many wonderful deliverances have taken place. Glory
to Jesus.
Many people were wonderfully helped by rising
from their seats in faith and saying “Jesus heal me,”
without the prayers of the Evangelist at all, but by just
following his simple directions. One woman who had eruptions
on her arms and burning sensations caused by these eruptions
was healed as she sat in her seat. Truly these were wonderful
days, God’s Spirit was poured out and Jesus was glorified,
and the devil’s kingdom suffered great defeat.
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