Centenary Celebrations (Part Four)
This is Part Four of a series of articles on the Life of WP Nicholson. Click here to read Part One, Part Two or Part Three.
In this our concluding article we want to consider some of the distinctive features of W. P. Nicholson’s ministry and to particularly reflect on what we can learn from his life.
Before coming to this assessment, we need to briefly remind ourselves of what happened to him in the years after his notable missions in Ireland in the 1920’s. In June 1926 while conducting a series of meetings in Sydney, Australia, his wife took ill and suddenly died. Some time later, still in Australia, he married Fanny Elizabeth Collett and returned to his home in Los Angeles. The Nicholsons spent the years from 1928 to 1930 in the UK, with WP conducting missions in Ireland and Scotland. The couple returned to the USA in 1930 and for the rest of his life WP engaged in an itinerant ministry, preaching all over the world – in South Africa, USA, Australia and New Zealand. He returned to conduct missions in Ireland in 1936, 1946 and 1958.
In 1959 the Nicholsons set sail for Ireland on board the liner ‘Mauretania’ with the intention of settling in Bangor. During the voyage WP suffered a serious heart attack. When the ship arrived in Cork, he was taken to the Victoria Hospital where he died two weeks later on 29th October. He was eighty-three. His funeral took place in Hamilton Road Presbyterian Church, Bangor, and he was buried in the Clandeboye Cemetery.
In many respects it is difficult to assess the life of this great servant of God. One is reluctant to do so for several reasons. Who am I to evaluate such a ministry? He was a man whom Gid mightily used and who saw blessing upon his ministry far greater than anything I have ever known. The blessing of God was undoubtedly resting on him. Those who professed faith in Christ through his preaching were, by and large, men and women who showed evidence of salvation and were found following the Lord many years afterwards. When I began my ministry in Somerton Road in 1984 there were several people associated with the congregation who had professed faith in Christ at the Nicholson missions in the early 1920s.
Also, Nicholson was in many ways an ecclesiastical maverick who is not easily categorised theologically or otherwise. Nevertheless, we shall consider three aspects of his life and ministry from which, I believe, we can learn much.
HIS CHURCHMANSHIP
WP was brought up in the Irish Presbyterian Church. After his conversion he moved in interdenominational evangelical circles – the Lanarkshire Christian Union, the Chapman/Alexander campaigns and the Los Angeles Bible Institute. He was ordained by the Presbyterian Church of the USA but in time, left that church and joined Carl McIntire’s Bible Presbyterian Church. During his ministry some pulpits were barred to him – sometimes because of his doctrine, sometimes because of his style. On one occasion an invitation was withdrawn because he could not comply with the suggestion that he must use language ‘acceptable to man and glorifying to God’.
Many Nicholson converts adopted a certain pattern of church attendance, a pattern which Nicholson did not necessarily promote, although he did not discourage either. They would attend the ‘big’ church to which they traditionally belonged, even though it might be spiritually dead, for the morning service. But in the evening, they would go along to the local mission hall where they would get spiritual help and fellowship. They would attend the mid-week meeting in the ‘Hall’ and send their children to the Sunday School there, and it became their spiritual home.
HIS SPEECH
WP had a remarkable turn of phrase. We’ve already seen in our last article the unique way in which he could express deep spiritual truth in a style that made the gospel understandable to men and women who had had little schooling and education. Sometimes, however, he did seem to ‘cross the line’.
The town clerk of Lurgan was a Christian. He was entirely bald and had a habit of always arriving late for meetings. WP got very irritated with latecomers. One night, in Lurgan, he arrived late for a Nicholson meeting. He walked into the aisle and looked for a seat. Nicholson stopped the meeting and said, “Hi man, it was not combing your hair that kept you late” (1)
He had his own way of sorting out domestic strife. A woman came to him and said “Sir, my husband beats me”. He said, “I can easily remedy that. Get him to the service”. She said, “I will do my best”. He said, “the night you are in the service and he is with you, give me a nod and I will know he is there”. And sure enough one night the woman was there and a man sitting beside her. She gave WP a nod. When it came to the offering, WP said, “I have something to say: There is a man in this meeting who beats his wife. What a dirty coward and rascal he is”. Then he gave the man, without mentioning him, a dreadful dressing-down. “Now I am prepared to be generous,” he said. “As the plate is passed, I will watch what that man gives, and if he does not give a ten shilling note I will name him after the offering is lifted”. It appears that on that night the plates were filled with ten-shilling notes! (2)
Despite his frankness, it would appear however, that there were occasions on which WP was prepared to listen to advice and to tone down his outspokenness. Dr Austin Fulton in bis biography of Professor Ernest Davey, makes the following comment:
“It is said that in these circumstances (violence, sectarian strife etc) a highly placed person in the Northern Ireland Government appealed to Nicholson not to acerbate the situation by inflammatory words about the Roman Catholics and their church. Nicholson is said to have assured this person that he would be careful not to do so – he would lay off the ’Papishes’ and instead take it out on the ‘Plyms’” (3)
HIS LIFE OF PRAYER
For all his outspokenness and forthright ways there is no doubt that WP was the man who God used at a critical moment in the history of our land. What was the secret of his success? Of course we recognise that the Lord, our sovereign God, chose to use him as a mighty instrument in his hand. Nevertheless it is striking to read of WP’s life of prayer. In the secret place he was a man who prevailed upon God and sought his face often. Lindsay Glegg comments,
‘The secret of his power was no doubt in his prayer life. He stayed at our house for ten days during a campaign and he was up in the morning at six o’clock, but he never appeared until twelve noon. My wife would take up his breakfast and leave it outside his bedroom door, but it was rarely taken in. By his own special request he was not disturbed by telephone or visitor, no matter how urgent’ (4)
On another occasion the Gleggs discovered on WP’s departure that his bed sheets were torn to shreds: ‘What had happened was that while unconsciously agonising in prayer he had ripped the sheets into strips with his strong hands’ (5)
And so we pray –
‘Lord, we thank you for the life and ministry of WP Nicholson. Thank you for the many you called into your kingdom through the preaching of your faithful servant. Please, Lord, help us to prevail in prayer like him. We long to see you working mightily by your Spirit in our day’
Footnotes
(1) S W Murray, WP Nicholson: Flame for God and Ulster, p.4
(2) ibid, p.20
(3) A Fulton, A Biography of J Ernest Davey
(4) Stanley Barnes, All for Jesus: The Life of WP Nicholson, p.129
(5) ibid, p.129
