Maria Woodworth-Etter
I have been in great dangers; many times not knowing when I would be
shot down, either in the pulpit, or going to and from meetings…But I
said I would never run, nor compromise. The Lord would always put His
mighty power on me, so that He took all fear away, and made me like a
giant…If in any way they had tried to shoot, or kill me, He would have
struck them dead, and I sometimes told them so.¹
Within a short time after Maria Woodworth-Etter responded to God’s
call to “go out in the highways and hedges and gather in the lost
sheep,”² and people were thronging to hear her speak with signs and
wonders following. By 1885, without a public address system, crowds of
over twenty-five thousand pressed in to hear her minister while
hundreds fell to the ground under the power of God.³ Woodworth-Etter
not only shook up denominational religion, she rocked the secular
world with life-altering displays of God’s power.
Those who came to investigate, condemn, or harass her seemed most at
risk of “falling out” in what was described as a trance-like state.
Maria preached that these strong manifestations of the Spirit were
“nothing new; they were just something the Church had lost.” 4 She was
unwavering in her determination to break the strongholds that held
people, communities, and whole cities in bondage. It seemed the more
opposition she faced, the more she dug in her heels. Maria produced
invincible strength through tenacious prayer that enabled her to take
authority and minister with grace and power. She was known as a
revivalist who could break towns open.
Maria Woodworth-Etter did not immediately heed the Lord’s call to
evangelistic ministry in her life. As a single woman in the latter
part of the nineteenth century, she felt the need to position herself
by first obtaining an education and then marrying a missionary. Her
well thought-out plans were interrupted when her father suddenly died
in a farming accident and she was left with the burden of helping
support her family. She met P.H. Woodworth upon his return from the
Civil War, and after a brief courtship, they married and took up
farming.
Over the course of time, P.H. and Maria became the parents of six
children. Farming life proved difficult and they struggled with the
demands of making a living and raising a family. Maria was frustrated
that she couldn’t answer the call to ministry due to the demands of
her life on the farm as a wife and mother of a growing family. She
battled illness and disappointment that her husband did not share her
desire for ministry. Then overwhelming tragedy struck as the
Woodworth’s lost five of their six children to illness. P.H. never
recovered from this loss and Maria did her best to support him while
raising their only surviving daughter. Instead of growing bitter,
Maria applied the Word of God to her heart.
She came to understand through her study of the Bible that God had
used women as ministers, prophets, and leaders. From the prophecy of
Joel she read that God would pour out his Spirit on both men and
women. Still, she felt inadequate and ill-equipped to be of useful
service to the Lord. She continued to study and later wrote, “The more
I investigated, the more I found to condemn me.”5
Then Maria had a vision. Angels came into her room and took her to the
West, over prairies, lakes, forests, and rivers where she saw a long,
wide field of waving grain. As the view unfolded she began to preach
and saw the grains begin to fall like sheaves. Then Jesus told her
that, “just as the grain fell, so people would fall” as she preached.6
Finally, Maria yielded to the increasingly clear call and asked the
Lord to anoint her for ministry.
And the Lord did. Shortly after she began ministering to small groups
in her community, churches began inviting her to speak to their
congregations. The result was always a deep conviction among the
hearers as they fell to the floor weeping. Soon she was invited
westward and began traveling extensively. It wasn’t long before she
had held nine revivals, preached two hundred sermons, and started two
churches with Sunday school memberships of over one hundred people.
God honored Maria’s dedication and faithfulness restoring her heart
and the years she had lost.
But it was not until she preached at a church in western Ohio that the
meaning of her vision about the sheaves of wheat became clear. Here
the people fell into what seemed like “trances”—an altered state which
would come to profoundly mark her ministry and confound the wise of
her day. “Fifteen came to the altar screaming for mercy. Men and women
fell and lay like dead,” Maria recounted. “After laying on the floor
for some time, they sprang to their feet shouting praises to God. The
ministers and elder saints wept and praised the Lord for His
‘Pentecost Power’”7—and from that meeting on, her ministry would be
marked by this particular manifestation with hundreds miraculously
healed, and hundreds more coming to Christ.
At every meeting she held, there was a demonstration of the power of
the Spirit. One reporter wrote, “Vehicles of all sorts began pouring
into the city at an early hour—nothing short of a circus or a
political rally ever before brought in so large a crowd.”8 Maria
couldn’t answer all the invitations she received to minister, but the
ones she did accept created a national stir that has never been
silenced. The writings of then young F.F. Bosworth described the
spectacular meetings that took place in Dallas, Texas, from July
through December. As a result, Dallas became a hub of the Pentecostal
revival.
Along with Maria’s ministry success came great pressures and severe
persecution. It was during a controversial crusade in Oakland,
California—where she had met with unusually challenging opposition—she
decided to leave her unfaithful husband after his infidelity had been
exposed. After twenty-six stormy years of marriage, they were divorced
in January of 1891. In less than a year, P.H. remarried and publicly
slandered Maria’s character. He died not long after on June 21, 1892,
of Typhoid Fever.
God, however, continued to honor Maria. As she persistently sowed,
labored, and reaped a momentous harvest for the Lord, God sent her a
true friend and partner in Samuel Etter. Again her sorrow was turned
to joy as the two were married in 1902. Samuel became a vital part of
Maria’s ministry in every capacity and the two co-labored for Christ
until his death twelve years later. Maria never wavered in her
dedication to the healing and evangelistic ministry she was so
powerfully called to. She seemed invincible in her ability to carry on
in the face of tragedy and opposition. Her fame for miraculous
healings and revival services grew, as did her critics. But God
silenced them all.
She has been called the grandmother of the Pentecostal movement. None
has done more than Maria Woodworth-Etter to shed light on the
convicting power of the Holy Spirit, the role of women in ministry,
and the power of miracle crusades to revive a nation. In addition, she
brought insight on how to effectively administrate massive miracle
crusades, build sustainable ministry centers and manage opposition in
the public arena. Her commitment and dedication personally influenced
such great heroes of the faith as Smith Wigglesworth, Aimee Semple
McPherson, John Alexander Dowie, John G. Lake, E.W. Kenyon, F.F.
Bosworth, and Kathryn Kuhlman.
Her legacy is evidenced by the ongoing ministry work of healing
evangelists around the world. Though, for the last six years of her
life, she confined herself to ministering from the Tabernacle she had
erected in Indianapolis, ID, her healing anointing remained as
powerful as ever. She continued to speak with power from the Word of
God until her very last days. As she became weaker, she was carried in
a chair to the pulpit, and finally ministered a touch of healing or a
word of hope from her bed.
In 1924, at the age of eighty, Maria B. Woodworth-Etter fell into a
deep sleep and went home to be with the Lord. Her passing was mourned
by all whose lives she touched and was felt by the entire nation. She
ministered God’s healing power with the last ounce of her strength,
proclaiming God’s love with the last of her breath.
I have been in great dangers; many times not knowing when I would be
shot down, either in the pulpit, or going to and from meetings…But I
said I would never run, nor compromise. The Lord would always put His
mighty power on me, so that He took all fear away, and made me like a
giant…If in any way they had tried to shoot, or kill me, He would have
struck them dead, and I sometimes told them so.¹
Within a short time after Maria Woodworth-Etter responded to God’s
call to “go out in the highways and hedges and gather in the lost
sheep,”² and people were thronging to hear her speak with signs and
wonders following. By 1885, without a public address system, crowds of
over twenty-five thousand pressed in to hear her minister while
hundreds fell to the ground under the power of God.³ Woodworth-Etter
not only shook up denominational religion, she rocked the secular
world with life-altering displays of God’s power.
Those who came to investigate, condemn, or harass her seemed most at
risk of “falling out” in what was described as a trance-like state.
Maria preached that these strong manifestations of the Spirit were
“nothing new; they were just something the Church had lost.” 4 She was
unwavering in her determination to break the strongholds that held
people, communities, and whole cities in bondage. It seemed the more
opposition she faced, the more she dug in her heels. Maria produced
invincible strength through tenacious prayer that enabled her to take
authority and minister with grace and power. She was known as a
revivalist who could break towns open.
Maria Woodworth-Etter did not immediately heed the Lord’s call to
evangelistic ministry in her life. As a single woman in the latter
part of the nineteenth century, she felt the need to position herself
by first obtaining an education and then marrying a missionary. Her
well thought-out plans were interrupted when her father suddenly died
in a farming accident and she was left with the burden of helping
support her family. She met P.H. Woodworth upon his return from the
Civil War, and after a brief courtship, they married and took up
farming.
Over the course of time, P.H. and Maria became the parents of six
children. Farming life proved difficult and they struggled with the
demands of making a living and raising a family. Maria was frustrated
that she couldn’t answer the call to ministry due to the demands of
her life on the farm as a wife and mother of a growing family. She
battled illness and disappointment that her husband did not share her
desire for ministry. Then overwhelming tragedy struck as the
Woodworth’s lost five of their six children to illness. P.H. never
recovered from this loss and Maria did her best to support him while
raising their only surviving daughter. Instead of growing bitter,
Maria applied the Word of God to her heart.
She came to understand through her study of the Bible that God had
used women as ministers, prophets, and leaders. From the prophecy of
Joel she read that God would pour out his Spirit on both men and
women. Still, she felt inadequate and ill-equipped to be of useful
service to the Lord. She continued to study and later wrote, “The more
I investigated, the more I found to condemn me.”5
Then Maria had a vision. Angels came into her room and took her to the
West, over prairies, lakes, forests, and rivers where she saw a long,
wide field of waving grain. As the view unfolded she began to preach
and saw the grains begin to fall like sheaves. Then Jesus told her
that, “just as the grain fell, so people would fall” as she preached.6
Finally, Maria yielded to the increasingly clear call and asked the
Lord to anoint her for ministry.
And the Lord did. Shortly after she began ministering to small groups
in her community, churches began inviting her to speak to their
congregations. The result was always a deep conviction among the
hearers as they fell to the floor weeping. Soon she was invited
westward and began traveling extensively. It wasn’t long before she
had held nine revivals, preached two hundred sermons, and started two
churches with Sunday school memberships of over one hundred people.
God honored Maria’s dedication and faithfulness restoring her heart
and the years she had lost.
But it was not until she preached at a church in western Ohio that the
meaning of her vision about the sheaves of wheat became clear. Here
the people fell into what seemed like “trances”—an altered state which
would come to profoundly mark her ministry and confound the wise of
her day. “Fifteen came to the altar screaming for mercy. Men and women
fell and lay like dead,” Maria recounted. “After laying on the floor
for some time, they sprang to their feet shouting praises to God. The
ministers and elder saints wept and praised the Lord for His
‘Pentecost Power’”7—and from that meeting on, her ministry would be
marked by this particular manifestation with hundreds miraculously
healed, and hundreds more coming to Christ.
At every meeting she held, there was a demonstration of the power of
the Spirit. One reporter wrote, “Vehicles of all sorts began pouring
into the city at an early hour—nothing short of a circus or a
political rally ever before brought in so large a crowd.”8 Maria
couldn’t answer all the invitations she received to minister, but the
ones she did accept created a national stir that has never been
silenced. The writings of then young F.F. Bosworth described the
spectacular meetings that took place in Dallas, Texas, from July
through December. As a result, Dallas became a hub of the Pentecostal
revival.
Along with Maria’s ministry success came great pressures and severe
persecution. It was during a controversial crusade in Oakland,
California—where she had met with unusually challenging opposition—she
decided to leave her unfaithful husband after his infidelity had been
exposed. After twenty-six stormy years of marriage, they were divorced
in January of 1891. In less than a year, P.H. remarried and publicly
slandered Maria’s character. He died not long after on June 21, 1892,
of Typhoid Fever.
God, however, continued to honor Maria. As she persistently sowed,
labored, and reaped a momentous harvest for the Lord, God sent her a
true friend and partner in Samuel Etter. Again her sorrow was turned
to joy as the two were married in 1902. Samuel became a vital part of
Maria’s ministry in every capacity and the two co-labored for Christ
until his death twelve years later. Maria never wavered in her
dedication to the healing and evangelistic ministry she was so
powerfully called to. She seemed invincible in her ability to carry on
in the face of tragedy and opposition. Her fame for miraculous
healings and revival services grew, as did her critics. But God
silenced them all.
She has been called the grandmother of the Pentecostal movement. None
has done more than Maria Woodworth-Etter to shed light on the
convicting power of the Holy Spirit, the role of women in ministry,
and the power of miracle crusades to revive a nation. In addition, she
brought insight on how to effectively administrate massive miracle
crusades, build sustainable ministry centers and manage opposition in
the public arena. Her commitment and dedication personally influenced
such great heroes of the faith as Smith Wigglesworth, Aimee Semple
McPherson, John Alexander Dowie, John G. Lake, E.W. Kenyon, F.F.
Bosworth, and Kathryn Kuhlman.
Her legacy is evidenced by the ongoing ministry work of healing
evangelists around the world. Though, for the last six years of her
life, she confined herself to ministering from the Tabernacle she had
erected in Indianapolis, ID, her healing anointing remained as
powerful as ever. She continued to speak with power from the Word of
God until her very last days. As she became weaker, she was carried in
a chair to the pulpit, and finally ministered a touch of healing or a
word of hope from her bed.
In 1924, at the age of eighty, Maria B. Woodworth-Etter fell into a
deep sleep and went home to be with the Lord. Her passing was mourned
by all whose lives she touched and was felt by the entire nation. She
ministered God’s healing power with the last ounce of her strength,
proclaiming God’s love with the last of her breath.
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