William P. Nicholson

From Seafaring Rebel to Soul-Stirring Evangelist

By: Michael Yeager

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

He cursed like a sailor because he was one.
Born in 1876 to a ship-owning family in Bangor, County Down, William Patteson Nicholson spent his youth on cargo ships, drinking, brawling, and running from the God his mother prayed he would find. Then, on a Monday morning in May 1899, sitting at her fireside, the Holy Spirit seized him—suddenly, consciously, powerfully—and the rebel became a revivalist.

Known as “the Tornado of the Pulpit,” Nicholson preached with a directness that scandalized the religious establishment and electrified the working class. During the Ulster revival of 1921–1923, his campaigns drew thousands nightly in cities torn by civil violence. Shipyard workers at Harland & Wolff returned stolen tools by the wagonload—so many that a special shed had to be built to hold them. Contemporaries claimed he did “more for the peace of Ulster than military and guns.”
Twelve times around the world he carried the gospel—from Belfast to Los Angeles, from Sydney to Dublin—armed with nothing but plain speech, ferocious prayer, and an unshakeable conviction that whatsoever means whatsoever and whosoever means whosoever.

Told entirely in Nicholson’s own voice and drawn from his surviving sermons, this first-person autobiography takes you inside the mind and heart of a man who prayed six hours before he preached, who wept over sinners and roared at hypocrites, and who never—in sixty years of ministry—got used to men and women going to hell.

His gravestone tells the whole story in three words: Born again, 22nd May 1899.