Billy Nicholson
'The Tornado of the Pulpit'
William Patteson Nicholson (1876-1959) was a Presbyterian preacher and evangelist born in Bangor, Co Down. Nicknamed ‘The Tornado of the Pulpit’, Nicholson spent his early years on his father’s cargo ship, but began to preach in 1899 at the age of 23. He was known for his ‘men-only’ meetings and straightforward language. In the Belfast shipyard of Harland & Wolff, a ‘Nicholson shed’ was erected to house stolen tools that newly converted workers returned as a result of Nicholson’s preaching!
In the year 1900 a ‘massed band’ of four people marched out-of-step down the main street of Bangor in Northern Ireland. The two members with uniforms were Salvation Army lassies; the other two were young men. One of these men had a mind as keen as a razor’s edge; the other (according to the first) “hadn’t enough brains to give him a nucleus for a headache.”
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