☧ Today in Christian History
@HistoricalRook
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“The Lord bless you and keep you; The Lord make His face shine upon you, And be gracious to you; The Lord lift up His countenance upon you, And give you peace.”
Numbers 6:24-26
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October 17, 107:
Ignatius of Antioch was fed to the beasts in Rome.
“Nearness to the sword is nearness to God; to be among the wild beasts is to be in the arms of God; only let it be in the name of Jesus Christ. I endure all things that I may suffer together with him, since
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June 7, 1891:
English Baptist Charles H. Spurgeon, who preached to (on average) 6,000 people at each of his services, delivers his last sermon at London's Metropolitan Tabernacle.
“Those who have no master are slaves to themselves. Depend upon it, you will either serve
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October 31, 1517:
Martin Luther nails a challenge to a debate on the Wittenberg church door. It consists of ninety-five statements, or theses, against the practice of indulgences—theses which he is willing to defend. The theses will be widely distributed and precipitate the
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November 12, 1660:
John Bunyan is arrested for unlicensed preaching and sentenced to prison. While incarcerated, he penned Pilgrim's Progess and Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, the greatest Puritan spiritual autobiography.
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December 10, 1520:
German reformer Martin Luther publicly burns Pope Leo X's bull "Exsurge Domine," which had demanded that Luther recant his heresies—including justification by faith alone.
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April 16, 1521:
German reformer Martin Luther arrives at the Diet of Worms, convinced he would get the hearing he requested in 1517 to discuss the abuse of indulgences and his "95 Theses." He was astounded when he discovered it would not be a debate, but rather a judicial
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February 23, 155:
(traditional date)
Polycarp, the bishop of Smyrna, is martyred. Reportedly a disciple of the Apostle John, at age 86 he was taken to be burned at the stake. "You try to frighten me with fire that burns for an hour and forget the fire of hell that never
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November 13, 1618:
The Dutch Reformed Church convenes the Synod of Dort to settle the controversy over Arminianism.
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June 19, 1834:
Baptist preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon, one of the greatest preachers and orators of the nineteenth century, is born.
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June 13, 1525:
German reformer, Martin Luther, formerly a monk, marries Katherine von Bora, formerly a nun, who had escaped from her convent in a fish barrel.
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February 18, 1678:
Puritan preacher John Bunyan publishes The Pilgrim's Progress, the best-selling book (apart from the Bible) in history. The allegorical tale, which describes Bunyan's own conversion process, begins, "I saw a man clothed with rags … a book in his hand and
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April 9, 1945:
Lutheran pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer is hanged at Flossenburg, only days before the American liberation of the POW camp. The last words of the courageous 39-year-old opponent of Nazism were “This is the end—for me, the beginning of life.”
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June 26, 1932
Francis Schaeffer attends a Presbyterian church meeting where a Unitarian spoke out against the truth of the Bible and its teachings. A young lady named Edith had prepared a rebuttal, but before she could speak…
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December 31, 1384:
John Wycliffe, pre-Reformer who initiated the first complete translation of the Bible into English and influenced Hus, Luther and Calvin, dies at about 64. He was condemned at the council of Constance (1415), and his body was disinterred and burned.
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May 2, 373:
Church father Athanasius, "the father of Orthodoxy," dies. He attended the Council of Nicea, and after becoming bishop of Alexandria, he fought Arianism and won. He was also the first to list the New Testament canonical books as we know them today.
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May 27, 1564:
John Calvin, French Protestant Reformer, dies.
He kept writing and ministering to the Christians in Geneva nearly up to his death, telling his worried friends,
"What! Would you have the Lord find me idle when he comes?"
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November 28, 1628:
English preacher John Bunyan, author of more than 60 books, including the famous Pilgrim's Progress, is born in Elstow, England.
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November 24, 1572:
Death in Edinburgh of John Knox, the most notable of the reformers of Scotland.
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November 23, 1654:
French thinker Blaise Pascal undergoes a profound religious conversion, which he records on paper, giving the date and time, followed by the words:
“Fire. The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. Not of the philosophers and intellectuals.
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June 7, 1891
English Baptist Charles H. Spurgeon, who preached to (on average) 6,000 people at each of his services for 30 years, delivers his last sermon at London's Metropolitan Tabernacle.
His last sermon ended in these words:
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5/15, 1984
American theologian, philosopher, & Presbyterian pastor Francis A. Schaeffer dies in Rochester, Minnesota. Many of his books, which include The God Who is There (1968) and How Should We Then Live (1976), argue that moral relativity is responsible for social ills
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December 10, 1520
German reformer Martin Luther publicly burns Pope Leo X’s bull Exsurge Domine, which demands that Luther recant his “heresies,” including justification by faith alone.
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November 2, 1533:
Harried by Catholic authorities, John Calvin flees Paris by lowering himself out a window with a bedsheet rope and disguising himself as a farmer, complete with a hoe over his shoulder. He spent three years as a fugitive before settling in Geneva.
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February 23, 155
Martyrdom of Polycarp, an early Church Father who was a disciple of the Apostle John. Arrested at age 86, Polycarp was burned at the stake for refusing to deny the Christian faith.
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February 22, 1649:
The Westminster Assembly adjourns, having held one thousand one hundred and sixty three sessions over a period of five years, six months, and twenty-two days. They were known for their solemn fasts and long hours of prayer.
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May 16, 1540:
German reformer Martin Luther remarked:
'In the worst temptations nothing can help us but faith that God's Son has put on flesh, is bone, sits at the right hand of the Father, and prays for us. There is no mightier comfort.'
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October 19, 1512: Martin Luther receives his Doctor of Theology degree from the University of Wittenberg.
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June 15, 1520
In the papal encyclical "Exsurge Domine," Leo X condemns Martin Luther on 41 of counts of heresy, branding him an enemy of the Roman Catholic Church. After the encyclical, Luther's works were burned in Rome.
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October 16, 1555:
English reformers Nicholas Ridley and Hugh Latimer are burned at the stake under the government of Queen Mary.
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February 6, 1564:
Carried to church in a chair, John Calvin preaches his last sermon three months before his death.
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February 4, 1555:
English reformer and theologian John Rogers becomes the first Protestant martyr under "Bloody" Mary I when he is burned at the stake for heresy.
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June 9, 1834:
William Carey, often called "the father of modern Protestant missions" dies, having spent 41 years in India without a furlough.
His mission could count only about 700 converts, but he had laid a foundation of Bible translations, education, and social
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May 3, 1738:
English preacher George Whitefield, the most famous religious figure of the 1700s, arrives in America for his first of seven visits. In his lifetime, Whitefield preached at least 18,000 times to perhaps 10 million hearers.
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May 11, 1926:
J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis have their first long chat. Five years afterward, Lewis converts to Christ. Later the two men, with a group of friends and colleagues, will become members of the Inklings, a predominantly Christian group at Oxford.
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March 10, 1748:
John Newton, the captain of a slave ship, converts to Christianity during a huge storm at sea. He had been reading Thomas a Kempis's The Imitation of Christ, and was struck by a line about the "uncertain continuance of life." He eventually became an Anglican
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October 21, 1532:
German reformer Martin Luther:
'For some years now I have read through the Bible twice every year. If you picture the Bible to be a mighty tree and every word a little branch, I have shaken every one of these branches because I wanted to know what it was
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August 12, 1859
Ashbel Green Simenton lands in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. “What can one or two missionaries accomplish in an empire as large as the United States?” he had asked. “The work is so perfectly hopeless by mere human agency that they who undertake it must either find
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February 28, 1944:
Nazi soldiers arrest Dutch Christian Corrie ten Boom and her family for harboring Jews. Corrie was the only member of her family who survived internment in concentration camps. Corrie will become an international speaker for Christianity, author of The
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November 9, 1572:
Fifteen days before his death, John Knox preaches his last sermon in Edinburgh.
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November 12, 1704:
Forty-two year old Matthew Henry writes in his journal that he means to prepare a commentary on the entire Scripture. A couple days later he adds, “I set about it, that I may endeavour something and spend my time to some good purpose and let the Lord make
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December 20, 1560:
The Scottish Reformed Church, organized with the help of John Knox, holds its first assembly.
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January 21, 1672:
A Bedford, England, congregation calls John Bunyan as its pastor. He is in prison at the time for preaching.
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January 27, 417:
Pelagius, a British theologian, is excommunicated for heresy. He was condemned for denying original sin and claiming that men could become righteous purely by the exercise of free will.
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February 9, 1958:
David Wilkerson, a pastor in Pennsylvania, decides to sell his TV and pray two hours a night. He goes on to do a notable work among the gangs of New York City. He was the founder of the addiction recovery program Teen Challenge, and founding pastor of Times
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May 6, 1619:
The Canons of Dort, a Calvinist response to the Arminian Remonstrance, are promulgated in Dort’s Great Church before a large congregation.
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November 20, 1850:
Blind Fanny Crosby becomes a Christian following a disconcerting dream in which a dying friend makes her promise to meet him in heaven. Attending a Methodist service, she seeks assurance at the altar and she is flooded with joy, and leaps up, shouting
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November 13, 354:
Birth of Augustine of Hippo, greatest of the Early Latin Church Fathers. Of his many writings, two have endured: "Confessions" describes the circumstances leading to his conversion to the Christian faith, and "The City of God" was written as a Christian
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January 8, 1956:
Missionaries Jim Elliot, Nate Saint, Roger Youderian, Ed McCully, and Pete Fleming are killed by Ecuadorean Indians they sought to evangelize. The story of the missionaries and their deaths along the Curaray River was publicized by Elliot's widow,
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February 18, 1546:
Death in Eisleben of German reformer Martin Luther.
Luther’s last preserved writing was found on a table after he had died. The little scrap of paper contained just a few sentences and ended with these words: “We are beggars. That is the truth.”
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May 4, 1521:
Traveling home from the Diet of Worms, Martin Luther is taken into protective custody by order of German ruler Frederick the Wise and held at Wartburg, where he will translate the Bible into German.
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January 6, 1850:
Charles Spurgeon, who would become one of the greatest preachers of all time, converts to Christianity after receiving a vision, "not a vision to my eyes, but to my heart. I saw what a Savior Christ was," he wrote, "I can never tell you how it was, but I no
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April 30, 304:
The last and most punishing anti-Christian edict during Roman Emperor Diocletian's reign is published. The ensuing carnage was so horrific that it was said even the coliseum lions got tired. The man behind the edict, Augustus Galerius, finally issued an edict
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May 27, 1564
John Calvin, French Protestant Reformer and theologian, dies. He kept writing and ministering to the Christians in Geneva nearly up to his death, telling his worried friends, "What! Would you have the Lord find me idle when he comes?"
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July 30, 1547
John Knox is captured by the French. He had become the chaplain of the killers of Cardinal Beaton of St. Andrews. When the French capture their castle, he is sentenced to the galleys. Eventually he will escape the galleys to become a leader of the Scottish
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March 11, 1812:
Fire engulfs missionary William Carey's print shop in Serampore, India, destroying his massive polyglot dictionary, two grammar books, sets of type for 14 eastern languages, and whole versions of the Bible. Undaunted, Carey said, "The loss is heavy, but as
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May 15, 1984:
American evangelical and apologist Francis A. Schaeffer dies in Rochester, Minnesota. With his wife, Edith, he had operated L’Abri, a ministry to intellectuals. His most important book may have been his smallest, Escape from Reason (1968), which caused many
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April 15, 1892:
Dutch devotional writer Corrie ten Boom, known for hiding Jewish refugees in her home during World War II (an act dramatized in the 1971 film The Hiding Place) is born. She also died on this date, age 91, in 1983.
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March 2, 1938:
Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller, one of the founders of Germany's "Confessing Church," is sentenced to seven months in prison for opposing Hitler. "First they came for the socialists and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist," he said. "Then they
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March 29, 1788:
Death of Charles Wesley in London. An evangelist like his more famous brother, John, he also wrote many hymns of the highest quality.
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March 21, 1556:
After denying earlier forced recantations, Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer, a crucial figure in the English Reformation and author of the Book of Common Prayer, is burned at the stake by Queen Mary. He reportedly thrust his arm into the
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June 1, 165:
(traditional date)
Justin, an early Christian apologist, is beheaded with his disciples for their faith.
"If we are punished for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ, we hope to be saved," he said just before his death.
Christians soon named him Justin Martyr.
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October 7, 1857:
Spurgeon preaches to his largest congregation ever, more than twenty-three thousand, at the Crystal Palace.
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April 21, 1855:
Sunday school teacher Edward Kimball visits the Holton Shoe Store in Boston, Massachusetts, where Dwight L. Moody works, finds him in a stockroom, and speaks to him of the love of Christ. Shortly thereafter, Moody is converted and devotes his life to serving
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March 9, 320
(traditional date):
Roman soldiers leave Christian soldiers naked on the ice of a frozen pond in Sebaste, Armenia.They placed baths of hot water around them to tempt them to renounce their faith. When one did so, a pagan guard—inspired by the fortitude of the
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March 6, 1901:
Amy Carmichael, serving as a missionary in India, shelters her first temple runaway, a young girl dedicated to the Hindu gods and forced into prostitution to earn money for the priests.
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May 2, 1559:
John Knox, having spent several years on the Continent studying and writing, returns to Scotland to help lead the Reformation there.
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February 5, 1864:
Having already established herself as a poet, 44-year-old Fanny Crosby pens her first hymn. She went on to write 8,000 more before her death 50 years later.
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October 1, 1529:
The Colloquy of Marburg, which attempted to unify the followers of Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli, begins. It would close in failure October 4. While the Reformers agreed on 14 of the 15 articles, they remained divided over the Lutheran doctrine of the
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May 8, 303:
Torture and beheading of Victor of Milan, a soldier in the Roman army, because he had revealed his Christian faith by destroying pagan altars.
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February 28, 1638:
Scotland’s national covenant is signed at Greyfriars Kirk, Edinburgh, giving rise to the Covenanter movement among Scottish Presbyterians, insisting that Christ, not the king of England, is head of the church. Eighteen thousand will be martyred for this
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April 26, 1877:
Residents of Minnesota observe a statewide day of prayer, set by Governor John Sargent Pillsbury, imploring deliverance from a plague of grasshoppers that has been ravaging their crops. Many families are on the verge of starvation. In the next two days warm
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April 11, 1836:
George Mueller, leader of the Plymouth Brethren movement, opens his famous orphanage on Wilson Street in Bristol. By 1875, Mueller's orphanage provided care for over 2,000 children, a work sustained not by regular fundraising but by thousands of "answers to
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November 29, 1898:
Christian writer and scholar C.S. Lewis, one of modern Christianity's best-loved writers, is born in Belfast, Ireland.
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October 22, 1903:
Death of Susannah Spurgeon, wife of English Baptist preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon. Their marriage had lasted thirty-six years, until Charles’ death in 1892, and she had engaged in many minstries alongside her husband. By the time she died in 1903,
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April 29, 1764:
John Newton is ordained a deacon in the Church of England. He had been a slaver at the time of his conversion to Christ.
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December 3, 1557:
Under the leadership of John Knox, Protestants in Scotland sign their First Covenant at Edinburgh, uniting Presbyterians under the name: “Congregation of the Lord.”
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January 31, 1892:
Death near Nice, France, of Charles Spurgeon, a Baptist minister considered one of the greatest preachers of all time.
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“Christ died - that is history; Christ died for our sins - that is doctrine. Without these two elements, joined in an absolutely indissoluble union, there is no Christianity.”
-J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism
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May 26, 1521:
The Edict of Worms formally condemns Martin Luther's teachings and he is put under the ban of the Holy Roman Emperor.
Those who fear for his life then kidnap Luther and hide him in Frederick’s Wartburg castle.
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…Francis stood up and shredded the speaker's arguments. Edith was impressed, and after she read her remarks, Francis was impressed as well. He walked her home—the beginning of their lifelong relationship and ministry together.
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June 1, 597:
Ethelbert, an Anglo-Saxon king, is baptized, having converted to Christianity weeks earlier.
In the late ninth century Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, he is referred to as a bretwalda, or "Britain-ruler".
He was the first English king to convert to Christianity.
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April 24, 387:
On this day, Augustine of Hippo writes in his autobiographical Confessions, "We were baptized and all anxiety for our past life vanished away." The 33-year-old had been a teacher of rhetoric and philosophy at some of the Roman Empire's finest schools, but
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May 16, 1569:
Dirk Willem is burned at the stake in his native Netherlands for his Anabaptist faith, captured because he turned to save a pursuer who had fallen through the ice. The very man he rescued had taken him captive.
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March 22, 1758:
Jonathan Edwards, America's greatest theologian, dies from the effects of a smallpox vaccination after arriving in New Jersey to accept the presidency of what is now Princeton University.
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April 18, 1587:
English Protestant historian John Foxe, author of Actes and Monuments of Matters Happenning to the Church (the shorter version is now known as Foxe's Book of Martyrs), dies at age 71.
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April 19, 1854;
Nineteen-year-old English Baptist preacher, C.H. (Charles Haddon) Spurgeon, is called to pastor the New Park Chapel in London, one of the city's largest churches.
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June 11, 1632:
John Owen graduates BA from Oxford University.
He becomes one of the leading non-conformist preachers of his day and the author of many theological works.
A Calvinist, he will strongly oppose Arminian views.
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March 9, 1522:
Martin Luther begins preaching his "Invocavit Sermons" in the German city of Wittenberg, reminding citizens to trust God's word rather than violence,marking a pivotal moment in the Reformation.
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April 20, 1718:
Birth of David Brainerd, colonial American missionary to the Indians of New England. Following his premature death from tuberculosis at 29, Brainerd's journal (published in 1649 by the Jonathan Edwards) influenced hundreds to become missionaries after him.
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September 21, 1522
Martin Luther, 36, first published his German translation of the New Testament. (Luther's translation of the entire Bible was completed in 1534)
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March 25, 1625:
England's King James I dies. In 1604, at the Hampton Court Conference, James authorized the translation project that produced the 1611 King James (Authorized) Version of the Bible.
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February 7, 1649:
The British Parliament ratifies the Westminster Confession which had been accepted by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland the previous August.
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May 6, 1619
The Canons of Dort, a Calvinist response to the Arminian Remonstrance, are promulgated in Dort’s Great Church before a large congregation.
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April 19, 1560:
German reformer Philip Melanchthon dies. The leader of the German reformation after the death of his friend, Martin Luther, Melanchthon composed the Augsburg Confession of 1530. He called for Lutherans and Zwinglians to put aside their differences for the
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April 18, 1521
Martin Luther makes his bold declaration, “Here I stand!” at a second hearing before emperor Charles V at the Diet of Worms.
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March 26, 1555
Nineteen-year-old William Hunter is burned to death in Brentwood, England, under Queen Mary. He had resisted both threats and bribes. He died with Psalm 51 on his lips and told his brother, “I am not afraid”.
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