1737 HT: Dan Graves FROM THE TIME Georg Schmidt was sixteen, he had one unswerving ambition: to win souls for Christ. But he also had a penchant for getting into trouble with authorities. Born in Moravia in 1709, he walked to Herrnhut, Saxony, Germany, in the winter of 1726, to join Moravians who had migrated…
1741 HT: Dan Graves All you that never passed under a great change of heart by the mighty power of the Spirit of God upon your souls; all that were never born again, and made new creatures, and raised from being dead in sin…you are thus in the hands of an angry God; ’tis nothing…
1415 Jan Hus, Czech reformer, is burned at the stake in Constance, Germany for “heresy.” He had been outspoken in his appeals for church reform and for political and religious rights for the common people. 1527 As friends arrive for dinner, Martin Luther feels an intense buzzing in his left ear and goes to lie…
1755 HT: Dan Graves John Cennick was punched in the nose, beaten until his shoulders were black and blue, dunked in a dirty pond, sprayed with ditch water and blackened with musket smoke when he preached. Hecklers tried to drown his voice by beating drums and pans. Or they set dogs barking by swinging a…
1515 William Tyndale is created an MA. He will place the Bible above philosophy and make an English translation of God’s word that will become the basis of the Authorized version. Thomas Shepard was a seventeenth-century Pilgrim leader renowned for his power in prayer. He migrated from England to Massachusetts in 1635 and became minister…
1555 HT: Dan Graves The sheriff feared a riot if he moved John Bradford while most people were still out in the streets. And so he had his soldiers transfer the condemned man to Newgate Prison around midnight. Despite the government’s attempt at secrecy and the late hour, thousands of the good man’s supporters lined…
1637 HT: Dan Graves ON THIS DAY, 30 JUNE 1637, William Prynne was pilloried with Henry Burton and John Bastwick. The authorities cropped the stubs of Prynne’s ears, cropped three years earlier for a libel, and he was branded with the letters “S.L.,” standing for “Seditious Libeler.” On his way back to prison, he wrote…
1315 (traditional date) Death by stoning of mystic and missionary Raymond Lull in Bougie, North Africa (Tunisia). He had been persuaded by a vision to seek the conversion of Muslims, had founded a school to train men to the task, and had studied Islamic culture. 1900 HT: Dan Graves Our missionaries have remained with us;…
Here’s this week’s inspirational delve into the past by Paul James-Griffiths of Christian Heritage Edinburgh Image: Oswald Chambers (1874-1917), contemporary photograph, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons In faraway Cairo, a much-loved chaplain to the armed forces was laid to rest in 1917 with full military honours. Here soldiers, civilians and local people alike mourned the passing…
HT: Christian History Institute In 1900, rising anti-Western feeling in China led to the Boxer (Thunder-fist) massacre of westerners, many of them Christian missionaries. Hard hit was Taiyuan in the Shanxi province of northern China, where many Chinese Christians and at least forty-five foreign missionaries were executed in July. Among them was Dr. Arnold E.…