1877 HT: Dan Graves William Strong was born on this day, March 3, 1877, to Presbyterian parents. His father had done mission work in South America for two years, but a breakdown in health sent him back to America. There he founded an insurance company. Following in his father’s footsteps, William sold insurance, too. He joined a church…
1724 HT: Dan Graves If Beethoven is the poster child for unexpected results from a faulty ancestry, Henry Venn could stand for predictable results from a good line. His great-great grandfather William Venn became a Protestant clergyman during the Reformation. William’s son Richard was dispossessed of his church position by Parliament because he favored the…
1534 HT: Dan Graves William Farel was a fiery Reformation evangelist in Western Switzerland. Born in France in 1489, he converted to Protestant beliefs in part through the teaching of Jacques Lefèvre d’ Étaples, a French philosopher and Biblical scholar. Without formal ordination, Farel immediately began to preach the gospel zealously in Paris and throughout…
1546 George Wishart, a Scottish reformer, is arrested by Roman Catholic authorities, and will be burned to death as a heretic the next day by order of Cardinal David Beaton. 1638 HT: Dan Graves Scotland took seriously the religious reforms introduced in the sixteenth century by John Knox, which included church rule by elders. When…
398 HT: Dan Graves John Chrysostom resisted, pleaded. The Imperial messengers were deaf to his pleas. They had their secret orders. He was coming with them whether he wished it or not. Outside Antioch they transferred him into a royal chariot and rode for Constantinople. There, in the capital of the Roman Empire he…
1945 HT: Dan Graves In China, Eric Liddell asked his students if they believed Christ’s Sermon on the Mount. When they said they did, he would say “let’s add it on to the end of the Apostles Creed and when you finish saying the Apostles Creed say, ‘I believe in the Sermon on the Mount’.” This…
1636 HT: Dan Graves Not many pastors rise at 3 A.M. to be sure they have sufficient time for God and their people. Samuel Rutherford was one who did. Thus it came as a great blow to him when he was compelled to leave the folk he loved. Rutherford had published an Apology of Divine Grace against…
1678 HT: Dan Graves Next to the Bible, John Bunyan’s allegory of a pilgrim toiling toward the Celestial City is the best-selling Christian book ever written. Like the King James Bible, Pilgrim’s Progress gave the English language many phrases. “Vanity Fair,” for example, became the title of William Makepeace Thackeray’s best-known novel and of a British magazine.…
1688 HT: Dan Graves An estimated eighteen thousand Scots Covenanters died for their faith between 1660, when the Restoration made Charles II monarch of England, and 1688, when the “Glorious Revolution” brought William III and Mary to the throne. Covenanters believed that Jesus, not any earthly king, was head of the church. For this they…
1497 HT: Dan Graves NEXT TO MARTIN LUTHER, one man did more than all others to create Lutheran theology. That was Philip Melanchthon, who was born on this day, 16 February 1497 in the little town of Bretten, Germany. Someone noted that the time was six minutes after 7 p.m. He had godly parents, his father…