1921 HT: Dan Graves On this day, January 6, 1921, Alexander Whyte died quietly in his sleep. The eighty-five-year-old Scotsman had risen from poverty and illegitimacy to become one of the most prominent pastors in Scotland. His faith began when he was young. Sunday mornings, his hardworking mother, Janet Thomson, took him to the Free…
1743 HT: Dan Graves Muscle-builders and pregnant women know that anyone who grows too fast is liable to get stretch marks. Organizations that grow too rapidly can get stretch marks, too. That was the case with the Welsh Methodists in the early 1740s. Converts were coming in so fast that revival leaders were unsure how…
1934 HT Dan Graves After Hitler came to power, he confronted Christians in Germany with uncomfortable choices. At first, few pastors seemed to recognize where Hitler was taking the church. He sought to co-opt both Lutheran and Reformed churches to support his National Socialist Party. Many church people supported him. Sick of the decadence that had…
1560 HT: Dan Graves When Luther’s Reformation began in Germany, it was inevitable that his ideas would seep through border cracks into neighboring Scandinavia. The most vigilant efforts of Denmark’s government and its established church could not stop German ideas, books, and preachers from slipping into the country. A shoemaker’s son was the chief…
1625 HT: Dan Graves No doubt it was with some nervousness that John Livingstone preached his first sermon on this day, 2 January 1625 in his father’s pulpit at Kilsyth, Scotland. But his most famous sermon would come five years later. Born a minister’s son in 1603, John Livingstone decided at a young age to follow Christ.…
1519 The Swiss Reformation begins when Huldrych Zwingli assumes his duties as priest of Zurich and begins preaching through the Bible. 1826 HT: Dan Graves David Nasmith‘s heart was broken. 19th-century Scotland was rich in Industry. But when the 27-year-old man looked around his native Glasgow, it was not industrial wealth he saw, but spiritual…
1782 HT: Christian History Institute David Zeisberger was a Moravian missionary to America who won many converts among Native Americans and who founded several towns, including Goshen, Ohio. He also kept a diary that has proven invaluable to later historians. The year 1782 was marred by war and by the cold-blooded massacre of over eighty…
1384 HT: Dan Severance John Wycliffe: Reformation Morningstar John Wycliffe, heralded as the “Morning star of the Reformation” was the leading philosopher of the 14th century and an English priest. There were many reformers throughout the history of the Christian church and all of the great ones that we will look at in the next…
1876 HT: Dan Graves “Right here let me notice that some say I’m preaching for effect. That’s what I am doing. I want to affect you; I want to rouse you out of your death-sleep, when I warn you to prepare to meet your God; for “in such hour as you think not the Son of man…
1737 HT: Christian History Institute John Gill was converted to the Christian faith at twelve years of age; at nineteen he made a public confession of faith. Those who knew him assumed he would be a preacher because his nose was always in a book. Gill did indeed become a pastor, accepting a call to…