1646 HT: Christian History Institute In seventeenth-century England, Parliament attempted to suppress Baptists for a number of reasons, among them a desire for greater religious unity. A law in 1645 forbade anyone from preaching unless they had been ordained in the Church of England or in some other reformed church. That law failed to have…
1666 HT: Dan Graves When Hugh McKail dragged himself up the scaffold for his hanging, on this day, December 22, 1666 he did so joyfully. The twenty-six-year-old Scotsman was eager to enter eternal life with God and he told the crowd so. “Now I leave off to speak any more with created beings and begin my communion…
1846 HT: Christian History Institute ONE DAY AROUND 1890, the inmates of a workhouse in Wakefield, England, crowded to windows in anticipation. Their bishop was coming to speak to them! Like people who line a street to view a parade, they were excited. They expected at the very least a magnificent coach with a team…
1903 HT: Dan Graves Fourteen year old Sundar Singh blamed the Christian God for the death of his mother. He threw filth on his Christian teachers, mocked their Scriptures, and interrupted classes. Then he made an ultimate gesture of scorn. He built a fire and page by page tore up a Bible and burned it.…
1553 HT: Dan Graves When Queen Mary Tudor came to the English throne in 1553, everyone expected she would restore the Roman Church to a nation which had become Protestant. Fearing brutality, some clergymen fled. One who stayed in England was John Philpot, archdeacon of Winchester. Assured that he could speak freely, he debated Roman…
1836 HT: Dan Graves JOHN RIPPON was an extraordinary faith-filled young man. In 1771, when he was just twenty, Carter Lane Baptist Church, Tooley Street, London, invited him to try out for their pulpit. Rippon had been a Christian just four years. He trembled at the offer because famed theologian John Gill had been the…
1737 HT: Dan Graves When Count von Zinzendorf, leader of the Moravians, became a bishop, his first official act was to ordain Peter Bohler. Neither man could have foreseen the day’s far-reaching consequences of the ceremony, which took place on this day, December 15, 1737. Peter, who had been born in Frankfort, Germany, was a graduate…
1872 HT: Dan Graves SHORTLY AFTER HE WAS BORN in Scotland, John Geddie became seriously ill and nearly died. His parents pleaded with the Lord to spare their only son, promising to devote him to the service of the Lord. The boy lived, but was such a small, timid child no one could have imagined…
1948 HT: Dan Graves IN JANUARY 1948, while attending Wheaton College in Illinois, twenty-year-old Jim Elliot began a journal which became among the most famous spiritual records of the twentieth century. Meditations on Bible readings prompted many of his entries. Word studies were the focus of other daily logs, while some mentioned books or alluded to battles with temptation. Now and then…
1640 HT: Christianity.com What is the best form of church government? Should there be bishops ruling in a hierarchical order, should each congregation be independent, should councils and synods establish church policy, or should a church be organized along some other lines? These issues were being fiercely debated in England in the seventeenth century. On December…