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;…
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.…
1836 HT: Christian History Institute Alexander Duff was a Scotsman who became a missionary educator in Calcutta, India, serving there for much of the nineteenth century. He set up his first school under a banyan tree and within two years had over a thousand students. However, he saw few conversions. Nonetheless, his educational methods inspired reform…
1776 HT: Christian History Institute John Newton was a slaver when he became a Christian. Some years after leaving the slave trade, he became a staunch anti-slavery man, a Minister in the Church of England, and the author of the hymn “Amazing Grace.” He also counseled people by letter. On this day, 20 June, 1776, he wrote…
1745 David Brainerd commences his influential journal when he begins to preach to the Indians at Crossweeksung (in New Jersey). 1787 Death in Haddington of John Brown, a Scottish pastor, author of the Self-Interpreting Bible—a Bible with many marginal notes and comparison of one Scripture to another. He had been a pastor who instructed his…
1896 HT: Dan Graves MAMIYELI MITSEKI GWAMBE was twelve when he left his family village in Mozambique to find work and get an education in South Africa. Living in the slums of Cape Town, he was appalled at the drunkenness and vice he witnessed, and resolved never to imbibe alcohol. The Cowley fathers (members of…
1789 HT: Dan Graves THE HONOR of evangelizing New England for the Methodists belongs to Jesse Lee. Charles Wesley preached in New England in 1736, before the Methodist movement could fairly be said to have gotten off the ground. During the next fifty years, a few other Methodists ventured into New England. None planted churches…
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. 1923 Mildred Cable and the Chinese Trio leave Hwo Chow to set out for Central Asia, uncertain what and where the…