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…
1685 HT: Dan Graves When John Wycliffe sent his barefoot preachers throughout England in the 14th-century, carrying the Scripture in English, and calling for real heart changes, his message crossed the border into Scotland. There Murdoch Nisbet heard and believed. He acquired one of the rare English-language manuscripts of the Bible. Murdoch’s son, grandson and…
1882 HT: Dan Graves Never mind that father had forbidden it. Father was far away. Nine year old Titus Coan was going sledding with a friend on a frozen pond. Out onto the ice he whizzed. It broke. Titus could not find the bottom and rose to the surface, screaming for help. His friend was…
1803 HT: Natalie Tunbridge Henry Martyn, later to become a remarkable missionary, is ordained and given charge of a church at Lolworth, Cambridgeshire, England. The missionary life of Henry Martyn is one of single-minded perseverance to obey the call of God, laborious allegiance to the Word of God, and most importantly, a passionate love for…
1721 HT: Dan Graves On the west coast of Greenland, in the tundra zone about one hundred and fifty miles south of the arctic circle, a new colony was being built. Europeans had established a presence in Greenland as early as 980 under Eric the Red. Severe winters and the problems of maintaining trade caused…
1791 HT: Dan Graves ONE OF THE MOST CURIOUS STORIES to come out of colonial-era America was that of John Marrant, a free African American. He may have been the first African American ordained as a pastor. Born in New York in 1755, he was four years old when his father died and his mother…
1911 HT: Dan Graves F. W. Boreham was a Baptist pastor who once held the record as Australia’s most prolific author. Many of Boreham’s essays take small things as their starting point to display the goodness of God. Boreham was born in England in 1871, on the day that the Franco-Prussian war ended. His…
1549 HT: Dan Graves Elizabeth Dirks was a trailblazer and a woman of great courage. Raised in a nunnery in East Friesland, she learned to read Latin and read the Bible through and through. She became certain that monasticism was not the way taught in Scripture. With the help of milkmaids she escaped and became…
1805 HT: Dan Graves When France suppressed its Protestant Huguenots, they scattered around the world. Many wound up in the young United States. Several presidents, the first chief justice of the United States (John Jay) and many other famous men boasted Huguenot blood. George Washington Bethune, born on this day, March 18, 1805 in New York City,…