180 HT: Dan Graves Vigellius Saturninus, the proconsul (Roman administrator) of North Africa in 180 A.D., spoke generously. “You can have the forgiveness of our Lord the Emperor if only you return to your senses,” he said. Speratus, one of twelve Christians who faced him, replied for the rest. “We have never done evil; we…
1739 HT: DIANA SEVERANCE David Brainerd lived only 29 years but the account of those years inspired many to follow Christ. Some, like William Carey and Henry Martyn, followed his footsteps onto the mission field. At the age of seven David began to seek the Lord. His journal shows that he struggled greatly in coming…
1924 HT: Dan Graves “I need your help, Eric.” Evangelist D. P. Thompson was urgent. “Not many men come out to the meetings. I think they would come if they knew you were going to speak.” Eric Liddell did not like to speak in public. He was shy. But he did not say anything to…
1737 HT: Dan Graves FROM THE TIME Georg Schmidt was sixteen, he had one unswerving ambition: to win souls for Christ. But he also had a penchant for getting into trouble with authorities. Born in Moravia in 1709, he walked to Herrnhut, Saxony, Germany, in the winter of 1726, to join Moravians who had migrated…
1741 HT: Dan Graves All you that never passed under a great change of heart by the mighty power of the Spirit of God upon your souls; all that were never born again, and made new creatures, and raised from being dead in sin…you are thus in the hands of an angry God; ’tis nothing…
1415 Jan Hus, Czech reformer, is burned at the stake in Constance, Germany for “heresy.” He had been outspoken in his appeals for church reform and for political and religious rights for the common people. 1527 As friends arrive for dinner, Martin Luther feels an intense buzzing in his left ear and goes to lie…
1755 HT: Dan Graves John Cennick was punched in the nose, beaten until his shoulders were black and blue, dunked in a dirty pond, sprayed with ditch water and blackened with musket smoke when he preached. Hecklers tried to drown his voice by beating drums and pans. Or they set dogs barking by swinging a…
1515 William Tyndale is created an MA. He will place the Bible above philosophy and make an English translation of God’s word that will become the basis of the Authorized version. Thomas Shepard was a seventeenth-century Pilgrim leader renowned for his power in prayer. He migrated from England to Massachusetts in 1635 and became minister…
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…