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 to the First Church in Cambridge. Harvard College was originally located near him because of the good results coming out of his ministry.
Shepard died young because of abscesses from severe tonsillitis. On this day July 2 of an unspecified year, he wrote:
“I saw it to be my duty not only to pray from time to time, but actually to live by prayer. To live by prayer for myself, and for my family, and for my church. And I saw that my heart was at last conformed to the mind and the will of God in that respect. And I went on to consider in what ways I might henceforth live by prayer alone.”
1865
William Booth preaches the first of nine sermons in a ragged tent pitched on an unused Quaker graveyard. The name of his organization is the East London Christian Mission, precursor of the Salvation Army.
(Authority for the date: Hattersley, Roy. Blood and Fire: William and Catherine Booth and their Salvation Army. Doubleday, 1999)
1921
At Zang Xien, China, Wang Ming-dao preaches his first public sermon, taking as his text, “Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand.” He will become the “father” of China’s house church movement, rejecting assimilation into the official Communist-controlled Three-Self Patriotic Church system.
(Authority for the date: Lyall, Leslie T. Three of China’s Mighty Men)