1565
The Huguenots were converted out of Catholic France when preachers brought Bibles and the Calvinist doctrines of predestination and justification by faith from Switzerland. Growth of this Reform church was rapid in Gallic lands. Within a hundred years it had won a million and a half converts.
Some French leaders saw in the emergence of this sect a chance to catapult themselves to power. Unfortunately, this led to a succession of wars in which the Huguenots, fighting against overwhelming odds, won enough victories to force concessions from Catholic France, but never took the throne. One of these concessions was the Edict of Nantes. Gradually it was gnawed away by government officials and overzealous prelates. Consequently many Huguenots began to migrate overseas, hoping to improve their lot.
Of all the Christian sects which emerged from the Reformation, the Anabaptists and Huguenots suffered the most. The atrocities committed against both have filled books. One of the bloodiest and most senseless acts of butchery against the Huguenots occurred in Florida on this day September 20, 1565.
Colonies of Huguenots had struggled to establish themselves in Florida for several years. The Huguenots at St. Johns expected trouble when Spanish captain Pedro Menéndez sailed into the area. Spain, after all, claimed the New World and had no use for the French and especially French Protestants.
One leader of the Huguenots, Laudonnière, wanted to throw up a fort. He was overruled by Ribault, commander of the whole expedition. Ribault had determined on a naval battle (he had seven ships). Unfortunately Ribault’s ships were wrecked in a storm and the unhappy Huguenot refugees on shore were left to fend for themselves.
Menéndez landed with 2,600 men. He butchered all the men he could lay hands on but spared women and children. Laudonnière fled with a few men in a small remaining boat and eventually reached France. Ribault and those who had escaped the shipwreck, about 350 in all, asked for terms of surrender. Menendez said they must trust themselves to his mercy. It appears he swore an oath to spare them. Two hundred who distrusted him fled into the wilderness. The rest surrendered.
Ribault reminded Menéndez that Spain and France were at peace. That mattered little to the cruel Spaniard. Menéndez wrote the king: “I had their hands tied behind their backs and themselves put to the sword. It appeared to me that by thus chastising them, God our Lord and your Majesty were served. Whereby this evil sect will in future leave us more free to plant the gospel in these parts.” When the matter became known in Europe there was a tremendous outcry from all decent men, Catholic and Protestant alike.
The remaining 200 Huguenots put up such fierce resistance that they were finally promised their lives if they surrendered. They were consigned to the Spanish galleys.
1838
IN 1828 Ramavo, a woman of the royal line, seized power in Madagascar through a well-planned coup. She took the name Queen Ranavalona. Her policies would be brutal and anti-Christian. Because “Christian” nations such as the Netherlands, Britain, and France had imposed their rule on much of Africa, often aided by Christian missionaries, she was deeply suspicious of Christians. In 1835 she forbade her subjects to practice Christianity and imposed a number of strictures on Christian missionaries.
Soon Madagascar’s queen went further, forcing all Christian missionaries to leave. She required Christian converts among her people to renounce Christianity and return to ancestral paganism. Those who did not had their property confiscated and were either enslaved or killed, often with cruel tortures. Some were tested with ritual poison, from which many died.
One who would not relinquish her Christian faith was Marie Rafaravavy. Maids had denounced her. However, Rafaravavy’s father, a pagan with power at court, interceded for his daughter and threw the maids into prison. Rafaravavy pleaded in their behalf and got them freed. Two became Christian converts as a result. The queen fined Rafaravavy half what she would have fetched if sold as a slave.
In 1837, open persecution of Christians flared again. Banned religious writings were unearthed at Rafaravavy’s home. After imprisoning the Christian woman for several days, the queen ruled that all Rafaravavy’s property could be seized by the public. Rafaravavy learned of this when people arrived and began plundering her house. Someone even seized the house itself and moved it to a new location. Rafaravavy was sentenced to die by spearing the next day. However, the capital city caught fire that night with extensive damage. All governmental business was postponed and Rafaravavy was forgotten for several months.
Eventually, because she was of noble blood, Rafaravavy was sold into slavery rather than being executed. Her master allowed her to do as she pleased and she conducted secret Christian services, praying and reading from translations of the Bible and of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress.
The general tenor of Rafaravavy’s thought during these sufferings was:
Did not the Savior forewarn us that we should incur the hatred of all men for his sake? The Son of God has died in our stead, and that will shortly redeem us from all our sufferings. I know in whom I have believed; and though my blood be shed, the word of God must prosper in this country. Pray for me, that if it be the Lord’s will I should suffer now, that he would take my soul to himself; but that, if I am spared, I may live more than ever to his glory.
Denounced once again, she fled with several Christian companions, hiding in caves for several months where they encouraged one another by reading pages torn out of Bibles and hidden in their clothes. However, this mode of subsistence could no longer be maintained. On this day 20 September 1838, she went to Tamatave to meet Mr. Johns, formerly of the London Missionary Society. The following month, with his help and the help of Ramiandrahasina, a Christian officer, Rafaravavy and her associates escaped from Madagascar by ship to Mauritania. They sailed to England by way of South Africa.
She reached Walthamshow, England, with her friends Sarah Razafy, David Ratsarahomba, Simeona Andrianomanana, and Josefa Rasoamaka. In 1842 Rafaravavy returned to Mauritania, hoping that circumstances on Madagascar would improve. They did not and so she worked among her country’s refugees there until she died, just forty years old, in 1848.
Queen Ranavalona continued to rule in Madagascar until her death in 1861. She went down in history as one of the most murderous monarchs who ever lived. More than half of her subjects died (an estimated two and a half million deaths) either directly at her instigation or through her oppressive policies and her greedy mismanagement of the island nation, which led to widespread starvation and banditry.
1871
John Coleridge Patteson was deeply distressed. Wicked white sailors were grabbing natives of the Pacific islands as workers in various plantations. “The deportation of natives is going on to a very great extent here as in the New Hebrides and Banks Islands,” he wrote. “Means of all kinds are employed: sinking canoes and capturing the natives, enticing men on board, and getting them below, and then securing hatches and imprisoning them. Natives are retaliating.” John noted that some islands had few men left. John and other missionaries pleaded to no avail for an end to the dreadful system.
On September 16th, 1871 John’s ship lay off the Santa Cruz group, a place where every effort to start a mission work had failed. He wrote, saying, “You can enter into my thoughts, how I pray God that if it be His will, and if it be the appointed time, He may enable us in his own way to begin some little work among these very wild but vigorous energetic islanders.” He did not think that he was in much danger, for the islanders remembered him from previous visits, even if they did not comprehend why he came to them.
John was in the Pacific as a missionary. Born in 1827, he was a reared by godly parents who used patience, explanation and other forms of discipline to overcome his natural laziness and flaring temper. In 1855, he heard bishop Selwyn speak of the need for workers in the islands of the Pacific Ocean. He made up his mind to become one of those workers. A year later, he was in the islands.
The young man undertook an enormous amount of work. He toured and preached on the islands many times, mastered twenty-three Polynesian languages and ran the mission college. Selwyn had decided that the way to spread the gospel was to bring young men of the islands to a central location and there to convert them and teach them the gospel to carry back to their own people.
John was a key worker in this plan. Although he worked hard, he was wise enough to realize that results might not appear immediately. “Our Saviour, the first of all Christian Missionaries, was thirty years of His life preparing and being prepared for his work. Three years he spake as never man spake, and did not his work at that time look a failure? He made no mistakes either in what he taught or the way of teaching it, and he succeeded, though not to the eyes of men. Should not we be contented with success like his? And with how much less ought we not to be contented! So! The wonder is that by our means any result is accomplished at all.”
But like Jesus or Paul, he worked himself hard–so hard, indeed, under the tropical heat that he became desperately ill. At forty, he spoke of himself as an old man. He was just forty-three when a friend wrote, “Few have had to be at once head of a college, sole tutor and steward, as well as primary schoolmaster all at once, or afterwards united these charges with those of Bishop, examining chaplain and theological professor, with the interludes of voyages which involved intense anxiety and watchfulness, as well as the hardships of those unrestful nights in native huts, and the exhaustion of the tropical climate. No wonder then that he was already as one whose work was well-nigh done, and to whom rest was near.”
After John recuperated, he sailed back to the islands. Before going ashore on this day, September 20, 1871, he preached on the death of Stephen which is recorded in Acts chapter Seven. The text proved appropriate. Frustrated natives of Nukapu Island clubbed him to death and attached five knots made out of local fiber to his body, indicating that he was killed in retaliation for five men recently stolen by white sailors. The vengeful natives shot three native mission workers with arrows at the same time. Joseph Atkin, a twenty-nine year old and Stephen Taroniara, about twenty-five years old, died a week later.
John’s death achieved what his life never had. Public outcry was so great in England that the practice of forced labor had to stop. The British navy enforced the ban.
1921
On this night, September 20, 1921, Sara Kirkpatrick awakened and noticed that the light in her husband’s study was still on. She called to him and he did not answer. Going over, she found 83-year old William J. Kirkpatrick slumped over, dead. As usual, he had been working on a piece of music.
Born in Duncannon, Pennsylvania in 1838, William learned to play musical instruments at an early age and received formal training. He published his first hymn collection at age 21, but although he issued around fifty books of music in his life, he often found it necessary to support himself with carpentry or furniture making, although he devoted every spare moment to music, playing for churches and writing hymn tunes.
Even his service with the Union armies in the Civil War was as a musician, fife major to the 91st Regiment P. V. Not until after the death of his first wife in 1878 was he able to devote himself full time to his great love. William wrote the tunes to many favorite hymns: “We Have Heard the Joyful Sound,” “‘Tis Sweet to Trust in Jesus,” “Redeemed, How I Love to Proclaim It,” and “He Hideth My Soul.”
He wrote both the words and the music to the song “Lord, I’m Coming Home.” The story behind it shows him as a soul-winner.
William was song-leader at a camp meeting. The hired soloist had a magnificent voice, able to put tremendous expression into the music he sang. However, William noticed that the young man never stayed to hear the sermon.
Afraid that the soloist was not a Christian, William knelt in his tent and prayed long and earnestly for his soul. The words to “Coming Home” formed in his mind. He wrote them down and set them to a haunting tune.
I’ve wandered far away from God
Now I’m coming home
The paths of sin too long I’ve trod
Lord, I’m coming home.
Coming home, coming home never more to roam
Open wide thine arms of love, Lord I’m coming home.
That evening, William handed the newly-written words and tune to the soloist. Visibly moved after he had sung them, the man stayed for the sermon, went to the altar that night and gave his heart to Christ. The song became a popular invitation hymn in evangelical services, winning many others beside the man it was written for.
0 Comments