(ABOVE: John Hunt—Archibald McLean, Epoch Makers of Modern Missions. Cincinnati: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1912)

JOHN HUNT was born at Hykeham Moor, near Lincoln, England, on this day, 13 June 1812, and died thirty-six years later in the Fiji Islands. Growing up, he prayed daily for protection against things that frightened him—dogs, gypsies, and thunder.

As he entered his teens, however, he stopped exercising his faith. He was clumsy and other boys mocked him mercilessly. To fit in, he joined them in their sins. There were times he felt sorrow and promised to change, but he did not do so until a severe fever threatened his life at sixteen. He realized he could no longer make empty resolutions—he must practice the faith he had confessed as a child. Hunt prayed, read his Bible, and openly declared his determination to live for God. Although he was sincere in this determination, Hunt found it difficult to be at peace. Only after an agonizing struggle to trust God’s forgiveness did he finally find contentment in Christ.

Soon, Hunt began preaching and diligently studying the Bible, working late into the night so as not to neglect his farm duties. When he entered a theological institute in London, he not only studied hard but also worked among outcasts and with young people. As a result, revival broke out in the city.

Hunt soon became engaged to Hannah Summers, a frail young woman who agreed to accompany him to South Africa as a missionary. Since medical care was available to her there, it was a good arrangement, and she was more than willing to go. However, Wesleyan leaders asked Hunt to go to Fiji instead. A new mission field with few comforts and no medical care, Fiji was surely the last place Hannah would go. Upon hearing the news, Hunt returned to his room in despair. His roommate asked why.

“I’ll tell you what it is,” Hunt replied. “That poor girl in Lincolnshire will never go with me to Fiji; her mother will never consent.” His friend encouraged him to lay the matter before the women and let God work. To Hunt’s great joy, Hannah said yes. They were married in March 1838 and sailed the same year.

Turning down a lucrative job offer in Australia, the Hunts continued on to Fiji. There they found themselves dealing with cannibals who lied, stole incessantly, murdered the sick and old, treated women as beasts of burden, robbed graves for food, and strangled widows. The Fijians roasted humans within eyesight of the Hunts’ home.

Hunt mastered the language quickly and began preaching, but conversions came slowly. Eventually, revival did break out. Hunt worked without rest to translate the Bible for the new converts, to teach them to read, and to train them in Christian living. He became seriously ill. As he lay dying, the islanders pleaded with God to take ten of their lives but spare his. On his part, Hunt mourned his failures and prayed fervently for the islanders. Suddenly, he grew calm. “You see a bright prospect before you,” said someone. “I see nothing but Jesus,” he exclaimed.

Although Fiji lost a gifted teacher with Hunt’s death, Tahitian and English Wesleyans carried on the work. Not all of the islanders became Christians, but within fifty years they ceased openly practicing the old religion.

—Dan Graves

Although set in Irian Jaya (New Guinea), not Fiji, The Yali Story tells of a cannibal people converted to Christ by the work of missionaries

Other Notable Events

313

Edict of Milan is proclaimed by Licinius when he enters Nicomedia.

853

Beheading in Toledo of Fandila, a priest of Tabanos, who had reviled Muhammed.

1231

Death in Arcella, Verona, Italy, of Anthony of Padua, who had been a notable Franciscan preacher and wonder worker.

1525

German reformer, Martin Luther, formerly a monk, marries Katherine von Bora, formerly a nun, who had escaped from her convent in a fish barrel.

1749

In Germany, John Henry Schramm ordains Philip William Otterbein, who will become a notable evangelist and leader of the United Brethren movement in America.

1776

Death in Wethersfield, Connecticut, of Elizabeth Scott, a hymnwriter whose most notable hymn was based on Psalm 3:5 and titled “Morning Hymn.”

1793

William Carey and his family sail for India, accompanied by John Thomas. They will do notable mission work there.

1857

David E. Campbell, missionary to India, with his wife and two children are put to death by Nana Sahib, a rebel chief.

1903

A. J. Tomlinson leads an assembly that creates the Church of God (Cleveland), a Pentecostal-Holiness group that considers the years from the Council of Nicaea in 325 until 1903 the dark ages of the church. Over the next century, the new denomination will gather more than a million adherents world-wide.

1910

A World Missionary Conference is called to order this evening at the Assembly Hall of the United Free Church of Scotland. Lord Balfour of Burleigh reads greetings from world leaders and the delegates arise spontaneously to sing “God Save the King.” The conference will run for ten days.

(ABOVE: Phyllis Wheatley—Frontispiece, Poems on Various Subjects Religious and Moral. Denver, Colorado: W. H. Lawrence and Co., 1887. Public domain)

ON THIS DAY, 12 June 1773, a young Bostonian wrote the dedication to a slender volume she hoped to publish: “To the Right Honorable, the Countess of Huntingdon, the following poems are most respectfully inscribed, by her much obliged, very humble, and devoted servant, Phillis Wheatley, Boston June 12, 1773.” What made these Poems on Various Subjects Religious and Moral remarkable was that the author was a slave girl who had not learned English until she was about nine years old. Anticipating that skeptics would claim someone had ghostwritten the poems, eminent individuals such as the Governor of Massachusetts signed a statement attesting Wheatley’s authorship.

Within eighteen months of arriving in the United States, Wheatley had been able to read the most difficult passages in the Bible, and by twelve she was reading Greek and Latin. Impressed by the poems of her contemporaries such as Thomas Gray, John Milton, and Alexander Pope, she began writing verses of her own. She also corresponded with a number of famous people of her day and conversed with notable Bostonians.

People took notice of Wheatley when she penned an elegy on George Whitefield following his death. Addressed to Whitefield’s sponsor, the Countess of Huntingdon, this well-composed poem was printed as a broadside and sold in Boston, New York, and other American cities. Following its success, Wheatley wrote and printed a number of similar broadsides.

Her Christianity permeated her poetry. After her conversion during the Great Awakening, she wrote:

‘Twas mercy brought me from my pagan land,

Taught my benighted soul to understand

That there’s a God, that there’s a Savior too . . .

The Countess of Huntingdon invited Wheatley to England. Phillis accompanied Nathaniel Wheatley, the son of her masters, across the Atlantic where the Countess helped her secure publication of her poems—the first collection by an African-American to see print. It was acclaimed by those who supported an end to slavery as proof of black and white intellectual equality.

Wheatley wrote many notable poems, including “To His Excellency General Washington” —possibly the first time America was named “Columbia” in literature. She also described Washington as “first in peace and honors,” which some consider the genesis of, “first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.”

Sometime between 1774 and 1778, the Wheatleys freed Phillis. When Mr. and Mrs. Wheatley died, and Nathaniel moved to England, Phillis had to support herself. She entered into a bad marriage and lost her only child to an untimely death. Phillis died alone in poverty at the young age of thirty-one.

—Dan Graves

Although many people know of Phillis Wheatley, Harriet Tubman, and Sojourner Truth, few have heard the story of the Maria Ennals, whose escape from slavery is told in Carry Me Home. Watch at RedeemTV.

Carry Me Home can be purchased at Vision Video

Other Notable Events

1509

Publication of John Fisher’s The Seven Penitential Psalms.

1595

Ruthenian bishops of Lithuania formally read a letter drafted by an Orthodox synod held in Brest, submitting to Pope Clement VIII. They are then accepted into the Roman Catholic Church as “Uniates.” Among concessions granted by the pope, they are allowed to retain priestly marriage, to recite the creed without the “filoque” clause added by Rome, and to observe the Julian calendar rather than the Gregorian. The Uniates joined Rome rather than come under the rule of the newly-created Russian Patriarchate.

1677

Eusebio Kino is ordained a priest in the Jesuit order at Eistady, Austria. He will become a missionary to New Spain in the area that will become the nation of Mexico and the southwestern United States.

1744

David Brainerd is ordained in New Jersey. The latter years of his short life will be spent in efforts to evangelize American Indians until his death of tuberculosis at age twenty-nine.

1775

Less than two months after a skirmish at Concord, Massachusetts between American militia and British soldiers, the Continental Congress issues a call for all citizens to fast and pray and confess their sins that the Lord God might bless the land.

1840

The World’s Anti-Slavery Convention meets in Freemasons’ Hall, London. Many Christians represent the anti-slavery societies of many nations but women delegates are rejected.

1842

Death in Rugby, Warwickshire, England, of Thomas Arnold, a Christian and a prominent English educator.

1844

Dr. D. B. McCartee, the first American Presbyterian missionary to settle in Central China, gets his first sight of the city of Ningpo where he will live and work for many years. His presence is the result of prayerful faith, the Board of Foreign Missions having prepared for the day when changes in international agreements would allow them to enter this region of China with the Gospel.

1845

Death in Hartburn, Northumberland, England, of clergyman John Hodgson, author of a well-planned history of Northumberland, and, perhaps more importantly, a successful advocate for improved safety in the mining industry.

1893

Professors of Marsovan College in Turkey are condemned on false accusations of revolutionary activity, receiving sentences that range between seven years and death.

1898

Death in Richmond, Indiana, of Sanford F. Bennett, American hymnwriter, author of the hymn “In the Sweet By and By” (“There’s a Land That Is Fairer Than Day”).

1902

Death at the White Earth Indian Reservation in northern Minnesota of John Johnson Enmegahbowh, the first recognized Native American priest in the Episcopal Church. He had worked tirelessly among the Ojibway people, especially in Minnesota.

1917

Death in Glasgow, Scotland, of James Denney. As a theologian and educator in the Free Church, he strongly defended the penal character of the atonement.

(ABOVE: Anna Stone. Margaret E. Burton, Notable Women of Modern China. New York: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1912. Public domain)

WHEN ANNA STONE was born late in the nineteenth century, her Chinese culture had a saying: “Ten queenly daughters are not worth as much as one son with a limp.” Anna’s mother rejected this notion. Having learned to read so that she could share the Bible with other women, she determined that Anna should be given as much education as possible to make her useful for Christian work. Although Anna was sickly, she worked diligently to learn English so that she could study in the United States and prayed for an opportunity to do so.

The opportunity came when a visiting Methodist bishop arranged for Anna and a friend to travel to America with him. Since her father, a preacher, had died from wounds received during the Boxer Rebellion, Bishop Joyce became like a foster father to her.

Anna enrolled in medical school upon arriving in America. However, the demanding program took its toll on her health. Though she later transferred to a Bible college, her health continued to fail. Soon, a doctor diagnosed the illness as tuberculosis and sent her to sunny southern California to recuperate.

Anxious to put her learning to work for her people, Anna could not stay put, but sailed home to China aboard the S.S. Siberiaon this day, 11 June 1904. She wrote, “After six years of special preparation, for which I feel greatly indebted to my Master, it is a happy privilege to do what may be in my power to show Him my gratitude.”

Full of enthusiasm, she became a caregiver to women at the mission hospital, visited them in their homes, and invited them to meals so that she might share the Gospel. Anna also studied Chinese classics to gain a way into the hearts of the educated elites, and revived a love of learning among the bored girls at the mission’s day school by teaching them music and English. She put her musical talents to work as well by singing Christian hymns before large audiences.

One of her most memorable witnesses was with an opium addict who was considered hopeless by everyone else. She made him her personal bodyguard and rickshaw puller, and in the end, her trust was key to bringing him to a steady love for Christ.

Meanwhile, her health continued to deteriorate. She hid her pain and never complained, but her condition worsened. Early in 1906, she suffered a lung hemorrhage, quickly developing a painful pleurisy. With much work still to be done in China, Anna was reluctant to die. On the morning of 16 March, however, she told her sister she heard the beautiful music of heaven and had seen a great light. She died that same day.

—Dan Graves

1040, Christianity in the New Asia looks at the growth of faith in China and other Asian nations. Watch at RedeemTV.

1040 can be purchased at Vision Video.

Other Notable Events

888

Death of Rimbert, archbishop of Bremen-Hamburg. He had helped evangelize Scandinavia and probably authored the life of his mentor Ansgar.

1289

Dante, who will one day write the Divine Comedy, fights on the side of the Guelphs in the Battle of Campaldino. The Guelphs are victorious and control Florence.

1294

Death of Roger Bacon, a Franciscan monk and one of the most original thinkers of the Middle Ages. He had predicted aircraft, submarines, suspension bridges, engines, and more.

1445

Repose (death) of Venerable Barnabas the abbot of Vetluga, who, after serving as an Orthodox priest, became a hermit along the River Vetluga at Red Hill, living on wild growth and acorns. He is supposed to have predicted that many people would one day live in this uninhabited region. Following his death, a monastery grew up there, followed by an influx of farmers.

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.

1860

Death in London of Rev. Baden Powell, a clergyman-mathematician who developed an argument based on uniformitarian presuppositions to prove that belief in miracles is atheistic! He had also supported Darwinian evolution. His son, Robert Baden-Powell, will later found the Boy Scouts.

1923

Mildred Cable and the Chinese Trio leave Hwo Chow to set out for Central Asia, uncertain what and where the Lord is calling them. Years later they will have preached the gospel to hundreds of cities and villages in the Gobi desert.

1936

The Presbyterian Church of North America is founded in Philadelphia, led by J. Gresham Machen and others who believe that the United Presbyterian church has become too liberal. In 1938 the denomination changes its name to the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

1951

Ordination of Fulton John Sheen as a bishop in the Roman Catholic Church. Although a masterful theologian and educator, he will gain international recognition as the host of the radio program The Catholic Hour and will present the TV programs Life Is Worth Living and The Fulton Sheen Program.

1965

Evangelist Prem Pradhan is released from prison in Nepal where he had been incarcerated for his witness about Christ. He will become an educator and accept hundreds of orphans whom he, his wife, and assistants will rear in Christian faith.

1970

Death of missionary Frank Laubach in Benton, Pa. He had taught reading through phonetics.

(ABOVE: Gregory Palamas—Anonymous; Byzantine depiction of Gregory Palamas / public domain, Wikimedia.)

NINE YEARS after the death of Gregory Palamas, a special council of the Eastern Orthodox Church declared him a saint. The council went further and named him “the greatest among the fathers of the church.”

Gregory Palamas was born in 1292. Before the turn of the century, his mother died, but Palamas never forgot her. Some scholars think he transferred his adoration of her to the Virgin. His father was a senator and prepared Palamas for a high position in Constantinople, where the family was on good terms with the emperor, who had great respect for learning.

Fourteenth century Byzantium was crumbling before the advances of Islamic Turks and eroding internally from ceaseless squabbling. Perhaps it was these circumstances that led the twenty-year-old Palamas to abandon literature and political pursuits and to become a monk instead. A proponent of the ascetic life, he soon encouraged his siblings to do the same.

At the famous monastery at Mt. Athos, Palamas learned the tradition of prayer known as hesychasm. This consisted of reciting over and over “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me,” while ignoring the senses and controlling posture and breathing. Some of the monks claimed that praying in this way, they saw the uncreated light of God that had shone from Christ at the transfiguration.

A monk from the West took issue with this practice, claiming God is unknowable. Others argued that such an uncreated light would rival God, adding a member to the Trinity. The argument simmered for years. Palamas was even imprisoned over it. Matters came to a head on this day, 10 June 1341, when an Orthodox council met in Constantinople at the great church named Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom). It was a sweltering day, but the emperor attended in full regalia. He ordered that the matter be settled that day. The council upheld Palamas and criticized the teachings of Bernardo Barlaamo, the opposing monk.

If the emphasis of Palamas’ theology was on the uncreated light of God, the emphasis of his devotion was on Mary. He described her in effusive terms as “worshipped and marveled at and hymned by all the faithful,” and declared: “She is the glory of those upon earth, the joy of celestial beings, the adornment of all creation. She is the beginning and the source and root of unutterable good things; she is the summit and consummation of everything holy.”

Within a few years, the empire was in the throes of civil war, and active men rose against the emperor, whose resistance to the Turks was feeble. Palamas tried to bring about reconciliation. However, he was jailed by his opponents and later by the Ottoman Empire. Upon his final release, he was old and weary, and he died in 1359.

—Dan Graves

For an an in-depth look at the history and distinctive beliefs of the Orthodox Church watch The History of Orthodox Christianity

(The History of Orthodox Christianitycan be purchased at Vision Video)

For more on Eastern Christianity read Christian History #54 Eastern Orthodoxy, then and now

Other Notable Events

1695

François Fénelon is consecrated archbishop of Cambrai.

1821

Joseph Tarkington joins the Methodist Church in Indiana. He will become a Methodist circuit rider and the grandfather of the novelist Booth Tarkington.

1838

Twelve hundred people attend the dedication at Cape Coast of the first Wesleyan chapel in Guinea. English missionary Thomas Birch Freeman preaches for the occasion.

1877

Death at Halle, Germany, of Friedrich A. G. Tholuck, German Lutheran Bible scholar and theologian. He had done much to check rationalistic scholarship in Germany within the Lutheran church.

1900

Chinese soldiers and revolutionaries known as Boxers surround the home of the Orthodox priest Fr. Mitrophan about ten at night, having burned his church a week and a half earlier. They torture Mitrophan and the Christians assembled at his house, primarily women and children. Finally Boxers puncture his chest and he dies under a date tree.

1921

Death in Chicago of American hymnwriter Edwin O. Excell. Converted at a Methodist revival, Excell had turned his energies toward sacred music. For the rest of his life he will be active in the publication of gospel songbooks and Sunday school conventions. Among his popular tunes are those to which we sing “Since I Have Been Redeemed,” “I'll Be a Sunbeam,” and “Count Your Blessings.”

1953

The East German Communist government announces that its attack on churches is over. It had tried repeatedly to force youth to renounce the Lutheran Junge Gemeinde [young people’s organizations], but hundreds had bravely remained in the church groups.

2008

Death of Kwame Bediako, first rector of Ghana’s Akrofi-Christaller Institute for Theology, Mission and Culture. He was internationally respected for writings about Christianity in Ghana and Africa.

(ABOVE: Patrick Hamilton. W. I. Ormsby, Pentographer in Portraits of the Principal Reformers of the Sixteenth Century. With a Narrative of the Reformation of Religion. United States, Van Nostrand & Dwight, 1835.)

ON THIS DAY, 9 June 1523, Patrick Hamilton became a member of Scotland’s oldest and most influential university: St Andrews. Four months later, he joined the arts faculty. What might have seemed like an innocuous career move was actually an event of considerable significance because at the same time that Hamilton was moving into a position of prominence, he was turning from Catholicism to Lutheran ideas.

Born near Glasgow, he began his training at the University of Paris at fourteen, which was not an unusual age to enter the university in those days. Following his studies in France, he went to Holland. He attended the University of Louvain briefly and probably studied under Erasmus before returning to his native Scotland. He was about nineteen when he entered St. Andrews.

At the time, Luther’s books and Tyndale’s New Testaments were pouring into Scotland. Hamilton was among those affected by them. By 1526, he was openly preaching Lutheran doctrine, even in the school’s cathedral. Archbishop of St. Andrews James Beaton, the highest-ranking Catholic churchman in Scotland, investigated. He ordered that Hamilton be formally summoned and accused. Considering how earlier cases had been handled, Hamilton knew this meant he would be burned at the stake. In April 1527, he fled to Germany.

Hamilton went to Wittenberg but the students had left because of plague. He remained long enough to hear Luther preach and to observe the changes that had come to the local church. Moving on to Marburg, he wrote a statement of belief, known as Patrick’s Places. Its first section contrasted law and Gospel in Lutheran terms: “The Law says, 'Where is your righteousness, goodness, and satisfaction?’ The Gospel says, ‘Christ is your righteousness, goodness, and satisfaction.’” Other sections also presented ideas heavily influenced by Luther.

Before the end of the year, Hamilton was back in Scotland. To show his break with the church of his youth, he married. He preached Lutheran doctrine boldly to his family and in surrounding regions. Archbishop Beaton summoned him to St. Andrews to discuss his teachings. Hamilton knew this would mean death, but he determined to go, believing that if he were martyred, people would take notice and the Lutheran message would spread.

Beaton allowed Hamilton a month of freedom, in which he disputed with champions of the established church. Then he arrested him. Because Hamilton’s family was powerful, Beaton gave him opportunities to escape. When Hamilton stayed to face the flames, he was burned alive on Leap Year Day in 1528. Wind and damp slowed the flame so that it took him six hours to die.

Appalled at this cruel execution, the Scots did inquire about Hamilton’s beliefs and read his pamphlet. As a result, many converted to Lutheranism. Although the Scottish Reformation became a Calvinist movement under John Knox, its origin was Lutheran, and Hamilton was the first of several Lutheran martyrs to die in Scotland.

—Dan Graves

----- ----- -----

John Knox benifited from Hamilton’s testimony and retold his story. Watch at RedeemTV.

Knox: The Life and Legacy of Scotland's Controversial Reformer can be purchased at Vision Video.

Other Notable Events

419

Co-emperors Honorius and Theodosius II declare that anyone who hides a Pelagian within the Roman Empire is to suffer the same penalties as a Pelagian.

597

Death of Columba of Iona, influential Irish missionary to England. He had founded several monasteries which served as centers of faith and learning.

1572

Death of Jeanne D'Albret, queen of Navarre, who had skillfully kept her country Protestant during the tense and religiously violent sixteenth century. Her son Henry, a Huguenot leader, had displeased her by converting to Catholicism to become king of France.

1597

Death of Jesuit missionary and poet Jose de Anchieta at Reritiba, Brazil. He had helped establish São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

1717

Death at Blois, France, of Madame Guyon, a Roman Catholic mystic who claimed union with Christ. She had deeply influenced François Fenelon.

1834

Death in Hooghly, West Bengal, India, of William Carey, the Baptist “Father of Modern Protestant Missions.”

1895

Thérèse of Lisieux makes her Act of Oblation (an offering of herself to God’s love).

1899

John Joseph Burke is ordained a Roman Catholic priest. He will become an influential Paulist and the editor of The Catholic World.

1911

Death of Carry Nation, American temperance leader. After an unhappy marriage to a drunkard, she had joined the prohibitionists. In 1899 she began her notorious career by wrecking all the saloons in Medicine Lodge, Kansas. She used an ax in her 1901 crusades against the saloons in Wichita and Topeka. She did much to spur the prohibition movement in the U.S.

1918

The Soviets, attempting to placate the anger of the Perm populace following the execution of Archbishop Andronicus, summon the Orthodox priest Vladyka Theophanes to Perm to take his place. This will cost Theophanes his life. He will be arrested in October and murdered on Christmas Eve by being repeatedly lowered nude by the hair of his head through a hole chopped in a frozen river.

1946

Japanese Christians issue a statement of repentance for World War II, vow to take up their crosses anew, and promise to evangelize their islands for Christ and to assist those suffering hunger and poverty after the war.

1947

Death in Nairobi of Roland Allen, whose approach to creating indigenous missions will become prevalent later in the twentieth century.

(ABOVE: Lloyd-Jones. Christian History Institute.)

IT IS NOT HARD to find testimonials from people who consider Martyn Lloyd-Jones one of the greatest preachers of the twentieth century. His books and recorded sermons give evidence that those people are right.

Lloyd-Jones was born in Cardiff, Wales, near the end of 1899. Perhaps the most interesting event of his childhood occurred when he was ten years old. His family home caught fire in January while he and his brothers were sleeping in it. Although their lives were saved, the family lost almost everything they owned, and their finances never recovered. This aroused in Lloyd-Jones a life-long determination to succeed.

Consequently, he entered medical school, completing his studies before he reached the legal age to practice medicine. He became chief clinical assistant to notable physician Sir Thomas Horder, who described him as “the most acute thinker that I ever knew.”

Although poised for a career as a great doctor, Lloyd-Jones abandoned medicine in 1924. He began to question whether he was really a Christian at all and realized he needed to be converted and born again. No sooner had he submitted to Christ than souls became his passion. He thought of the people he had left behind in Wales and went back to share his newly discovered faith with them. His first sermon was in Wales in 1925, calling for spiritual awakening.

A small church in Aberavon, Wales asked him to become their pastor, and he accepted. The town’s doctors feared he was going to steal their patients, but Lloyd-Jones was careful to give no offense in that regard. Years later one of the doctors requested his advice and Lloyd-Jones made a clear and correct diagnosis. After that, requests for his medical knowledge were so continual they threatened his pastoral work. Meanwhile, his preaching proved productive. People came to know Christ with such transforming power that even alcoholics were set free from drink.

In 1939, he became an associate to G. Morgan Campbell at Westminster Chapel, London. In that great church he preached many series, some of which he gathered into books. One of the most famous was a study of Christ’s Sermon on the Mount. His books made him internationally famous.

Lloyd-Jones preached his last sermon at the opening of Barcombe Baptist Chapel on this day, 8 June 1980. His topic was Joshua 4:6, “What mean ye by these stones?” One person in attendance recalled that Lloyd-Jones began slowly and seemed to find his way with some difficulty. Then, “wondrously, it was as though a sudden power came upon him that energized him and electrified the congregation. Suddenly all were awake and alert: God was speaking with authority through a man.” The following year, Lloyd-Jones died in his sleep. He was eighty-one years old.

—Dan Graves

----- ------ ------

Although Lloyd-Jones was not part of The Welsh Revivals of 1859 and 1904, he also stirred souls in his Welsh homeland. Watch at RedeemTV.

The Welsh Revivals 1859 and 1904 can be purchased at Vision Video

Other Notable Events

793

Viking raiders devastate the Christian community on Lindisfarne island (off the coast of England) by looting and slaughter.

1621

John Yukinoura Jirocmon is executed on the remote Japanese island of Nakai no shima. He dies saying, “From here it is not far to Paradise.”

1688

Seven bishops who refuse to violate the English constitution by accepting an arbitrary Declaration of Indulgence promulgated by King James II without parliamentary approval, are arrested and taken to the Tower of London. They will be found not guilty when tried.

1727

Death at Halle of Christian pastor and philanthropist August Hermann Francke.

1794

French revolutionaries in Paris, having rejected Christianity and the Catholic Church, celebrate the first Feast of the Supreme Being at Notre Dame, with an actress playing the part of the Goddess of Reason.

1819

Dr. John Scudder and his associates Spaulding, Winslow, and Woodward, with their wives, sail from Boston on the brig Indies, bound for Calcutta as missionaries. Scudder will be especially influential because he is a medical doctor and surgeon. His daughter Ida will in due course also become a notable medical missionary.

1862

(Whitsunday) King George of Tonga and participants from Tonga, Fiji, and Samoa gather to celebrate Tonga’s new constitution and Christian government. Remembering with shame their former way of life, they break into sobs when they begin to sing “Jesus shall reign where’er the sun / Doth his successive journeys run.”

1936

Death of H. R. Mackintosh, a Church of Scotland theologian, and professor of systematic theology at New College, Edinburgh, until a year before his death. His wrote The Doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ, carefully assessing theologies and heresies regarding the understanding of Christ’s incarnation and arguing for the kenotic theory.

(ABOVE: Charles Spurgeon—Living Leaders of the World. Chicago: Hubbard, 1889. Public domain)

CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON, often called “the prince of preachers,” remarked in one of the first sermons he preached at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, “If I am asked what is my creed, I must reply, It is Jesus Christ.” Every sermon he preached, no matter what its text, pointed people to Jesus—a fact that was true to the very end. He preached his last sermon at the Tabernacle in London on this day, 7 June 1891, on Christ our great captain.

Spurgeon took as his text 1 Samuel 30. David and his men had been away on a military campaign and returned to the town of Ziklag to find it plundered and burned. Amalekites had captured their wives and children. In bitterness of heart, David’s men threatened to stone him. David turned to the Lord for strength and consulted him as to what to do. Then he led his men on a forced march, surprised the enemy, routed them, and reclaimed all the wives and children in addition to a great deal of plunder.

But two hundred of David’s men had been too exhausted to march, so David left them behind to guard the baggage. Following the victory, the stronger men did not want to share the plunder with the weaker. David, however, stood up for the baggage tenders. This is where Spurgeon drew his parallel to Christ. Our Savior, he said, stands up for the weak. “We are all one in Christ Jesus. Surely this ought to comfort those of you who, by reason of feebleness, are made to feel as if you were inferior members of the body.” Christ is “the most magnanimous of captains.”

Spurgeon had followed this “magnanimous captain” since he was sixteen years of age. After months searching for salvation, he stepped into a Methodist chapel on a bitterly cold day. Because of the bad weather, the regular pastor was absent, so a shaky lay preacher led the service. “Young man,” he said to Spurgeon, “you seem miserable.” He urged him to look to Christ. Spurgeon looked, and never stopped looking.

Almost as soon as he was saved, he began preaching. While still a young man, he was invited to take a dying Baptist church in London. Although he was so nervous before sermons that he often threw up, God blessed him with abundant crowds. After enlarging their chapel twice, the Baptists decided to build the Metropolitan Tabernacle. This structure opened in 1861 and seated six thousand. Although microphones had not yet been invented, Spurgeon’s strong voice proclaimed Christ loudly enough for the whole audience to hear. Individuals who could not attend the Tabernacle could read his printed sermons.

Spurgeon preached at the Tabernacle for thirty years. In addition to his pulpit work, he founded a college, administered charities, penned numerous books, and was the father of two sons. He died in 1892.

—Dan Graves

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One of the best documentaries ever produced about Spurgeon is C. H. Spurgeon, the people's preacher.

(C.H. Spurgeon: The People's Preacher can be purchased at Vision Video)

[Missing image: https://www.christianhistoryinstitute.org/uploaded/thumbnails/db_file_img_2180_150xauto.jpg]

Christian History #29 is devoted to Charles Spurgeon’s life and times.

Other Notable Events

761

During the iconoclast controversies, Byzantine Emperor Constantine V has John, the Abbot of Monagria, tied up in a sack and thrown into the sea because he refuses to trample an icon.

1048

Death of Berno of Reichenau who had done much to restore prosperity to the Lake Constance area (now in Switzerland). A scholar, he enriched the library, rebuilt the church, and wrote many treatises on music.

1066

Murder at Lentz of the warrior-prince Gottschalk by heathen who reject his attempts to Christianize them.

1683

The Concord sets sail, carrying the first German settlers (Quakers and Mennonites fleeing persecution) toward their new home in Pennsylvania.

1692

Port Royal, Jamaica, “the richest and wickedest city in the world,” is destroyed by earthquake and tsunami. Later, members of Jamaica's council will make every future anniversary a day of fasting and humiliation.

1794

Ordination of Archibald Alexander who will become a famous educator and first principal of Princeton Seminary.

1834

A little more than two weeks after their marriage, Samuel and Marie Gobat leave Germany bound for Ethiopia as missionaries. They will suffer great privations, terrible sufferings, and death of a child while crossing Egypt.

1863

Death of Franz Xaver Gruber, Austrian church organist and composer of “Silent Night” (STILLE NACHT). Gruber had written almost one hundred music compositions during his lifetime but “Silent Night” is his most famous tune.

1945

Death in Guadalcanal of Ini Kopuria, founder of an evangelistic outreach known as the Melanesian Brotherhood.

2002

American missionary Martin Burnham and Filipino nurse Ediborah Yap are killed when the Philippine military launches a raid to rescue them from Islamic radicals who have held them captive in the jungle for more than a year. Burnham’s wife Gracie is freed but suffers a gunshot wound.

(ABOVE: George Williams—The Father of the Red Triangle; the life of Sir George Williams, founder of the Y.M.C.A. London, New York, Toronto: Hodder and Stoughton, 1918. Colorized by Christian History Institute. Public domain)

GEORGE WILLIAMS WAS APPALLED at the way London’s shocking amusements tempted unattached workmen into vice. Their employers cared nothing about them, he wrote. “They were treated as though deprived of mind . . . as though formed only to labor and sleep...without a moment for spiritual or mental culture, without the disposition or even the strength for the performance of those devotional exercises which are necessary to the maintenance of a spiritual life.” He determined to do something about it.

Williams had been a country boy who moved to London for work. Successful in business, he soon rose to the top of his drapery (cloth-sellers’) firm. As a Christian, he labored to bring his fellow employees to Christ. Influenced by American evangelist Charles Finney and by British Quakers, who demanded that the Christian life be lived out in practical expressions and social concerns, he used his growing wealth to support evangelical causes.

Especially, he looked for some way to redirect the energies of young men away from vice and frivolity to useful and noble diversions. On this day, 6 June 1844, he gathered twelve men in his bedroom for prayer and spiritual conversation. All but one were his co-workers. This group grew into the Young Men’s Christian Association, or the YMCA. To fulfill their purpose, they hired a hall and invited fellow-drapers to join them for lectures (which included Gospel talks), exercise, and innocent fun.

Although the founders’ original intent was merely to help employees of drapery houses, they soon extended the idea to any interested young man. It caught fire and became a worldwide movement, with over one hundred and fifty thousand members in Britain alone, half a million in America, and thousands of branches around the world. Prominent philanthropists like Lord Shaftesbury endorsed it. This was an age in which the church was reaching out to the victims of the industrial revolution, and the YMCA was yet another expression of that concern.

Queen Victoria eventually knighted Williams for service to the nation. The YMCA originally said its one supreme aim was “enthroning Jesus Christ in the hearts of young men,” a statement now broadened to “a mission to put Christian principles into practice through programs that build a healthy spirit, mind and body for all.”

—Dan Graves

----- ------ ------

George Williams sought to give young men Christian disciplines in place of corrupt activities. For more about the life of discipline, watch Celebration of Discipline.

(Celebration of Discipline can be purchased at Vision Video)

Other Notable Events

1622

Pope Gregory XV creates the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith to organize and direct the foreign missions of the Roman Catholic Church.

1870

Death of Anna Hinderer, aged forty-three. She had served as a missionary in Nigeria until ill-health forced her to return to England. There, despite suffering, she continued to work among factory girls and children of the poor.

1882

On the day of his sister’s marriage, blind parson George Matheson experiences deep mental suffering, and writes his beloved hymn, “O Love that wilt not let me go.”

1886

Death in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, of John Williamson Nevin, a staunchly Calvinist theologian, who had opposed nineteenth-century revivalism, believing it was too individualistic and did not uphold the historic confessions of the church.

1900

Li Chouzi, an ardent, soul-winning Christian girl, and all the other Chinese Christians of her village are hacked to death by revolutionaries known as Boxers.

1903

Death of Bishop Joseph A. Beebe of the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church (now known as the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church) after preaching the gospel fifty-two years and serving the church thirty-five years as a bishop.

1925

Harold Wildish boards the Amakura, bound for South America. He had received word to fill the place of an ailing missionary but had only one British pound in money. He went upstairs and spread the letter out before the Lord, saying, “You know what I need.” Next morning, he received a check in the mail for twenty-five pounds. “But I must have thirty-five,” he prayed. The next day he received another letter from the same person. “I could not sleep last night thinking of you. I believe you must need the additional enclosed ten pounds.”

1991

Christian brothers, Zaher Kamel, a doctor, and Maher Kamel, a high school teacher, are gunned down by Muslim radicals in Qena, Upper Egypt.

2010

In Edinburgh, Scotland, groups including Catholic, Orthodox, Evangelical, Pentecostal, and major Protestant churches affirm The Common Call, which among other assertions states, “We believe the church, as a sign and symbol of the reign of God, is called to witness to Christ today by sharing in God’s mission of love through the transforming power of the Holy Spirit.”

(ABOVE: Fredrik Franson—Antti Mäkinen, Vapaakirkollinen liike Suomessa, Vapaa Lähetys. Helsinki, 1911. Public domain)

FREDRIK FRANSON was born in Sweden in 1852. His father died when he was just five. Two years later his mother remarried. Passionate about missions, his mother influenced Franson to study Scripture. Though he did not become a Christian at that point, he did benefit from his studies at excellent schools, learning English, French, German, Latin and Norwegian in addition to his native Swedish.

When he was seventeen, his family migrated to the United States and settled in Nebraska. There Franson worked hard on their farm until he contracted malaria. It took him the better part of a year to recover, but when the twenty-year-old rose from his sick bed, he had committed his heart to Christ. Immediately, he joined a nearby Baptist church and plunged into Christian work. By 1875, he was secretary of the regional Scandinavian Baptist Conference. It was not eminent positions within the church he aimed to gain, however, but souls.

A few years later, he traveled to Chicago, where he could study first-hand the evangelistic methods of Dwight L. Moody. He joined the master-evangelist’s church and became a traveling evangelist—a position that would eventually allow him to reach thousands around the world. One of his first assignments was among Scandinavians who had become Mormons. His work in Utah prompted him to write The Craftiness of Deception Exposed: 70 of the Bible Passages Misunderstood by the Mormons, Considered in the Light of the Scripture.

He was not quite thirty when he returned to Sweden to spread the gospel throughout Scandinavia. He founded many churches and God used him to revive dying ones, especially in Norway. But some resisted his methods and opposition rose against him. In Denmark, he was jailed for faith healing and then expelled from the country.

By now, Franson was convinced of the need of special missions to reach the world. Believing Christ could return at any moment (despite Christ’s warning that the day was known only to the Father, Franson even set a date), he felt a sense of urgency to gather souls quickly. He said, “Fellowship with Jesus and work for Jesus are two preoccupations that we can never assess too highly.”

His passion compelled him to found The Scandinavian Alliance Mission of North America (now known as TEAM); to advocate employing women in evangelistic work; and to found or work closely with twelve other mission organizations. A. B. Simpson, Hudson Taylor, Andrew Murray, and other prominent Christian leaders of the day were among his allies.

Between 1902 and 1908 Franson made a world tour, preaching wherever he went, establishing mission societies, and working himself to the bone. On this day, 5 June 1908, he crossed from Mexico into Colorado, intending to take a short rest because he felt very tired. He died within two months at Idaho Springs, Colorado, just fifty-six years old.

—Dan Graves

In his varied career, Franson worked among Mormons and exposed many of their theological errors. Watch at RedeemTV.

The Mormons can be purchased at Vision Video.

Other Notable Events

303

Felix, Bishop of Tibiuca in North Africa, is hauled before the magistrate of his city and ordered to hand over Christian books in compliance with an imperial decree, but staunchly refuses.

1409

The Council of Pisa declares that the rival popes Gregory XII and Benedict XIII are “notorious schismatics, promoters of schism, and notorious heretics, errant from the faith, and guilty of the notorious and enormous crimes of perjury and violated oaths.”

1568

Counts Egmont and Hoorn are beheaded at Brussels by Spanish overlords, rousing a furious resistance which will free the Netherlands from Spain and embed Calvinism as the principal form of Christianity.

1724

Death of Rev. Henry Sacheverell, a Church of England priest whose politically charged oratory led the Whig government to impeach him. Anglicans rose in his defense, riots followed, and the Whig government was swept from power.

1801

A Turkish tribunal condemns Mark of Smyrna to die by the sword after torturing him. He had previously betrayed his Christian faith but, ashamed of his behavior, renounced Islam and testified to the gospel although it meant sure death.

1831

Rafaravavy Rasalama is one of the Christians who takes part in the first observance of the Lord’s Supper on Madagascar at the Ambatonakanga church. She will also become the island’s first martyr under the persecutions initiated by Queen Ranavalona I.

1851

The first episode of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin is published in serial form in National Era magazine.

1865

Pastor Sabine Baring-Gould pens the hymn “Onward Christian Soldiers” as a marching song for some children he must keep together as they walk between two villages during a Whit-Monday festival (i.e., the day after Pentecost) in Yorkshire, England.

1900

Chinese revolutionists, known as Boxers, behead lay preacher Chen Dayong at Yanqing, and hack his wife and daughter to death.

1965

Death in London, England, of Eleanor Farjeon. She authored the popular hymn “Morning Has Broken.”

1995

Steve Saint and some of his family head for the Ecuador jungle with plans to train the Waodani Indians to handle their own lives in the modern world.

(ABOVE: Niels Hemmingsen—Johan Ottosen, Vor Historie, 1902. Public domain)

NIELS HEMMINGSEN grew up with the Reformation. He was born on this day, 4 June 1513, just four years before Luther tacked his Ninety-Five Theses to the church door in Wittenberg. Although his family were farmers on the Danish island of Lolland, Hemmingsen did not work the soil, but instead became an impressive scholar and theologian, studying with biblical humanists at Roskilde and Lund. When he completed his training there, he moved on to Wittenberg, which had become the center of the Reformation.

Luther and Melanchthon reigned supreme among the scholars in Wittenberg. Hemmingsen developed great respect for Melanchthon and the two corresponded until Melanchthon’s death.

Denmark adopted Lutheranism as its state church in 1536, and Niels Hemmingsen became the best known of the Danish theologians. His writings (in the universal language of the day, Latin) on systematic theology, homiletics (the composition and delivery of sermons), and pastoral theology were used as textbooks throughout Europe. From his promotion of education, he earned the nickname “Teacher of Denmark.” He also studied legal theory to see if reason could ground laws on natural principles without having to resort to Biblical commands .

Hemmingsen was deeply concerned with pastoral theology, teaching that the pastor’s foremost duty is to feed God’s flock from God’s word. He wrote many useful works for pastors, including a preacher’s manual, translated into English in 1574. He observed that there are four kinds of audiences for a sermon: “To these four kinds of hearers all the sermons of Christ are directed, for sometimes he teaches the ignorant who are desirous to learn, and sometimes he comforts and stirs up the faint hearted; now he exhorts the slower sort, and now with threatenings he terrifies such as are profane and ungodly.”

But despite his fame, King Frederick II suspended him from the University of Copenhagen in 1579 for the sake of concord. Hemmingsen’s position on the Lord’s Supper was attacked as “crypto-Calvinist,” or secretly Calvinist, by theologians known as Gensio-Lutherans. When his authority was cited in arguments against them, it was too much for the Elector of Saxony, brother of the king, who urged his ouster.

The king ordered Hemmingsen to return to Roskilde where he had an income. There the theologian continued to advise the government when asked to do so, although he gradually became blind. He died in 1600, respected and admired, having lived to the ripe age of eighty-seven.

—Dan Graves

Niels Hemmingsen was part of the Luther Legacy.

Other Notable Events

308

Quirinus, bishop of Siscia, after imprisonment, tortures, and mockery is drowned in a river (in the region that will become Poland) where he preaches until he sinks.

1133

Lothaire II of Saxony receives the imperial crown from Pope Innocent II whom he has just established on the papal throne by a show of armed force.

1571

An executioner in Toledo, Spain, tries to spare Doctor Sigismondo Arquer from burning alive for his Protestant beliefs by garroting him, but the onlooking crowd riots at this mercy. In the melee, Arquer is seriously injured and is already half dead when committed to the flames.

1639

Fundamental Orders of New Haven are adopted. These had been proposed by Rev John Davenport and are an extraordinary example of the religiously-inspired formation of a government.

1663

Death at St John's, Oxford, of Archbishop William Juxon. As a priest he had attended King Charles I of England at his execution, for which service, after the Restoration, Charles II appointed him Archbishop of Canterbury.

1775

John Carmichael of Brandywine, Pennsylvania, preaches a sermon saying war in self-defense is lawful. Sermons of this character helped form American opinion at the time of its Revolutionary War.

1883

Death of “Righteous Vera,” a girl who had begun early to seek the Lord and practice asceticism. Her twin sister Lyubov died four days later. The twelve-year-olds were visiting the Russian monastery at Optina.

1931

Carl McIntire is ordained and installed at the Chelsea Presbyterian Church in Atlantic City, New Jersey. He will become well-known as a radio broadcaster delivering fundamentalist and anti-Communist views.

1948

The first radio broadcast of the Far East Broadcasting Company’s new Manila station goes on the air, with the staff singing “All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name.”

1985

The Supreme Court of the United States rules against an Alabama law requiring a moment of silence (i.e.: prayer) in public schools.

1995

At the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, Brussels, Pope John Paul II beatifies Father Damien, the priest who had given his life in Hawaii for outcasts suffering leprosy.