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Devotional

Reasons for Affliction (1862)

I have tested you in the furnace of affliction—Isaiah 48:10 (NIV). The furnace has often been the instrument of co...

Events

310

Christian witness Adrianus is thrown to a lion in Palestine and afterwards slain with the sword.

Authority for the date: Eusebius Pamphilius. Ecclesiastical History.

493

Archbishop John sallies forth from Ravenna with crosses, the Gospels, and a retinue of monks, falling at the feet of Theodoric and suing for peace—which the invader grants.

Authority for the date: Hodgkin, Thomas. Theodoric the Goth.

1518

Erasmus sends a copy of Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses to Sir Thomas More, a vigorous opponent of the Protestant Reformation.

Authority for the date: Smith, Preserved. The Age of the Reformation.

1526

Zurich authorities commence a trial which eventuates in sentences of life imprisonment for the Anabaptists Conrad Grebel, Felix Manz, and George Blaurock. Two weeks later the three manage to escape.

Authority for the date: Wenger, John Christian. “Even Unto Death: The Heroic Witness of The Sixteenth-Century Anabaptists.”

1687

Hungarian officials behead and quarter Sigmund Zimmermann, Caspar Rauscher, Andreas Keczer, and Franz Baranyay in Eperjes [Prešov, Slovakia]. In a complex political situation, animosity to oppressive Hapsburg policies had led to a revolt after which Catholic leaders of the Holy Roman Empire cracked down on all opposition, cruelly oppressing Protestants and their pastors and inspiring another revolt. These four are the first to die as martyrs when the second revolt was quelled in Eperjes.

Authority for the date: http://www.executedtoday.com

1708

Death in London of Bishop William Beveridge. He had preached profoundly and lived peaceably amid the controversies of his day. He will be remembered for his book Private Thoughts upon Religion and a Christian Life (1713), published after his death. It sets forth resolutions such as, “I am resolved, by the grace of God, to be always exercising my thoughts upon good objects, that the devil may not exercise them upon bad.”

Authority for the date: www.ccel.org/ccel/beveridge_w

1797

Henry Nott and a large missionary party, which includes artisans, arrive at Tahiti’s Matavai Bay. Sponsored by the London Missionary Society, they are to settle on the islands of Tahiti, Tonga, and the Marquesas to teach the gospel and useful arts. While the others die, go mad, or desert, Nott remains steady. It will be twenty-two years before he sees his first convert.

Authority for the date: “Henry Nott: the apostle of Tahiti.” The Sunday at Home, Volume 42 p.421.

1858

Death in Wiltshire, England, of Maria Grace Saffary, who had been a Baptist hymnwriter and wrote “God of the sunlight hours!” as well as hymns about baptism, including one that begins “’tis the great Father we adore in this baptismal sign.”

Authority for the date: Burrage, Henry S. Baptist Hymnwriters and their Hymns.

1899

Evangelist Sam Jones opens a crusade in Toledo, Ohio, where the mayor is also named Sam Jones. The mayor welcomes the publicity until Jones says, “If the Devil were mayor of Toledo, he wouldn’t change a thing.” Nonetheless, Mayor Jones will be reelected by a wide margin.

Authority for the date: Morgan, Robert. On This Day: 365 Amazing and Inspiring Stories about Saints, Martyrs and Heroes.

1977

Death in Abeokuta, Nigeria, of James Tanimola Ayorinde, who had been a Baptist pastor, chairman of the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation, and a respected and beloved leader of the Baptist World Aliance.

Authority for the date: Dictionary of African Christian Biography.

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