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Quote of the day

“As the prevailing of errors and heresies is noted by our Savior in the gospel, and elsewhere in the Scriptures, as a forerunner of God s judgments, an...”

Christian, John T. A History of the Baptists, with Some Account of their Principles and Practices. Texarkana, Texas: Bogard Press,1922.

Devotional

Guide My Ship (1914)

Ah Lord, unto whom all hearts are open, You can govern the vessel of my soul far better than I can. Arise, O Lord, and c...

Events

609

Pope Boniface IV dedicates the Pantheon as a Catholic church and introduces the Festival of All Saints. The bones of martyrs from various Roman cemeteries are brought in a solemn procession of twenty-eight carriages to the new church.

Authority for the date: Schaff, Philip. History of the Christian Church.

1248

Sentence is pronounced against the Talmud in Paris. Following this decision, fourteen cartloads of books will be burned, followed by another six. The Inquisition had taken note of blasphemies of Christ in Jewish writings, prompting the pope in 1239 to order the rulers of several European nations to seize Jewish books. 

Authority for the date: https://www2.stetson.edu/~psteeves/relnews/yastrebov150798.html

1291

King Philip the Fair of France addresses a letter to the seneschal of Carcassonne in which he denounces the inquisitors for cruelly torturing innocent men, whereby the living and the dead are fraudulently convicted. Among abuses he particularly mentions are “tortures newly invented.” Ironically, he will use the same tactics sixteen years later against the Knights Templar.

Authority for the date: Vacandard, E. The Inquisition.

1607

Jamestown settlers attend their first prayer service in Virginia after their Anglican minister builds a makeshift church by “nailing a piece of timber between two trees,” and stretching “a square of sailcloth over it.”

Authority for the date: Christian History 93 (2007).

1619

Execution in the Hague of John Barneveld, Dutch statesman, at seventy one years of age. He had advocated free states and taken the Arminian side against the Calvinists.

Authority for the date: White, Andrew Dickson. Seven Great Statesmen in the Warfare of Humanity with Unreason. Kessinger Publishing, 2004.

1643

An ordinance calling for the Westminster Assembly is introduced into the English House of Commons and will pass a month later.

Authority for the date: Leith, John H. Assembly at Westminster. Richmond, Va., John Knox Press, 1973.

1685

Cotton Mather, who will be an influential pastor in New England, is ordained in Boston’s North Church.

Authority for the date: Biographical Dictionary of Evangelicals.

1704

Death in Paris of Louis Bourdaloue, one of the most famous French preachers of his day, “king of preachers and preacher of kings” (he was called to preach frequently at court).

Authority for the date: Britannica

1828

Evangelist David Marks asks his audience what they want him to preach on. Someone shouts “nothing” and so Marks preaches on “nothing” to an Ancaster, Ontario, crowd, showing them that they would be nothing and have nothing without Christ.

Authority for the date: Morgan, Robert J. On This Day. Nelson, 1997.

1831

A meeting in London for the proposed union of Congregational churches adjourns. It had authorized the creation of a plan for union to be amended by the affected British churches and submitted for adoption the following year.

Authority for the date: Dale, R. W. History of English Congregationalists.

1838

Death in London of Zachary Macaulay, who had been one of the evangelical social-action group known as the Clapham Sect, a slavery abolitionist, and governor of Sierra Leone (1794–1799).

Authority for the date: Biographical Dictionary of Evangelicals.

1839

Death in Rome of Cardinal Joseph Fesch, uncle of Napoleon Bonaparte, influential figure in French religious politics and a collector of masterworks of art.

Authority for the date: Catholic Encyclopedia

1874

Pope Pius IX issues an encyclical “On the Greek-Ruthenian rite,” forbidding that any changes be made to Eastern Catholic liturgies, and in particular to the Ruthenian Rite.

Authority for the date: Eternal Word Television Network.

1917

Three children claim to have seen the Virgin Mary in the town of Fatima in Portugal.

Authority for the date: Eternal Word Television Network.

1940

Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands arrives in England, fleeing the German invasion of the Netherlands. A Christian, she will rally her people through weekly radio broadcasts. Three years after the war, she will abdicate in favor of her daughter, taking the name Princess Wilhelmina of the Netherlands.

Authority for the date: Princess Wilhelmina of the Netherlands. Lonely but Never Alone.

1981

A Turk named Mehmet Ali Agca, who belongs to the extremist group the “Gray Wolves,” shoots Pope John Paul II as he waves to a crowd in St. Peter’s Square. Bullets rip the pope’s abdomen, right arm, and left hand.

Authority for the date: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/18/mehmet-ali-agca-gunman-wh_n_426877.html

2006

Death in Hamden, Connecticut, of Jaroslav Pelikan, a Christian scholar and church historian who had written nearly forty books and over a dozen reference works on numerous aspects of Christian history. Late in life he had joined the Eastern Orthodox Church.

Authority for the date: Christian History 91 (2006).

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