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Devotional

We remember Michael and the angels (1887)

Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep. —John Milton. What the...

Events

393

An imperial decision protects Jews and their synagogues in the Roman Empire, banning regulations against Judaism in the name of Christianity.

Authority for the date: Wisconsin Lutheran College, Imperial Laws an

440

Leo I, the Great, is consecrated bishop of Rome (i.e.: pope). He will strengthen the authority of the church, suppress the Manichean heresy, and write important doctrinal letters.

Authority for the date: New Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967.

1622

Death in exile of theologian Conrad Vorstius, at Toningen, Holstein, Germany. He had been accepted for a time by the Dutch Remonstrants (Arminians) but apparently denied the Trinity and the pre-existence of Christ and was eventually exiled by the Calvinist Synod of Dort.

Authority for the date: Wikipedia.

1642

An American Indian tomahawks René Goupil for having made the sign of the cross over some Iroquois children. Goupil falls, gasping the name of Jesus. Earlier he had been beaten to the ground and assailed several times with knotted sticks and fists, had his hair, beard and nails torn off and his forefingers bitten through. [Note: some sources assign this event to September 23rd.]

Authority for the date: Standard encyclopedias.

1771

Death at Aventage, India, of Rajanaiken. Converted from Catholic to Protestant views while serving in the army, he had enjoyed such success winning souls that he left the military to became an evangelist and pastor. His former church then had persecuted him and stirred up mobs to kill him, but each time he managed to escape, dying at last of natural causes.

Authority for the date: Oxford Reference.

1830

The Leeds Mercury publishes Richard Oastler’s letter deploring “Yorkshire Slavery”—oppressive labor conditions of women and children. “Thousands of our fellow-creatures and fellow-subjects, both male and female, the miserable inhabitants of a Yorkshire town....are this very moment existing in a state of slavery, more horrid than are the victims of that hellish system ‘colonial’ slavery.”

Authority for the date: http://www.victorianweb.org/history/poorlaw/oastler.html

1878

Death of Marianne Dyson, who had been on familiar terms with some of the Church of England’s Tractarians. She had sought to bring their teachings to the lower middle class through education and publications. She also had mentored the successful author Charlotte Yonge.

Authority for the date: Blakeway, “The influential life of Marianne Dyson.”

1883

Baptism of Pandita Ramabai, who becomes the most influential woman of India in the nineteenth-century.

Authority for the date: Dyer, Helen S. Pandita Ramabai. New York: Revell, 1911.

1904

While Reverend Seth Joshua prays, Evan Roberts is filled with the Holy Spirit. He will go on to lead a significant revival in Wales.

Authority for the date: Christian History 83 (2008).

1918

Edward Thomas Demby is consecrated as the first African American suffragan (assistant) bishop of the Episcopal Church.

Authority for the date: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/library/glossary/demby-edward-thomas

1941

Communists sentence Natalya Ivanovna Sundukova to death because she refuses to work for the Soviet state, declaring it is antichristian. She is convicted of “anti-Soviet propaganda among the prisoners and counter-revolutionary sabotage” and will be shot the following January.

Authority for the date: Moss, Vladimir. Holy New Martyrs and Confessors of the Urals, Siberia and Central Asia.

1951

Death of notable Welsh evangelist and revivalist Evan Roberts near Cardiff.

Authority for the date: Carradice, Phil. Snapshots of Welsh History: Without the Boring Bits. 

1968

Death of Christian and Missionary Alliance missionary Betty Ann Olsen, while being held captive by the Viet Cong. She was sick with dysentery, malnutrition and tormented by fungus, infections, leeches, and ulcerated sores.

Authority for the date: “Olsen, Betty Ann.” http://www.pownetwork.org/bios/o/o600.htm

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