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Quote of the day

“In the darkness, degradation, pollution and misery that surrounds me, I will look forward in the vision of faith to the time when some of these poor i...”

Patterson, George. Missionary Life Among the Cannibals: Being the Life of the Rev. John Geddie. Toronto: James Campbell & Son, James Bain & Son, and Hart & Co., 1882.

Devotional

How Readily We Promise what We Cannot Perform (1847)

They have done well in all that they have spoken. Oh that they had such a heart in them, that they would fear Me an...

Events

1555

Bishop John Hooper (deprived of his see at Gloucester), and Dr. Rowland Taylor are burned at the stake as Protestant heretics in the reign of Mary Tudor. 

Authority for the date: Standard encyclopedias.

1619

Authorites in Toulouse, France, cut out Lucilio “Giulio Cesare” Vanini’s tongue, then strangle and burn him as an atheist and libertine. He had promulgated pantheistic views and addressed nature as a goddess.

Authority for the date: www.executedtoday.com/2010/02/09/1619-lucilio-vanini-aka-giulio-cesare/

1815

Death of Claudius Buchanan, in England. He had been a chaplain and educator in India where he had done much to advance the gospel and free missionaries from the control of the East India Company.

Authority for the date: www.wmcarey.edu/carey/buchanan2/est.htm

1849

After the success of Mazzini and his followers and the flight of Pius IX from Rome, an Italian assembly declares the temporal power of the pope abolished.

Authority for the date: Britannica.

1881

Death of Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky, who often included Christian characters and themes in his writing.

Authority for the date: Standard encylcopedias.

1907

Mary Stone, a Chinese missionary doctor, sails from Shanghai bound for the United States to receive medical care she desperately needs.

Authority for the date: Burton, Margaret E. Notable Women of Modern China. 

1943

Alexander Solzhenitsyn is arrested at the German front and charged with conspiracy to overthrow Stalin’s government because of a letter he had written a friend criticizing the Communist leader’s actions. He will be sent to the Gulag where he will find faith.

Authority for the date: Christian History 86 (2005).

1949

Cardinal József Mindszenty is sentenced in Hungary. Hungary's Communist government had accused him of treason because he refused to permit the secularization of Catholic schools. He had scribbled a note to his mother, saying, “I have taken no part in any conspiracy of any kind....if despite what I now say you should read that I have confessed or resigned, and even see it authenticated by my signature, bear in mind that it will have been only the result of human frailty. In advance, I declare all such actions null and void.”

Authority for the date: Shuster, George Nauman. Religion Behind the Iron Curtain. Greenwood Press, 1978.

1958

Dave Wilkerson, a pastor in Pennsylvania, decides to sell his TV and pray two hours a night. He goes on to do a notable work among the gangs of New York City.

Authority for the date: Wilkerson, Dave. The Cross and the Switchblade.

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Containing today’s events, devotional, quote and stories