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Quote of the day

“The unfortunate man who was too easily persuaded that he had made an end of supernatural religion was taken in hand by the Bishop and hewn in pieces....”

Nicoll, W. Robertson. “J.B.Lightfoot,” in Princes of the Church. Hodder and Stoughton, 1923.

Devotional

Get humility

Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. Matthew 5:5. Every day strengthens the conviction in my mind tha...

Events

1521

Pope Leo X excommunicates Martin Luther in the bull Decet Romanum Pontificum for having challenged practices of the Roman Catholic Church and refusing to recant as required in Exsurge Domine, an earlier bull.

Authority for the date: Standard encyclopedias.

1638

Shogunate warriors defeat Christian and peasant rebels who retreat to Shimabara where they capture the fortress at Hara. After the rebellion is put down, Christianity will be outlawed in Japan.

Authority for the date: Wikipedia.

1853

Presbyterians in Chicago pass resolutions against slavery, declaring it “a gross invasion of the natural rights of man and a grievous outrage upon the principles of that civil liberty we enjoy and that Protestant Christianity [that] we profess, a moral wrong which must be offensive to God, and which is most injurious to the temporal prosperity and happiness and to the spiritual wellbeing of all connected with it.”

Authority for the date: Stockwell, A Better Class of People

1918

Death at Bennington, Vermont, of Annie Sherwood Hawks, Baptist hymnwriter, best known for the hymn “I need thee every hour.”

Authority for the date: http://www.cyberhymnal.org/bio/h/a/w/hawks_as.htm

1927

Fray Luis (Dr. Walter Montaño), having fled a Dominican monastery, kneels in prayer beside Protestant missionary Charles A. Patton, and yields himself to Christ as Savior. Montaño will become a well-known Protestant evangelist throughout Latin America.

Authority for the date: Pearson, B. H. The Monk Who Lived Again. Los Angeles, California: Cowman Publications, 1948.

1930

Kenyan zealots who insist on female circumcision murder elderly missionary Hilda Stumpf of the Africa Inland Mission (who opposed the practice) and multilate her body.

Authority for the date: Temu, A. J. British Protestant Missions. Prentice Hall Press, 1973.

1930

Soviets sentence several nuns to exile in the north: Theodora, Anna, Darya, Anysia, and Agrippina. They will not be heard from again.

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

1963

Peter Vashchenko and several other Russian Christians, desperate after years of mistreatment, which included having their children sent to juvenile homes to live with unmanageable delinquents, overwhelm the policeman at the gates of the American embassy in Moscow and enter, seeking asylum in the West. Their complicated story will cover three decades.

Authority for the date: Pollock, John. The Siberian Seven. Waco Texas: Word, 1979.

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Containing today’s events, devotional, quote and stories