OCTOBER 31
SAMUEL SCHERESCHEWSKY'S UNUSUAL PATH TO PREEMINENCE (1877)
“My Moonshee Indian language teacher said, How can you prove this book the gospel , to be the word of God I took him to walk with me on the shore that...”
Rhea, Sarah J. Life of Henry Martyn, Missionary to India and Persia. Chicago: Women’s Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions of the Northwest, 1888.
Heaven is to have God himself (1911)
I thirst for truth, but shall not drink it till I reach the source—Browning What is heaven? It is a country whose...
Events
415
Co-emperors Honorius and Theodosius II issue penalties against Montanists and against any land-owner who permits them to assemble on his property. Montanist meeting places are to be turned over to orthodox churches.
Authority for the date: Wisconsin Lutheran College,Imperial Laws and Lett1503
Election of Julian Rovere to be pope. He takes the name Julius II.
Authority for the date: Schaff, Philip. History of the Christian Church.1517
Martin Luther nails a challenge to a debate on the Wittenberg church door. It consists of ninety-five statements, or theses, against the practice of indulgences—theses which he is willing to defend. The theses will be widely distributed and precipitate the Reformation.
Authority for the date: Standard encyclopedias (based on Melanchthon's account).1731
Catholic archbishop Leopold von Firmian of Salzburg, Austria, issues an edict expelling all Lutherans from his territory. About twenty thousand people have to leave. Many have nowhere to go and freeze to death in the coming winter.
Authority for the date: Library of Congress.1754
Provost Acrelius writes to the Consistory of Upsala, requesting the suspension of Rev. John Lidenius from the Swedish ministerial office because he preaches in English.
Authority for the date: Louhi, E. A. The Delaware Finns.1772
Thomas and Samuel Green of New Haven publish “A Sermon” by Indian preacher Samson Occum which he had given the month before at the hanging of an Indian man for murder. The sermon becomes wildly successful, going through ten editions in eight years.
Authority for the date: Love, William DeLoss. Samson Occom and the Christian Indians of New England.1816
Robert Moffat sails for South Africa where he will establish a mission work. Mission leaders had been reluctant to send him, believing he was unqualified. He will become a world-famed mission leader.
Authority for the date: Bach, Thomas John. Robert Moffat, the Scotchman Who Went to the Hottentots. http://www.wholesomewords.org/missions/1832
George Washington Doane is consecrated Episcopal bishop of a diocese in New Jersey. He will be remembered by Christians for his hymns, especially “Softly Now the Light of Day.”
Authority for the date: anglicanhistory.org/usa/gwdoane/1871
Vasilii Ivanov is baptized in Tbilisi, Georgia, in the Kura River, an event considered the starting point of the Baptist movement in Azerbaijan, because he will spread the Baptist faith throughout Baku province.
Authority for the date: Anar Alizade, Christianity in Azerbaijan1877
Samuel Schereschewsky is consecrated Anglican Bishop of Shanghai. Developing Parkinson’s disease, he will resign his position, and spend the rest of his life completing a translation of the Bible into Wenli (a Chinese dialect), typing hundreds of pages with the one finger that he could still move.
Authority for the date: Perry, William Steven. Bishops of the American Church. 1897.1879
Death of Jacob Abbott, American Congregationalist author. He wrote many groundbreaking works of children’s fiction, including the instructional Rollo series and the warm Franconia novels.
Authority for the date: Standard encyclopedias.1920
Baptism of Spetume Florence Njangali in Saint Peter’s Cathedral, Hoima, Uganda. She will become a leader in the effort to obtain theological education for women and their ordination as deaconesses in the Anglican church of Uganda.
Authority for the date: Dictionary of African Christian Biography.1992
Pope John Paul II admits indirectly that the church erred three hundred and sixty years earlier when it condemned Italian astronomer Galileo.
Authority for the date: Christian History 76 (2002)1997
Bishop Shenouda is chosen by lot to be the 117th Patriarch of the See of St. Mark.
Authority for the date: “His Holiness Anba Shenouda III.” www.theestimate.com/public/01282000b.html1999
Catholics and Lutherans issue a joint statement on justification in Augsburg, Germany, declaring that “a consensus in basic truths of the doctrine of justification exists between Lutherans and Catholics.”
Authority for the date: www.religioustolerance.org/chr_just.htm2010
Al Qaida terrorists besiege Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church in Baghdad, massacring most of the 120 worshipers inside, including a three year old boy who pleads with them to stop killing.
Authority for the date: Persecuted: the global assault on Christians.