DECEMBER 2
A CRAVING FOR GOD DROVE RUYSBROEK TO SOLITARY CONTEMPLATION (1381)
“Scottish theologian H. R. Mackintosh used to begin his classroom lecture on evil with a mathematical analogy. Evil, he said, is a surd. A surd is a ma...”
Cueni, Dr. R. Robert. “THE DEVIL YOU SAY!?” a Sermon given December 2, 2001 http://www.cccckc.org/Sermons/120201BC.htm
Make Your Holidays Holy with Kindness (1913)
Yes, December’s cold and gray, And the birds have flown away, Leaving us to wintry stress, But ourselves can change the...
Events
1381
Death of Jan Van Ruysbroek, “the Ecstatic Doctor,” so called because of his mysticism. He had written The Spiritual Espousals (1350), a commentary on Matthew 25:6: “Behold, the bridegroom comes,” which will influence contemporaries such as John Tauler and Gerard Groote, and later writers such as Thomas à Kempis.
Authority for the date: Standard encyclopedias.1697
Dedication of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, designed by Christopher Wren. It replaces a medieval cathedral that had burned in the Great Fire of 1666. The Right Reverend Henry Compton, Bishop of London, preaches the dedication sermon based on Psalm 122: “I was glad when they said unto me: Let us go into the house of the Lord.”
Authority for the date: Standard encyclopedias.1751
A Consistory of the Dutch Reformed Church writes with frustration from Colombo, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), complaining that Roman Catholicism has greatly increased, despite severe penalties meted out by Dutch governors.
Authority for the date: History of Christianity in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, 1450–1990, edited by Klaus Koschorke, Frueder Lud1873
After years of struggle, Frances Havergal, Christian singer, sees the importance of complete Christian surrender “as a flash of electric light,” and makes it.
Authority for the date: Morgan, Robert J. On This Day. Nelson, 1997.1906
The first of Paulo Mwamribwa’s pupils are baptized in Digoland, Tanzania (formerly Tanganyika). He had founded the first indigenous Protestant mission school in the Gombero area.
Authority for the date: Dictionary of African Christian Biography.1910
Death in Richmond, Virginia, of Bishop Channing Moore Williams, who had served as an Episcopal missionary in the Far East, founding a divinity school in Japan.
Authority for the date: Episcopal Church. Holy Women, Holy Men.1916
The Suwa Maru docks at Kobe carrying missionary Irene “Sensei” Webster-Smith, who will later rescue Geisha children and convert Japanese war criminals.
Authority for the date: Hitt, Russell T. Sensei. New York: Harper & Row, 1965.1947
Death of Father Alexis Kabaliuk, Apostle of Carpatho-Russia, who had played a major role in reviving the Orthodox Church in Transcarpathia (a region on the western edge of the Ukraine) in the early twentieth century despite persecution by Austrian-Hungarian authorities.
Authority for the date: http://orthodoxwiki.org/Alexis_(Kabaliuk)_of_Carpathia.1948
Romania’s Official Gazette #281 publishes a decree transferring Uniate church property to the Romanian State without compensation.
Authority for the date: Shuster, George Nauman. Religion Behind the Iron Curtain. New York, Macmillan, 1954.1994
Death of Sir James Norman Dalrymple Anderson, a legal scholar and missionary to Islamic regions.
Authority for the date: Larsen, Timothy, ed. Biographical Dictionary of Evangelicals. Downers Grove, Ill. : InterVarsity Press, 2003.