FEBRUARY 19
Armenians Celebrate Mesrob Who Preserved Their Culture in Writing (441)
“On the 19th of February, about noon, we arrived at Evansville, on the Indiana side of the river. This was the prettiest place we had yet seen and its...”
Davies, Ebenezer. American Scenes, and Christian Slavery: A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States. 1849.
Beware this Danger Signal
The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing , 1 Corinthians 1:18 (NIV). There is contained...
Events
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Icons are restored to eastern churches with solemn processions on the first Sunday of Lent following the iconoclast wars, an event that will later be observed as the “Feast of Orthodoxy.”
Authority for the date: Fortescue, Adrian. The Orthodox Eastern Church.1414
Death in Canterbury, Kent, England, of Thomas Arundel, archbishop of Canterbury and chancellor of England. He had been a violent persecutor of the Lollards, Wycliffe’s reform followers.
Authority for the date: Standard encyclopedias.1568
Burial of Miles Coverdale, who had produced the first complete printed edition of the Scriptures in English, completing William Tyndale’s Bible following Tyndale’s execution. Coverdale’s version of the Psalms will long be used by the Church of England.
Authority for the date: Register of Burials of St. Bartholomew’s, cited in Dictionary of National Biography1672
(or 1671) Death in Boston, Massachusetts, of Charles Chauncy, eighteen years the president of Harvard College. A Congregational clergyman, his insistance on full immersion for baptism had been controversial in New England.
Authority for the date: Wikipedia.1716
Death in Bergen, Norway, of Dorothe Engelbretsdotter, once highly regarded for her Christian verses, which included an evening and a morning hymn.
Authority for the date: Evangelical Lutheran Hymnary Handbook.1735
Death in Germantown, Pennsylvania, of Alexander Mack, leader of America’s German Baptists.
Authority for the date: Standard encyclopedias.1812
The Caravan sails from Salem Harbor with America’s first foreign missionaries aboard: the Judsons and Newells.
Authority for the date: Biographical Dictionary of Evangelicals.1869
Death near Melrose, Scotland, of Elizabeth Clephane. A Scottish orphan, she wrote two memorable hymns: “Beneath the Cross of Jesus” and “The Ninety and Nine.”
Authority for the date: Standard encyclopedias.1882
Death in Toronto, Canada, of Methodist minister Egerton Ryerson who had been a notabale educator in Canada. Although most of his reforms and innovations had high merit, his policies for the education of native Americans will be censured by future generations.
Authority for the date: Biographical Dictionary of Evangelicals.1896
Death of Xi Shengmo. After years of bondage to opium, he had become a Christian and the Holy Spirit freed him after an agonizing battle. He then adopted his last name which meant “conqueror of demons.” He went on to establish fifty opium refuges in four provinces where prayer was a major factor in treatment of the addicts. Many became Christians and applied his methods to other addicts.
Authority for the date: Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Christianity.1948
Father Butrus Sowmy conveys the first of the Dead Sea Scrolls to American John Trever, whom he had contacted the day before. Trever requests permission to photograph them and sends the photographs to famed archaeologist William Albright, who will confirm the value of the manuscripts.
Authority for the date: The Dead Sea Scrolls (six videos) I: “Secrets of the Caves.”1954
Death of evangelist Lionel Bale Fletcher in Sydney, Australia.
Authority for the date: Biographical Dictionary of Evangelicals.