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Devotional

We Are Given Strength for a Single Day (1864)

And as your days, so shall your strength be —Deuteronomy 33:25 (ESV) Christian! mark again these words. They do no...

Events

685

Dedication of a new church at the monastery of Jarrow in England. This monastery will be of interest because of its association with Biscop Baducing and the Venerable Bede. The building will still be functional, displaying its original dedication inscription, fifteen centuries later.

Authority for the date: Blair, Peter Hunter. World of Bede. Cambridge University Press, 1990.

997

Martyrdom of Adalbert of Prague, Missionary to Prussia, at the hands of a heathen priest. As bishop of Prague, he had sought to extinguish heathen customs and institute moral reforms and, when repulsed, devoted himself to mission work in Germany and Poland. It was he who baptized Stephen of Hungary.

Authority for the date: Standard encyclopedias.

1625

Death of Maurice de Nassau, Prince of Orange, who had successfully driven the Spanish from the Netherlands, improving the training and care of armies in the process. He had favored strict Calvinists over Arminians and a centralized state over states’ rights, executing his chief rival Johan van Oldenbarnevelt.

Authority for the date: www.awamipolitics.com

1702

Death of English Quaker leader Margaret Fell Fox. Her last words were “I am in Peace.” She had been a founding member of the Religious Society of Friends and one of the society’s “Valiant Sixty” preachers and missionaries.

Authority for the date: http://www.ushistory.org/penn/margaret_fell.htm

1849

Fyodor Dostoevsky is arrested, accused of plotting to overthrow the Russian government. After a staged appearance before a firing squad with a last minute reprieve, he will be sent to Siberia where he will take comfort in the Bible. Dostoevsky will include Christian themes in his writing but will suffer until the last decade of his life from an inability to control his impulse to gamble.

Authority for the date: Leatherbarrow, William J. Fedor Dostoevsky. Tayne, 1981.

1960

Death of Japanese Christian Socialist Toyohiko Kagawa.

Authority for the date: Davey, Cyril. Kagawa of Japan. London: Epworth, 1960.

1968

In Dallas, the ten-million-member Methodist and the seven hundred and fifty thousand-member Evangelical United Brethren churches join together to form the United Methodist Church, which thus becomes at that time the second largest Protestant denomination in the United States (after the Southern Baptists).

Authority for the date: ” History: Our Story.” http://www.umc.org/site/c.lwL4KnN1LtH/b.1720691/k.B5CB/History_Our_Story.htm

1982

Death in North Carolina of Cameron Townsend while battling acute leukemia. He had been a missionary linguist and founder of Wycliffe Bible Translators, one of the world’s largest mission agencies.

Authority for the date: Encyclopedia of Arkansas. http://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=4453

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