AUGUST 12
SIMONTON RISKED MALARIA TO WIN BRAZIL FOR CHRIST (1859)
“WHEREAS, a few of our race did in the NAME and FEAR Of GOD, Associate for the purpose of advancing our friends in a true knowledge of God, of true rel...”
Douglas, William. Annals of the First African Church in the United States of America now Styled the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, Philadelphia... Philadelphia: King & Baird Printers, 1862.
Take refuge in God’s greatness (1908)
Be a rock of refuge for me, where I can always go —Psalm 71:3 (Holman). As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the wa...
Events
844
Charles the Bald gives Bishop Hincmar an estate—which the bishop will make over to the hospice of St. Denis on his elevation to the archepiscopate.
Authority for the date: Schaff, Philip. History of the Christian Church.1257
On command of Pope Alexander IV, Thomas Aquinas is reluctantly admitted as a doctor of theology by the University of Paris. The university had denied mendicant friars (Dominicans and Franciscans) the privilege of occupying university chairs because they had refused to take an oath relating to the autonomy of the university. School leaders had also opposed the friars on a number of other grounds.
Authority for the date: New Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967.1728
Anthony Jacob Henckel is killed falling off his horse. Expelled from Germany in 1717 for rebuking bad behavior in his prince’s court, he had become a preacher in the New Hanover region of Pennsylvania, founding several congregations.
Authority for the date: Stapleton. A Wonderful Story of Old Time Evangelical Evangelism.1792
During the French Revolution, a decree orders the evacuation of all religious houses that are still occupied by “religious men and women” (meaning monks and nuns), except those that provide medical services or charities. The occupants have until October 1st to comply.
Authority for the date: Cunningham, Francis Aloysius. The War Against Religion.... Boston: Pilot Publishing, 1911.1812
Archibald Alexander becomes the first professor of Princeton, filling its theology chair. Like many of America’s premiere colleges and universities, Princeton had been founded to train ministers.
Authority for the date: Kerr, Hugh Thomas. Sons of the Prophets: Leaders in Protestantism from Princeton Seminary. Princeton University Press,1859
Ashbel Green Simenton lands in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. “What can one or two missionaries accomplish in an empire as large as the United States?” he had asked. “The work is so perfectly hopeless by mere human agency that they who undertake it must either find support by resting upon the power of God or else despair.” He will found the first Presbyterian Church in Brazil. In order to carry on his work more effectively, he will move to the center of the city, where he will be exposed to malaria. With friends begging him to leave, he retorts that if foreign merchants live there merely to make money, he should be willing to do so to win souls. He will contract malaria and die at the age of thirty four.
Authority for the date: Kerr, Hugh Thomas. Sons of the Prophets: Leaders in Protestantism from Princeton Seminary. Princeton University Pre1900
Edith Nathan, May Nathan, and Mary Heaysman, three women who had been working as missionaries in the Chinese city of Ta-ning, are captured by Boxers. They will be executed the next morning.
Authority for the date: Moore, Henry Charles. Noble Deeds of the World’s Heroines.1918
Bolsheviks arrest the Orthodox spiritual father of the Belogorsk monastery, Hieromonk Vyacheslav, whom they will execute.
Authority for the date: www.orthodox.net/russiannm/perm-hieromartyrs-and-martyrs-of.html1947
A group of Ayoré Indians in Bolivia lay down their weapons and come out of the jungle in response to friendly overtures by New Tribes missionaries. The Ayoré had martyred New Tribes missionaries Dave Bacon, Cecil and Bob Dye, George Hosback, and Eldon Hunter four years earlier.
Authority for the date: Johnston, Ken. The Story of New Tribes Mission. Sanford, Florida: New Tribes Mission, 1985.1959
Presbyterians in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, along with many other well-wishers, observe the centennial of the arrival of Presbyterian missionary Ashbel Green Simenton in 1859.
Authority for the date: William R. Read, New Patterns of Church Grow