Moments in Church History: First Panic, Then Revival

 Could God work something wonderful out of the relentlessly negative news? Leave it to evangelicals to find the silver lining amid economic crisis. If revival begins with recognizing our need for God, then perhaps the declining economy will wean Americans from their self-reliance. You would expect no other perspective from people who believe in the [...]

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Moments in Church History: Did you have your quiet time?”

1729

A Ceremony of Profession was held for Sister St. Stanislaus Hachard at the Ursuline convent in New Orleans, thereby making her the first Catholic woman to become a nun in America.

1839

Scottish clergyman Robert Murray McCheyne wrote in a letter: ‘All my ideas of peace and joy are linked in with my Bible; and I [...]

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Moments in Church History

March 11, 843: Eastern churches officially reintroduced and sanctioned icons, after an 89-year controversy that occasionally turned violent.
March 11, 1513: Leo X is elected pope. His eight-year tenure, marked by gross excesses and immorality, would culminate his 1520 excommunication of Martin Luther .
March 11, 1812: Fire engulfs missionary William Carey’s print shop in Serampore, India, [...]

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Moments in Church History

1839

Birth of Phoebe Palmer Knapp, American Methodist hymnwriter. She published more than 500 hymn tunes during her lifetime; her most famous melody comprises the tune to Fanny Crosby’s hymn, “Blessed Assurance.”

1843

Scottish clergyman Robert Murray McCheyne wrote in a letter: ‘You will never find Jesus so precious as when the world is one vast howling [...]

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Moments in Church History: Tearin’ Down the House

1629

In Germany, the Edict of Restitution ordered that all church property secularized since 1552 be restored to the Roman Catholic Church.

1735

English revivalist George Whitefield wrote in a letter: ‘The renewal of our natures is a work of great importance. It is not to be done in a day. We have not only a new [...]

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Moments in Church History

1179

The Third Lateran Council opened under Alexander III. It was attended by 300 bishops who enacted measures against the Waldenses and Albigensians. Lateran III also mandated that popes were to be elected by two-thirds vote from the assembled cardinals.

1555

French-born Swiss reformer John Calvin wrote in a letter to Philip Melanchthon: ‘It behooves us to [...]

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Moments in Church History: Baptism, Prayer and…

1547

The Seventh Session of the Council of Trent declared: ‘If anyone says that one baptized cannot, even if he wishes, lose grace, however much he may sin, unless he is unwilling to believe, let him be anathema.’

1744

Colonial missionary to the American Indians, David Brainerd wrote in his journal: ‘In the morning, spent an hour [...]

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Moments in Church History

1948

U.S. Senate Chaplain Peter Marshall prayed: ‘O God, forgive the poverty and the pettiness of our prayers. Listen not to our words but to the yearnings of our hearts. Hear beneath our petitions the crying of our need.’

1959

American Presbyterian apologist Francis Schaeffer wrote in a letter: ‘Christianity is the greatest intellectual system the mind [...]

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Moments in Church History: The Joys of Death and Other Things

1633

On his deathbed, English poet and clergyman George Herbert, 39, uttered these last words: ‘I shall be free from sin and all the temptations and anxieties that attend it…I shall dwell… where these eyes shall see my Master and Savior.’

1692

The Salem Witch Trials in the Massachusetts colony officially began with the conviction of Rev. [...]

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Moments in Church History 2-28

1759

Pope Clement XIII granted permission for the Bible to be translated into the languages of the Roman Catholic states.

1784

English churchman John Wesley, 80, formally chartered the movement within Anglicanism which afterward came to be known as Wesleyan Methodism.

1947

U.S. Senate Chaplain Peter Marshall prayed: ‘Let not the past ever be so dear to us [...]

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