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1700 THE ENLIGHTENMENT IS BORN
The Enlightenment was a philosophical movement based on faith in human ability that sought to formulate and defend truth on the basis of reason alone. Eighteenth-century Germany was the birthplace of the Enlightenment, and also where it had its greatest impact. This philosophy led to the widespread rejection of both supernatural revelation and the belief that man is sinful. The movement perceived God as having placed within man a natural theology that led to both morality and immortality.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1700 PETER THE GREAT PROMOTES MISSIONS IN SIBERIA
Russia began commercial expansion into northern Asia in approximately 1500. But two hundred years passed before the area now known as Siberia came under the political control of Russia. Russian Czar Peter the Great (1672-1725) sought to extend the reach of the Russian Orthodox Church for reasons more political than religious. Yet because of Peter's sponsorship, by 1750, priests and monks carried Orthodox Christianity as far east as the Bering Sea. Church affiliation among many ethnic Russians in Siberia proved to be nominal, but among indigenous people groups, Russian Orthodoxy took root and flourished for centuries.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1701 YALE COLLEGE IS FOUNDED
In 1701, at the urging of Congregational pastors in the colony, the Connecticut General Assembly adopted "An Act of Liberty to Erect a Collegiate School, wherein Youth may be instructed in the Arts & Sciences who through the Blessing of Almighty God may be fitted for Publick Employment both in Church and Civil State." The Collegiate School opened its doors that same year in the Killingworth, Connecticut home of its first rector, Congregational pastor Abraham Pierson (1645-1707). In 1716, the school was relocated to New Haven, Connecticut, and was renamed Yale to honor Elihu Yale (1649-1721), who had donated 417 books to the school's library. Among early notable students were theologian Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) and missionary David Brainerd (1718-1747). The college expanded to include graduate programs and became Yale University in 1887.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1704 POPE CONDEMNS CHINESE RITES
Jesuit monk Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) set the standard for Jesuit relations with China by articulating Christianity to the Chinese in their own terms. Ricci believed that the Chinese worshiped the true God in their own way; consequently, Jesuit missionaries usually tolerated indigenous rites in honor of ancestors and Confucius. The Dominican and Franciscan orders eventually joined the Jesuits in China, and by the late sixteenth century the Jesuits' lenient practices sparked heated debate. Though Jesuit skill with astronomy and mathematics had won the favor of Chinese scholars and officials, the Dominicans argued that their policy of allowing traditional Chinese rites permitted superstition to enter the church. In 1704, Pope Clement XI (1649-1721) issued a decree condemning the Chinese rites. Despite the pope's condemnation, the Jesuit method of accommodation survived as a missionary strategy.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1706 DANISH-HALLE MISSION IS FOUNDED
In 1706, King Frederick IV (1671-1730) of Denmark founded a mission to the Danish colonies in India. Two of August Francke's (1663-1727) former students in Halle, Germany were the first missionaries, and it became known as the Danish-Halle Mission. The various business endeavors Francke started raised funds for the missionaries and published their letters from India. The Danish-Halle Mission operated for more than 250 years.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1707 ISAAC WATTS WRITES HYMNS AND SPIRITUAL SONGS
Isaac Watts (1674-1748), born in Southampton, England, served as a pastor in London for most of his life and wrote such well-known hymns as "Joy to the World," "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross," "O God Our Help in Ages Past," and "Jesus Shall Reign." Most of these hymns were first published in 1707 in Hymns and Spiritual Songs, a collection unlike any other before it. These hymns broke the English taboo against singing anything other than Psalms in public worship.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1708 ALEXANDER MACK FOUNDS THE CHURCH OF THE BRETHREN
Alexander Mack (1679-1735) of Schriesheim, Germany, was born to Reformed parents but was drawn to the more radical Pietist movement led by E. C. Hochmann von Hochenau (1670-1721). Persecution of Pietists caused Mack to move to Wittgenstein, Germany, where in 1708, he and seven others started a fellowship that became the Church of the Brethren. Many of their rituals, such as foot washing and the holy kiss following Communion, came directly from Scripture. They also emphasized believer's baptism and practiced triple immersion. Due to continued persecution, the Brethren eventually set out for America. The first group arrived in Pennsylvania in 1719, and the second group, led by Mack, followed in 1729. Mack guided the Brethren until his death.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1708 THE SAYBROOK PLATFORM IS FORMED
By the start of the eighteenth century the churches of New England were faced with a congregational polity that seemed ineffective for solving disputes and promoting piety within the church. In an effort to curb this decline, the Congregational Church of Connecticut met in Saybrook and formed the Saybrook Platform. Building upon the ideas of Puritan preachers such as Cotton Mather (1663-1728), the Saybrook Platform declared that a board made up of lay and clerical representatives would be responsible for making authoritative judgments for the church, as well as for resolving disputes. This marked an important break with the congregational polity set up by the churches of Massachusetts Bay, moving toward a more Presbyterian model of church governance. The Saybrook Platform became the most important confessional document for the churches of New England.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1717 ANTI-CHRISTIAN EDICTS ARE FORMED IN CHINA
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Jesuit missionaries experienced great success in China, with early Manchu emperors graciously welcoming Christianity and allowing missions to be founded throughout the Chinese provinces. Dominican and Franciscan missionaries joined the Jesuits, and by the early 1700s there were at least 250,000 Chinese Roman Catholics. Unfortunately, the disagreement between Jesuits and Dominicans over the role of Chinese rites was very damaging to relations with China. Pope Clement XI (1649-1721) issued a decree in 1704 to end the Chinese rites, but this declaration only served to irritate K'ang Hsi (1654-1722), China's emperor. As a result, Emperor K'ang Hsi banished all missionaries in 1717. Persecution of Christians followed and continues today.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1721 PETER THE GREAT PUTS THE CHURCH UNDER HIS CONTROL
In 1721, Russian czar Peter the Great (1672-1725) issued a "Spiritual Regulation" and established his own Holy Synod as a means to bring the Russian Orthodox Church under his control. Composed of twelve members nominated by the czar, the synod officially replaced the patriarch, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow. The Holy Synod, which became the dominant authority over the church, turned Christian ministers into a police force of sorts, strengthening the state's control of clergy and church members alike. The Russian government controlled the church for nearly two hundred years. Following the Communist Revolution of 1917, the synod was finally abolished and the patriarch temporarily restored.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1722 ZINZENDORF FOUNDS HERRNHUT
Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf (1700-1760), the founder of the Moravian Church, was born to an Austrian noble family. As a young man he was interested in foreign missions, but was pressured by his family into a government job. In 1722, he invited a group of Moravian Protestant refugees to live on an estate he purchased at Berthelsdorf, outside of Dresden, Germany. Zinzendorf called the newly formed Christian community "Herrnhut." He retired from his Saxon civil service job in 1727 to devote himself full time to the religious colony. Zinzendorf's "heart religion" emphasized a deep mystical, spiritual, and experiential faith that manifested itself in community and worldwide evangelism. The community at Herrnhut was the beginning of the Moravian Church.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1726 REVIVAL COMES TO THE CHURCH OF THEODORUS FRELINGHUYSEN
By the beginning of the eighteenth century in America, the evangelistic fervor that had first been present in New England had passed with the deaths of its founders. Many church members were theologically knowledgeable but remained unconverted. Immigrants were increasingly unchurched. Through the influence of Rationalism, the role of the Word of God was rapidly being displaced by human reason. It was in this setting that revival began through New Jersey pastor Theodorus J. Frelinghuysen (1691-1774). Born in the Netherlands, Frelinghuysen grew up in Dutch Calvinistic pietism. In his late twenties, he felt called to preach among the Dutch Reformed congregations in America and immigrated to New Jersey in 1720. Frelinghuysen was an eloquent preacher who emphasized the need for personal spiritual regeneration. Around 1726, God lit the first sparks of a revival in Frelinghuysen's church that would become known as the Great Awakening.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1726-1760 THE GREAT AWAKENING REVIVES THE COLONIES
The Great Awakening is the name given to the revivals occurring in the American colonies from 1726 to 1760. The movement was led by the preaching of Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) and George Whitefield (1714-1770) and reached its peak in 1740. Jonathan Edwards was a pastor first in Northhampton, Massachusetts, and then in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, briefly becoming president of the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University). Whitefield toured the colonies, calling all to repent and believe in Christ. By 1740, evangelical Christianity was firmly established on American soil. The revival birthed numerous universities, including Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania, Rutgers, Brown, and Dartmouth.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1726 LOG COLLEGE IS FORERUNNER OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY In 1726, William Tennent (1673-1746), a Presbyterian minister in Neshaminy, Pennsylvania, began training his sons and other young men for the ministry. In 1735, the teaching became formalized and Tennent erected a modest structure that was referred to as the "log college." The name stuck, and the men who attended were referred to as the "New Side" Presbyterians, the "Old Side" being those who rejected the validity of the Great Awakening. The Log College closed with the death of William Tennent in 1746, but his vision lived on. Later that year, alumni and supporters of the Log College founded the College of New Jersey, which eventually became Princeton University.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
THE ANTIDOTE TO DISUNITY August 13, 1727
It's a familiar story—people couldn't get along.
In 1700, Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf was born in Dresden, Germany, in a Pietist noble family. The Pietists were Lutherans who sought to know Jesus personally and to live a godly life. At the age of six, Zinzendorf committed his life to Jesus. In childlike simplicity he wrote love letters to his Savior and threw them out the windows of the castle. At ten, he was sent to school in Halle, the center of German Pietism.
In 1721, he purchased his grandmother's estate containing the village of Berthelsdorf. Soon thereafter a leader of the Moravians, the spiritual descendants of Jan Hus, came and asked him if oppressed Moravians could take refuge on his estate. Zinzendorf agreed, and in December 1722, the first ten Moravians arrived. They were given a plot of land that was named Herrnhut, meaning "The Lord's Watch."
Soon ninety Moravians lived on Herrnhut. Because the Pietist pastor of the Lutheran church in Berthelsdorf shared the Moravians' vision in his preaching, Lutheran Pietists soon became part of Herrnhut, as did Reformed and Anabaptists. By 1727, the population had reached three hundred, but divisions were arising.
Language barriers and squabbles over the church liturgy sprang up between the Moravians and the Lutherans. Zinzendorf, determined not to let Herrnhut destroy itself, moved there himself, going house to house to encourage unity in the community. He organized the people into prayer bands of two or three.
Then on Sunday, August 13, 1727, the Lutheran church pastor gave an early morning address at Herrnhut to prepare them for the Lord's Supper. The people walked to the church in Berthelsdorf feeling united as never before and expectantly awaited the service, which began with the singing of a hymn. The congregation became gripped with such emotion that the sound of weeping nearly drowned out the singing. Zinzendorf led the congregation in a prayer of confession for their earlier broken fellowship. Then they partook of the Lord's Supper together. After the service people who had previously been fighting embraced one another, pledging to love each other from that time on.
The residents of Herrnhut saw that day as their Pentecost. Soon an around-the-clock prayer ministry began at Herrnhut and continued for one hundred years.
The Moravians became the first missionary-sending Protestant church. When Zinzendorf died thirty-three years later, 226 missionaries had been sent out from Herrnhut. One of every sixty of the early Moravians had become a missionary.
The day before he died, Zinzendorf asked a Moravian friend, "Did you ever suppose in the beginning that the Savior would do as we now really see in the various Moravian settlements ... amongst the heathen? ... What a formidable caravan from our church already stands around the Lamb."
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1727 HERRNHUT WITNESSES REVIVAL
In 1727, five years after the founding of the Moravian religious community on the estate of Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf (1700-1760), discord developed between the residents of Herrnhut and the Lutheran Pietists with whom they worshiped. During the summer of 1727, Zinzendorf organized the people into prayer groups to build unity. On Sunday, August 13, as they were singing the first hymn of worship at the Lutheran church, the spirit of revival swept through the service, resulting in weeping, prayers of confession, and heartfelt reconciliation among the worshipers. The residents of Herrnhut saw that day as their Pentecost. The Moravians, as they came to be known, were the first missionary-sending Protestant church.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1728 FIRST TRAINING INSTITUTE FOR EVANGELIZING JEWS AND MUSLIMS
It was not until the Reformation that the church began to take any interest in evangelizing Jews and Muslims. This interest did not become serious until the Moravians and the Pietists emerged. The first Protestant effort to evangelize Jews began through the efforts of three men: Ezra Edzard (1629-1708), J. H. Callenberg (1694-1760), and A. H. Francke (1663-1723). They established the Institutum Judaicum et Muhammedicum at Halle in Germany to train missionaries to evangelize Jews and Muslims.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1728 THE HOLY CLUB BEGINS
The Holy Club was started in 1728, when Oxford University student Charles Wesley (1707-1788) began a small Christian group with two friends. The name of the group came from other students, who teased Wesley and his friends, calling them the "Holy Club" or "Methodists." Later, Charles' brother John (1703-1791) took over leadership of the group, and by 1733, when George Whitefield (1714-1770) joined, there were eight or nine members. The club focused on self-discipline and encouraged its members to maintain pious lives characterized by good works. Unfortunately, their efforts lacked faith in Jesus Christ for salvation, and their religious routines served only to highlight how far they were from perfection. Of the members of the Holy Club, only Whitefield was converted to Christ while still at Oxford.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1729 BACH WRITES ST. MATTHEW PASSION
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) was born in Eisenach, Germany. He was a committed orthodox Lutheran his entire life. Bach was a regular church musician by age fifteen, and at twenty-three he became the court organist for the Duke of Weimar. During his lifetime, Bach was better known as an organist than as a composer. Only nine or ten of his compositions were published while he was alive. However, in the mid-nineteenth century, a rediscovery of Bach's work began. Felix Mendelssohn's discovery of Bach's St. Matthew Passion, his greatest work, composed in 1729, made Bach known as a composer. Since that time, many have regarded him as the greatest sacred composer in church history. He often wrote on his compositions I.N.J., the Latin initials for "In the name of Jesus."
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1732 FIRST MORAVIAN MISSIONARIES SAIL FOR WEST INDIES Leonhard Dober (1706-1766) and David Nitschmann (1696-1772) were the first Moravian missionaries to set out from Herrnhut, their headquarters in Saxony, Germany, where Christians from Moravia had taken refuge in the early eighteenth century. After walking to Copenhagen, Dober and Nitschmann set sail for the West Indies on October 8, 1732. Paying their own way, they had no formal support system. Over a fifty-year period, the Moravians preached the gospel throughout the West Indies, and by the time missionaries from other Christian denominations arrived, they had baptized approximately thirteen thousand converts. By the mid-eighteenth century, more than two hundred additional Moravian missions were established around the world in Australia, North and South America, Tibet, Russia, and parts of Africa.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1735 ISRAEL BEN ELIEZER FOUNDS HASIDISM
Largely in reaction to the Jews' primarily intellectual study of the Talmud, Israel ben Eliezer (1700-1760)—known as Israel Baal Shem Tov ("Master of the Good Name")—began teaching a mystical form of Judaism in about 1735 that came to be known as Hasidism. He articulated a spiritual life in which ordinary Jews, not just intellectuals, could participate. Making use of the kabbalah, or Jewish mysticism, Hasidism first swept through the Jewish community of the Ukraine, then through Hungary and northern Rumania, attracting as much as half of the Jewish population of these areas. Hasidism included ecstatic worship and was led by charismatic rabbis known as zaddikim. Many Jews made pilgrimages to the zaddikim seeking inspiration or a blessing.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1735 JONATHAN EDWARDS PREACHES DURING THE GREAT AWAKENING
Revival came to the Massachusetts town of Northampton in 1735, through the preaching of Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758). Throughout the fall Edwards preached with passion, attempting to convert the lost members of his church. At the end of December, "the spirit of God began extraordinarily to set in and wonderfully to work amongst us," he later wrote. In a matter of a few days several church members were converted. Eventually people were converted in every home in Northhampton. Jonathan Edwards went on to become one of America's greatest theologians.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1735 GEORGE WHITEFIELD IS CONVERTED
Educated at Oxford's Pembroke College and a member of the Holy Club along with the Wesley brothers, George Whitefield (1714-1770) became convinced of the necessity of conversion in 1735, and subsequently experienced spiritual rebirth himself. A year later, he was ordained in the Church of England. Traveling to the New World seven times, Whitefield is considered to be the founder of American revivalism and was the leader of the Great Awakening in America. During his six-week tour of New England in 1740, he preached more than 175 times to tens of thousands. In addition to his American tours, he made fourteen visits to Scotland. In his thirty-four-year career, Whitefield delivered more than fifteen thousand sermons to millions of people, and his unrehearsed style of preaching irreversibly affected American evangelistic preaching.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
THE HOLY CLUB
May 5, 1735
It was a religious club that produced mostly poor results.
Charles Wesley and two friends began a Christian small group at Oxford University in 1728. John Wesley, who already had graduated from Oxford, returned the following year as a tutor and assumed its leadership. Oxford students made fun of the group, referring to it as the "Holy Club" or "Methodists." By the time George Whitefield joined the group in 1733, the group included eight or nine dedicated members.
The focus of the Holy Club was on religious self-discipline. They woke up early for lengthy devotions, took Communion each Sunday, fasted every Wednesday and Friday, and observed Saturday as the Sabbath in preparation for the Lord's Day. They were motivated by the belief that they were working for the salvation of their souls. Yet their self-discipline brought them neither happiness nor salvation.
The lifestyle of the Holy Club had a catastrophic effect on the life of William Morgan, one of the founders. He lost his mind and eventually his life in his struggle to achieve self-disciplined perfection.
Whitefield was the first Holy Club member to question their practices. He read a book through which, in his words, "God showed me that I must be born again, or be damned!"
His solution, however, was to try to be born again through further extremes of self-denial. During Lent of 1735, he ate only a little coarse bread with tea. By Holy Week he was so weak he could not study or even walk up a flight of stairs. His grades began to suffer and his tutor wondered if he was going mad. His physician put him in bed where he remained for seven weeks.
Having hit bottom in his efforts to earn his salvation, Whitefield described what happened next:
God was pleased to remove the heavy load, to enable me to lay hold of his dear Son by a living faith, and by giving me the Spirit of adoption, to seal me, even to the day of everlasting redemption.
O! With what joy—joy unspeakable—even joy that was full of and big with glory, was my soul filled when the weight of sin went off and an abiding sense of the love of God broke in upon my disconsolate soul! Surely it was a day to be had in everlasting remembrance. My joys were like a spring tide and overflowed the banks.
Later he declared, "I knew the place: it may be superstitious, perhaps, but whenever I go to Oxford I cannot help running to the place where Jesus Christ first revealed himself to me, and gave me the new birth."
On May 5, 1735, Whitefield sent a letter to John Wesley, attempting to share what had happened to him. He wrote, "Into his all gracious arms, I blindly throw myself."
It would be three more years before the Wesleys found Jesus' gracious arms.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1735 THE WESLEYS GO TO GEORGIA
Charles (1707-1788) and John Wesley (1703-1791) were born in Epworth, Lincolnshire, England. While studying at Oxford they were involved in the Holy Club, a group started by Charles to promote the practice of Christian duties. John was invited by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel to be a missionary to the Indians and colonists of Georgia. He went in 1735, accompanied by his brother Charles. However, the mission was unsuccessful, and upon returning to England Wesley wrote, "I went to Georgia to convert Indians; but, oh, who shall convert me?" Though the mission was a failure, it succeeded in introducing the brothers to Moravian Christians whose teachings eventually lead to their conversions.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1738 JOHN AND CHARLES WESLEY ARE CONVERTED
Despite having been sent as missionaries from England to Georgia, it was not until later that brothers Charles (1707-1788) and John Wesley (1703-1791) were converted to Christ. In 1738, Charles read Martin Luther's (1483-1546) commentary on Galatians for the first time, and as he later wrote, found himself "at peace with God and rejoiced in hope of loving Christ." Charles went on to write 7, 270 hymns, becoming known as the "sweet singer of Methodism." On May 24, 1738, three days after Charles' conversion, John's heart too was "strangely warmed" while listening to the reading of Luther's preface to the book of Romans. Of that day he wrote, "Then it pleased God to kindle a fire which I trust shall never be extinguished." This experience made a powerful evangelist out of John, who later became known as the "founder of Methodism."
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1739 REVIVAL BEGINS AT FETTER LANE WATCH NIGHT SERVICE The Moravian congregation at the Fetter Lane Chapel in London, England, met on New Year's Eve, 1738, for their annual Watch Night service. Following Moravian custom, they held a prayer service and "love feast" as a prelude to the Lord's Supper. About sixty people were in attendance, including George Whitefield (1714— 1770), John (1703-1791) and Charles (1707-1788) Wesley, and other former members of the "Holy Club" at Oxford University. Much to the surprise of those in attendance, at about three in the morning they were greatly moved by the Holy Spirit and experienced what Whitefield called "a Pentecostal season indeed." What took place at this small Moravian service began what came to be known in England as the Evangelical Revival. Through Whitefield and the Wesleys, all of England was affected by the Fetter Lane Watch Night Revival.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
A HEART STRANGELY WARMED
May 20, 1738
They were missionaries while still themselves a mission field.
John and Charles Wesley were born in 1703 and 1707 respectively, the fifteenth and eighteenth children of Samuel and Susanna Wesley.
At Oxford they met frequently with George Whitefield and others for Bible study and reflection. John was the leader of their group that was mockingly called the "Holy Club."
In 1735, the Wesleys sailed to America to become missionaries in the colony of Georgia. During the long journey the ship was buffeted by a violent storm, and John was left cowering in fear of death. He was amazed at the sense of peace that he observed among the Moravian Christians aboard the same ship. He was shaken, realizing that they had something he didn't have.
On January 24, 1738, he wrote in his journal, "I went to America to convert the Indians; but O! who shall convert me?"
After a short and unsuccessful time in America, the brothers returned to England where they came under the influence of Peter Boehler, another Moravian. Boehler's teachings on justification by faith, not works, were convincing. The Wesleys began eagerly reading Martin Luther's writings on Galatians and Romans, coming to the realization that their theology had been resting on works, not faith. This doctrine was now clear in their minds, but they had not yet experienced it in their hearts.
On May 20, 1738, the brothers and some friends stayed up all night praying for Charles, who was quite ill. They also were praying that God would open their hearts so they could truly believe and have assurance of salvation. The next day, Charles believed and gave his life to Christ for the first time. "I now found myself at peace with God, and rejoiced in hope of loving Christ."
For three days John wrestled with what happened to his brother. He wanted to believe, but couldn't and became very depressed. Then on May 24, 1738, he wrote in his journal:
In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther's preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given to me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.
When John went to Charles to tell him the good news, he found Charles up late writing a hymn to celebrate his own conversion. They sang the hymn together.
John and Charles Wesley went on to lead the great Methodist revival that changed English society. Charles wrote almost eight thousand hymns by the time he died in 1788. John preached nonstop until his death in 1791.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1739 WHITEFIELD PREACHES IN THE OPEN AIR
George Whitefield (1714-1770) first preached in the open air at Bristol, England. In 1739, while he took a break from his time in America to raise money for an orphanage, Whitefield's preaching at open-air meetings began to have an astounding impact throughout England. Returning to the American colonies, Whitefield became the leader of the Great Awakening that had begun in 1735 under the preaching of Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758). Whitefield continued the practice of open-air preaching until the end of his life, usually delivering at least twenty sermons a week, traveling great distances to carry his message to millions of people.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1739 JOHN WESLEY BEGINS ITINERANT PREACHING
Believing his God-given mission was to evangelize Great Britain, in April 1739, John Wesley (1703-1791) set out to preach the gospel. At his friend George Whitefield's (1714-1770) prompting, Wesley preached in the open air for the first time at Kingswood in Bristol, England. As Wesley's evangelical preaching caused many churches to close their doors to him, he realized that open-air preaching was the most effective way for him to reach the masses. Seeing the need to follow up with recent converts, he formed fellowships, which led to the formation of Methodism. In his lifetime, he rode 250,000 miles on horseback, preached 42,000 sermons, and published 233 books. Wesley remained a member of the Church of England until his death.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1741 JONATHAN EDWARDS PREACHES "SINNERS IN THE HANDS OF AN ANGRY GOD"
In 1735, the Great Awakening began in New England in the village of Northampton, Massachusetts, under the leadership of Jonathan Edwards.
When Edwards was invited to speak in Enfield, Connecticut, on July 8, 1741, he faced an indifferent audience as the Awakening had made little impact on the town. The title of his sermon that evening was "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." As Edwards preached in his even-tempered, logical style about God's wrath and human sinfulness, the attitude of his audience moved from indifference to fear for their souls. Some began to weep, crying out, "What shall I do to be saved?" Edwards ended his sermon with a call to come to Christ, and the town of Enfield was never the same.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
SINNERS IN THE HANDS OF AN ANGRY GOD
July 8, 1741
It was the most famous sermon ever preached in America.
The preacher was Jonathan Edwards, pastor of the Congregational Church in Northampton, Massachusetts, and a future president of Princeton College. The date was Saturday, July 8, 1741, and the place was Enfield, Connecticut, where Edwards had been invited to speak.
Enfield was not a religious place. The Great Awakening had touched surrounding towns, but not Enfield. With curiosity and nonchalance, the crowd entered the meetinghouse to hear Edwards speak.
Then Edwards began. He did not sound like the evangelists of today. He wrote out his sermons word for word and then usually read them. Listening to Edwards was like listening to a lecturer who made his case in an even-tempered, intellectually demanding style in which he tried to develop each step of his argument logically.
The title of Edwards' sermon was "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," and his text was Deuteronomy 32:35: "Their foot shall slide in due time" (KJV).
Edwards explained his text:
As he that walks in slippery places is every moment liable to fall, he cannot foresee one moment whether he shall stand or fall the next; and when he does fall, he falls at once without warning: which is also expressed in Psalm 73:18-19. "Surely thou didst set them in slippery places: thou castedst them down into destruction: How are they brought into desolation as in a moment!" ...
The bow of God's wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart, and strains the bow, and it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, and that of an angry God, without any promise or obligation at all, that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood. Thus all you that have never passed under a great change of heart, by the mighty power of the Spirit of God upon your souls; all you that were never born again, and made new creatures, and raised from being dead in sin, to a state of new, and before altogether unexperienced light and life, are in the hands of an angry God.
As Edwards preached, members of the audience cried out, "What shall I do to be saved? O, I am going to hell!" Some crowded toward the pulpit begging him to stop. The noise was so loud at one point during the sermon that Edwards asked everyone to be quiet so that he could be heard.
He ended the sermon by saying: "Let everyone that is out of Christ now awake and fly from the wrath to come. The wrath of Almighty God is now undoubtedly hanging over a great part of this congregation. Let everyone fly out of Sodom: 'Haste and escape for your lives, look not behind you, escape to the mountain, lest you be consumed.'"
The little town of Enfield was never the same.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1741 HANDEL WRITES MESSIAH
George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) was of Lutheran heritage and possessed uncommon musical talent. Handel did not come from a musical family, and his father wanted him to study law. Despite his father's wishes, Handel mastered harpsichord, organ, violin, and oboe by the age of seventeen. He began composing in Hamburg, where German opera was flourishing. Moving to England, Handel wrote approximately forty operas, which were popular among English aristocrats. Eventually he began composing oratorios. His Messiah, composed in only three weeks during 1741, tells the story of Christ from prophecy to fulfillment and has been performed more than any other choral work in history. Handel, master of the English oratorio, inspired later composers like Haydn (1732-1809), Beethoven (1770-1827), and Mendelssohn (1809-1847).
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1742 DAVID BRAINERD IS APPOINTED MISSIONARY TO THE INDIANS
Born in Haddam, Connecticut, David Brainerd (1718-1747) experienced a profound conversion at the age of twenty-one. Desiring to go into the ministry, he studied at Yale and was first in his class, but he was expelled for an offhand remark he made that reflected his involvement in the Great Awakening. In November 1742, Brainerd was commissioned as a missionary to the Indians. Serving in Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, Brainerd saw more than 130 Indians put their faith in Christ within four years. Becoming terminally ill with tuberculosis, Brainerd spent a short while studying at the College of New Jersey and then accepted the invitation to spend his last days at the home of his friend Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758). Following Brainerd's death in October 1747, Edwards published Brainerd's diary, which became a devotional classic and a source of great inspiration for the cause of cross-cultural missions.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
MESSIAH
September 14, 1741
He wrote the world's most beautiful music in an amazingly short period of time.
George Frideric Handel was born in 1685. Handel's father was the town surgeon of Giebichenstein, a suburb of Halle, Germany. George was the second child and was baptized as a Lutheran the day after he was born.
When Handel began showing an interest in music, his father, determined that his son be a lawyer, forbade him to have anything to do with music. A sympathetic relative, however, secretly gave young Handel access to a clavichord and Handel taught himself to play.
When Handel was six years old he accompanied his father to the court of a duke to whom his father had been appointed surgeon. While there, Handel went up and played the organ after a Sunday worship service. Hearing the lad play, the duke was so impressed that he urged the father to give his son a formal music education. As a result, Handel was allowed to study under the organist of the Liebfrauenkirche in Halle. By the time he was twelve, Handel had written his first composition and was proficient enough at the organ to serve as his teacher's substitute.
At the age of twenty-seven Handel moved to England, where he spent the rest of his life. But life as a composer and musician was not easy. Finally in 1741, his health began to fail, and he was facing debtor's prison.
Then two events occurred that turned Handel's life around. A friend gave him a libretto for an oratorio on the life of Christ, with the words taken from the Bible. Then three Dublin charities commissioned him to compose a work for a fund-raising benefit.
On August 22, 1741, Handel sat down to begin composing. He became so absorbed in his work that he hardly took time to eat. On September 14, 1741, he finished his composition and named it simply Messiah. In just twenty-four days he had written 260 pages of music. Considering the short time involved, it was the greatest feat in the history of musical composition. Later, in describing his experience he alluded to the apostle Paul and said, "Whether I was in the body or out of my body when I wrote it, I know not."
Dublin hosted the premier performance of Messiah on April 13, 1742. The king was in attendance at the London premier a year later. As the choir began to sing the "Halleluiah Chorus" the king rose to his feet and the whole audience followed his lead, beginning a tradition that continues to this day.
Messiah was Handel's last public performance, on April 6, 1759. At the end of the concert he fainted by the organ and died just eight days later. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, where his statue shows him holding the manuscript from Messiah, opened to "I know That My Redeemer Liveth."
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
THE TIMES AND SEASONS ARE GOD'S
November 3, 1745
What a difference a year can make.
David Brainerd, a twenty-seven-year-old missionary to the Indians of Crossweeksung, New Jersey, baptized fourteen converts one Sunday in 1745. This was part of what he called "a remarkable work of grace" with which God had blessed his labors among the Native Americans of New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
David Brainerd was born in 1718 in Haddam, Connecticut, and orphaned at the age of fourteen. His plans to farm the land he had inherited changed when he experienced a profound conversion in 1739. That same year he entered Yale at the age of twenty-one, aspiring to the Congregational ministry.
At Yale, he became a leader in the Great Awakening, a revival then sweeping through New England. He was expelled from the university in his third year when he was overheard questioning the salvation of a faculty member. After his expulsion, he continued his studies for the ministry, living with a local minister. Subsequently, he was licensed to preach and ordained as a Presbyterian minister before becoming a missionary to the American Indians of New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
On Sunday, November 3, 1745, Brainerd joyously baptized six adults and eight children, bringing the total to forty-seven baptized believers. One was an eighty-year-old woman. Two were fifty-year-old men who were notorious drunkards before putting their trust in the Lord Jesus. One of the men was a murderer as well. Because of the ter-rible lives these men had led, Brainerd delayed baptizing them until he saw a radical change in their lives. But changed they were, and Brainerd finally felt at peace about baptizing them. Brainerd wrote in his journal, "Through rich grace, none of them have been left to disgrace their profession of Christianity by any scandalous or unbecoming behavior."
A year later this remarkable work of God among the Indians continued, but David Brainerd's work was coming to a close. Brainerd was dying of tuberculosis at the age of just twenty-eight. He sadly realized that he must return to New England where friends and family could care for him during his last days.
Desperately weak in body on November 3, 1746, Brainerd spent the day bidding farewell to his beloved Indian flock. He visited every family in their home and exhorted each person from God's Word. The tears flowed freely as he left each house. His farewells took most of the day and in the evening he rode off, his mission completed.
A year later, David Brainerd died, at the age of twenty-nine.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1746 PRINCETON UNIVERSITY IS FOUNDED
Disappointed with the liberalism of Yale University, the Presbyterian synods of New Jersey and New York decided to found their own college to prepare men for the ministry, building on the foundation of the Log College founded by William Tennent (1673-1746). Specifically, pastors Jonathan Dickenson (1688-1747) and Aaron Burr Sr. (1716-1757) were concerned with Yale's expulsion of David Brainerd (1718-1747) due to his involvement in the Great Awakening. The College of New Jersey, which later became Princeton University, received its charter from the governor of New Jersey in 1746. Classes began in May 1747, with Brainerd as the first official student and Dickinson as the first president. Initially, the college was located in Dickinson's home in Elizabethtown, New Jersey, but he died the same year. Aaron Burr Sr. succeeded Dickinson as president, and under his leadership the students moved to Burr's parsonage in Newark, New Jersey, and then finally to Princeton. Burr was succeeded as president by his father-in-law, Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758).
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1748 JOHN NEWTON IS CONVERTED
Son of a merchant sea captain, John Newton (1725-1807) was forced into the British Royal Navy at age nineteen. Following a failed attempt at escape, Newton was humiliated and flogged. He found work with a slave trader shipping slaves from Africa. On March 21, 1748, a great storm at sea nearly sank his ship in the North Atlantic, and Newton turned to God in faith. He left the sea in 1755, and became curate of Olney in Buckinghamshire, England. Newton is best known for his hymn "Amazing Grace."
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1750 JONATHAN EDWARDS IS DISMISSED FROM HIS CHURCH
On June 22, 1750, the church in Northampton, Massachusetts, voted to dismiss Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), their pastor of twenty-three years. In spite of great successes during the Great Awakening, Edwards had fallen out of favor with the people over his stand against the open Communion practiced by his grandfather Solomon Stoddard (1643-1729). However, the next summer Edwards was called as pastor to the church in the small frontier village of Stockbridge, Massachusetts. There he was able to devote much of his time to writing. During the next seven years Edwards wrote some of his most influential works, such as Freedom of the Will, The End for Which God Created the World, The Nature of True Virtue, and Original Sin. God used Edwards' dismissal to enrich his people forever through these books.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1750 NEW ENGLAND THEOLOGY EVOLVES
Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) wrote his treatise titled Freedom of the Will in defense of the Great Awakening. In order to explain man's accountability for his actions and God's sovereignty over man's will, Edwards argued that God must incline the human will to understand and accept the gift of salvation. The successors of Edwards, who included Jonathan Edwards Jr. (1745-1801), Timothy Dwight (1752-1817), Samuel Hopkins (1721-1803), and Nathaniel Taylor (1786-1858), built on his theology. Later successors sometimes softened Edwards' view of God's sovereignty, and in their thinking, the primary work in salvation shifted from God to man. This subtle dilution of Edwards' theology became known as New England Theology. It controlled Congregational schools from 1750 until the influx of German higher-critical theology in the late nineteenth century.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1750 INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION BEGINS
Since the Middle Ages, the Western world had primarily been an agrarian society. However, in the middle part of the eighteenth century, much of the Western world began to manufacture goods primarily through steam power that was fueled by coal instead of by water or wind power. The steam engine invented by James Watt (1736-1819) allowed tasks, once dependent upon man or animal power, to be accomplished much more quickly and efficiently. Soon the steam engine locomotive and steam-powered ship were transporting people farther and more quickly than ever before. Another outcome of the Industrial Revolution was the invention and proliferation of factories. These factories, in spite of often dangerous working conditions, created the necessary means for the development of the middle class. The industrial revolution changed the structure of society in the Western world, providing Christians with both effective tools and challenges.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
AMAZING GRACE
March 21, 1748
Born in London in 1725, John Newton, a sea captain's son, lost his mother when he was six. However, before she died she prayed that he would become a minister. Newton went to sea with his father at age eleven. After an unsuccessful stint in the Royal Navy, he went to work for a slave trader.
In March 1848, Newton was in a violent storm that changed him forever. He went to bed that night and was awakened by the storm. Within a few minutes the ship was a virtual wreck, filling with water. Working frantically, the crew finally was able to plug the leaks. Exhausted, Newton heard himself say to the captain, "If this will not do, the Lord have mercy upon us." Newton was instantly taken aback by his own words that reflected the first time he had desired God's mercy in years. Then the thought went through his mind, What mercy can there be for me?
As the storm continued the next day, March 21, 1748, Newton sadly concluded that there had never been a sinner as wicked as he and that his sins were too great and too many to be forgiven. His journal records the deliverance from that storm and his spiritual deliverance as well: "[This] is a day much to be remembered by me, and I have never suffered it to pass wholly unnoticed since the year 1748. On that day, the Lord sent from on high and delivered me out of the deep waters...."
Later he wrote: "I stood in need of an Almighty Saviour, and such a one I found described in the New Testament.....I was no longer an infidel; I heartily renounced my former profaneness, and I had taken up some right notions; was seriously disposed, and sincerely touched with a sense of the undeserved mercy I had received, in being brought safe through so many dangers."
Although he continued sailing and working in the slave trade for a time, Newton studied the Bible, prayed, read Christian books, and finally left the sea behind. In 1764, at age thirty-nine, John Newton began a new life as a minister in the Church of England, later writing his autobiographical hymn, "Amazing Grace."
Throughout his life, he stopped to thank God on his "anniversary." The last entry in his journal was written on March 21, 1805, an anniversary of his deliverance. He wrote simply, "Not well able to write; but I endeavor to observe the return of this day with humiliation, prayer, and praise."
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
AN INFLUENTIAL LIFE
September 24, 1757
The impact of a life matters more than its length.
Aaron Burr Sr. was born in Connecticut and graduated first in his class at Yale in 1735. He then became pastor of the Presbyterian Church of Newark, New Jersey.
When a student named David Brainerd was expelled from Yale because of his involvement in the Great Awakening, Aaron Burr along with Jonathan Dickinson, pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Elizabethtown, New Jersey, took an active interest in his case. The two pastors were particularly upset when their alma mater refused to readmit Brainerd after his apology for the offhand comments that had caused his expulsion. This action by Yale confirmed the conviction of the Presbyterian Synods of New Jersey and New York that they should found their own college to prepare men for ministry.
The College of New Jersey, which was to become Princeton University, received its charter from the governor of the state in 1746. Aaron Burr was the youngest of the organizing seven trustees.
The college began in May 1747, in Jonathan Dickinson's home in Elizabethtown, New Jersey, with David Brainerd as its first official student. The original students studied in Dickinson's library, attended classes in the parlor, and ate meals in the dining room with the family. Just four and a half months later they would accompany the family to Dickinson's funeral.
Aaron Burr was persuaded then to take charge of the college. The students bid farewell to the grieving Dickinson family and moved six miles to Newark, where they boarded in the town and held their classes at the Burr parsonage. Burr did the teaching with the assistance of one tutor. A year later, Aaron Burr was formally elected the college's second president.
Burr was still a bachelor when he accepted the position. Some years earlier he had met fifteen-year-old Esther Edwards, daughter of Jonathan Edwards. Unable to forget about fair Esther, Burr made a courting visit to the Edwards' home. Esther accepted his declaration of love, and they were married at Burr's church in Newark.
In 1755, Burr resigned the pastorate to devote himself full-time to the college. He supervised the erection of the college's first building in Princeton, New Jersey. In 1756, Burr and the now seventy students and two tutors moved to Princeton into glorious Nassau Hall, the largest stone building in the colonies.
The governor died the following year, and Burr traveled to Elizabethtown to deliver the funeral sermon. Returning to Princeton seriously ill himself, Aaron Burr died on September 24, 1757, at the age of only forty-one.
Burr's father-in-law, Jonathan Edwards, was chosen five days later to follow his son-in-law as the college's next president.
Esther survived her husband by less than a year, succumbing to smallpox at the age of twenty-six. She left two children, four-year-old Sarah and two-year-old Aaron Jr. Sarah later married Connecticut Chief Justice Tapping Reeve, and Aaron Jr. became the third vice president of the United States.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1759 VOLTAIRE WRITES CANDIDE
The French philosopher Voltaire (1694-1778) was one of the most articulate spokesmen for the Age of Enlightenment, advocating the use of reason to reeval-uate traditional ideas and institutions. Educated by French Jesuits, Voltaire developed a distaste for what he considered to be the superstition and intolerance in the Catholic Church. He then was influenced by the English Deists. Voltaire's most well-known writing, Candide, was published in 1759. It is a satirical critique of the common ideas about good and evil. Thirty-nine of his works eventually were banned by the Roman Catholic Church. Voltaire, who worked to ordain tolerance as the distinguishing characteristic of society, epitomized the self-sufficient humanist. His beliefs were widely held among the educated in the 1700s and 1800s.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1759 EUROPEAN NATIONS BEGIN TO OUTLAW JESUITS
The Society of Jesus, better known as the Jesuits, was founded in Italy in 1540 by Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556). The brotherhood grew rapidly and spearheaded the Roman Catholic attack on the Reformation. However, they were not popular with absolute monarchs. In 1758, an assassination attempt on the king of Portugal was blamed on the Jesuits, and as a result they were expelled from Portugal in 1759. In 1764, they were suppressed in France and three years later in Spain.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1769 JUNIPERO SERRA FOUNDS FIRST OF NINE MISSIONS IN CALIFORNIA
Junipero Serra (1713-1784), a Franciscan missionary to the Indians of Mexico and the California coast, came from the island of Majorca in the Mediterranean. Serra earned a doctorate in theology, but turned away from a more privileged life at the university to establish missions in America. In 1769, Serra entered California with a Spanish army of conquest, but he was the first to defend the lives of the native Indians. Serra's work titled Representation describes his expectations for conduct in the missions he established. He spent his life in ministry, traveling between the missions he established, baptizing six thousand and confirming five thousand in his lifetime. San Diego, San Gabriel, San Francisco, San Juan Capistrano, and Santa Clara are among the cities that developed around the missions founded by Serra.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1767 MOSES MENDELSSOHN BECOMES A DEFENDER OF JUDAISM
The Jewish Enlightenment movement started in Germany with Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786). Committed to the Enlightenment philosophies of the eighteenth century, Mendelssohn was interested in showing that Jewish beliefs constituted an acceptable intellectual view of the world. Among his achievements was a German translation of the Hebrew Bible, which he encouraged all Jews to study. Mendelssohn believed Jews could practice their faith while becoming involved in the cultural and civic duties of the nations where they happened to reside. In 1769, at the height of his career, Mendelssohn held a public debate with a Christian apologist and from that time on became a defender of Judaism in print. He was the grandfather of composer Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847).
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1771 FRANCIS ASBURY IS SENT TO AMERICA
Francis Asbury (1745-1816) was converted at fourteen in England and began preaching at sixteen. His parents were some of the early followers of John Wesley (1703-1791). In 1771, Asbury was among four men who left England to answer Wesley's call for volunteers to sail to America as missionaries. Once in America he traveled to preach the gospel wherever he could, a commitment that set the standard for the early American Methodist itinerant preachers. When the Revolutionary War broke out, Asbury was the only Methodist missionary to remain in America. Later he was appointed joint superintendent of the Methodists in the United States. By the end of his life, Asbury had ordained more than four thousand preachers, and there were more than 214,000 Methodists in the United States. He is known as the father of American Methodism.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1772 VILNA RABBIS EXCOMMUNICATE THE HASIDIM
Hasidim, who first appeared in Eastern Europe in the 1730s under the leadership of Israel ben Eliezer (1700-1760), practiced a mystical form of Judaism in contrast to the intellectualism of traditional Talmud study. As a result of their teachings, the Hasidim were considered a threat to the authority of the rabbis who led the yeshivas, the Jewish institutes where students studied the Talmud. Led by Elijah ben Solomon Zalman (1720-1797)—the gaon, or leader of the ye-shiva of Vilna, Lithuania—the leaders of the Eastern European yeshivas excommunicated the Hasidim in 1772 and burned their books. Despite the opposition, Hasidism continued to spread.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
THE COWPER BROTHERS
March 10, 1770
They are in heaven together.
John and Ann Cowper had seven children, but only two survived infancy: William, born in 1731, and John, born in 1737. John Sr. was rector of Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, England, and the family was strongly evangelical. The one weakness Rev. Dr. Cowper passed on to his son William was chronic depression. Today he would be diagnosed as having a bipolar disorder.
In 1764, during one of his hospitalizations, William was converted through the evangelistic efforts of his doctor. Despite his mental illness, he became one of England's greatest poets, writing the lyrics to hymns such as "O for a Closer Walk with Thee" and "There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood." His brother John, however, remained unconverted.
In September 1769, John became so ill that his friends insisted William come to visit him. After ten days John was much improved, and William returned home, mystified as to why his brother refused to trust in Jesus even when he was facing death.
The following February, William was again summoned because of John's failing health. John continued in great suffering until March 10, 1770, when William heard him quoting the words, "Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth" to which he added, "Ay, and he is able to do it too."
The following day William wrote to a Christian friend about what had happened:
I am in haste to make you a partaker of my joy......Yesterday, in the afternoon, my
Brother suddenly burst into tears, and said with a loud cry, "Oh! forsake me not!" I went to his bed-side, and ... found that he was in prayer. Then, turning to me, he said,.. ."I have felt that which | never felt before; and l am sure that God has visited me with this sickness, in order to teach me what I was too proud to learn in health. I never had satisfaction till now. The doctrines I had been used to referred me to myself for the foundation of my hope, and there I could find nothing to rest upon. The sheer anchor of the soul was wanting. I thought you wrong, yet wanted to believe as you did. I found myself unable to believe, yet always thought that I should one day be brought to do so. You suffered more than I have done, before you believed these truths, but our sufferings, though different in their kind and measure, were directed to the same end... .These things were foolishness to me once, I could not understand them, but now I have a solid foundation and am satisfied.".. . The good I enjoy, comes to me as the overflowing of his bounty. But the crown of all his mercies is this, that he has given me a Saviour, and not only the Saviour of mankind, but my Saviour."
John Cowper died ten days later.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1773 POPE CLEMENT XIV SUPPRESSES THE JESUITS
In 1773, pressure from Portugal, Spain, France, and various Italian states caused Pope Clement XIV (1705-1774) to issue the papal bull Dominus ac Redemptor noster, officially dissolving the Jesuit order. However, this did not mean the order was extinguished. Jesuits continued to teach throughout Germany and Austria, where they were protected by both Frederick II (1712-1786) of Prussia and Empress Catherine the Great (1729-1796) of Russia. The Jesuits also continued their activities and maintained their possessions in England, where Roman Catholic bishops were discouraged from implementing the pope's ruling. This was also true in the United States, where the Jesuits continued their work almost uninterrupted.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1775 AMERICAN REVOLUTION BEGINS
On the morning of April 19, 1775, in Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, the first shots of the American Revolution were fired. Dissatisfaction with British rule among the colonial Americans had been increasing for several years. However, after the Intolerable Acts were passed in 1774, war was inevitable. On May 10, 1775, Benedict Arnold (1741-1801) and Ethan Allen (1738-1789) led a group of American troops to Fort Ticonderoga, where they defeated the surprised British forces, beginning the war in earnest. That summer, the Continental Congress appointed George Washington (1732-1799) commander of the Colonial army. The next year, the new nation formally declared independence from British rule. After six years of war, the British surrendered to the American forces at Yorktown, and the United States of America emerged. No country in the world would be so strongly influenced by biblical Christianity.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
THE METHODIST PARSON
August 7, 1771
His life was an example of what God can do with one man.
Francis Asbury was born in 1745 to a poor family near Birmingham, England. His parents had been among the early converts of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism.
When Asbury was a boy, his mother surrounded him with prayer, Scripture, and hymns. She invited everyone she met who seemed "religious" to stay at her house. Young Asbury didn't get into much trouble, but his peers jeeringly called him "Methodist Parson," a cutting insult because Methodism at that time was seen as a crazy new religion.
At the age of thirteen, Asbury began asking his mother questions about the Methodists. She arranged for a friend of hers to take him to the town of Wednesbury so that he could see for himself.
He was particularly impressed with the spontaneity of a Methodist service he attended. Soon thereafter, when Asbury and a Christian friend prayed together in his father's barn loft, he trusted the Savior he had heard about for so long.
His great excitement about his salvation led him to become a local traveling preacher at the age of seventeen, while also continuing his work as a blacksmith's apprentice. By the age of twenty, he was ministering full-time in various Methodist preaching circuits throughout England.
On August 7, 1771, at the age of twenty-one, Asbury answered John Wesley's call for Methodist preachers to go to America. When Wesley announced, "Our brethren in America call aloud for help," Asbury answered, "Here am I, send me."
Once in America, Asbury was chosen to be one of the first two Methodist superintendents in the Methodist Episcopal Church, a new denomination that was born from his leadership. He subsequently changed his title to "bishop."
Asbury defined the role of an itinerant minister. His motto was, "Go into every kitchen and shop; address all, aged and young, on the salvation of their souls." He urged all Methodist ministers to do the same. He became a circuit rider, visiting camp meetings, revivals, and conventions on horseback.
Asbury traveled constantly for forty-five years, covering about three hundred thousand miles, mostly on horseback, and crossing the Appalachians more than sixty times. He literally had no home of his own in America but found shelter wherever he could.
When Asbury came to America in 1771, the country was home to approximately three hundred Methodists and four ministers, all on the Atlantic seaboard. When Asbury died in 1816, the denomination had spread into every state and over 214,000 people in America called themselves Methodists. Asbury himself had ordained more than four thousand Methodist ministers and had preached more than sixteen thousand sermons.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
DON'T FIRE UNTIL YOU SEE THE WHITES OF THEIR EYES"
June 16, 1775
In times of battle, men's thoughts often turn to prayer—and for good reason!
On June 16, 1775, a significant prayer meeting took place in Boston. The day before, the Patriots had learned of English General Gage's plan to occupy the southern projection of Bunker Hill on the Charleston peninsula, across the Charles River from Boston. In the twilight of June 16, twelve hundred Patriot troops gathered on the Cambridge Common. There Samuel Langdon, the gray-haired president of Harvard College, led them in prayer concerning the awesome task before them. He prayed, "O may our camp be free from every accursed thing! May our land be purged from all its sins! May we truly be a holy people and all our towns cities of righteousness!"
After the prayer, the patriot commander William Prescott led the troops to a rise near Bunker Hill overlooking the British army that occupied Boston. All through the night they worked preparing fortifications to withstand the British soldiers the next day.
General Gage committed twenty-two hundred British soldiers, a third of all his troops to the operation. At two in the afternoon the cannon fire from the British ships in Boston Harbor intensified against the patriot position as the British troops crossed the Charles River in small boats and then formed themselves into long lines. As the church bells tolled three o'clock, Gage's field commander, General William Howe, began leading his troops up the long hill. Behind him two rows of British soldiers, stretching the complete width of the peninsula, advanced up the open slope toward the patriot position.
The British troops were puzzled that the patriots did not fire a single shot at them as they advanced, even though they were well in range. Prescott, the patriot commander, had commanded his men with the now famous words, "Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes." The young soldiers bravely did as they were told and were victorious. Seeing the countless red-coated British soldiers lying all around them, they knew that God had given them the victory.
Corporal Amos Farnsworth of the Massachusetts militia wrote in his diary that night, "O, the goodness of God in preserving my life, although they fell on my right hand and on my left! O may this act of deliverance of thine, O God, lead me never to distrust thee; but may I ever trust in thee and put confidence in no arm of the flesh!" Another soldier, Peter Jennings, wrote to his mother, "God, in His mercy to us, fought our battle for us, and although we were but few... we were preserved in a most wonderful way, far beyond expectation."
God answered the prayers of the previous night's prayer meeting.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1775 HENRY ALLINE CONVERTS
Known for bringing the Great Awakening to Nova Scotia, Henry Alline (1748-1784) was born to Congregational parents in Rhode Island. He moved to Nova Scotia, and in 1775, having experienced a dramatic conversion, Alline felt called to preach the gospel. A second experience, which gave him the sense that he needed only Christ, not a theological education, to qualify for the ministry, empowered Alline to begin a lifetime of preaching. His message centered on the need for a new birth. God used him to start a revival known as the New Light movement in the maritime colonies of Canada. The movement resulted in many Congregationalists becoming Baptists in Nova Scotia, and as a result, many evangelical churches were established in the province.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1775 FIRST INDEPENDENT BLACK BAPTIST CHURCH IS FOUNDED IN AMERICA
The first independent black church likely was one founded in 1775 in Silver Bluff, South Carolina. The successful establishment of this church led to the formation of other black congregations in Savannah, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and other cities throughout the United States.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1779 COWPER AND NEWTON PUBLISH OLNEY HYMNS
William Cowper (1731-1800), a descendant of the English poet John Donne (1573-1631), became chronically depressed following an attempted suicide in his youth. But then he started reading the Bible and was converted to Christ. In 1767, he moved to Olney in Buckinghamshire, England, and was befriended by John Newton (1725-1807), a pastor who had been a slave trader before his conversion. Newton and Cowper wrote and published Olney Hymns in 1779. Cowper composed sixty-eight of the 348 hymns, including the well known, "O for a Closer Walk with God!" and "There is a Fountain Filled with Blood." The collection also included hymns by Newton, his most familiar being, "Amazing Grace" and "Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken."
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1780 ROBERT RAIKES BEGINS SUNDAY SCHOOL
Robert Raikes (1735-1811) followed his father as publisher of the Gloucester Journal in Gloucester, England, a position which afforded him the opportunity of helping those in need. In 1780, after consulting the pastor of a nearby church, Raikes set up a Sunday school for the city's growing number of neglected children. During the week and on Sunday, the teachers at the school taught Bible, reading, and other basics. The undertaking was quickly duplicated at other parishes, but concern that educating the poor would lead to revolution brought much opposition as well. Raikes, however, used his newspaper to promote his Sunday school idea, and within six years two hundred thousand children were being educated in English Sunday schools. The idea soon spread to Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and the Americas.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1781 CORNWALL'S CHRISTMAS REVIVAL FOCUSES ON PRAYER Cornwall's Christmas Revival was unique in that it was largely a prayer movement without the involvement of any significant preachers. Most gatherings were prayer meetings rather than evangelistic meetings. It started in 1781, when a Christmas morning service in Cornwall, England, turned into six hours of prayer. After a brief break with their families, many gathered again at the church that evening to continue praying. This prayer revival continued daily, with prayer meetings held most evenings until midnight through March. The revival was also unique in that it was interdenominational, with Baptists, Methodists, and Anglicans gathering together to pray for the revival of England. Many unbelievers were drawn to these large meetings and were converted. Cornwall's Christmas Revival was one of the first events in the Second Great Awakening, which spread throughout England, America, and many other nations.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1781 KANT PUBLISHES HIS CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), was the most influential philosopher of modern times. A professor of logic and metaphysics in Konigsberg, Prussia, he published Critique of Pure Reason in 1781. At the heart of Critique was Kant's case for human freedom and his explanation of knowledge and morality. By demonstrating that rational knowledge is derived only from logic, mathematics, and physics, Kant argued that neither reason nor experience can provide metaphysical or abstract knowledge. Kant's belief that knowledge of God is unattainable made a significant impact on Protestantism, providing a foundation for later liberal theology. Though he eventually articulated moral arguments for God, immorality, and freedom, Kant maintained that these premises were produced only by reason and therefore were not scientifically demonstrable conclusions.
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1782 HOLY ROMAN EMPEROR JOSEPH II ISSUES EDICT OF TOLERANCE
Joseph II (1741-1790), king of Austria and the Holy Roman emperor, issued the Edict of Tolerance in 1782, which abolished the Jews' special poll tax, the yellow badge they had been forced to wear, the ban on Jews from attending universities, and the ban on Jews leaving their homes on Sundays and Christian holidays. On the other hand, it prohibited the use of Hebrew or Yiddish in any business documents or public records and introduced military service for Jewish males. In spite of the Edict of Tolerance, the Jews soon discovered that their newly gained rights were often denied by bureaucrats.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1784 METHODIST CONFERENCE FORMS IN CHURCH OF ENGLAND
In 1739, John Wesley's (1703-1791) successful preaching led him to establish Methodist societies to support recent converts. The name came from the Wesley's earlier Holy Club at Oxford University whose members were derisively called "Methodists." When Wesley filed a Deed of Declaration in the Court of Chancery in 1784, the societies became an official "Yearly Conference of People Called Methodists" that listed one hundred preachers. The authority to appoint ministers to its "Preaching Houses" was included in the deed. In addition, the deed called for preachers to be ordained in the Church of England, though few followed the provision. Following Wesley's death, the one-hundred-person limit was extended to include all English Methodist preachers.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1784 JOHN WESLEY WRITES THE ARTICLES OF RELIGION
In 1784, John Wesley (1703-1791) wrote the Articles of Religion as the official doctrinal standard for American Methodists. His Twenty-Four Articles of Religion were a revision of the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England. Wesley removed everything from the Thirty-Nine Articles having to do with ritual or Calvinism. He did not add anything uniquely Methodist as this was already available in his sermons and in his "Notes on the New Testament." The American Methodists added one article affirming their loyalty to the American government. The resulting Twenty-Five Articles were officially adopted by the Baltimore Conference later that year.
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1784 THOMAS COKE COMES TO AMERICA
Born in Brecon, Wales, England, Thomas Coke (1747-1814) earned his doctorate in civil law at Oxford University and was ordained in the Church of England. While serving as the curate in South Pertherton, however, Coke was removed from his office because of his Methodist beliefs. Coke, a good preacher with a sharp legal mind, earned the respect of John Wesley (1703-1791) and served as superintendent of the Methodist circuit in London. In 1784, Coke sailed to America after John Wesley appointed him to assist Francis Asbury (1745-1816) as joint superintendent for America. Next to John Wesley, Thomas Coke was the most significant figure in early Methodism.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1784 THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH IS FOUNDED IN AMERICA
Thomas Coke (1747-1814), the devoted English Methodist, came to America with instructions from John Wesley (1703-1791) for Francis Asbury (1745-1816), the leading Methodist preacher in the United States. In 1784, the two men organized what became known as the Christmas Convention, chaired by Coke. The meeting was held in Baltimore and led to the official formation of a new American denomination called the Methodist Episcopal Church. In accordance with Wesley's recommendation, the conference adopted the Articles of Religion and established a rule of discipline. Coke, who had been ordained superintendent by Wesley, ordained Asbury as a fellow superintendent. At its founding, the denomination included eight thousand members, and more than one hundred itinerant preachers, with eight hundred regular preaching locations and sixty chapels.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1784 CHRISTIANITY COMES TO KOREA
In 1783, Lee Seung-hoon, a Korean Confucian scholar accompanying an envoy to Peking, China, read Jesuit literature there and was baptized a Christian. He then returned to Korea and baptized two of his friends in l784. From Seung-hoon's testimony, Catholicism spread throughout Korea. For nearly one hundred years and despite terrible persecutions by Confucian rulers in 1791, 1801, 1839, 1846, and 1864, the hidden Catholic Church in Korea grew to more than 17, 500 members. Protestantism was introduced by Suh Sang-yum who was converted by Scottish missionaries in Manchuria in 1878. Although it was against the law to do so, Sang-yum returned with parts of Scripture translated into Korean and quietly converted the first Korean Protestant Christians. The first Presbyterian and Methodist missionaries arrived in 1884. By 2000, there were more than 7 million evangelical Christians in South Korea and approximately 355,000 in North Korea.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1786 THOMAS COKE LEADS THE FIRST METHODIST MISSION TO WEST INDIES
In addition to serving as joint superintendent of Methodism in the newly formed United States of America, Thomas Coke (1747-1814) rightly bears the title of "father of Methodist Missions." In 1786, he wrote the first Methodist tract on missions and that same year set out to establish a mission in Nova Scotia. However, a severe storm forced his ship to land in Antigua, West Indies, where he was thrilled to find an open door for missionaries. Missions in the British West Indies and the other British colonies became his passion for the remainder of his life.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1787 THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT BEGINS
The Abolition Society, formed in Britain in 1787 by Thomas Clarkson (1760-1846) and William Wilberforce (1759-1833), was the first organized group that sought to abolish slavery. In 1807, the society successfully lobbied Parliament to outlaw the slave trade within the British Empire. Slavery itself continued, but in 1823, the Anti-Slavery Society was formed in Britain under the direction of a member of Parliament named Thomas Forwell Buxton (1786-1845). Finally in 1833, the British Parliament passed legislation that abolished all slavery throughout the empire. The anti-slavery movement gained strength and subsequently spread to North America.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1787 SECOND GREAT AWAKENING BEGINS AT HAMPDEN-SYDNEY COLLEGE
The second national revival in the United States is known as the Second Great Awakening. The era energized the spiritual life of Americans following the Revolutionary War and confronted two major challenges. First, Deism was popular among educated society and centered on thinking of God on the basis of reason not faith. Secondly, the challenges and dangers of life on the Western frontier resulted in churches being few and far between. The much-needed revival came first to colleges in the East, where in 1787, Hampden-Sydney College experienced a spiritual awakening. From Hampden-Sydney, revival spread to Washington College, Yale, Williams, Dartmouth, and Amherst. Carried along by students and preachers alike, the Second Great Awakening lasted from 1787 to 1825, sweeping the land from East to West.
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THE AGE OF PROGRESS
1789—1914
The Age of Progress saw Christians of all sorts wage a valiant struggle against the advance of secularism. Out of the evangelical awakenings came new efforts to carry the gospel of Christ to distant lands, and to begin a host of social service ministries in industrialized Europe and North America. From the ramparts of Rome, a defensive papacy fired a barrage of missiles aimed at the modern enemies of the Catholic faith. In spite of Christians' best efforts, however, Christianity was slowly driven from public life in the Western world. Believers were left with the problem we recognize in our own time: How can Christians exert moral influence in pluralistic and totalitarian societies where Christian assumptions about reality no longer prevail?
BRUCE L. SHELLEY
1791—U. S. Bill of Rights written
1793-4—Reign of Terror in France
1808—Napoleon controls almost all Europe
1846—One million Irish starve in Potato Famine
1856—Transatlantic cable developed
1903—Wright brothers make first flight
1905—lbert Einstein develops Theory of Relativity
1914—Panama Canal completed
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1789 REVOLUTION RADICALIZES FRANCE
In eighteenth-century France, excesses by the monarchy, the nobility, and the clergy led to intense political and social upheaval. The middle classes demanded political power, refusing to submit to the nobility and the clergy. The peasants demanded redistribution of land and an end to feudalism. An intense distrust of the Catholic Church had developed, due primarily to the church's increased wealth and power. The Enlightenment had bred ideas of Deism and naturalism that compounded the newly found aversion toward organized religion. The fighting began with the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, and the revolution continued for ten years. The revolution overthrew the monarchy and abolished the old feudal system, but it also attempted to abolish the church in France by removing all vestiges of Christianity from French culture. Although the Catholic Church regained some privileges later under Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), it never regained its former place in French society.
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1791 CATHERINE THE GREAT ESTABLISHES THE PALE OF SETTLEMENT
In the 1770s, Poland was divided three times between Prussia, Austria, and Russia, and the majority of Polish Jews came under Russian authority. Russia, which had been closed to Jews, suddenly had one million Jewish inhabitants. Desiring to keep Jews separate from the rest of her subjects, in 1791 Empress Catherine the Great (1729-1796) of Russia restricted Jews to an area known as the Pale of Settlement. That region included the areas they already inhabited and territories taken from the Ottoman Empire along the Black Sea that the empress wished to colonize. In one form or another, the Pale of Settlement was enforced until the Russian Revolution in 1917.
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1791 THE FIRST AMENDMENT TO THE U.S. CONSTITUTION IS RATIFIED
In order to ratify the American Constitution, several states demanded that certain rights be added to the document. This Bill of Rights constitutes the basic freedoms of American citizens. The first amendment declares that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; of the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government of a redress of grievances." The Supreme Court has ruled that the freedom of religion does not apply when it results in antisocial or self-harming behavior. In 1947, the Everson v. Board of Education verdict stated that there was a "wall of separation between church and state." This decision has resulted in the removal of prayer, Bible reading, and most religious-related activities from American public schools.
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1791 FRANCE GRANTS CIVIL RIGHTS TO JEWS
When the French Revolution occurred in 1789, it had positive results for the Jews of France. During the Revolution, in the first debate in the French National Assembly on the status of the Jews, many radicals fought bitterly against granting equal rights to Jews. Nevertheless, on September 27, 1791, the National Assembly granted Jews their full civil rights, becoming the first European nation to do so. The rationale was simply that all Frenchmen were equal.
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1791 SCHLEIERMACHER PUBLISHES ON RELIGION
Frederick Ernst Daniel Schleiermacher (1768-1834) was born to a Pietistic German family and studied at Halle, the center of Pietism, under Moravian teachers. As a university student, Schleiermacher rejected much of Pietism and became fascinated by debates concerning the teaching of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). In 1799, Schleiermacher published his first major work, On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers. The book, which gives theological voice to Romanticism, describes religion as a "sense and taste for the infinite" and argues that life becomes dreadful without religion. Schleiermacher rejected the orthodox doctrine of Christ, seeing him merely as a person, thus paving the way for future liberal views of Christ as merely a man inspired by God.
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1792 THE CLAPHAM SECT IS FORMED
Around 1792, a small group of influential Christians living near Clapham, a village south of London, joined forces to promote Christian action, particularly the abolition of slavery. Working tirelessly to influence public opinion and to exert pressure on the government, they accomplished the abolition of the slave trade in 1807, and the emancipation of all slaves throughout the British territory in 1833. Members of the close-knit group included William Wilberforce (1759-1833) and Zachary Macaulay (1768-1838) (members of Parliament), John Venn (1759-1813) (rector of Clapham), Henry Thornton (1760-1815) (banker whose home was the meeting place), Hannah More (1745-1835) (writer and educator), and Lord Teignmouth (1751-1834) (governor-general of India). In addition to facilitating the end of slavery in the British Empire, they worked for reform in England's schools and prisons. God used a small group of committed believers to change their world.
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1792 HANNAH MORE PUBLISHES CHEAP REPOSITORY TRACTS Growing up in England, Hannah More (1745-1833) mastered French, Latin, Italian, and Spanish at an early age, and was gifted in mathematics and poetry. She administered a school with her three sisters and became an important social and literary figure in London. After the death of two literary friends, More lost interest in the London social scene and decided to devote her abilities to serving God. John Newton (1725-1807), author of "Amazing Grace, " became her spiritual advisor. She wrote many books and essays on the importance of education and Christianity in establishing moral laws. In 1792, she published a series called Cheap Repository Tracts, which explained religious truth and responsibility. The series was sponsored by William Wilberforce (1759-1833) and Henry Thornton (1760-1815) of the Clapham Sect and sold 2 million copies in the first year. Hannah More wrote throughout her life, becoming the first evangelical to use novels for religious or moral purposes.
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1793 FESTIVAL OF REASON DEGRADES CHRISTIAN INFLUENCE IN FRANCE
With the triumph of the French Revolution, its leaders tried to abolish the church in France. Festivals such as the Festival of Reason in 1793 were part of a concerted effort to erase any vestige of a Christian culture from the nation. To that end, Notre Dame Cathedral—formerly a Christian center for intellectual and spiritual reform—became the Temple of Reason. Catholic priests were forced to take an oath to the newly created Civil Constitution. The Catholic Church denounced the Civil Constitution and, as a result, Catholic clergy endured cruel mistreatment.
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EXPECT GREAT THINGS"
May 31, 1792
Fellow ministers called him "the harebrained enthusiast, " but we know him as the father of modern missions.
William Carey was born in 1761 to a poor Anglican family in rural England. At the age of fourteen he began training as a shoemaker's apprentice. Providentially, fellow apprentice John Warr was a Christian.
Carey was uncomfortable with the evangelical arguments Warr presented to him, and over time Carey began to feel a "growing uneasiness and stings of conscience gradually increasing" in regard to Warr's beliefs. Over the next two years, he came to "depend on a crucified Saviour for pardon and salvation. "
Although he did not attend high school, Carey possessed a keen intellect. He taught himself five languages, and by the end of his life he knew dozens of languages and dialects.
Carey became a Calvinistic Baptist preacher, who was burdened for overseas missions. He published a pamphlet called An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens.
For years Carey tried to convince fellow Baptist ministers of the need to form a missionary society in order to spread the gospel across the world. Although the leaders of the denomination kept putting him off, he persisted.
On the evening of May 30, 1792, Carey preached at the annual Baptist association meeting. His text was Isaiah 54:2-3, and his theme was "Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God." He urged his fellow pastors to commit to venture forth among the nations with the gospel, having confidence that God would bless the message and extend his kingdom. Carey's address made a profound impression on the ministers in attendance.
The nest day, May 31, 1792, they agreed to form the "Baptist Society for Propagating the Gospel among the Heathen." Later it was renamed the Baptist Missionary Society.
In 1793, Carey and two other missionaries sailed for India where Carey worked until his death in 1834. His comprehensive approach to missions included evangelization, church planting, and Bible translation. He also established schools, hospitals, and a savings bank; founded the Agricultural and Horticultural Society of India; started a Bengali newspaper; and supervised the start of India's first printing press, paper mill, and steam engine. He also taught languages at a local college, wrote a Bengali-English dictionary, and founded the first Christian college in Asia. In all, Carey translated the complete Bible into six languages and portions of it into twenty-nine others.
He expected great things from God, attempted great things for God, and God brought them to pass.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1793 WILLIAM CAREY SAILS FOR INDIA
William Carey's (1761-1834) vision for evangelizing the entire world was unlike that of his predecessors, which had focused on territories of the missionary's homeland. Converted at eighteen and ordained in 1787, Carey mastered Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, and Dutch. Following the establishment of the Particular Baptist Society for Propagating the Gospel among the Heathens (now the Baptist Missionary Society), Carey sailed for India in 1793. Carey and his fellow missionaries established twenty-six churches and more than 125 schools. He translated Scripture into at least thirty-five languages, including Bengali and Sanskrit. India's first medical mission, bank, girls' school, printing operation, paper mill, steam engine, and Bengali newspaper are among his other accomplishments. The father of Modern Missions, Carey baptized eighteen hundred converts, and his work prompted the creation of numerous other missionary societies.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1795 ROBERT AND JAMES HALDANE ARE CONVERTED
Brothers Robert (1764-1842) and James Haldene (1768-1851) were raised by uncles after losing their parents when very young. They were educated in Dundee and Edinburgh, Scotland, after which they joined the navy. Both had left the navy before they were converted in 1795. James then became an influential itinerant preacher, and Robert attempted to set up agencies for financing foreign missions. However, the Church of Scotland opposed foreign missionary work, so Robert redirected his efforts and finances to establishing preaching tabernacles and theological seminaries throughout Scotland. In 1797, James founded the Society for Propagating the Gospel at Home and, in 1799, became the first Congregational pastor in Scotland. By 1801, he was pastor of the huge Tabernacle in Edinburgh, where he ministered for almost fifty years.
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1795 LONDON MISSIONARY SOCIETY IS FORMED
One of the first societies of its kind, the Missionary Society (renamed London Missionary Society in 1818) was founded in 1795 by a group of Anglicans, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and Methodists who met at Baker's Coffee House in London to pray for and plan for foreign missions. With the formation of the society they pooled their efforts to promote Christian missions. One of the society's unique founding principles was that no particular denomination should be promoted by the missionaries, and that church government should instead be set up by those converted. The first mission was made up of twenty-nine missionaries who ventured to Tahiti in 1796. The London Missionary Society eventually became the Council for World Missions (CWM). In subsequent years, the CWM initiated large-scale mission efforts in China, India, South East Asia, and East Africa.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1796 HANS NIELSEN HAUGE IS CONVERTED
Hans Nielsen Hauge (1771-1824) was raised in the pious Lutheran home of a Norwegian farmer. In 1796, he experienced a dramatic conversion, after which he devoted himself to full-time evangelism as a lay preacher. He traveled throughout Norway, usually on foot, exhorting Norwegians to repent. He was quite successful, quickly gathering many followers. At this time itinerant preaching was illegal in Norway, and Hauge was sent to prison from 1804 to 1811. After a long trial he was ordered to pay a fine for unlawful preaching and criticizing the clergy. His followers, who came to be called "Haugeans," helped him buy a farm near Oslo where he wrote many widely circulated books. Toward the end of Hauge's life, his relations with the authorities became much friendlier. Hauge is regarded as the founder of the Christian laymen's movement in Norway.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1797 METHODISTS BEGIN TO SEPARATE FROM CHURCH OF ENGLAND
In 1787, the "Preaching Houses" established by John Wesley (1703-1791) were registered as dissenting churches under the Toleration Act of 1559. The Methodist's Plan of Pacification in 1795 furthered their detachment from the Church of England, because it permitted Communion and baptism, as well as marriage and funeral services, to be carried out in Methodist chapels. The Plan also allowed preachers with full connection to the Methodist Conference to be considered ordained ministers. In 1797, six years after Wesley's death, Alexander Kilham (1762-1798) formed the Methodist New Connection, the first Methodist group to break officially from the Church of England. The principles of the New Connection eventually were taken over by the main Methodist bodies.
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1797 SECOND GREAT AWAKENING SPREADS WESTWARD IN THE UNITED STATES
Excitement and emotion characterized the Second Great Awakening in America when it spread westward. In 1797, the revival started in three Presbyterian churches led by James McGready (1769-1817) in Logan County, Kentucky. His fiery preaching, with its vivid descriptions of heaven and hell, shook the apathy from his congregation. When one of his churches invited the other Presbyterian and Methodist churches of the area to its annual Communion service in 1800, the revival spread to the visiting churches.
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1799 NAPOLEON BREAKS DOWN GHETTO WALLS
After Napole'on Bonaparte (1769-1821) seized power in France in 1799, he conquered much of Europe. In an effort to promote the legal equality of all men, Napoleon's armies broke down the walls of Jewish ghettos whenever he encountered them. Napoleon's destruction of the Roman Ghetto, established by Pope Paul IV (1476-1559) in the sixteenth century, also sent a message to the Catholic Church, whose authority Napoleon refused to recognize. Though some of the ghettos eventually would be rebuilt, and though Napoleon himself placed some limits on Jewish settlement, he was considered a liberator by many Jews in the eighteenth century.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
The Enlightenment was a philosophical movement based on faith in human ability that sought to formulate and defend truth on the basis of reason alone. Eighteenth-century Germany was the birthplace of the Enlightenment, and also where it had its greatest impact. This philosophy led to the widespread rejection of both supernatural revelation and the belief that man is sinful. The movement perceived God as having placed within man a natural theology that led to both morality and immortality.
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1700 PETER THE GREAT PROMOTES MISSIONS IN SIBERIA
Russia began commercial expansion into northern Asia in approximately 1500. But two hundred years passed before the area now known as Siberia came under the political control of Russia. Russian Czar Peter the Great (1672-1725) sought to extend the reach of the Russian Orthodox Church for reasons more political than religious. Yet because of Peter's sponsorship, by 1750, priests and monks carried Orthodox Christianity as far east as the Bering Sea. Church affiliation among many ethnic Russians in Siberia proved to be nominal, but among indigenous people groups, Russian Orthodoxy took root and flourished for centuries.
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1701 YALE COLLEGE IS FOUNDED
In 1701, at the urging of Congregational pastors in the colony, the Connecticut General Assembly adopted "An Act of Liberty to Erect a Collegiate School, wherein Youth may be instructed in the Arts & Sciences who through the Blessing of Almighty God may be fitted for Publick Employment both in Church and Civil State." The Collegiate School opened its doors that same year in the Killingworth, Connecticut home of its first rector, Congregational pastor Abraham Pierson (1645-1707). In 1716, the school was relocated to New Haven, Connecticut, and was renamed Yale to honor Elihu Yale (1649-1721), who had donated 417 books to the school's library. Among early notable students were theologian Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) and missionary David Brainerd (1718-1747). The college expanded to include graduate programs and became Yale University in 1887.
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1704 POPE CONDEMNS CHINESE RITES
Jesuit monk Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) set the standard for Jesuit relations with China by articulating Christianity to the Chinese in their own terms. Ricci believed that the Chinese worshiped the true God in their own way; consequently, Jesuit missionaries usually tolerated indigenous rites in honor of ancestors and Confucius. The Dominican and Franciscan orders eventually joined the Jesuits in China, and by the late sixteenth century the Jesuits' lenient practices sparked heated debate. Though Jesuit skill with astronomy and mathematics had won the favor of Chinese scholars and officials, the Dominicans argued that their policy of allowing traditional Chinese rites permitted superstition to enter the church. In 1704, Pope Clement XI (1649-1721) issued a decree condemning the Chinese rites. Despite the pope's condemnation, the Jesuit method of accommodation survived as a missionary strategy.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1706 DANISH-HALLE MISSION IS FOUNDED
In 1706, King Frederick IV (1671-1730) of Denmark founded a mission to the Danish colonies in India. Two of August Francke's (1663-1727) former students in Halle, Germany were the first missionaries, and it became known as the Danish-Halle Mission. The various business endeavors Francke started raised funds for the missionaries and published their letters from India. The Danish-Halle Mission operated for more than 250 years.
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1707 ISAAC WATTS WRITES HYMNS AND SPIRITUAL SONGS
Isaac Watts (1674-1748), born in Southampton, England, served as a pastor in London for most of his life and wrote such well-known hymns as "Joy to the World," "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross," "O God Our Help in Ages Past," and "Jesus Shall Reign." Most of these hymns were first published in 1707 in Hymns and Spiritual Songs, a collection unlike any other before it. These hymns broke the English taboo against singing anything other than Psalms in public worship.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1708 ALEXANDER MACK FOUNDS THE CHURCH OF THE BRETHREN
Alexander Mack (1679-1735) of Schriesheim, Germany, was born to Reformed parents but was drawn to the more radical Pietist movement led by E. C. Hochmann von Hochenau (1670-1721). Persecution of Pietists caused Mack to move to Wittgenstein, Germany, where in 1708, he and seven others started a fellowship that became the Church of the Brethren. Many of their rituals, such as foot washing and the holy kiss following Communion, came directly from Scripture. They also emphasized believer's baptism and practiced triple immersion. Due to continued persecution, the Brethren eventually set out for America. The first group arrived in Pennsylvania in 1719, and the second group, led by Mack, followed in 1729. Mack guided the Brethren until his death.
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1708 THE SAYBROOK PLATFORM IS FORMED
By the start of the eighteenth century the churches of New England were faced with a congregational polity that seemed ineffective for solving disputes and promoting piety within the church. In an effort to curb this decline, the Congregational Church of Connecticut met in Saybrook and formed the Saybrook Platform. Building upon the ideas of Puritan preachers such as Cotton Mather (1663-1728), the Saybrook Platform declared that a board made up of lay and clerical representatives would be responsible for making authoritative judgments for the church, as well as for resolving disputes. This marked an important break with the congregational polity set up by the churches of Massachusetts Bay, moving toward a more Presbyterian model of church governance. The Saybrook Platform became the most important confessional document for the churches of New England.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1717 ANTI-CHRISTIAN EDICTS ARE FORMED IN CHINA
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Jesuit missionaries experienced great success in China, with early Manchu emperors graciously welcoming Christianity and allowing missions to be founded throughout the Chinese provinces. Dominican and Franciscan missionaries joined the Jesuits, and by the early 1700s there were at least 250,000 Chinese Roman Catholics. Unfortunately, the disagreement between Jesuits and Dominicans over the role of Chinese rites was very damaging to relations with China. Pope Clement XI (1649-1721) issued a decree in 1704 to end the Chinese rites, but this declaration only served to irritate K'ang Hsi (1654-1722), China's emperor. As a result, Emperor K'ang Hsi banished all missionaries in 1717. Persecution of Christians followed and continues today.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1721 PETER THE GREAT PUTS THE CHURCH UNDER HIS CONTROL
In 1721, Russian czar Peter the Great (1672-1725) issued a "Spiritual Regulation" and established his own Holy Synod as a means to bring the Russian Orthodox Church under his control. Composed of twelve members nominated by the czar, the synod officially replaced the patriarch, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow. The Holy Synod, which became the dominant authority over the church, turned Christian ministers into a police force of sorts, strengthening the state's control of clergy and church members alike. The Russian government controlled the church for nearly two hundred years. Following the Communist Revolution of 1917, the synod was finally abolished and the patriarch temporarily restored.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1722 ZINZENDORF FOUNDS HERRNHUT
Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf (1700-1760), the founder of the Moravian Church, was born to an Austrian noble family. As a young man he was interested in foreign missions, but was pressured by his family into a government job. In 1722, he invited a group of Moravian Protestant refugees to live on an estate he purchased at Berthelsdorf, outside of Dresden, Germany. Zinzendorf called the newly formed Christian community "Herrnhut." He retired from his Saxon civil service job in 1727 to devote himself full time to the religious colony. Zinzendorf's "heart religion" emphasized a deep mystical, spiritual, and experiential faith that manifested itself in community and worldwide evangelism. The community at Herrnhut was the beginning of the Moravian Church.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1726 REVIVAL COMES TO THE CHURCH OF THEODORUS FRELINGHUYSEN
By the beginning of the eighteenth century in America, the evangelistic fervor that had first been present in New England had passed with the deaths of its founders. Many church members were theologically knowledgeable but remained unconverted. Immigrants were increasingly unchurched. Through the influence of Rationalism, the role of the Word of God was rapidly being displaced by human reason. It was in this setting that revival began through New Jersey pastor Theodorus J. Frelinghuysen (1691-1774). Born in the Netherlands, Frelinghuysen grew up in Dutch Calvinistic pietism. In his late twenties, he felt called to preach among the Dutch Reformed congregations in America and immigrated to New Jersey in 1720. Frelinghuysen was an eloquent preacher who emphasized the need for personal spiritual regeneration. Around 1726, God lit the first sparks of a revival in Frelinghuysen's church that would become known as the Great Awakening.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1726-1760 THE GREAT AWAKENING REVIVES THE COLONIES
The Great Awakening is the name given to the revivals occurring in the American colonies from 1726 to 1760. The movement was led by the preaching of Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) and George Whitefield (1714-1770) and reached its peak in 1740. Jonathan Edwards was a pastor first in Northhampton, Massachusetts, and then in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, briefly becoming president of the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University). Whitefield toured the colonies, calling all to repent and believe in Christ. By 1740, evangelical Christianity was firmly established on American soil. The revival birthed numerous universities, including Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania, Rutgers, Brown, and Dartmouth.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1726 LOG COLLEGE IS FORERUNNER OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY In 1726, William Tennent (1673-1746), a Presbyterian minister in Neshaminy, Pennsylvania, began training his sons and other young men for the ministry. In 1735, the teaching became formalized and Tennent erected a modest structure that was referred to as the "log college." The name stuck, and the men who attended were referred to as the "New Side" Presbyterians, the "Old Side" being those who rejected the validity of the Great Awakening. The Log College closed with the death of William Tennent in 1746, but his vision lived on. Later that year, alumni and supporters of the Log College founded the College of New Jersey, which eventually became Princeton University.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
THE ANTIDOTE TO DISUNITY August 13, 1727
It's a familiar story—people couldn't get along.
In 1700, Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf was born in Dresden, Germany, in a Pietist noble family. The Pietists were Lutherans who sought to know Jesus personally and to live a godly life. At the age of six, Zinzendorf committed his life to Jesus. In childlike simplicity he wrote love letters to his Savior and threw them out the windows of the castle. At ten, he was sent to school in Halle, the center of German Pietism.
In 1721, he purchased his grandmother's estate containing the village of Berthelsdorf. Soon thereafter a leader of the Moravians, the spiritual descendants of Jan Hus, came and asked him if oppressed Moravians could take refuge on his estate. Zinzendorf agreed, and in December 1722, the first ten Moravians arrived. They were given a plot of land that was named Herrnhut, meaning "The Lord's Watch."
Soon ninety Moravians lived on Herrnhut. Because the Pietist pastor of the Lutheran church in Berthelsdorf shared the Moravians' vision in his preaching, Lutheran Pietists soon became part of Herrnhut, as did Reformed and Anabaptists. By 1727, the population had reached three hundred, but divisions were arising.
Language barriers and squabbles over the church liturgy sprang up between the Moravians and the Lutherans. Zinzendorf, determined not to let Herrnhut destroy itself, moved there himself, going house to house to encourage unity in the community. He organized the people into prayer bands of two or three.
Then on Sunday, August 13, 1727, the Lutheran church pastor gave an early morning address at Herrnhut to prepare them for the Lord's Supper. The people walked to the church in Berthelsdorf feeling united as never before and expectantly awaited the service, which began with the singing of a hymn. The congregation became gripped with such emotion that the sound of weeping nearly drowned out the singing. Zinzendorf led the congregation in a prayer of confession for their earlier broken fellowship. Then they partook of the Lord's Supper together. After the service people who had previously been fighting embraced one another, pledging to love each other from that time on.
The residents of Herrnhut saw that day as their Pentecost. Soon an around-the-clock prayer ministry began at Herrnhut and continued for one hundred years.
The Moravians became the first missionary-sending Protestant church. When Zinzendorf died thirty-three years later, 226 missionaries had been sent out from Herrnhut. One of every sixty of the early Moravians had become a missionary.
The day before he died, Zinzendorf asked a Moravian friend, "Did you ever suppose in the beginning that the Savior would do as we now really see in the various Moravian settlements ... amongst the heathen? ... What a formidable caravan from our church already stands around the Lamb."
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1727 HERRNHUT WITNESSES REVIVAL
In 1727, five years after the founding of the Moravian religious community on the estate of Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf (1700-1760), discord developed between the residents of Herrnhut and the Lutheran Pietists with whom they worshiped. During the summer of 1727, Zinzendorf organized the people into prayer groups to build unity. On Sunday, August 13, as they were singing the first hymn of worship at the Lutheran church, the spirit of revival swept through the service, resulting in weeping, prayers of confession, and heartfelt reconciliation among the worshipers. The residents of Herrnhut saw that day as their Pentecost. The Moravians, as they came to be known, were the first missionary-sending Protestant church.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1728 FIRST TRAINING INSTITUTE FOR EVANGELIZING JEWS AND MUSLIMS
It was not until the Reformation that the church began to take any interest in evangelizing Jews and Muslims. This interest did not become serious until the Moravians and the Pietists emerged. The first Protestant effort to evangelize Jews began through the efforts of three men: Ezra Edzard (1629-1708), J. H. Callenberg (1694-1760), and A. H. Francke (1663-1723). They established the Institutum Judaicum et Muhammedicum at Halle in Germany to train missionaries to evangelize Jews and Muslims.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1728 THE HOLY CLUB BEGINS
The Holy Club was started in 1728, when Oxford University student Charles Wesley (1707-1788) began a small Christian group with two friends. The name of the group came from other students, who teased Wesley and his friends, calling them the "Holy Club" or "Methodists." Later, Charles' brother John (1703-1791) took over leadership of the group, and by 1733, when George Whitefield (1714-1770) joined, there were eight or nine members. The club focused on self-discipline and encouraged its members to maintain pious lives characterized by good works. Unfortunately, their efforts lacked faith in Jesus Christ for salvation, and their religious routines served only to highlight how far they were from perfection. Of the members of the Holy Club, only Whitefield was converted to Christ while still at Oxford.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1729 BACH WRITES ST. MATTHEW PASSION
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) was born in Eisenach, Germany. He was a committed orthodox Lutheran his entire life. Bach was a regular church musician by age fifteen, and at twenty-three he became the court organist for the Duke of Weimar. During his lifetime, Bach was better known as an organist than as a composer. Only nine or ten of his compositions were published while he was alive. However, in the mid-nineteenth century, a rediscovery of Bach's work began. Felix Mendelssohn's discovery of Bach's St. Matthew Passion, his greatest work, composed in 1729, made Bach known as a composer. Since that time, many have regarded him as the greatest sacred composer in church history. He often wrote on his compositions I.N.J., the Latin initials for "In the name of Jesus."
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1732 FIRST MORAVIAN MISSIONARIES SAIL FOR WEST INDIES Leonhard Dober (1706-1766) and David Nitschmann (1696-1772) were the first Moravian missionaries to set out from Herrnhut, their headquarters in Saxony, Germany, where Christians from Moravia had taken refuge in the early eighteenth century. After walking to Copenhagen, Dober and Nitschmann set sail for the West Indies on October 8, 1732. Paying their own way, they had no formal support system. Over a fifty-year period, the Moravians preached the gospel throughout the West Indies, and by the time missionaries from other Christian denominations arrived, they had baptized approximately thirteen thousand converts. By the mid-eighteenth century, more than two hundred additional Moravian missions were established around the world in Australia, North and South America, Tibet, Russia, and parts of Africa.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1735 ISRAEL BEN ELIEZER FOUNDS HASIDISM
Largely in reaction to the Jews' primarily intellectual study of the Talmud, Israel ben Eliezer (1700-1760)—known as Israel Baal Shem Tov ("Master of the Good Name")—began teaching a mystical form of Judaism in about 1735 that came to be known as Hasidism. He articulated a spiritual life in which ordinary Jews, not just intellectuals, could participate. Making use of the kabbalah, or Jewish mysticism, Hasidism first swept through the Jewish community of the Ukraine, then through Hungary and northern Rumania, attracting as much as half of the Jewish population of these areas. Hasidism included ecstatic worship and was led by charismatic rabbis known as zaddikim. Many Jews made pilgrimages to the zaddikim seeking inspiration or a blessing.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1735 JONATHAN EDWARDS PREACHES DURING THE GREAT AWAKENING
Revival came to the Massachusetts town of Northampton in 1735, through the preaching of Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758). Throughout the fall Edwards preached with passion, attempting to convert the lost members of his church. At the end of December, "the spirit of God began extraordinarily to set in and wonderfully to work amongst us," he later wrote. In a matter of a few days several church members were converted. Eventually people were converted in every home in Northhampton. Jonathan Edwards went on to become one of America's greatest theologians.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1735 GEORGE WHITEFIELD IS CONVERTED
Educated at Oxford's Pembroke College and a member of the Holy Club along with the Wesley brothers, George Whitefield (1714-1770) became convinced of the necessity of conversion in 1735, and subsequently experienced spiritual rebirth himself. A year later, he was ordained in the Church of England. Traveling to the New World seven times, Whitefield is considered to be the founder of American revivalism and was the leader of the Great Awakening in America. During his six-week tour of New England in 1740, he preached more than 175 times to tens of thousands. In addition to his American tours, he made fourteen visits to Scotland. In his thirty-four-year career, Whitefield delivered more than fifteen thousand sermons to millions of people, and his unrehearsed style of preaching irreversibly affected American evangelistic preaching.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
THE HOLY CLUB
May 5, 1735
It was a religious club that produced mostly poor results.
Charles Wesley and two friends began a Christian small group at Oxford University in 1728. John Wesley, who already had graduated from Oxford, returned the following year as a tutor and assumed its leadership. Oxford students made fun of the group, referring to it as the "Holy Club" or "Methodists." By the time George Whitefield joined the group in 1733, the group included eight or nine dedicated members.
The focus of the Holy Club was on religious self-discipline. They woke up early for lengthy devotions, took Communion each Sunday, fasted every Wednesday and Friday, and observed Saturday as the Sabbath in preparation for the Lord's Day. They were motivated by the belief that they were working for the salvation of their souls. Yet their self-discipline brought them neither happiness nor salvation.
The lifestyle of the Holy Club had a catastrophic effect on the life of William Morgan, one of the founders. He lost his mind and eventually his life in his struggle to achieve self-disciplined perfection.
Whitefield was the first Holy Club member to question their practices. He read a book through which, in his words, "God showed me that I must be born again, or be damned!"
His solution, however, was to try to be born again through further extremes of self-denial. During Lent of 1735, he ate only a little coarse bread with tea. By Holy Week he was so weak he could not study or even walk up a flight of stairs. His grades began to suffer and his tutor wondered if he was going mad. His physician put him in bed where he remained for seven weeks.
Having hit bottom in his efforts to earn his salvation, Whitefield described what happened next:
God was pleased to remove the heavy load, to enable me to lay hold of his dear Son by a living faith, and by giving me the Spirit of adoption, to seal me, even to the day of everlasting redemption.
O! With what joy—joy unspeakable—even joy that was full of and big with glory, was my soul filled when the weight of sin went off and an abiding sense of the love of God broke in upon my disconsolate soul! Surely it was a day to be had in everlasting remembrance. My joys were like a spring tide and overflowed the banks.
Later he declared, "I knew the place: it may be superstitious, perhaps, but whenever I go to Oxford I cannot help running to the place where Jesus Christ first revealed himself to me, and gave me the new birth."
On May 5, 1735, Whitefield sent a letter to John Wesley, attempting to share what had happened to him. He wrote, "Into his all gracious arms, I blindly throw myself."
It would be three more years before the Wesleys found Jesus' gracious arms.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1735 THE WESLEYS GO TO GEORGIA
Charles (1707-1788) and John Wesley (1703-1791) were born in Epworth, Lincolnshire, England. While studying at Oxford they were involved in the Holy Club, a group started by Charles to promote the practice of Christian duties. John was invited by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel to be a missionary to the Indians and colonists of Georgia. He went in 1735, accompanied by his brother Charles. However, the mission was unsuccessful, and upon returning to England Wesley wrote, "I went to Georgia to convert Indians; but, oh, who shall convert me?" Though the mission was a failure, it succeeded in introducing the brothers to Moravian Christians whose teachings eventually lead to their conversions.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1738 JOHN AND CHARLES WESLEY ARE CONVERTED
Despite having been sent as missionaries from England to Georgia, it was not until later that brothers Charles (1707-1788) and John Wesley (1703-1791) were converted to Christ. In 1738, Charles read Martin Luther's (1483-1546) commentary on Galatians for the first time, and as he later wrote, found himself "at peace with God and rejoiced in hope of loving Christ." Charles went on to write 7, 270 hymns, becoming known as the "sweet singer of Methodism." On May 24, 1738, three days after Charles' conversion, John's heart too was "strangely warmed" while listening to the reading of Luther's preface to the book of Romans. Of that day he wrote, "Then it pleased God to kindle a fire which I trust shall never be extinguished." This experience made a powerful evangelist out of John, who later became known as the "founder of Methodism."
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1739 REVIVAL BEGINS AT FETTER LANE WATCH NIGHT SERVICE The Moravian congregation at the Fetter Lane Chapel in London, England, met on New Year's Eve, 1738, for their annual Watch Night service. Following Moravian custom, they held a prayer service and "love feast" as a prelude to the Lord's Supper. About sixty people were in attendance, including George Whitefield (1714— 1770), John (1703-1791) and Charles (1707-1788) Wesley, and other former members of the "Holy Club" at Oxford University. Much to the surprise of those in attendance, at about three in the morning they were greatly moved by the Holy Spirit and experienced what Whitefield called "a Pentecostal season indeed." What took place at this small Moravian service began what came to be known in England as the Evangelical Revival. Through Whitefield and the Wesleys, all of England was affected by the Fetter Lane Watch Night Revival.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
A HEART STRANGELY WARMED
May 20, 1738
They were missionaries while still themselves a mission field.
John and Charles Wesley were born in 1703 and 1707 respectively, the fifteenth and eighteenth children of Samuel and Susanna Wesley.
At Oxford they met frequently with George Whitefield and others for Bible study and reflection. John was the leader of their group that was mockingly called the "Holy Club."
In 1735, the Wesleys sailed to America to become missionaries in the colony of Georgia. During the long journey the ship was buffeted by a violent storm, and John was left cowering in fear of death. He was amazed at the sense of peace that he observed among the Moravian Christians aboard the same ship. He was shaken, realizing that they had something he didn't have.
On January 24, 1738, he wrote in his journal, "I went to America to convert the Indians; but O! who shall convert me?"
After a short and unsuccessful time in America, the brothers returned to England where they came under the influence of Peter Boehler, another Moravian. Boehler's teachings on justification by faith, not works, were convincing. The Wesleys began eagerly reading Martin Luther's writings on Galatians and Romans, coming to the realization that their theology had been resting on works, not faith. This doctrine was now clear in their minds, but they had not yet experienced it in their hearts.
On May 20, 1738, the brothers and some friends stayed up all night praying for Charles, who was quite ill. They also were praying that God would open their hearts so they could truly believe and have assurance of salvation. The next day, Charles believed and gave his life to Christ for the first time. "I now found myself at peace with God, and rejoiced in hope of loving Christ."
For three days John wrestled with what happened to his brother. He wanted to believe, but couldn't and became very depressed. Then on May 24, 1738, he wrote in his journal:
In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther's preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given to me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.
When John went to Charles to tell him the good news, he found Charles up late writing a hymn to celebrate his own conversion. They sang the hymn together.
John and Charles Wesley went on to lead the great Methodist revival that changed English society. Charles wrote almost eight thousand hymns by the time he died in 1788. John preached nonstop until his death in 1791.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1739 WHITEFIELD PREACHES IN THE OPEN AIR
George Whitefield (1714-1770) first preached in the open air at Bristol, England. In 1739, while he took a break from his time in America to raise money for an orphanage, Whitefield's preaching at open-air meetings began to have an astounding impact throughout England. Returning to the American colonies, Whitefield became the leader of the Great Awakening that had begun in 1735 under the preaching of Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758). Whitefield continued the practice of open-air preaching until the end of his life, usually delivering at least twenty sermons a week, traveling great distances to carry his message to millions of people.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1739 JOHN WESLEY BEGINS ITINERANT PREACHING
Believing his God-given mission was to evangelize Great Britain, in April 1739, John Wesley (1703-1791) set out to preach the gospel. At his friend George Whitefield's (1714-1770) prompting, Wesley preached in the open air for the first time at Kingswood in Bristol, England. As Wesley's evangelical preaching caused many churches to close their doors to him, he realized that open-air preaching was the most effective way for him to reach the masses. Seeing the need to follow up with recent converts, he formed fellowships, which led to the formation of Methodism. In his lifetime, he rode 250,000 miles on horseback, preached 42,000 sermons, and published 233 books. Wesley remained a member of the Church of England until his death.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1741 JONATHAN EDWARDS PREACHES "SINNERS IN THE HANDS OF AN ANGRY GOD"
In 1735, the Great Awakening began in New England in the village of Northampton, Massachusetts, under the leadership of Jonathan Edwards.
When Edwards was invited to speak in Enfield, Connecticut, on July 8, 1741, he faced an indifferent audience as the Awakening had made little impact on the town. The title of his sermon that evening was "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." As Edwards preached in his even-tempered, logical style about God's wrath and human sinfulness, the attitude of his audience moved from indifference to fear for their souls. Some began to weep, crying out, "What shall I do to be saved?" Edwards ended his sermon with a call to come to Christ, and the town of Enfield was never the same.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
SINNERS IN THE HANDS OF AN ANGRY GOD
July 8, 1741
It was the most famous sermon ever preached in America.
The preacher was Jonathan Edwards, pastor of the Congregational Church in Northampton, Massachusetts, and a future president of Princeton College. The date was Saturday, July 8, 1741, and the place was Enfield, Connecticut, where Edwards had been invited to speak.
Enfield was not a religious place. The Great Awakening had touched surrounding towns, but not Enfield. With curiosity and nonchalance, the crowd entered the meetinghouse to hear Edwards speak.
Then Edwards began. He did not sound like the evangelists of today. He wrote out his sermons word for word and then usually read them. Listening to Edwards was like listening to a lecturer who made his case in an even-tempered, intellectually demanding style in which he tried to develop each step of his argument logically.
The title of Edwards' sermon was "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," and his text was Deuteronomy 32:35: "Their foot shall slide in due time" (KJV).
Edwards explained his text:
As he that walks in slippery places is every moment liable to fall, he cannot foresee one moment whether he shall stand or fall the next; and when he does fall, he falls at once without warning: which is also expressed in Psalm 73:18-19. "Surely thou didst set them in slippery places: thou castedst them down into destruction: How are they brought into desolation as in a moment!" ...
The bow of God's wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart, and strains the bow, and it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, and that of an angry God, without any promise or obligation at all, that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood. Thus all you that have never passed under a great change of heart, by the mighty power of the Spirit of God upon your souls; all you that were never born again, and made new creatures, and raised from being dead in sin, to a state of new, and before altogether unexperienced light and life, are in the hands of an angry God.
As Edwards preached, members of the audience cried out, "What shall I do to be saved? O, I am going to hell!" Some crowded toward the pulpit begging him to stop. The noise was so loud at one point during the sermon that Edwards asked everyone to be quiet so that he could be heard.
He ended the sermon by saying: "Let everyone that is out of Christ now awake and fly from the wrath to come. The wrath of Almighty God is now undoubtedly hanging over a great part of this congregation. Let everyone fly out of Sodom: 'Haste and escape for your lives, look not behind you, escape to the mountain, lest you be consumed.'"
The little town of Enfield was never the same.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1741 HANDEL WRITES MESSIAH
George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) was of Lutheran heritage and possessed uncommon musical talent. Handel did not come from a musical family, and his father wanted him to study law. Despite his father's wishes, Handel mastered harpsichord, organ, violin, and oboe by the age of seventeen. He began composing in Hamburg, where German opera was flourishing. Moving to England, Handel wrote approximately forty operas, which were popular among English aristocrats. Eventually he began composing oratorios. His Messiah, composed in only three weeks during 1741, tells the story of Christ from prophecy to fulfillment and has been performed more than any other choral work in history. Handel, master of the English oratorio, inspired later composers like Haydn (1732-1809), Beethoven (1770-1827), and Mendelssohn (1809-1847).
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1742 DAVID BRAINERD IS APPOINTED MISSIONARY TO THE INDIANS
Born in Haddam, Connecticut, David Brainerd (1718-1747) experienced a profound conversion at the age of twenty-one. Desiring to go into the ministry, he studied at Yale and was first in his class, but he was expelled for an offhand remark he made that reflected his involvement in the Great Awakening. In November 1742, Brainerd was commissioned as a missionary to the Indians. Serving in Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, Brainerd saw more than 130 Indians put their faith in Christ within four years. Becoming terminally ill with tuberculosis, Brainerd spent a short while studying at the College of New Jersey and then accepted the invitation to spend his last days at the home of his friend Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758). Following Brainerd's death in October 1747, Edwards published Brainerd's diary, which became a devotional classic and a source of great inspiration for the cause of cross-cultural missions.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
MESSIAH
September 14, 1741
He wrote the world's most beautiful music in an amazingly short period of time.
George Frideric Handel was born in 1685. Handel's father was the town surgeon of Giebichenstein, a suburb of Halle, Germany. George was the second child and was baptized as a Lutheran the day after he was born.
When Handel began showing an interest in music, his father, determined that his son be a lawyer, forbade him to have anything to do with music. A sympathetic relative, however, secretly gave young Handel access to a clavichord and Handel taught himself to play.
When Handel was six years old he accompanied his father to the court of a duke to whom his father had been appointed surgeon. While there, Handel went up and played the organ after a Sunday worship service. Hearing the lad play, the duke was so impressed that he urged the father to give his son a formal music education. As a result, Handel was allowed to study under the organist of the Liebfrauenkirche in Halle. By the time he was twelve, Handel had written his first composition and was proficient enough at the organ to serve as his teacher's substitute.
At the age of twenty-seven Handel moved to England, where he spent the rest of his life. But life as a composer and musician was not easy. Finally in 1741, his health began to fail, and he was facing debtor's prison.
Then two events occurred that turned Handel's life around. A friend gave him a libretto for an oratorio on the life of Christ, with the words taken from the Bible. Then three Dublin charities commissioned him to compose a work for a fund-raising benefit.
On August 22, 1741, Handel sat down to begin composing. He became so absorbed in his work that he hardly took time to eat. On September 14, 1741, he finished his composition and named it simply Messiah. In just twenty-four days he had written 260 pages of music. Considering the short time involved, it was the greatest feat in the history of musical composition. Later, in describing his experience he alluded to the apostle Paul and said, "Whether I was in the body or out of my body when I wrote it, I know not."
Dublin hosted the premier performance of Messiah on April 13, 1742. The king was in attendance at the London premier a year later. As the choir began to sing the "Halleluiah Chorus" the king rose to his feet and the whole audience followed his lead, beginning a tradition that continues to this day.
Messiah was Handel's last public performance, on April 6, 1759. At the end of the concert he fainted by the organ and died just eight days later. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, where his statue shows him holding the manuscript from Messiah, opened to "I know That My Redeemer Liveth."
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
THE TIMES AND SEASONS ARE GOD'S
November 3, 1745
What a difference a year can make.
David Brainerd, a twenty-seven-year-old missionary to the Indians of Crossweeksung, New Jersey, baptized fourteen converts one Sunday in 1745. This was part of what he called "a remarkable work of grace" with which God had blessed his labors among the Native Americans of New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
David Brainerd was born in 1718 in Haddam, Connecticut, and orphaned at the age of fourteen. His plans to farm the land he had inherited changed when he experienced a profound conversion in 1739. That same year he entered Yale at the age of twenty-one, aspiring to the Congregational ministry.
At Yale, he became a leader in the Great Awakening, a revival then sweeping through New England. He was expelled from the university in his third year when he was overheard questioning the salvation of a faculty member. After his expulsion, he continued his studies for the ministry, living with a local minister. Subsequently, he was licensed to preach and ordained as a Presbyterian minister before becoming a missionary to the American Indians of New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
On Sunday, November 3, 1745, Brainerd joyously baptized six adults and eight children, bringing the total to forty-seven baptized believers. One was an eighty-year-old woman. Two were fifty-year-old men who were notorious drunkards before putting their trust in the Lord Jesus. One of the men was a murderer as well. Because of the ter-rible lives these men had led, Brainerd delayed baptizing them until he saw a radical change in their lives. But changed they were, and Brainerd finally felt at peace about baptizing them. Brainerd wrote in his journal, "Through rich grace, none of them have been left to disgrace their profession of Christianity by any scandalous or unbecoming behavior."
A year later this remarkable work of God among the Indians continued, but David Brainerd's work was coming to a close. Brainerd was dying of tuberculosis at the age of just twenty-eight. He sadly realized that he must return to New England where friends and family could care for him during his last days.
Desperately weak in body on November 3, 1746, Brainerd spent the day bidding farewell to his beloved Indian flock. He visited every family in their home and exhorted each person from God's Word. The tears flowed freely as he left each house. His farewells took most of the day and in the evening he rode off, his mission completed.
A year later, David Brainerd died, at the age of twenty-nine.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1746 PRINCETON UNIVERSITY IS FOUNDED
Disappointed with the liberalism of Yale University, the Presbyterian synods of New Jersey and New York decided to found their own college to prepare men for the ministry, building on the foundation of the Log College founded by William Tennent (1673-1746). Specifically, pastors Jonathan Dickenson (1688-1747) and Aaron Burr Sr. (1716-1757) were concerned with Yale's expulsion of David Brainerd (1718-1747) due to his involvement in the Great Awakening. The College of New Jersey, which later became Princeton University, received its charter from the governor of New Jersey in 1746. Classes began in May 1747, with Brainerd as the first official student and Dickinson as the first president. Initially, the college was located in Dickinson's home in Elizabethtown, New Jersey, but he died the same year. Aaron Burr Sr. succeeded Dickinson as president, and under his leadership the students moved to Burr's parsonage in Newark, New Jersey, and then finally to Princeton. Burr was succeeded as president by his father-in-law, Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758).
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1748 JOHN NEWTON IS CONVERTED
Son of a merchant sea captain, John Newton (1725-1807) was forced into the British Royal Navy at age nineteen. Following a failed attempt at escape, Newton was humiliated and flogged. He found work with a slave trader shipping slaves from Africa. On March 21, 1748, a great storm at sea nearly sank his ship in the North Atlantic, and Newton turned to God in faith. He left the sea in 1755, and became curate of Olney in Buckinghamshire, England. Newton is best known for his hymn "Amazing Grace."
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1750 JONATHAN EDWARDS IS DISMISSED FROM HIS CHURCH
On June 22, 1750, the church in Northampton, Massachusetts, voted to dismiss Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), their pastor of twenty-three years. In spite of great successes during the Great Awakening, Edwards had fallen out of favor with the people over his stand against the open Communion practiced by his grandfather Solomon Stoddard (1643-1729). However, the next summer Edwards was called as pastor to the church in the small frontier village of Stockbridge, Massachusetts. There he was able to devote much of his time to writing. During the next seven years Edwards wrote some of his most influential works, such as Freedom of the Will, The End for Which God Created the World, The Nature of True Virtue, and Original Sin. God used Edwards' dismissal to enrich his people forever through these books.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1750 NEW ENGLAND THEOLOGY EVOLVES
Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) wrote his treatise titled Freedom of the Will in defense of the Great Awakening. In order to explain man's accountability for his actions and God's sovereignty over man's will, Edwards argued that God must incline the human will to understand and accept the gift of salvation. The successors of Edwards, who included Jonathan Edwards Jr. (1745-1801), Timothy Dwight (1752-1817), Samuel Hopkins (1721-1803), and Nathaniel Taylor (1786-1858), built on his theology. Later successors sometimes softened Edwards' view of God's sovereignty, and in their thinking, the primary work in salvation shifted from God to man. This subtle dilution of Edwards' theology became known as New England Theology. It controlled Congregational schools from 1750 until the influx of German higher-critical theology in the late nineteenth century.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1750 INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION BEGINS
Since the Middle Ages, the Western world had primarily been an agrarian society. However, in the middle part of the eighteenth century, much of the Western world began to manufacture goods primarily through steam power that was fueled by coal instead of by water or wind power. The steam engine invented by James Watt (1736-1819) allowed tasks, once dependent upon man or animal power, to be accomplished much more quickly and efficiently. Soon the steam engine locomotive and steam-powered ship were transporting people farther and more quickly than ever before. Another outcome of the Industrial Revolution was the invention and proliferation of factories. These factories, in spite of often dangerous working conditions, created the necessary means for the development of the middle class. The industrial revolution changed the structure of society in the Western world, providing Christians with both effective tools and challenges.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
AMAZING GRACE
March 21, 1748
Born in London in 1725, John Newton, a sea captain's son, lost his mother when he was six. However, before she died she prayed that he would become a minister. Newton went to sea with his father at age eleven. After an unsuccessful stint in the Royal Navy, he went to work for a slave trader.
In March 1848, Newton was in a violent storm that changed him forever. He went to bed that night and was awakened by the storm. Within a few minutes the ship was a virtual wreck, filling with water. Working frantically, the crew finally was able to plug the leaks. Exhausted, Newton heard himself say to the captain, "If this will not do, the Lord have mercy upon us." Newton was instantly taken aback by his own words that reflected the first time he had desired God's mercy in years. Then the thought went through his mind, What mercy can there be for me?
As the storm continued the next day, March 21, 1748, Newton sadly concluded that there had never been a sinner as wicked as he and that his sins were too great and too many to be forgiven. His journal records the deliverance from that storm and his spiritual deliverance as well: "[This] is a day much to be remembered by me, and I have never suffered it to pass wholly unnoticed since the year 1748. On that day, the Lord sent from on high and delivered me out of the deep waters...."
Later he wrote: "I stood in need of an Almighty Saviour, and such a one I found described in the New Testament.....I was no longer an infidel; I heartily renounced my former profaneness, and I had taken up some right notions; was seriously disposed, and sincerely touched with a sense of the undeserved mercy I had received, in being brought safe through so many dangers."
Although he continued sailing and working in the slave trade for a time, Newton studied the Bible, prayed, read Christian books, and finally left the sea behind. In 1764, at age thirty-nine, John Newton began a new life as a minister in the Church of England, later writing his autobiographical hymn, "Amazing Grace."
Throughout his life, he stopped to thank God on his "anniversary." The last entry in his journal was written on March 21, 1805, an anniversary of his deliverance. He wrote simply, "Not well able to write; but I endeavor to observe the return of this day with humiliation, prayer, and praise."
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
AN INFLUENTIAL LIFE
September 24, 1757
The impact of a life matters more than its length.
Aaron Burr Sr. was born in Connecticut and graduated first in his class at Yale in 1735. He then became pastor of the Presbyterian Church of Newark, New Jersey.
When a student named David Brainerd was expelled from Yale because of his involvement in the Great Awakening, Aaron Burr along with Jonathan Dickinson, pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Elizabethtown, New Jersey, took an active interest in his case. The two pastors were particularly upset when their alma mater refused to readmit Brainerd after his apology for the offhand comments that had caused his expulsion. This action by Yale confirmed the conviction of the Presbyterian Synods of New Jersey and New York that they should found their own college to prepare men for ministry.
The College of New Jersey, which was to become Princeton University, received its charter from the governor of the state in 1746. Aaron Burr was the youngest of the organizing seven trustees.
The college began in May 1747, in Jonathan Dickinson's home in Elizabethtown, New Jersey, with David Brainerd as its first official student. The original students studied in Dickinson's library, attended classes in the parlor, and ate meals in the dining room with the family. Just four and a half months later they would accompany the family to Dickinson's funeral.
Aaron Burr was persuaded then to take charge of the college. The students bid farewell to the grieving Dickinson family and moved six miles to Newark, where they boarded in the town and held their classes at the Burr parsonage. Burr did the teaching with the assistance of one tutor. A year later, Aaron Burr was formally elected the college's second president.
Burr was still a bachelor when he accepted the position. Some years earlier he had met fifteen-year-old Esther Edwards, daughter of Jonathan Edwards. Unable to forget about fair Esther, Burr made a courting visit to the Edwards' home. Esther accepted his declaration of love, and they were married at Burr's church in Newark.
In 1755, Burr resigned the pastorate to devote himself full-time to the college. He supervised the erection of the college's first building in Princeton, New Jersey. In 1756, Burr and the now seventy students and two tutors moved to Princeton into glorious Nassau Hall, the largest stone building in the colonies.
The governor died the following year, and Burr traveled to Elizabethtown to deliver the funeral sermon. Returning to Princeton seriously ill himself, Aaron Burr died on September 24, 1757, at the age of only forty-one.
Burr's father-in-law, Jonathan Edwards, was chosen five days later to follow his son-in-law as the college's next president.
Esther survived her husband by less than a year, succumbing to smallpox at the age of twenty-six. She left two children, four-year-old Sarah and two-year-old Aaron Jr. Sarah later married Connecticut Chief Justice Tapping Reeve, and Aaron Jr. became the third vice president of the United States.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1759 VOLTAIRE WRITES CANDIDE
The French philosopher Voltaire (1694-1778) was one of the most articulate spokesmen for the Age of Enlightenment, advocating the use of reason to reeval-uate traditional ideas and institutions. Educated by French Jesuits, Voltaire developed a distaste for what he considered to be the superstition and intolerance in the Catholic Church. He then was influenced by the English Deists. Voltaire's most well-known writing, Candide, was published in 1759. It is a satirical critique of the common ideas about good and evil. Thirty-nine of his works eventually were banned by the Roman Catholic Church. Voltaire, who worked to ordain tolerance as the distinguishing characteristic of society, epitomized the self-sufficient humanist. His beliefs were widely held among the educated in the 1700s and 1800s.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1759 EUROPEAN NATIONS BEGIN TO OUTLAW JESUITS
The Society of Jesus, better known as the Jesuits, was founded in Italy in 1540 by Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556). The brotherhood grew rapidly and spearheaded the Roman Catholic attack on the Reformation. However, they were not popular with absolute monarchs. In 1758, an assassination attempt on the king of Portugal was blamed on the Jesuits, and as a result they were expelled from Portugal in 1759. In 1764, they were suppressed in France and three years later in Spain.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1769 JUNIPERO SERRA FOUNDS FIRST OF NINE MISSIONS IN CALIFORNIA
Junipero Serra (1713-1784), a Franciscan missionary to the Indians of Mexico and the California coast, came from the island of Majorca in the Mediterranean. Serra earned a doctorate in theology, but turned away from a more privileged life at the university to establish missions in America. In 1769, Serra entered California with a Spanish army of conquest, but he was the first to defend the lives of the native Indians. Serra's work titled Representation describes his expectations for conduct in the missions he established. He spent his life in ministry, traveling between the missions he established, baptizing six thousand and confirming five thousand in his lifetime. San Diego, San Gabriel, San Francisco, San Juan Capistrano, and Santa Clara are among the cities that developed around the missions founded by Serra.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1767 MOSES MENDELSSOHN BECOMES A DEFENDER OF JUDAISM
The Jewish Enlightenment movement started in Germany with Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786). Committed to the Enlightenment philosophies of the eighteenth century, Mendelssohn was interested in showing that Jewish beliefs constituted an acceptable intellectual view of the world. Among his achievements was a German translation of the Hebrew Bible, which he encouraged all Jews to study. Mendelssohn believed Jews could practice their faith while becoming involved in the cultural and civic duties of the nations where they happened to reside. In 1769, at the height of his career, Mendelssohn held a public debate with a Christian apologist and from that time on became a defender of Judaism in print. He was the grandfather of composer Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847).
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1771 FRANCIS ASBURY IS SENT TO AMERICA
Francis Asbury (1745-1816) was converted at fourteen in England and began preaching at sixteen. His parents were some of the early followers of John Wesley (1703-1791). In 1771, Asbury was among four men who left England to answer Wesley's call for volunteers to sail to America as missionaries. Once in America he traveled to preach the gospel wherever he could, a commitment that set the standard for the early American Methodist itinerant preachers. When the Revolutionary War broke out, Asbury was the only Methodist missionary to remain in America. Later he was appointed joint superintendent of the Methodists in the United States. By the end of his life, Asbury had ordained more than four thousand preachers, and there were more than 214,000 Methodists in the United States. He is known as the father of American Methodism.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1772 VILNA RABBIS EXCOMMUNICATE THE HASIDIM
Hasidim, who first appeared in Eastern Europe in the 1730s under the leadership of Israel ben Eliezer (1700-1760), practiced a mystical form of Judaism in contrast to the intellectualism of traditional Talmud study. As a result of their teachings, the Hasidim were considered a threat to the authority of the rabbis who led the yeshivas, the Jewish institutes where students studied the Talmud. Led by Elijah ben Solomon Zalman (1720-1797)—the gaon, or leader of the ye-shiva of Vilna, Lithuania—the leaders of the Eastern European yeshivas excommunicated the Hasidim in 1772 and burned their books. Despite the opposition, Hasidism continued to spread.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
THE COWPER BROTHERS
March 10, 1770
They are in heaven together.
John and Ann Cowper had seven children, but only two survived infancy: William, born in 1731, and John, born in 1737. John Sr. was rector of Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, England, and the family was strongly evangelical. The one weakness Rev. Dr. Cowper passed on to his son William was chronic depression. Today he would be diagnosed as having a bipolar disorder.
In 1764, during one of his hospitalizations, William was converted through the evangelistic efforts of his doctor. Despite his mental illness, he became one of England's greatest poets, writing the lyrics to hymns such as "O for a Closer Walk with Thee" and "There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood." His brother John, however, remained unconverted.
In September 1769, John became so ill that his friends insisted William come to visit him. After ten days John was much improved, and William returned home, mystified as to why his brother refused to trust in Jesus even when he was facing death.
The following February, William was again summoned because of John's failing health. John continued in great suffering until March 10, 1770, when William heard him quoting the words, "Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth" to which he added, "Ay, and he is able to do it too."
The following day William wrote to a Christian friend about what had happened:
I am in haste to make you a partaker of my joy......Yesterday, in the afternoon, my
Brother suddenly burst into tears, and said with a loud cry, "Oh! forsake me not!" I went to his bed-side, and ... found that he was in prayer. Then, turning to me, he said,.. ."I have felt that which | never felt before; and l am sure that God has visited me with this sickness, in order to teach me what I was too proud to learn in health. I never had satisfaction till now. The doctrines I had been used to referred me to myself for the foundation of my hope, and there I could find nothing to rest upon. The sheer anchor of the soul was wanting. I thought you wrong, yet wanted to believe as you did. I found myself unable to believe, yet always thought that I should one day be brought to do so. You suffered more than I have done, before you believed these truths, but our sufferings, though different in their kind and measure, were directed to the same end... .These things were foolishness to me once, I could not understand them, but now I have a solid foundation and am satisfied.".. . The good I enjoy, comes to me as the overflowing of his bounty. But the crown of all his mercies is this, that he has given me a Saviour, and not only the Saviour of mankind, but my Saviour."
John Cowper died ten days later.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1773 POPE CLEMENT XIV SUPPRESSES THE JESUITS
In 1773, pressure from Portugal, Spain, France, and various Italian states caused Pope Clement XIV (1705-1774) to issue the papal bull Dominus ac Redemptor noster, officially dissolving the Jesuit order. However, this did not mean the order was extinguished. Jesuits continued to teach throughout Germany and Austria, where they were protected by both Frederick II (1712-1786) of Prussia and Empress Catherine the Great (1729-1796) of Russia. The Jesuits also continued their activities and maintained their possessions in England, where Roman Catholic bishops were discouraged from implementing the pope's ruling. This was also true in the United States, where the Jesuits continued their work almost uninterrupted.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1775 AMERICAN REVOLUTION BEGINS
On the morning of April 19, 1775, in Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, the first shots of the American Revolution were fired. Dissatisfaction with British rule among the colonial Americans had been increasing for several years. However, after the Intolerable Acts were passed in 1774, war was inevitable. On May 10, 1775, Benedict Arnold (1741-1801) and Ethan Allen (1738-1789) led a group of American troops to Fort Ticonderoga, where they defeated the surprised British forces, beginning the war in earnest. That summer, the Continental Congress appointed George Washington (1732-1799) commander of the Colonial army. The next year, the new nation formally declared independence from British rule. After six years of war, the British surrendered to the American forces at Yorktown, and the United States of America emerged. No country in the world would be so strongly influenced by biblical Christianity.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
THE METHODIST PARSON
August 7, 1771
His life was an example of what God can do with one man.
Francis Asbury was born in 1745 to a poor family near Birmingham, England. His parents had been among the early converts of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism.
When Asbury was a boy, his mother surrounded him with prayer, Scripture, and hymns. She invited everyone she met who seemed "religious" to stay at her house. Young Asbury didn't get into much trouble, but his peers jeeringly called him "Methodist Parson," a cutting insult because Methodism at that time was seen as a crazy new religion.
At the age of thirteen, Asbury began asking his mother questions about the Methodists. She arranged for a friend of hers to take him to the town of Wednesbury so that he could see for himself.
He was particularly impressed with the spontaneity of a Methodist service he attended. Soon thereafter, when Asbury and a Christian friend prayed together in his father's barn loft, he trusted the Savior he had heard about for so long.
His great excitement about his salvation led him to become a local traveling preacher at the age of seventeen, while also continuing his work as a blacksmith's apprentice. By the age of twenty, he was ministering full-time in various Methodist preaching circuits throughout England.
On August 7, 1771, at the age of twenty-one, Asbury answered John Wesley's call for Methodist preachers to go to America. When Wesley announced, "Our brethren in America call aloud for help," Asbury answered, "Here am I, send me."
Once in America, Asbury was chosen to be one of the first two Methodist superintendents in the Methodist Episcopal Church, a new denomination that was born from his leadership. He subsequently changed his title to "bishop."
Asbury defined the role of an itinerant minister. His motto was, "Go into every kitchen and shop; address all, aged and young, on the salvation of their souls." He urged all Methodist ministers to do the same. He became a circuit rider, visiting camp meetings, revivals, and conventions on horseback.
Asbury traveled constantly for forty-five years, covering about three hundred thousand miles, mostly on horseback, and crossing the Appalachians more than sixty times. He literally had no home of his own in America but found shelter wherever he could.
When Asbury came to America in 1771, the country was home to approximately three hundred Methodists and four ministers, all on the Atlantic seaboard. When Asbury died in 1816, the denomination had spread into every state and over 214,000 people in America called themselves Methodists. Asbury himself had ordained more than four thousand Methodist ministers and had preached more than sixteen thousand sermons.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
DON'T FIRE UNTIL YOU SEE THE WHITES OF THEIR EYES"
June 16, 1775
In times of battle, men's thoughts often turn to prayer—and for good reason!
On June 16, 1775, a significant prayer meeting took place in Boston. The day before, the Patriots had learned of English General Gage's plan to occupy the southern projection of Bunker Hill on the Charleston peninsula, across the Charles River from Boston. In the twilight of June 16, twelve hundred Patriot troops gathered on the Cambridge Common. There Samuel Langdon, the gray-haired president of Harvard College, led them in prayer concerning the awesome task before them. He prayed, "O may our camp be free from every accursed thing! May our land be purged from all its sins! May we truly be a holy people and all our towns cities of righteousness!"
After the prayer, the patriot commander William Prescott led the troops to a rise near Bunker Hill overlooking the British army that occupied Boston. All through the night they worked preparing fortifications to withstand the British soldiers the next day.
General Gage committed twenty-two hundred British soldiers, a third of all his troops to the operation. At two in the afternoon the cannon fire from the British ships in Boston Harbor intensified against the patriot position as the British troops crossed the Charles River in small boats and then formed themselves into long lines. As the church bells tolled three o'clock, Gage's field commander, General William Howe, began leading his troops up the long hill. Behind him two rows of British soldiers, stretching the complete width of the peninsula, advanced up the open slope toward the patriot position.
The British troops were puzzled that the patriots did not fire a single shot at them as they advanced, even though they were well in range. Prescott, the patriot commander, had commanded his men with the now famous words, "Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes." The young soldiers bravely did as they were told and were victorious. Seeing the countless red-coated British soldiers lying all around them, they knew that God had given them the victory.
Corporal Amos Farnsworth of the Massachusetts militia wrote in his diary that night, "O, the goodness of God in preserving my life, although they fell on my right hand and on my left! O may this act of deliverance of thine, O God, lead me never to distrust thee; but may I ever trust in thee and put confidence in no arm of the flesh!" Another soldier, Peter Jennings, wrote to his mother, "God, in His mercy to us, fought our battle for us, and although we were but few... we were preserved in a most wonderful way, far beyond expectation."
God answered the prayers of the previous night's prayer meeting.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1775 HENRY ALLINE CONVERTS
Known for bringing the Great Awakening to Nova Scotia, Henry Alline (1748-1784) was born to Congregational parents in Rhode Island. He moved to Nova Scotia, and in 1775, having experienced a dramatic conversion, Alline felt called to preach the gospel. A second experience, which gave him the sense that he needed only Christ, not a theological education, to qualify for the ministry, empowered Alline to begin a lifetime of preaching. His message centered on the need for a new birth. God used him to start a revival known as the New Light movement in the maritime colonies of Canada. The movement resulted in many Congregationalists becoming Baptists in Nova Scotia, and as a result, many evangelical churches were established in the province.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1775 FIRST INDEPENDENT BLACK BAPTIST CHURCH IS FOUNDED IN AMERICA
The first independent black church likely was one founded in 1775 in Silver Bluff, South Carolina. The successful establishment of this church led to the formation of other black congregations in Savannah, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and other cities throughout the United States.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1779 COWPER AND NEWTON PUBLISH OLNEY HYMNS
William Cowper (1731-1800), a descendant of the English poet John Donne (1573-1631), became chronically depressed following an attempted suicide in his youth. But then he started reading the Bible and was converted to Christ. In 1767, he moved to Olney in Buckinghamshire, England, and was befriended by John Newton (1725-1807), a pastor who had been a slave trader before his conversion. Newton and Cowper wrote and published Olney Hymns in 1779. Cowper composed sixty-eight of the 348 hymns, including the well known, "O for a Closer Walk with God!" and "There is a Fountain Filled with Blood." The collection also included hymns by Newton, his most familiar being, "Amazing Grace" and "Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken."
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1780 ROBERT RAIKES BEGINS SUNDAY SCHOOL
Robert Raikes (1735-1811) followed his father as publisher of the Gloucester Journal in Gloucester, England, a position which afforded him the opportunity of helping those in need. In 1780, after consulting the pastor of a nearby church, Raikes set up a Sunday school for the city's growing number of neglected children. During the week and on Sunday, the teachers at the school taught Bible, reading, and other basics. The undertaking was quickly duplicated at other parishes, but concern that educating the poor would lead to revolution brought much opposition as well. Raikes, however, used his newspaper to promote his Sunday school idea, and within six years two hundred thousand children were being educated in English Sunday schools. The idea soon spread to Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and the Americas.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1781 CORNWALL'S CHRISTMAS REVIVAL FOCUSES ON PRAYER Cornwall's Christmas Revival was unique in that it was largely a prayer movement without the involvement of any significant preachers. Most gatherings were prayer meetings rather than evangelistic meetings. It started in 1781, when a Christmas morning service in Cornwall, England, turned into six hours of prayer. After a brief break with their families, many gathered again at the church that evening to continue praying. This prayer revival continued daily, with prayer meetings held most evenings until midnight through March. The revival was also unique in that it was interdenominational, with Baptists, Methodists, and Anglicans gathering together to pray for the revival of England. Many unbelievers were drawn to these large meetings and were converted. Cornwall's Christmas Revival was one of the first events in the Second Great Awakening, which spread throughout England, America, and many other nations.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1781 KANT PUBLISHES HIS CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), was the most influential philosopher of modern times. A professor of logic and metaphysics in Konigsberg, Prussia, he published Critique of Pure Reason in 1781. At the heart of Critique was Kant's case for human freedom and his explanation of knowledge and morality. By demonstrating that rational knowledge is derived only from logic, mathematics, and physics, Kant argued that neither reason nor experience can provide metaphysical or abstract knowledge. Kant's belief that knowledge of God is unattainable made a significant impact on Protestantism, providing a foundation for later liberal theology. Though he eventually articulated moral arguments for God, immorality, and freedom, Kant maintained that these premises were produced only by reason and therefore were not scientifically demonstrable conclusions.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1782 HOLY ROMAN EMPEROR JOSEPH II ISSUES EDICT OF TOLERANCE
Joseph II (1741-1790), king of Austria and the Holy Roman emperor, issued the Edict of Tolerance in 1782, which abolished the Jews' special poll tax, the yellow badge they had been forced to wear, the ban on Jews from attending universities, and the ban on Jews leaving their homes on Sundays and Christian holidays. On the other hand, it prohibited the use of Hebrew or Yiddish in any business documents or public records and introduced military service for Jewish males. In spite of the Edict of Tolerance, the Jews soon discovered that their newly gained rights were often denied by bureaucrats.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1784 METHODIST CONFERENCE FORMS IN CHURCH OF ENGLAND
In 1739, John Wesley's (1703-1791) successful preaching led him to establish Methodist societies to support recent converts. The name came from the Wesley's earlier Holy Club at Oxford University whose members were derisively called "Methodists." When Wesley filed a Deed of Declaration in the Court of Chancery in 1784, the societies became an official "Yearly Conference of People Called Methodists" that listed one hundred preachers. The authority to appoint ministers to its "Preaching Houses" was included in the deed. In addition, the deed called for preachers to be ordained in the Church of England, though few followed the provision. Following Wesley's death, the one-hundred-person limit was extended to include all English Methodist preachers.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1784 JOHN WESLEY WRITES THE ARTICLES OF RELIGION
In 1784, John Wesley (1703-1791) wrote the Articles of Religion as the official doctrinal standard for American Methodists. His Twenty-Four Articles of Religion were a revision of the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England. Wesley removed everything from the Thirty-Nine Articles having to do with ritual or Calvinism. He did not add anything uniquely Methodist as this was already available in his sermons and in his "Notes on the New Testament." The American Methodists added one article affirming their loyalty to the American government. The resulting Twenty-Five Articles were officially adopted by the Baltimore Conference later that year.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1784 THOMAS COKE COMES TO AMERICA
Born in Brecon, Wales, England, Thomas Coke (1747-1814) earned his doctorate in civil law at Oxford University and was ordained in the Church of England. While serving as the curate in South Pertherton, however, Coke was removed from his office because of his Methodist beliefs. Coke, a good preacher with a sharp legal mind, earned the respect of John Wesley (1703-1791) and served as superintendent of the Methodist circuit in London. In 1784, Coke sailed to America after John Wesley appointed him to assist Francis Asbury (1745-1816) as joint superintendent for America. Next to John Wesley, Thomas Coke was the most significant figure in early Methodism.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1784 THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH IS FOUNDED IN AMERICA
Thomas Coke (1747-1814), the devoted English Methodist, came to America with instructions from John Wesley (1703-1791) for Francis Asbury (1745-1816), the leading Methodist preacher in the United States. In 1784, the two men organized what became known as the Christmas Convention, chaired by Coke. The meeting was held in Baltimore and led to the official formation of a new American denomination called the Methodist Episcopal Church. In accordance with Wesley's recommendation, the conference adopted the Articles of Religion and established a rule of discipline. Coke, who had been ordained superintendent by Wesley, ordained Asbury as a fellow superintendent. At its founding, the denomination included eight thousand members, and more than one hundred itinerant preachers, with eight hundred regular preaching locations and sixty chapels.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1784 CHRISTIANITY COMES TO KOREA
In 1783, Lee Seung-hoon, a Korean Confucian scholar accompanying an envoy to Peking, China, read Jesuit literature there and was baptized a Christian. He then returned to Korea and baptized two of his friends in l784. From Seung-hoon's testimony, Catholicism spread throughout Korea. For nearly one hundred years and despite terrible persecutions by Confucian rulers in 1791, 1801, 1839, 1846, and 1864, the hidden Catholic Church in Korea grew to more than 17, 500 members. Protestantism was introduced by Suh Sang-yum who was converted by Scottish missionaries in Manchuria in 1878. Although it was against the law to do so, Sang-yum returned with parts of Scripture translated into Korean and quietly converted the first Korean Protestant Christians. The first Presbyterian and Methodist missionaries arrived in 1884. By 2000, there were more than 7 million evangelical Christians in South Korea and approximately 355,000 in North Korea.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1786 THOMAS COKE LEADS THE FIRST METHODIST MISSION TO WEST INDIES
In addition to serving as joint superintendent of Methodism in the newly formed United States of America, Thomas Coke (1747-1814) rightly bears the title of "father of Methodist Missions." In 1786, he wrote the first Methodist tract on missions and that same year set out to establish a mission in Nova Scotia. However, a severe storm forced his ship to land in Antigua, West Indies, where he was thrilled to find an open door for missionaries. Missions in the British West Indies and the other British colonies became his passion for the remainder of his life.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1787 THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT BEGINS
The Abolition Society, formed in Britain in 1787 by Thomas Clarkson (1760-1846) and William Wilberforce (1759-1833), was the first organized group that sought to abolish slavery. In 1807, the society successfully lobbied Parliament to outlaw the slave trade within the British Empire. Slavery itself continued, but in 1823, the Anti-Slavery Society was formed in Britain under the direction of a member of Parliament named Thomas Forwell Buxton (1786-1845). Finally in 1833, the British Parliament passed legislation that abolished all slavery throughout the empire. The anti-slavery movement gained strength and subsequently spread to North America.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1787 SECOND GREAT AWAKENING BEGINS AT HAMPDEN-SYDNEY COLLEGE
The second national revival in the United States is known as the Second Great Awakening. The era energized the spiritual life of Americans following the Revolutionary War and confronted two major challenges. First, Deism was popular among educated society and centered on thinking of God on the basis of reason not faith. Secondly, the challenges and dangers of life on the Western frontier resulted in churches being few and far between. The much-needed revival came first to colleges in the East, where in 1787, Hampden-Sydney College experienced a spiritual awakening. From Hampden-Sydney, revival spread to Washington College, Yale, Williams, Dartmouth, and Amherst. Carried along by students and preachers alike, the Second Great Awakening lasted from 1787 to 1825, sweeping the land from East to West.
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THE AGE OF PROGRESS
1789—1914
The Age of Progress saw Christians of all sorts wage a valiant struggle against the advance of secularism. Out of the evangelical awakenings came new efforts to carry the gospel of Christ to distant lands, and to begin a host of social service ministries in industrialized Europe and North America. From the ramparts of Rome, a defensive papacy fired a barrage of missiles aimed at the modern enemies of the Catholic faith. In spite of Christians' best efforts, however, Christianity was slowly driven from public life in the Western world. Believers were left with the problem we recognize in our own time: How can Christians exert moral influence in pluralistic and totalitarian societies where Christian assumptions about reality no longer prevail?
BRUCE L. SHELLEY
1791—U. S. Bill of Rights written
1793-4—Reign of Terror in France
1808—Napoleon controls almost all Europe
1846—One million Irish starve in Potato Famine
1856—Transatlantic cable developed
1903—Wright brothers make first flight
1905—lbert Einstein develops Theory of Relativity
1914—Panama Canal completed
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1789 REVOLUTION RADICALIZES FRANCE
In eighteenth-century France, excesses by the monarchy, the nobility, and the clergy led to intense political and social upheaval. The middle classes demanded political power, refusing to submit to the nobility and the clergy. The peasants demanded redistribution of land and an end to feudalism. An intense distrust of the Catholic Church had developed, due primarily to the church's increased wealth and power. The Enlightenment had bred ideas of Deism and naturalism that compounded the newly found aversion toward organized religion. The fighting began with the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, and the revolution continued for ten years. The revolution overthrew the monarchy and abolished the old feudal system, but it also attempted to abolish the church in France by removing all vestiges of Christianity from French culture. Although the Catholic Church regained some privileges later under Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), it never regained its former place in French society.
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1791 CATHERINE THE GREAT ESTABLISHES THE PALE OF SETTLEMENT
In the 1770s, Poland was divided three times between Prussia, Austria, and Russia, and the majority of Polish Jews came under Russian authority. Russia, which had been closed to Jews, suddenly had one million Jewish inhabitants. Desiring to keep Jews separate from the rest of her subjects, in 1791 Empress Catherine the Great (1729-1796) of Russia restricted Jews to an area known as the Pale of Settlement. That region included the areas they already inhabited and territories taken from the Ottoman Empire along the Black Sea that the empress wished to colonize. In one form or another, the Pale of Settlement was enforced until the Russian Revolution in 1917.
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1791 THE FIRST AMENDMENT TO THE U.S. CONSTITUTION IS RATIFIED
In order to ratify the American Constitution, several states demanded that certain rights be added to the document. This Bill of Rights constitutes the basic freedoms of American citizens. The first amendment declares that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; of the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government of a redress of grievances." The Supreme Court has ruled that the freedom of religion does not apply when it results in antisocial or self-harming behavior. In 1947, the Everson v. Board of Education verdict stated that there was a "wall of separation between church and state." This decision has resulted in the removal of prayer, Bible reading, and most religious-related activities from American public schools.
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1791 FRANCE GRANTS CIVIL RIGHTS TO JEWS
When the French Revolution occurred in 1789, it had positive results for the Jews of France. During the Revolution, in the first debate in the French National Assembly on the status of the Jews, many radicals fought bitterly against granting equal rights to Jews. Nevertheless, on September 27, 1791, the National Assembly granted Jews their full civil rights, becoming the first European nation to do so. The rationale was simply that all Frenchmen were equal.
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1791 SCHLEIERMACHER PUBLISHES ON RELIGION
Frederick Ernst Daniel Schleiermacher (1768-1834) was born to a Pietistic German family and studied at Halle, the center of Pietism, under Moravian teachers. As a university student, Schleiermacher rejected much of Pietism and became fascinated by debates concerning the teaching of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). In 1799, Schleiermacher published his first major work, On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers. The book, which gives theological voice to Romanticism, describes religion as a "sense and taste for the infinite" and argues that life becomes dreadful without religion. Schleiermacher rejected the orthodox doctrine of Christ, seeing him merely as a person, thus paving the way for future liberal views of Christ as merely a man inspired by God.
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1792 THE CLAPHAM SECT IS FORMED
Around 1792, a small group of influential Christians living near Clapham, a village south of London, joined forces to promote Christian action, particularly the abolition of slavery. Working tirelessly to influence public opinion and to exert pressure on the government, they accomplished the abolition of the slave trade in 1807, and the emancipation of all slaves throughout the British territory in 1833. Members of the close-knit group included William Wilberforce (1759-1833) and Zachary Macaulay (1768-1838) (members of Parliament), John Venn (1759-1813) (rector of Clapham), Henry Thornton (1760-1815) (banker whose home was the meeting place), Hannah More (1745-1835) (writer and educator), and Lord Teignmouth (1751-1834) (governor-general of India). In addition to facilitating the end of slavery in the British Empire, they worked for reform in England's schools and prisons. God used a small group of committed believers to change their world.
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1792 HANNAH MORE PUBLISHES CHEAP REPOSITORY TRACTS Growing up in England, Hannah More (1745-1833) mastered French, Latin, Italian, and Spanish at an early age, and was gifted in mathematics and poetry. She administered a school with her three sisters and became an important social and literary figure in London. After the death of two literary friends, More lost interest in the London social scene and decided to devote her abilities to serving God. John Newton (1725-1807), author of "Amazing Grace, " became her spiritual advisor. She wrote many books and essays on the importance of education and Christianity in establishing moral laws. In 1792, she published a series called Cheap Repository Tracts, which explained religious truth and responsibility. The series was sponsored by William Wilberforce (1759-1833) and Henry Thornton (1760-1815) of the Clapham Sect and sold 2 million copies in the first year. Hannah More wrote throughout her life, becoming the first evangelical to use novels for religious or moral purposes.
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1793 FESTIVAL OF REASON DEGRADES CHRISTIAN INFLUENCE IN FRANCE
With the triumph of the French Revolution, its leaders tried to abolish the church in France. Festivals such as the Festival of Reason in 1793 were part of a concerted effort to erase any vestige of a Christian culture from the nation. To that end, Notre Dame Cathedral—formerly a Christian center for intellectual and spiritual reform—became the Temple of Reason. Catholic priests were forced to take an oath to the newly created Civil Constitution. The Catholic Church denounced the Civil Constitution and, as a result, Catholic clergy endured cruel mistreatment.
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EXPECT GREAT THINGS"
May 31, 1792
Fellow ministers called him "the harebrained enthusiast, " but we know him as the father of modern missions.
William Carey was born in 1761 to a poor Anglican family in rural England. At the age of fourteen he began training as a shoemaker's apprentice. Providentially, fellow apprentice John Warr was a Christian.
Carey was uncomfortable with the evangelical arguments Warr presented to him, and over time Carey began to feel a "growing uneasiness and stings of conscience gradually increasing" in regard to Warr's beliefs. Over the next two years, he came to "depend on a crucified Saviour for pardon and salvation. "
Although he did not attend high school, Carey possessed a keen intellect. He taught himself five languages, and by the end of his life he knew dozens of languages and dialects.
Carey became a Calvinistic Baptist preacher, who was burdened for overseas missions. He published a pamphlet called An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens.
For years Carey tried to convince fellow Baptist ministers of the need to form a missionary society in order to spread the gospel across the world. Although the leaders of the denomination kept putting him off, he persisted.
On the evening of May 30, 1792, Carey preached at the annual Baptist association meeting. His text was Isaiah 54:2-3, and his theme was "Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God." He urged his fellow pastors to commit to venture forth among the nations with the gospel, having confidence that God would bless the message and extend his kingdom. Carey's address made a profound impression on the ministers in attendance.
The nest day, May 31, 1792, they agreed to form the "Baptist Society for Propagating the Gospel among the Heathen." Later it was renamed the Baptist Missionary Society.
In 1793, Carey and two other missionaries sailed for India where Carey worked until his death in 1834. His comprehensive approach to missions included evangelization, church planting, and Bible translation. He also established schools, hospitals, and a savings bank; founded the Agricultural and Horticultural Society of India; started a Bengali newspaper; and supervised the start of India's first printing press, paper mill, and steam engine. He also taught languages at a local college, wrote a Bengali-English dictionary, and founded the first Christian college in Asia. In all, Carey translated the complete Bible into six languages and portions of it into twenty-nine others.
He expected great things from God, attempted great things for God, and God brought them to pass.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1793 WILLIAM CAREY SAILS FOR INDIA
William Carey's (1761-1834) vision for evangelizing the entire world was unlike that of his predecessors, which had focused on territories of the missionary's homeland. Converted at eighteen and ordained in 1787, Carey mastered Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, and Dutch. Following the establishment of the Particular Baptist Society for Propagating the Gospel among the Heathens (now the Baptist Missionary Society), Carey sailed for India in 1793. Carey and his fellow missionaries established twenty-six churches and more than 125 schools. He translated Scripture into at least thirty-five languages, including Bengali and Sanskrit. India's first medical mission, bank, girls' school, printing operation, paper mill, steam engine, and Bengali newspaper are among his other accomplishments. The father of Modern Missions, Carey baptized eighteen hundred converts, and his work prompted the creation of numerous other missionary societies.
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1795 ROBERT AND JAMES HALDANE ARE CONVERTED
Brothers Robert (1764-1842) and James Haldene (1768-1851) were raised by uncles after losing their parents when very young. They were educated in Dundee and Edinburgh, Scotland, after which they joined the navy. Both had left the navy before they were converted in 1795. James then became an influential itinerant preacher, and Robert attempted to set up agencies for financing foreign missions. However, the Church of Scotland opposed foreign missionary work, so Robert redirected his efforts and finances to establishing preaching tabernacles and theological seminaries throughout Scotland. In 1797, James founded the Society for Propagating the Gospel at Home and, in 1799, became the first Congregational pastor in Scotland. By 1801, he was pastor of the huge Tabernacle in Edinburgh, where he ministered for almost fifty years.
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1795 LONDON MISSIONARY SOCIETY IS FORMED
One of the first societies of its kind, the Missionary Society (renamed London Missionary Society in 1818) was founded in 1795 by a group of Anglicans, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and Methodists who met at Baker's Coffee House in London to pray for and plan for foreign missions. With the formation of the society they pooled their efforts to promote Christian missions. One of the society's unique founding principles was that no particular denomination should be promoted by the missionaries, and that church government should instead be set up by those converted. The first mission was made up of twenty-nine missionaries who ventured to Tahiti in 1796. The London Missionary Society eventually became the Council for World Missions (CWM). In subsequent years, the CWM initiated large-scale mission efforts in China, India, South East Asia, and East Africa.
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1796 HANS NIELSEN HAUGE IS CONVERTED
Hans Nielsen Hauge (1771-1824) was raised in the pious Lutheran home of a Norwegian farmer. In 1796, he experienced a dramatic conversion, after which he devoted himself to full-time evangelism as a lay preacher. He traveled throughout Norway, usually on foot, exhorting Norwegians to repent. He was quite successful, quickly gathering many followers. At this time itinerant preaching was illegal in Norway, and Hauge was sent to prison from 1804 to 1811. After a long trial he was ordered to pay a fine for unlawful preaching and criticizing the clergy. His followers, who came to be called "Haugeans," helped him buy a farm near Oslo where he wrote many widely circulated books. Toward the end of Hauge's life, his relations with the authorities became much friendlier. Hauge is regarded as the founder of the Christian laymen's movement in Norway.
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1797 METHODISTS BEGIN TO SEPARATE FROM CHURCH OF ENGLAND
In 1787, the "Preaching Houses" established by John Wesley (1703-1791) were registered as dissenting churches under the Toleration Act of 1559. The Methodist's Plan of Pacification in 1795 furthered their detachment from the Church of England, because it permitted Communion and baptism, as well as marriage and funeral services, to be carried out in Methodist chapels. The Plan also allowed preachers with full connection to the Methodist Conference to be considered ordained ministers. In 1797, six years after Wesley's death, Alexander Kilham (1762-1798) formed the Methodist New Connection, the first Methodist group to break officially from the Church of England. The principles of the New Connection eventually were taken over by the main Methodist bodies.
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1797 SECOND GREAT AWAKENING SPREADS WESTWARD IN THE UNITED STATES
Excitement and emotion characterized the Second Great Awakening in America when it spread westward. In 1797, the revival started in three Presbyterian churches led by James McGready (1769-1817) in Logan County, Kentucky. His fiery preaching, with its vivid descriptions of heaven and hell, shook the apathy from his congregation. When one of his churches invited the other Presbyterian and Methodist churches of the area to its annual Communion service in 1800, the revival spread to the visiting churches.
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1799 NAPOLEON BREAKS DOWN GHETTO WALLS
After Napole'on Bonaparte (1769-1821) seized power in France in 1799, he conquered much of Europe. In an effort to promote the legal equality of all men, Napoleon's armies broke down the walls of Jewish ghettos whenever he encountered them. Napoleon's destruction of the Roman Ghetto, established by Pope Paul IV (1476-1559) in the sixteenth century, also sent a message to the Catholic Church, whose authority Napoleon refused to recognize. Though some of the ghettos eventually would be rebuilt, and though Napoleon himself placed some limits on Jewish settlement, he was considered a liberator by many Jews in the eighteenth century.
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