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1900 BOXER REBELLION BEGINS IN CHINA
As the twentieth century approached, Western powers were anxious to gain access to China's resources. Meanwhile, a secret Chinese society that called itself the Righteous and Harmonious Fists was determined to drive out foreigners and retain the old Chinese religions. The Boxers, as they were nicknamed by Westerners, overthrew the emperor in 1900, replacing him with Empress Tsu Hsi (1834-1908), whom the Boxers could control. The Boxers began a violent assault on Christian missionaries and their converts. In Beijing, foreign diplomats and their families took cover in a makeshift fort for more than a month until an international force arrived and crushed the Boxer forces. A total of 188 missionaries and their children died in the rebellion, along with more than thirty thousand Chinese Christians. In the aftermath of the rebellion, the empress' Ch'ing dynasty was destroyed, and foreign access to China continued unabated until World War II.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1901 OZMAN SPEAKS IN TONGUES AT PARHAM'S BETHEL BIBLE COLLEGE
On January 1, 1901, Agnes N. Ozman (1870-1937), a student at Bethel Bible College in Topeka, Kansas, became the first of the modern Pentecostals to speak in tongues. The leader of the school, a former Methodist pastor named Charles F. Parham (1873-1929), explained the event as the baptism of the Holy Spirit and began to teach all over the country about the gift of tongues. One supporter described Ozman's experience as the "touch felt round the world." The Pentecostal revival spread to Missouri, Texas, and eventually Los Angeles. From Los Angeles, it blossomed into a worldwide movement. The Pentecostal revivals, Charismatic renewals, and "third-wave" theologies of the twentieth century all trace their roots to Ozman's experience in 1901.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1901 AMY CARMICHAEL FOUNDS DOHNAVUR
Amy Wilson Carmichael (1867-1951), one of India's best-known missionaries, was born in Northern Ireland into a committed Presbyterian family. Carmichael became the first missionary supported by the Keswick Convention's Missions Committee. She arrived in India in 1895. Her efforts to rescue little girls who otherwise would have become temple prostitutes led, on March 7, 1901, to the establishment of the Dohnavur Fellowship—a home providing physical and spiritual refuge for abandoned children. Carmichael lived Dohnavur's motto: "To preach Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves servants for Jesus' sake," serving for fifty-six years without furlough until her death in 1951. Thousands of abandoned children have passed through Dohnavur's doors into fellowship with Christ. Dohnavur Fellowship continues today as a native-led ministry to the needy among all ages and castes in India.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1901 ABRAHAM KUYPER BECOMES PRIME MINISTER OF THE NETHERLANDS
Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920), born in the Netherlands in a Reformed family, became a religious liberal as he prepared for the ministry. Later, as a pastor, he returned to his orthodox Calvinist roots. Kuyper was drawn into politics and in 1867, became head of the Anti-Revolutionist Party, which opposed the Godless cultural revolution then taking root in the Netherlands. Championing state support of private schools and suffrage for the middle class, Kuyper was elected to the Legislature in 1874. In 1880, he founded the Free University of Amsterdam to expand the influence of Calvinism. Six years later, Kuyper led a mass exodus of one hundred thousand orthodox Christians from the Reformed Church to form a new denomination called the Gereformeerde Kerk, now the second largest Protestant church in Holland. At the age of sixty-five in 1901, Kuyper was elected Prime Minister of the Netherlands, where he served until 1905.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1902 REUBEN TORREY BEGINS WORLDWIDE EVANGELISM
Born in Hoboken, New Jersey, Reuben Torrey (1856-1928) was educated at Yale Divinity School and was ordained a Congregationalist minister. He served pastorates in Garettsville, Ohio, and Minneapolis, Minnesota, before accepting Dwight L. Moody's invitation to become superintendent of his Chicago Training Institute, later called Moody Bible Institute. In 1902, Torrey decided to devote his time to mass evangelism, his greatest passion. For four years he conducted a number of preaching tours overseas, including trips to Australia, India, China, New Zealand, Great Britain, and Canada. Torrey later became dean of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles (BIOLA). He was a transitional figure between the revivalism and millenarianism of the later 1800s and the fundamentalism of the 1900's.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1904 WELSH REVIVAL SPREADS AROUND THE WORLD
Beginning in 1904, the greatest evangelical awakening of all time occurred throughout the world. The revival started in January 1904 in a church in New Quay, Cardiganshire, and spread from there throughout Wales and continued for two years with thousands coming to Christ. Church leaders came from around the world to witness the revival for themselves, then returned home, spreading the revival everywhere from Asia, Africa, and North and South America. It is estimated that more than 5 million people were converted to Christ by 1906.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1904 AZUSA STREET REVIVAL COMMENCES
The Azusa Street Revival began in 1906 when William J. Seymour (1870-1922), an African American preacher who had recently moved from Houston to California, began holding small meetings with his followers in a rundown industrial building at 312 Azusa Street in downtown Los Angeles. Quickly gaining a reputation as a place for spiritual revival, the Azusa Street location attracted visitors from around the world who attended the services that were held three times a day. In addition to witnessing miraculous healings at the gatherings, participants began speaking in tongues. The fellowship also shared a strong belief that Jesus would return at any moment. Though the Azusa Street Revival dwindled by 1909, it was a major contributor to the founding of the Pentecostal movement.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1904 THE SECOND ALIYAH BEGINS
The second wave of Jewish immigration to Palestine, or aliyah, which began in 1904 and lasted until 1914, brought about forty thousand Jews to the region. A major cause of the immigration was the persecution of Jews in Russia during 1903. Many of the Jews from the second aliyah banded together to form kibbutzim, collective farms owned by the members where families raised their children communally. Eventually there would be two hundred kibutzim in Palestine. The young men of the second aliyah who had been part of Jewish self-protection groups in Russia formed Hashomer, the Association of Jewish Watchmen in 1909, to protect the Jewish settlements in Palestine. They eventually became responsible for the defense of all Jewish villages.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1905 PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERS OF ZION APPEARS IN RUSSIA Anti-Semitism flourished during the reign of Russian Czar Nicholas II (r. 1894-1917). In December 1905, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion was published after circulating in manuscript form in the royal court in Russia. The document was a forgery claiming to be the records of a worldwide Zionist meeting of leaders plotting to take over the world. Though proven false, the spurious document continues to circulate among right-wing extremists and anti-Israel Arab groups today.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1906 REVIVAL OVERFLOWS AMONG THE MIZO PEOPLE
The Mizo Christians in Lushai, India, heard news of the great Welsh Revival and a subsequent indigenous Indian revival in nearby Khasi Hills. They prayed for similar revival in their primarily pagan community, and their prayers were answered. One evening in 1906, a group of Mizo Christians felt the outpouring of the Holy Spirit as they sang "God Be with You Till We Meet Again" in farewell to three friends. They continued in prayer and praise throughout the night as many others joined them. Several set out to bring the revival to nearby villages, often finding that the Holy Spirit was already moving there. This revival was followed by a period of persecution of Christians. However, in 1913, revival returned again to the Mizo people, and today Mizoram is India's most Christian province.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
NAVIGATOR
March 25, 1906
Dawson Trotman was born in Arizona on March 25, 1906. The family moved to California and his parents eventually divorced.
In high school Trotman was both president and valedictorian of his class, and he also led the Christian Endeavor Society at Lomita Presbyterian Church. But he was living a double life. After graduating from high school, he turned his back on his spiritual charade and immersed himself in the Roaring Twenties.
When the police picked up Trotman for drunkenness, his mother asked a Christian neighbor to pray for her wayward son. The next day the neighbor called her back saying, "We spent the night praying, and the Lord showed me a vision of Trotman holding a Bible, speaking to a large group of people. And the burden has lifted. Don't worry about Trotman any more."
Two nights later, Trotman went back to visit his old Christian Endeavor group at church. Their Scripture-memorization contest captivated his interest, and over the next two weeks he memorized twenty verses. As he walked to work one day, one of those verses flashed into his mind: "But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name" (John 1:12, KJV). He prayed a simple prayer, "O God, whatever it means to receive Jesus, I want to do it now."
After committing his life to Christ, Trotman joined a group dedicated to personal evangelism. He discovered that the words of God that he had memorized were a powerful witness to others. Bible memory became a discipline that would shape his future life and ministry.
He started a discipling group he called the "Minute Men." Then one day he met a sailor, and that meeting crystallized Trotman's vision. Thousands of young men were spending months each year aboard ships at sea, and Trotman saw the potential of training sailors to disciple their comrades. In 1933, the Minute Men became the Navigators. By 1945, Bible-memorizing Navigators had a presence on more than eight hundred navy ships, stations, and army bases. When World War II ended, thousands of former sailors went to college on the Gl Bill, and the Navigators followed them onto campuses across the United States.
In 1950, Billy Graham asked Trotman to develop a follow-up program for crusade converts. The Navigators' philosophy significantly influenced other ministries as well, including Wycliffe Bible Translators, Operation Mobilization, Mission Aviation Fellowship, and Campus Crusade for Christ.
In 1956, at the Navigators annual summer conference at Schroon Lake in the Adirondacks of New York, Trotman saw a girl fall out of a speedboat and dove into the lake to rescue her. He held her above water long enough for others to pull her out, but then sank himself. Before anyone could reach him, Dawson Trotman drowned.
The caption under his obituary photo in Time magazine said simply, "Always holding someone up."
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1906 SCHWEITZER WRITES IN QUEST OF THE HISTORICAL JESUS Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965), theologian, philosopher, musician, and medical missionary, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1952, after forty years of ministering to the needs of the people of the Congo. As a theologian, Schweitzer was a strange combination of liberal and literalist. His popular 1906 work, In Quest of the Historical Jesus, presented a Jesus more driven by first-century Jewish messianic expectations than by his divine calling as the "Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world." Two additional books, On the Edge of the Primeval Forest (1921) and The Jungle Hospital (1948), chronicled his experiences in the Congo and set forth his philosophy of "reverence for life."
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1907 THE KOREAN PENTECOST BEGINS Although Korea was one of the last Far Eastern nations to hear the gospel, the Korean church flourished at the turn of the century, transforming the country's culture and becoming a powerful force for God in Asia. Starting in 1903, revivals began within the Korean church that strengthened its members and added many new converts. These revivals set the stage for the "Pentecost" of 1907. This outpouring occurred at a New Year's Day Bible conference for Korean church leaders. During a concert of prayer, where everyone prayed aloud at the same time, fifteen hundred men became simultaneously convicted of their sins and began crying to God for mercy. These leaders became the carriers of revival back to their own congregations throughout the country. Approximately fifty thousand Koreans were converted during the 1907 Korean Pentecost.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1908 GOFORTH LEADS THE MANCHURIAN REVIVAL Jonathan Goforth (1859-1936) was a missionary to China at the turn of the century, during the deadly Boxer Rebellion. Longing to bring revival to the Chinese church, he traveled to Korea in 1907, after hearing the news of the great revival there. He began praying that the Holy Spirit would move in a similar way in China. In February 1908, Goforth was asked to conduct meetings in Mukden, China. On the fourth day of meetings, several church elders were convicted of their sins and began publicly confessing them, starting a torrent of confession and reconciliation among the church leadership and missionaries, which then spread to the people. Hundreds of people who had drifted from the church in Mukden returned. Mukden was the first of thirty-six revival campaigns Goforth conducted in six provinces of China, helping to establish the indigenous Chinese church.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1908 THE FEDERAL COUNCIL OF CHURCHES IS FORMED By the turn of the twentieth century, the social gospel, the belief that Christians are called to work to correct the flawed social order, had become the major agenda of many Christian denominations. The founding convention of the Federal Council of Churches was held in Philadelphia from December 2 to 3, 1908. Formed largely in answer to the growing emphasis on the needs of society, initial membership included more than thirty American denominations. In 1950, the Federal Council merged with thirteen other liberal interdenominational organizations to form the National Council of Churches.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1909 POPULAR REFERENCE BIBLE IS NAMED FOR EDITOR C. I. SCOFIELD Cyrus Ingerson (C. I.) Scofield (1843-1921) first came into the public eye in 1873, as the U. S. Attorney for the district of Kansas, but the church knows him as the editor of the perennially popular Scofield Reference Bible. Converted to Christ in 1879, Scofield turned from law to theology, becoming pastor of a Congregational church in Dallas, now Scofield Bible Church. During his pastorate he began work on an annotated Bible with a focus on biblical prophecy. In 1909, the Scofield Reference Bible was published. It popularized dispensationalism, a theology that divides history into seven distinct eras or dispensations.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1909 TEL AVIV IS FOUNDED
In 1909, a group of Jewish settlers moved a short distance north of the seaport of Jaffa (ancient Joppa) to found Tel Aviv, the first all-Jewish community on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in Palestine. Thirty-nine years later, on May 14, 1948, independence of the state of Israel would be declared from Tel Aviv.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1910 EDINBURGH MISSIONARY CONFERENCE IS PIVOTAL FOR FOREIGN MISSIONS
The 1910 World Missionary Conference held in Edinburgh, Scotland, was a pivotal event in the history of foreign missions for mainline denominations. Present for the ten-day conference were 1, 355 delegates from missionary societies representing major Protestant denominations. At this conference the International Missionary Council was born as well as the movement that culminated in the formation of the World Council of Churches in 1948.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1910 PUBLISHING OF THE FUNDAMENTALS BEGINS
The Fundamentals, a series of short books conceived by wealthy California oilman Lyman Stewart (1840-1923), were published between 1910and 1915. Each volume contained essays defending what Stewart considered to be essential Christian truths. Sixty-four respected American and British writers contributed, including E. Y. Mullins (1860-1928) of Southern Baptist Seminary and B. B. Warfield (1851-1921) of Princeton Seminary. R. A. Torrey (1856-1928), an evangelist and educational leader, assisted Stewart in editing the series. Of about ninety articles, one-third were written to affirm God's inspiration of Scripture, others were written to support the virgin birth of Christ, miracles, Jesus' resurrection, and the historicity of the Genesis Creation story. As an attempt to counteract the liberal theology of the day, 3 million free copies were distributed to every known Christian worker and theological student in America.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1913 WILLIAM WADE HARRIS MAKES HIS FIRST MISSIONARY JOURNEY
William Wade Harris (1865-1929), the most successful missionary in West Africa's history, was born in the Grebo tribe of Liberia that freed American slaves had colonized in 1847. Raised in the Methodist church, Harris joined the Episcopal Church in 1888. While jailed for political activism in 1910, he experienced a vision in which the angel Gabriel anointed him a prophet. On July 27, 1913, Harris began his first missionary journey from Liberia, traveling east to Ivory Coast, which was a Catholic mission field at that time. Harris denounced the traditional religions, preached Christ, and baptized one hundred thousand or more new Christians in the following eighteen months. Harris ministered in adjoining West African countries until he was deported back to Liberia in 1914, where he died in 1929. Today there are more than two hundred thousand members of Harrist churches in Ivory Coast alone.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1913 ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE OF B'NAI B'RITH IS FORMED Seventy years after its founding, the first non-religious Jewish fraternal order, the B'nai B'rith, formed the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith in 1913. The league was founded to oppose anti-Semitism and to guarantee justice for all Jewish Americans.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
THE AGE OF IDEOLOGIES
1914—2000
In the Age of Ideologies, new gods arose to claim the loyalties of secular people. Nazism exalted the state, Communism worshiped the party, and American democracy revered the individual's rights. Supposedly enlightened, modern nations waged two global wars in an attempt to establish the supremacy of these new deities. When no single ideology prevailed, a cold war of coexistence settled upon the once-Christian nations. Through these troubled times the denominations struggled over orthodox and liberal theologies, sought fresh ways to recover a lost unity, and reflected a new hunger for apostolic experiences.
After World War II, vigorous new Christian leadership emerged in the Third World, offering fresh hope for a new day for the old faith. Had missionaries from the neopagan nations of Europe and North America succeeded in giving Christianity a stake in the future, by carrying the gospel to Africa and Latin America?
Only time will tell. But Christians can hope, because faith always reaches beyond earthly circumstances..... Church history provides a quiet testimony that Jesus Christ will not disappear from the scene........ His truth endures for all generations.
BRUCE L. SHELLEY
1914-18--World War I
1915-Mohandas Gandhi leads Indian Nationalist movement
1918-20--Influenza kills 20 million
1929--U.S. stock market crashes
1939-45--World War II
1945--United Nations founded
1989--Berlin Wall falls
1999
--
Europe adopts Eurocurrency
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1914 WORLD WAR I BEGINS
World War I erupted on June 28, 1914, with the assassination of the Austro-Hungarian crown prince in Serbia. Ambassadors and peace advocates worked desperately to overcome the tensions in Europe, but armies marched to war, many expecting to be home by Christmas. Most armies, however, were unable to break through enemy lines, and World War I—the first war fought on land, sea, and in the air—quickly reached an impasse. Industrial advances allowed for a steady provision of weapons to the combat zone, and for three years the devastating conflict took the lives of more than 12 million people. The cost to the church and foreign missions was extensive as well, with funding and travel greatly inhibited. The aftermath of the war created enormous needs for relief for those left destitute.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1914 THE ASSEMBLIES OF GOD ARE ORGANIZED
The Pentecostal movement began in the early twentieth century, emphasizing a "baptism of the Holy Spirit" evidenced by speaking in tongues. The largest denomination to develop from the movement was the Assemblies of God (AOG). In April 1914, American Pentecostal leaders met in Hot Springs, Arkansas, to discuss basic beliefs, church order, missions, pastors, and education. Desiring to change existing churches rather than organize new ones, they formed the Assemblies of God as a casual fellowship of churches. Like other Protestant denominations, the AOG believe in the orthodox doctrines of the faith, but unlike other denominations, the AOG emphasize baptism of the Holy Spirit as a second blessing for believers. In 2000, there were more than 16 million AOG members throughout the world.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1915 ARMENIANS ARE MASSACRED DURING WORLD WAR I During World War I, the world stood by while the Turks slaughtered the Armenians, who had been a Christian nationality since ancient times. While conflict between Turks and Armenians was not new (a previous massacre of Armenians occurred in 1895-1897), this genocide was exacerbated by the fact that Armenians lived, almost equally divided, between Russia and Turkey, two countries on opposing sides in World War I. In 1915, Turkish forces brutalized their Armenian population, killing approximately one million people via mass murder, riots, and death marches. Though other nations spoke out against the horrors in Turkey, no one took action to stop the genocide.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1917 WILSON LEADS AMERICA INTO WWI ON CHRISTIAN PRINCIPLES In 1913, Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924), a devout Christian and the son of a Presbyterian minister, was inaugurated as the twenty-eighth president of the United States. In 1914, shortly after Wilson's inauguration, Archduke Francis Ferdinand (1863-1914) was assassinated and World War I began. The United States, however, stayed out of the conflict until Wilson's second term. In 1917, when the Germans sank five American vessels in the Atlantic Ocean, Wilson asked Congress for a declaration of war. Soon American troops were sent to Europe, Germany surrendered, and President Wilson was influential in peace negotiations. His perspective on the war and its aftermath was shaped by his Christian principles. His intent was to spread American democratic Christianity throughout the world. Unfortunately he had a debilitating stroke in 1919, without having accomplished his goals.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1917 BALFOUR DECLARATION PROMISES ENGLAND'S SUPPORT OF ISRAEL The Balfour Declaration was the single most important document in the establishment of the state of Israel. David Lloyd George (1863-1945), prime minister of England, and Arthur Balfour (1848-1930), his foreign secretary, issued the Balfour Declaration on November 2, 1917. It promised that England would support and help facilitate the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine. Chaim Weizmann (1874-1952), an influential Jewish chemistry professor and Zionist, had greatly influenced Lloyd George and Balfour, winning them over to the Zionist cause. In 1949, Weizmann became Israel's first president.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1917 BRITISH CAPTURE JERUSALEM Turkey, which controlled Palestine, joined Germany in declaring war on the Allies during World War I. Concerned that Jews or Arabs would create a disturbance in Palestine during the course of the war, the Turkish government arrested many settlers and expelled many more. Turkey's fears were enhanced when Jews were discovered engaging in espionage for England. This discovery increased the persecution of the Jews. As a result, when the British army captured Jerusalem in 1917, the Jews welcomed British General Edmund Allenby (1861-1936) as a liberator. The British capture of Jerusalem proved to be a major step toward Israel becoming a nation.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
AN UNLIKELY THREESOME November 2, 1917
What do a lapsed Baptist, a member of the English landed gentry, and the inventor of synthetic acetate have in common? Would you believe God used them to return the Jews to their land?
It all began in 1874, in the hamlet of Motol in what is today Belarus. Chaim Weizmann was born the third of fifteen children to Ezer Weizmann, a lumberman. In spite of the family's meager resources, the children were able to attend the Jewish school in their village and then go on to advanced training.
In 1900, Chaim received a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Fribourg and four years later became a professor of chemistry at the University of Manchester in England.
From childhood on, Weizmann had a passion for Zionism, the movement for reestablishing a Jewish national state in Palestine. As a leading academic in England he was able to use his position to share his passion with the influential politicians of his day.
Two of Weizmann's converts, Arthur Balfour and David Lloyd George, were leaders of Parliament. Balfour was the last representative of England's traditional landed class to lead England. Weizmann had a decisive discussion with Balfour in 1914that brought Balfour to tears and made him a committed supporter of Zionism.
David Lloyd George, a Welshman, was the grandson of a Baptist pastor. His father died when he was just one year old, leaving the family in dire poverty. His mother and her children were taken in and provided for by her brother, also a Baptist minister. David, however, lost his faith as a boy. As an adult and a leader of Parliament, he was infamous for his marital infidelity.
During World War I, Lloyd George, already a Zionist thanks to his contact with Weizmann, was put in charge of the entire War Office. By 1916, England was facing a huge military logistic problem. The country was running out of natural acetate, a crucial ingredient in the manufacture of munitions. Chaim Weizmann saved the day by quickly inventing a new process for extracting acetate from corn. The British would not run out of bullets!
Gratitude for Weizmann's discovery served the cause of Zionism well when, also in 1916, Lloyd George became prime minister and Balfour his foreign secretary. When the British army fought the Ottoman Empire for control of Palestine, the British government issued the Balfour Declaration on November 2, 1917, to rally Jewish support for its effort. The key paragraph read, "His Majesty's Government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people... and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object."
The Balfour Declaration became the single most important document in the establishment of the state of Israel. In 1949, Chaim Weizmann became Israel's first president.
God used Lloyd George, Balfour, and Weizmann to return the Jews to their land.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1917 RUSSIAN REVOLUTION NEGATIVELY AFFECTS THE CHURCH The Russian Revolution of 1917, in which the Communists came to power, had a terrible effect on the church, which found itself persecuted on all sides. In 1918, Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924), the first Communist dictator, banned churches from owning property, making public worship more difficult, though not illegal. The same decree outlawed teaching any religion to those under eighteen. Communism, with its atheistic ideology, proved to be a formidable enemy of the gospel for the rest of the century.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1917 INTERDENOMINATIONAL FOREIGN MISSION ASSOCIATION IS FOUNDED In March 1917, leaders of the South Africa General Mission invited leaders of three other mission agencies to meet together for prayer and discussion about how to increase the overall ministerial efficiency of evangelical mission agencies. As a result of this meeting, the Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association (IFMA) was formed with seven organizations as charter members. Holding its members to strict standards of financial accountability and fidelity to conservative Biblical theology, the IFMA currently has more than one hundred member agencies representing more than ten thousand American missionaries and five thousand foreign missionaries.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1919 THIRD ALIYAH BEGINS At the end of World War I, Britain received a mandate to establish a Jewish state while maintaining the borders of other peoples in Palestine. The Jewish Agency, which was established to assist in administering the mandate, promoted Jewish immigration and settlement in Palestine. Thus, in 1919, the third aliyah—or wave of immigration—began. The majority of Jews who came to the region were Zionists from Poland who favored the development of a Jewish nation in Israel. Known as Labor Zionist halutsim (pioneers), the immigrants from the third aliyah involved themselves in farming and manual labor. This period of immigration, which lasted until 1923, also saw the increased use of Hebrew among Jewish immigrants. More than thirty-five thousand Jews immigrated to Palestine during the four years of the third aliyah.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
TO WAR HERO September 26, 1918
Life on the farm in 1887 was tough in Fentress County, Tennessee, where a boy named Alvin York was born. His father, William, needed to farm, hunt, and blacksmith to support a family that eventually included eleven children.
York worked on the farm, and he especially enjoyed hunting with his father and even became a crack shot at an early age. But in 1911, York's father died from a kick by a mule, leaving York as chief provider for the family.
Floundering under the responsibility of caring for this large family, York began drinking the local moonshine. Once when York lurched home at midnight from a night of drinking and fighting, his mother plaintively asked him, "When are you going to be a man like your father and grandfather?"
She had nagged him for years about his drunkenness but had never before compared him to his father and grandfather. Both were legendary for their fairness and honesty.
His mother's words made York suddenly realize that his life was hopeless and that all he deserved was God's wrath. Of that moment he later said, "God just took ahold of my life. My little old mother had been praying for me for so long, and I guess the Lord finally decided to answer her." In the wee hours of New Year's Day, 1915, a new era dawned for Alvin York,
At the next revival at a nearby church, York walked down the aisle and to his neighbors' amazement publicly dedicated his life to God. He soon became a song leader and an elder in the church.
Things were going well for York until 1917, when the United States declared war on Germany. Joining the army was the last thing York wanted to do because his church opposed war as a violation of the commandment "Thou shalt not kill." Then he received a notice requiring him to register with his draft board, the head of which was his pastor. He was in a quandary, as was his pastor. He applied to be a conscientious objector but was turned down. He had no choice but to go to war.
On September 26, 1918, the battle for the Argonne Forest began. The great achievement of the battle—in fact the greatest single military achievement of the war—was performed by a corporal from Tennessee by the name of Alvin York. As a member of a patrol sent to silence a group of German machine-gun nests, York single-handedly killed more than twenty Germans and took 132 prisoners. He forced a German major to order all his soldiers to surrender. Everything took place within three hours and fifteen minutes.
For his heroism Corporal York, soon to be Sergeant York, received the Congressional Medal of Honor. General Pershing called him "The greatest civilian soldier of the war."
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1919 FIRST ANNUAL INTERVARSITY CONFERENCE MEETS IN ENGLAND
The first annual InterVarsity conference was held in 1919 in England. The intent of the gathering was to plan and coordinate evangelistic and missions events at British colleges and universities. Conference attendees included representatives of Christian organizations already operating on English college campuses. These conferences led to the official formation of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship in 1927. The InterVarsity movement spread to Canada in 1928, and to the United States in 1941. Today, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship continues to flourish.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1919 KARL BARTH WRITES COMMENTARY ON ROMANS
The spiritual and social dynamics of two world wars shaped the faith of theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968). Pastoring on the Swiss border during the dark days of World War I, Barth witnessed the political compromise of the German church and the spiritual powerlessness of Christian liberalism. Driven to the Bible to find answers for a world at war, Barth published his Commentary on Romans in 1919. A revised edition in 1922 shook the foundations of liberalism and introduced a "neoorthodoxy" to European theology. Although his theology was a reaction against liberalism, he refused to see the Bible as God's inspired Word. He argued instead that the Bible becomes the Word of God as the Holy Spirit speaks to the reader through it. Barth was the most influential European theologian of the twentieth century.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1920 ARAB RIOTS BEGIN IN PALESTINE In anticipation of the British Mandate over Palestine that was to begin July 1, 1920, the first Arab riots took place in March 1920, during Passover in Jerusalem.
In April, several Jews were killed defending Tel Hai, a settlement in Upper Galilee. In May, there was an outbreak of hostility in Jaffa, leading to larger revolts in many other cities, with forty-seven Jews killed and seventy-three wounded. These violent revolts were a chilling foreshadow of the years to come and demonstrated Arab capability and willingness to launch numerous militant and strategic attacks all across Palestine.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1920 BRITISH MANDATE OVER PALESTINE BEGINS Following World War I, one of the many results of the Treaty of Versailles was the establishment of the mandate system as a way to distribute and organize the lands formerly controlled by Germany and the Ottoman Empire. Consequently, England was given the mandate over Palestine, effective July 1, 1920. This declaration set up British oversight of the land until a self-sustaining Jewish government could be formed. The mandate was accepted by the League of Nations in 1922, resulting in years of bloody conflict between Jews and Arabs. The mandate ended with the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1921 FIRST CHRISTIAN RADIO BROADCAST IS AIRED KDKA in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was the first radio station in the United States. Owned by the Westinghouse Company, the first KDKA broadcast announced the 1920 election results to people listening on homemade radio devices. The audience quickly grew as people began buying radio sets, creating an immediate need for new programs. A choir member at Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh, working as an engineer for Westinghouse, suggested broadcasting a live church service. On January 2, 1921, the first Sunday of the New Year, the first Christian radio broadcast was aired. Due to the popularity of the broadcast, the Calvary church service became a regular feature on KDKA. By 1928, there were sixty religious radio stations in the United States.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1921 SIMON KIMBANGU EXPERIENCES HIS FIRST HEALING Simon Kimbangu (1889-1951), a Baptist lay pastor in Central Africa (modern-day Democratic Republic of Congo), experienced visions that changed the course of his life. Just before Kimbangu turned thirty, Christ called him to evangelize his fellow Africans and to establish indigenous evangelical churches on the continent. Kimbangu performed his first healing on April 6, 1921. Thousands flocked to N'Kamba, Congo, to hear Kimbangu preach and to witness the Holy Spirit's power. Within months the Belgian authorities arrested him for endangering public security, and he spent the rest of his life in prison. One hundred thousand of Kimbangu's followers were deported; another 150,000 were martyred. Today, the more than 7-million-member Church of Jesus Christ on Earth through the Prophet Simon Kimbangu (EJCSK), is the largest independent church on the African continent and the first indigenous African church to join the World Council of Churches.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1921 EINSTEIN WINS THE NOBEL PRIZE Albert Einstein (1879-1955) was one of many German Jewish intellectuals to immigrate to the United States to escape Nazism. Coming to America in 1934, Einstein was a theoretical physicist whose theory of relativity revolutionized modern scientific thought and forever altered conceptions about space and time. His work also formed a theoretical base for the study of atomic energy. In 1921, Einstein was awarded the Noble Prize.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1923 MACHEN CHAMPIONS ORTHODOX REFORMED THEOLOGY Passionately engaged in the battle against modernism that was dividing many American denominations, J. Gresham Machen (1881-1937) became the champion of Orthodox Reformed theology. Christianity and Liberalism, published in 1923, was his strong and influential apologetic for orthodoxy. As professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary, Machen fought for his seminary's long-standing Reformed position. In 1929, when he lost the battle for keeping Princeton Seminary theologically conservative, he founded Westminster Theological Seminary.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1923 AUBURN AFFIRMATION SUPPORTS THEOLOGICAL DIVERSITY In 1923, a group of liberal Presbyterian ministers met in Auburn, New York, to "safeguard the unity and liberty" of the Presbyterian Church. In fact, they were meeting because they were opposed to an action of the denomination's general assembly that required candidates to the ministry to subscribe to five fundamental doctrines prior to ordination. In response, the Auburn group published in January 1924 what became known as the Auburn Affirmation, which was a plea for theological diversity within the church. It was signed by 1, 274 pastors. By 1926, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church USA had adopted the affirmation's position, an action that became a defining moment in the Presbyterian Church USA's move away from orthodoxy toward liberal theology.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1924 DALLAS THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY IS FOUNDED In 1924, Evangelical Theological College was established by Lewis Sperry Chafer (1871-1952). Chafer studied at Oberlin College and was a traveling evangelist, eventually becoming the pastor of First Congregational Church in Dallas, Texas. It was during his tenure at First Congregational that Chafer founded the three-year graduate school. After two successful years it moved to its present campus and in 1936 was renamed Dallas Theological Seminary and Graduate School of Theology, a name that was shortened in 1969 to Dallas Theological Seminary. The seminary, which has always been nondenominational, has been a champion of dispensational theology.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1924 FOURTH ALIYAH BEGINS In 1924, the fourth aliyah, or wave of immigration to Palestine, began with many Jews emigrating from Poland, as in the third aliyah. The immigrants of the third aliyah were Zionists who set up farms and communes and were more philosophically interested in developing a distinctly Hebrew culture. Most of the Jews of the fourth aliyah, which lasted until 1931, were more interested in fleeing the growing anti-Jewish sentiment in Poland than in agricultural purposes. During this seven-year period, a variety of Jewish organizations like the Haganah, a Jewish defense organization, the Hebrew University, and the Histadrut, the General Federation of Hebrew Workers, were founded in Palestine. The developing presence of an organized Jewish community also led to increased tension with the native Arabs. More than eighty thousand Jews immigrated to Palestine during the fourth aliyah.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1924 THE JOHNSON ACT SHAPES UNITED STATES IMMIGRATION From the turn of the twentieth century until the post-World War I years, the American public became increasingly distrustful of immigrants. In response to this, Congress passed a series of laws that severely restricted immigration. The Immigration Act of 1924 was the culmination of these laws. Introduced by Congressman Albert Johnson (1869-1957) of Washington, the Johnson Act shaped U.S. immigration policy until the 1960s. Under its provisions, only 165,000 immigrants could enter the country annually. Based on the census of 1890, a certain number from each foreign nationality were allowed to enter the U.S. every year. This equation intentionally excluded immigrants from Southern and Eastern European countries, such as Italy and Russia. In particular, the Johnson Act ended the mass immigration of Jews to America, so that in the 1930s and early 1940s, America was closed to Jews seeking to flee Hitler and the Holocaust.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1925 HITLER PUBLISHES MEINKAMPF After a failed military coup to overthrow the government of Bavaria, Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) was imprisoned in Landsberg, Germany, for nine months. During this time he wrote his autobiography and political manifesto, Mein Kampf ("My Struggle"). It clearly revealed Hitler's violent anti-Semitism and was followed the next year by a second volume entitled, Die National-sozialistische Bewegung ("The National Socialistic Movement"). Initially, Mein Kampf was not widely distributed and made little impact in Germany or elsewhere. However, when Hitler rose to power, the book's sales multiplied rapidly. The book ominously foreshadowed the future Holocaust.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1925 HEBREW UNIVERSITY IS OPENED Early proponents of the Zionist movement began discussing the establishment of a Jewish university in Jerusalem. In 1914, a plot of land was purchased on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem. The building and construction began in 1918, with the school's cornerstone being laid by Chaim Weizmann (1874-1952). On April 1, 1925, Lord Arthur J. Balfour (1848-1930)—the British statesman responsible for the Balfour Declaration—opened the Hebrew University. The war of independence in 1948 cut off the university from Israeli West Jerusalem, necessitating construction of a new campus in the heart of the Israeli section of Jerusalem.
With the reunification of Jerusalem after the Six Day War, the original campus was restored and expanded, and in 1981, Mount Scopus once again became the university's main home.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1925 SCOPE'S MONKEY TRIAL ENDS WITH A GUILTY VERDICT William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925) was a newspaper editor, lawyer, congressman, secretary of state, fundamentalist Christian apologist, and three-time Democratic presidential candidate, but he is best remembered by the distorted media depiction of his opposition to evolution in the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925. At the trial of John T. Scopes (1900-1970), who was accused of teaching evolution in a public school, Bryan argued on behalf of biblical authority and the Genesis account of creation. Though Bryan was reasonable in his defense of the Bible, the national press portrayed him as uncultured, anti-intellectual, and the one real "monkey" in this debate on mankind's origins. Instead of a significant cultural dialogue, the trial became an antifundamentalist media campaign, increasing respect for the evolutionary position. Scopes was found guilty on July 21, 1925, and Bryan died the following Sunday.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1929 WESTMINSTER SEMINARY IS FOUNDED
In 1929, liberals within the Presbyterian Church gained control of the board of directors of Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, New Jersey, which had been the bastion of conservative theology since its founding in 1812. As a result of the doctrinal shift, J. Gresham Machen (1881-1937), professor at Princeton Seminary and the leading conservative scholar of his day, resigned and founded Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. On September 25, 1929, Westminster opened, and it eventually became the leading Reformed seminary in America.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1929 THE STOCK MARKET CRASHES
On October 24, 1929, the New York Stock Market crashed and continued to fall until the mid-1950s, triggering the Great Depression that lasted until World War II. A quarter of America's labor force became unemployed. An entire generation—one that had never known want and had been assured by the popular liberalism of the day that things always inevitably improve—saw its dreams shattered. Theological liberalism that had won the day in the 1920's with its assurances of an optimistic future was dealt a severe blow by the depression and a fatal blow by World War II. Less optimistic theologies like those of Karl Barth (1886-1968), Reinhold (1892-1970), and H. Richard Niebuhr (1894-1962) were deemed more realistic by the major denominations. The Depression, on the other hand, caused evangelical and fundamentalist Christianity to become more separatist and ingrown as it endeavored to survive.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
THE MONKEY TRIAL July 21, 1925
At the Scopes "Monkey" Trial, was Scopes found guilty or innocent?
The issue of evolution had become more and more divisive ever since Charles Darwin published his Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection in 1859. Following World War I, many prominent members of the emerging Fundamentalist movement went aggressively on the attack against evolution, believing that it undermined the authority of the Scriptures. One of the leading critics of evolution was William Jennings Bryan, a three-time Democratic nominee for president.
In 1915, Bryan threw himself into leadership of the Christian movement in America. As he saw the country's moral standards crumbling around him, he became convinced that a prime cause was Darwin's view of the origin of man.
Due in large measure to Bryan's efforts, the opposition to evolution became a national force in the 1920's. A number of Southern states passed laws outlawing the teaching of evolution in the public schools. The law passed in Tennessee was one of the strongest.
Within two weeks after the governor of Tennessee signed the bill into law, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) announced that they would test the law and would provide counsel to any teacher in Tennessee willing to be the defendant in the case. Some prominent citizens of Dayton, Tennessee, persuaded John Scopes, a young science teacher, to break the law and allow himself to be arrested. The ACLU provided him with a star-studded defense team headed by Clarence Darrow, a religious skeptic and the nation's most famous trial attorney. The attorneys for the prosecution asked William Jennings Bryan to lead their team.
The resulting "Monkey Trial," as the Scopes trial came to be known, proved to be one of the first great media events in history, with reporters packing the little town of Dayton and wiring their stories around the world. There was even a nationwide radio hookup.
Bryan gave an impassioned speech for the prosecution, and then the drama of the trial reached its crescendo when Darrow called Bryan as an expert witness on the Bible for the defense. Bryan's difficulty in answering many of Darrow's questions brought him ridicule from the press. A tired old man at this point, Bryan's testimony consisted of more fervor than fact. The following day, the judge struck all of Bryan's testimony as a defense witness from the record.
It took only a few minutes on July 21, 1925, for the jury to find Scopes guilty. He was fined one hundred dollars, but the Tennessee Supreme Court later threw out the conviction on a technicality. The big story nationally, however, was that the most famous trial lawyer of the day had humiliated the nation's greatest orator. The Bible had won in Dayton, but in the eyes of the nation's press, evolution had won.
William Jennings Bryan died in his sleep the following Sunday.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1929 RIOTS RAGE IN JERUSALEM; MASSACRES OCCUR IN HEBRON AND SAFED
Following a short period of relative stability, an outbreak of Arab hostility toward the Jews in Palestine erupted in 1929, sparked by disputes over Jewish rights to pray at the Wailing Wall, the western wall of the Temple Court. On August 23, a mob of Arabs attacked the Jews of Jerusalem, and the violence quickly spread. On August 24, Arabs of Hebron massacred seventy Jewish men and women, including infants and the elderly. Another slaughter occurred a few days later in Safed, with eighteen Jews killed and numerous others wounded. In the span of a few days, cities all across Palestine had been destroyed, with many Jews killed or wounded. British authorities eventually regained order, but the Palestinian riots refocused international attention on Palestine and the tension between Arabs and Jews.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1929 RASSHAMARA TABLETS ARE DISCOVERED
The first tablets of a remarkable ancient library were discovered in 1929, at the tell of Ras Shamara in Northern Syria. Scholars immediately began working to translate and to publish the texts. Ras Shamara was the site of Ugarit, a major Canaanite city in the ancient Middle East that was destroyed by invaders in the early twelfth century BC. The clay tablets were written in cuneiform, wedge-shaped characters pushed into wet clay with a reed stylus. The writing is still legible and relates the history and mythology of the ancient civilization in two languages: Ugaritic and Akkadian. The former language was unknown before the tablets were discovered. Both languages are related to and shed light on ancient Hebrew.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1929 LATERAN TREATY IS FORMED BETWEEN MUSSOLINI AND POPE
In 1929, the Lateran Treaty was signed between the Vatican and the Italian Kingdom. In bringing the pope to the table, anticlerical Italian dictator Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) settled an old dispute from 1870, when Italy wrested the city of Rome from the hands of the church. In the Lateran Treaty, Pope Pius XI (1857-1939) officially recognized Italy as a kingdom and Rome as its capital. In return, Mussolini recognized the Vatican City as an independent, sovereign state, with the Pope as its ruler. Catholicism was declared Italy's "sole religion," and the Vatican was compensated for the 1870 seizure of Rome. By signing the treaty, the church forfeited its right to political involvement, and Mussolini won the right to approve any new Italian bishop.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1931 C. S. LEWIS IS CONVERTED
Born in Belfast, Ireland, Clive Staples (C. S.) Lewis (1898-1963) was raised in the Church of England, but was what he called "a happy atheist" by the time he was fourteen. His conversion in 1931 was after a prolonged intellectual struggle, from which he concluded that the Christian faith was the only reasonable way to comprehend humanity and the universe. To his surprise he found himself sincerely believing in Jesus Christ. Not long after his conversion, Lewis, who taught at both Oxford and Cambridge Universities in England, wrote an autobiographical novel titled The Pilgrim's Regress (1933). A prolific writer, Lewis wrote fiction, apologetics, theology, children's books, poetry, and literary criticism. Much of his work seeks to articulate the truth of Christianity to the unbelieving age of the mid-twentieth century. Lewis believed reason comprehended truth, and imagination led to understanding. Among his most well-known works are The Screwtape Letters, Mere Christianity, and The Chronicles of Narnia.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1931 DONALD FULLERTON BEGINS THE PRINCETON EVANGELICAL FELLOWSHIP
In 1931, the mother of a Princeton University student asked Donald B. Fullerton (1892-1985), a former missionary to India and Afghanistan living in a nearby town, to disciple her son. Fullerton, a 1913 Princeton graduate, agreed and met initially with five students. The group eventually became known as the Princeton Evangelical Fellowship (PEF). Fullerton taught two Bible classes a week and after moving to Princeton in 1953 led personal Bible studies with interested students. He continued until his retirement in 1976. Alumni of the PEF include prominent seminary professors, scientists, denominational leaders, influential authors, as well as missionaries in more than twenty-five countries. As an independent group from a single university, the PEF has contributed more leaders to the Christian world than probably any other Christian college group. Today, the organization continues Fullerton's vision with an expanded full-time staff supported by alumni.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1931 HCJB IS THE FIRST MISSIONARY RADIO STATION
On Christmas Day 1931, The Voice of the Andes radio program began broadcasting from Ecuador on HCJB Radio. The establishment of HCJB, the first missionary radio station, was soon followed by the founding of the Far East Broadcasting Company (FEBC), Trans World Radio (TWR), Radio ELWA, and others. In 2004, with an estimated 1.2 billion radio sets in use around the world, shortwave radio stations broadcast in multiple languages, reaching billions of listeners, including more than a billion people who cannot read.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1932 FIFTH ALIYAH BEGINS
In 1932, just before the Nazi party came into power in Germany, the fifth wave of immigration, or aliyah, to Palestine began. As persecution of the Jews in Germany and other parts of Europe increased, the number of Jews coming to Palestine grew as well. The fifth aliyah continued until 1939, when the British, who coordinated the administration in Palestine, issued laws known as the White Papers, which limited Jewish immigration to the area. The laws were part of an effort to appease the Arabs in Palestine, who opposed any further development of Jewish communities on Palestinian territory. Despite the Arab and British opposition, during this period nearly a quarter of a million Jews migrated to Palestine, making it the largest immigration wave prior to Israel's becoming a nation in 1948.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1933 NAVIGATORS IS FOUNDED
During the 1920's, Dawson Trotman (1906-1956) was living a reckless life of drinking and gambling. While visiting his old Christian Endeavor group from church, Trotman became captivated by their Scripture memorization contest. He began memorizing Scripture verses, which led to his conversion a few weeks later. Trotman started a discipling group called the Minute Men. Meeting a sailor crystallized Trotman's vision to train Christian sailors to disciple their comrades. In 1933, the organization became known as the Navigators. The motto was "To Know Christ and to Make Him Known." Scripture memorization was a key part of their training program. By 1945, Bible-memorizing Navigators were active on more than eight hundred navy ships, stations, and army bases. The Navigators' philosophy significantly impacted other ministries such as Wycliffe Bible Translators, Operation Mobilization, Mission Aviation Fellowship, and Campus Crusade for Christ.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
HE LIVED TO TRANSLATE
August 10, 1933
God can be trusted to work out the details.
William Cameron Townsend was born in California in 1896. He came to a personal faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior at an early age and at the age of twelve joined the Presbyterian Church in which he was raised.
In 1917, Townsend went to Guatemala to sell Spanish Bibles to the rural Cakchiquel Indians. He soon realized that the Indians had no use for Spanish Bibles, but the Scriptures had not been translated into their own native language. One day an Indian asked him, "Why, if your God is so smart, hasn't he learned our language?"
Townsend then determined that he would translate the New Testament into Cakchiquel. Upon its completion in 1929, the Cakchiquels exclaimed, "Now God speaks our language!" This motivated Townsend to translate the Bible into yet another language.
A missionary friend, L. L. Legters, urged Townsend to come to Mexico, where at least fifty Indian tribes had no Bible in their language. Then news from Mexico came that a new Socialist president had confiscated all religious property and had ordered all foreign missionaries to leave the country.
Legters traveled to America's East Coast, to Keswick, a Bible conference ground in New Jersey where on August 10, 1933, the assembled group held a day of prayer for Mexico and Townsend's vision for translating the Bible into the country's tribal languages. When Keswick's director, Addison Raws, announced that the leaders would be fasting for the day, no one went to the dining hall.
After the day of prayer, those at Keswick were so sure God would answer their prayers that they encouraged Townsend and Legters to go immediately to Mexico and ask permission to do their translation work. Townsend and Legters followed those promptings, and through an amazing series of contacts, Townsend met Mexican's director of rural education. The director gave Townsend permission to study Mexico's rural education system for six weeks and was very pleased with the analysis Townsend wrote.
Confident that Mexico would be open to them, Townsend and Legters organized a three-month translation school in an Arkansas barn. They called it Camp Wycliffe, after John Wycliffe, the first translator of the Bible into English. The three students and four faculty members sat on nail kegs in the barn.
Townsend went to Mexico in 1935 with the students and began to translate the Bible into tribal languages. Wycliffe Bible Translators grew to become the largest independent Protestant mission agency in the world. At the time of Townsend's death in 1982, half of the world's five thousand languages still did not have any portion of Scripture, but half did—because of Cameron Townsend.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1933 BOYCOTT AGAINST JEWS BEGINS IN GERMANY
On April 1, 1933, less than a month after the election of Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), the new German government organized a boycott of businesses owned by Jews. The nationwide boycott served the Nazi government's initial plan to make life so difficult for the Jews that they would leave the country. Within a week, Jews were removed from all civil service positions, and within ten days the definition of "non-Aryan," a person with even one Jewish grandparent, became a legal racial status in Germany. As the restrictions on the Jews grew, hatred of them increased as well, and signs saying Jews Not Wanted were posted in businesses, restaurants, and hotels throughout the country.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1934 BARMEN DECLARATION CHALLENGES HITLER
When Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), leader of the Nazi Party, became chancellor of Germany in 1933, he already had plans to stamp out the church. As Nazis increasingly challenged the church's authority, a group of Protestant leaders formed an alliance called the Confessing Church. Its spiritual constitution was spelled out in the Barmen Declaration of 1934, calling for a return to the doctrines of the Reformation and to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Largely written by theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968), the Barmen Declaration affirms Christ's lordship and provided a biblical challenge to Hitler's totalitarian aims. The Confessing Church did not, however, speak against Hitler openly; thus the movement failed to be the prophetic moral voice that Germany so desperately needed in its darkest hour.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1934 CAMERON TOWNSEND FOUNDS CAMP WYCLIFFE FOR BIBLE TRANSLATION
American missionary Cameron Townsend (1896-1982) became a Bible translator in 1926, in order to give a Mayan tribe in Guatemala the Bible in their native tongue. Townsend believed that the most effective way to evangelize native tribes was to provide them with Bibles in their own language. In 1934, he founded Camp Wycliffe, named for John Wycliffe (1330-1384), who translated the Bible into English. The camp became the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) in 1942. SIL equips people to analyze and reduce unwritten languages into written form. The work of missionaries serving under SIL's sister organization— Wycliffe Bible Translators—has made Wycliffe a pioneer in the missionary movement to reach unreached peoples. Wycliffe has translated portions of the Bible into more than twenty-five hundred languages, and currently supports more than five thousand missionaries in seventy countries around the world.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1935 NUREMBURG LAWS INTENSIFY JEWISH PERSECUTION
On September 15, 1935, the German Reichstag adopted the Nuremberg Laws on Race and Citizenship. The laws became the official justification of racial discrimination in Germany. The legislation stated that only those of German blood (or closely related) were eligible for citizenship in the Reich. Also, only citizens were granted "full political rights." The Nuremberg Laws removed Jews from any positions of leadership in the army and prevented them from being citizens of the Reich. It also prohibited Germans from marrying or having any sexual contact with Jews. In the following years, these sentiments were intensified, and the full-scale persecution of Jews began in Germany.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1936 NGARUAWAHIA EASTER WEEK PROMPTS REVIVAL
Each Easter, many Christians in New Zealand gathered in Ngaruawahia for a week of worship. In 1936, many prayed that this might be the year they would experience revival. The revival historian J. Edwin Orr (1912-1987) was to be the speaker, further fueling the hopes and prayers for revival. Despite the expectations, most of the week-long meetings came and went uneventfully. After the meeting on Friday night, Orr met with a group of twelve young men who were disappointed about the lack of revival in their midst. Orr encouraged them to confess their sins. They were convicted, and as they began sincerely confessing and asking forgiveness of each other, the long-awaited revival began and spread quickly, in spite of its late start. On Saturday evening, one thousand people returned to the main tent to praise God for igniting revival among them, which they then carried back to their home churches.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
PLAY BALL!
October 27, 1935
Name a professional baseball player who spoke to larger crowds than he played for.
His name was Billy Sunday, and he was born near Ames, Iowa, in 1862, His father, a Union soldier, died before he ever saw his son. Unable to provide for all her children, his mother was forced to send Sunday and a brother to an orphanage.
After high school, Sunday moved to MarshalItown, Iowa, where he played on the local state-champion baseball team. His amazing speed attracted the attention of the Chicago White Stockings, and he signed with Chicago in 1883.
One Sunday afternoon in Chicago in 1886, Sunday and some of his teammates went to a saloon and after drinking their fill, went outside and sat down on the curb. Across the street a Christian band was playing gospel songs that Sunday remembered his mother singing years before in their log cabin. Sunday began to sob. One of the band members walked over to him and said, "We are going down to the Pacific Garden Mission. Won't you come?"
Sunday hesitated for a moment before jumping to his feet. He told his teammates on the curb, "I am going to Jesus Christ. We've come to a parting of the ways." Most of them laughed, but one friend encouraged him to go.
Billy Sunday walked to the mission, where he fell to his knees and into the arms of the Savior. Dreading his return to the ballpark the next day, he was pleasantly surprised to find his teammates supportive of what he had done.
Sunday joined a Presbyterian church and regularly went to Bible studies at the YMCA. In 1888, he married Helen Thompson, the sister of the White Stockings' batboy.
In 1891, Sunday ended his baseball career in order to work full time for the YMCA, for a fraction of his earnings as a baseball player. Two years later, he went to work as an advance man for evangelist J. Wilbur Chapman. When Chapman suddenly stopped traveling in 1895, he invited Sunday to hold evangelistic services for him in Garner, Iowa. Sunday did so and from then on was never without invitations to preach.
Sunday held evangelistic crusades in small midwestern towns and gradually went to the larger cities of the Midwest and the East. The climax of each service came after the sermon when he invited members of the audience to "walk the sawdust trail" to the front, indicating their decision to commit their life to Christ, His most successful crusade was in New York City where 98,264 people "hit the sawdust trail."
Billy Sunday preached his last sermon on October 27, 1935. No one else did more in the early days of the twentieth century in America to keep the Christian faith vital and growing. During his lifetime he preached to more than one hundred million, and hundreds of thousands put their faith in the Lord Jesus through his ministry.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1936 ARAB RIOTS RESULT IN THE FORMATION OF THE PEEL COMMISSION
As Palestine became a haven for Jews fleeing persecution in Europe during the 1930's, Arabs of Palestine increasingly resented the growing Jewish presence. In 1936, the Arab Higher Committee was formed with support from Germany and Italy, the Axis powers in World War II. The committee spread propaganda about the Jews that led to a number of Arab attacks on Jewish communities in Palestine. The violence, which lasted for three years, was ignored by England and its armed forces in Palestine until attacks were made on British stations. One of the results of the campaign was England's formation of the Peel Commission, which determined that the Jewish and Arab communities had irreconcilable differences and that Palestine should be divided.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1937 POPE PIUS XI CRITICIZES NAZISM AND COMMUNISM
In their early years, Italian Fascists supported the Catholic Church. So when Pius XI (1857-1939) became pope in 1922, he was content to work with them. However, he remained concerned with the atheism of Communism. In 1929, the Vatican signed the Lateran Treaty with Italian premier Benito Mussolini (1883— 1945), in which the Italian government recognized the sovereignty of the Vatican City, and Pius recognized Italy as a sovereign state with Rome as its capital. In 1933, Pius signed a concordat with German chancellor Adolf Hitler (1899-1945) that many interpreted as his qualified approval of the Nazis. However, by 1937, Pius realized the dangers of both the Nazis and the Communists and issued two encyclicals—one condemning Nazism and the other condemning Communism.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1937 CHILD EVANGELISM FELLOWSHIP IS FOUNDED
Child Evangelism Fellowship (CEF) is an international organization founded in 1937 by Jesse Irvin Overholtzer (1877-1955). Told as a boy that he was too young to understand religion, Overholtzer did not put his faith and trust in Christ until he was in college. He became a pastor, and after reading a sermon by Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892) on children's ability to understand and truly believe the gospel, was inspired to start Child Evangelism Fellowship. The heart of the organization's efforts revolve around preaching the gospel to children and providing them a foundation to grow up in a local church fellowship. The ministry became the world's largest organization evangelizing children. With more than twelve hundred workers and approximately forty thousand volunteers, CEF is active in every state in the U.S. and in more than one hundred fifty countries.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1938 KRISTALLNACHT ACCELERATES PERSECUTION OF GERMAN JEWS
When the Nazi party came to power in Germany in 1933, a variety of laws and boycotts heightened the persecution of German Jews. It was not until 1938, however, that the first widespread violence was directed against the Jewish community. During the night of November 9, Jews were attacked and Jewish establishments were destroyed throughout Germany. The night became known as Kristallnacht, or the "Night of Broken Glass," because of all the broken storefront windows. Despite claims that the violence was an outbreak sparked by the murder of a German official in Paris, Kristallnacht was in fact the result of an organized effort on the part of Nazi government agencies. The Jews were forced to pay for the damage, faced more regulations, saw their children removed from German schools, and were sent to concentration camps.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1938 DAVID MARTYN LLOYD-JONES JOINS THE STAFF OF WESTMINSTER CHAPEL
As a young man, David Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899-1981) was trained in Wales as a physician. However, early in his practice he came to see his patients' illnesses as deeper issues than physical or psychological diagnoses. He put his faith in Christ and studied theologians like John Owen (1616-1683) and Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758). In 1927, Lloyd-Jones was ordained to the ministry. He spent eleven years as an evangelist and preacher in south Wales before becoming co-pastor with G. Campbell Morgan (1863— 1945) at London's Westminster Chapel in 1938. He spent another thirty years at Westminster Chapel powerfully preaching from the Scriptures. In 1943, Campbell Morgan retired, leaving Lloyd-Jones as the sole preacher of the church. Thousands found Christ and grew in their faith under Lloyd-George's preaching.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
THE FIGHT AGAINST LIBERALISM
January 1, 1937
Friend and foe alike considered him to be the leading conservative Christian apologist of his time.
Born in 1881, J. Gresham Machen grew up in a Presbyterian family in Baltimore. He majored in classics at Johns Hopkins University and graduated first in his class in 1901. He then entered their graduate program, but after one year transferred to Princeton Seminary. Following his graduation in 1905, he studied for a year in Germany then returned to Princeton as a professor of New Testament.
Machen was known for his scholarly writing on New Testament topics and for his defense of conservative theology. He became nationally recognized after publishing Christianity and Liberalism in 1923. He maintained that liberalism was not a variety of Christianity, but was instead an entirely different religion. He wrote, "Liberalism appeals to man's will, while Christianity announces, first, a gracious act of God."
Machen's convictions caused him to become a controversial figure both at Princeton Seminary and within his denomination, the Presbyterian Church U.S.A., as these institutions were beginning to shift toward a more liberal theological stance. Princeton's drift into liberalism was heartbreaking for Machen, who fought to keep the seminary committed to the creeds of the Presbyterian Church. He pleaded with the seminary faculty to make a stand for "the full truthfulness of the Bible as the Word of God and for the vigorous defense and propagation of the Reformed or Calvinistic system of doctrine."
It was a losing battle. Princeton officially reorganized in 1929, to ensure a more inclusive theological curriculum. This left Machen and other Reformed professors worried about the lack of evangelical training for future Presbyterian ministers. In response, Machen and other Reformed faculty members left Princeton and founded Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. They envisioned Westminster Seminary as an institution that would train Presbyterian ministers with a focus on academic excellence and theological orthodoxy. Gresham Machen was a professor of New Testament there until his death.
At Westminster, Machen continued to fight liberalism within the Presbyterian Church. In 1933, he helped form the conservative Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions in order to counteract the liberalism infiltrating Presbyterian missions. The Presbyterian General Assembly rejected this new mission board, and in 1935, Machen was suspended from the ministry of the Presbyterian Church for refusing to break his ties to the Independent Board.
Machen then played a central role in founding a new denomination, the Presbyterian Church of America (later the Orthodox Presbyterian Church), which continued to uphold theological orthodoxy.
In December 1936, while on a speaking tour in Bismarck, North Dakota, Machen came down with pneumonia, but he continued his preaching until finally he was hospitalized. When a friend visited him on New Year's Eve, Machen told him about a vision of heaven he had had: "Sam, it was glorious, it was glorious." He added later, "Sam, isn't the Reformed Faith grand?" He died the next day, on January 1, 1937.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1939 BACK TO THE BIBLE BROADCAST BEGINS
On May 1, 1939, a young preacher by the name of Theodore Epp (1907-1985) went to Nebraska with the vision of starting a radio broadcast that would encourage Christians in their faith and spread the gospel. He called it Back to the Bible. Epp also had a strong burden for foreign missions. He used his broadcast to raise awareness and support for missions and also expanded radio broadcasts overseas. In 1954, Back to the Bible opened its first international office in Canada; offices in England, Sri Lanka, France, the Philippines, Australia, South Africa, India, Ecuador, and Jamaica soon followed. Through the years, the ministry continued to expand worldwide. Since Epps retirement in 1984, his vision has continued under able leadership.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1939 WORLD WAR II BEGINS
In the 1930's, Fascist power in Europe grew rapidly under dictators Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) in Germany and Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) in Italy. In August 1939, Italy and Germany created an alliance known as the Axis, to which Japan was later added. On September 1, 1939, German armies invaded Poland, drawing Europe into World War II. In all, fifty-seven nations declared war, leading eventually to the loss of tens of millions of lives. World War II dealt a death blow to religious liberalism, which had taught that "every day and in every way we are getting better and better." Germany, with its intellectual and spiritual leadership as well as newly developed technology, had delivered to the world destruction instead of progress.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1939 POGROMS SWEEP VIOLENTLY THROUGH POLAND
At the time of the German invasion in 1939, Poland had the greatest number of Jews of any country in the world. The Nazis brought their anti-Semitic laws with them into Poland, the Jewish religious and cultural center in Europe. In Polish territory, the Germans took their anti-Semitic sentiment even further than they had in Germany. As in Germany, regulations severely restricted Jewish life, but in addition, Jews were tortured and shot at random. The organized persecutions, or pogroms, were so violent and prevalent that more than 250,000 Jews were killed before the end of the year.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1940 GHETTOS ARE ESTABLISHED IN POLAND
Following their occupation of Poland in 1939, the Germans established Jewish ghettos in 1940. Ghettos were set up in Warsaw, Cracow, and other Polish cities that possessed railway connections. The entire Jewish population from each city was packed into the walled neighborhoods. Jews living in hundreds of Polish towns and villages were sent into these city ghettos. Any Jew found outside of a ghetto was executed. From the beginning, the Jews were used as slave labor for activities related to the war, and life in the ghettos became increasingly difficult as the war progressed. Within two years, the Germans liquidated the ghettos, sending the majority of Jews to concentration camps and death camps.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1940 SIXTH ALIYAH BEGINS
In 1940, the sixth aliyah, or immigration of Jews to Palestine, began. The first five were the major waves that started before the Nazi persecution of the Jews began in Germany in 1933. The sixth migration to Palestine took place during the war and at the height of the Holocaust in Europe. Immigration was hindered during this period by the British who ruled Palestine. It was common for boats carrying immigrants to be turned away. Nevertheless, the sixth aliyah lasted for about four years, until Britain made immigration to Palestine completely illegal. Approximately twelve thousand Jews successfully made their way to Israel during the sixth aliyah. Despite the British limitations, Germany's defeat opened the door for the largest migration to Palestine, which came with Israel's declaration of independence.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1940 ORTHODOX JUDAISM REVIVES IN AMERICA WITH THE ARRIVAL OF JOSEPH ISAAC SCHNEERSOHN
Hasidim—the adherents of an ultra-orthodox form of Judaism, founded in Eastern Europe by Israel Baal Shem Tov in the 1700s—immigrated to America from 1880 to 1925. However, the movement never took hold until 1940, with the arrival of Rabbi Joseph Isaac Schneersohn (1880-1950), a Lubavitcher grand rabbi, called a rebbe. Schneersohn and his successor and son-in-law, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneersohn (1902-1994), began a program for the Lubavitch Hasidim to evangelize American Jews to return to Orthodoxy. They established Jewish day schools, summer camps, and youth groups. When his father-in-law died in 1950, Menachem Mendel Schneersohn led the movement for the next forty-four years from its headquarters in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York. By the 1990's, there were 150,000 Jews living in Hasidic communities in New York and New Jersey.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1940 FIRST CHRISTIAN TELEVISION BROADCAST IS AIRED
On March 24, 1940, Dr. Samuel McCrea Cavert of the Federal Council of Churches in America officiated at an Easter service in New York City. The service was televised on the NBC station W2XBS in New York City. It was the first Christian television broadcast. No one watching that initial broadcast could have anticipated the degree to which television would be used to spread the gospel in the years to come.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1941 JEWS ARE PROHIBITED FROM EMIGRATING FROM GERMANY
In the 1930's, Jews living in Germany became increasingly threatened and restricted by the anti-Jewish laws, boycotts, and riots. Beginning in 1938, the German government decided to assist Jews who wanted to leave the country. Hoping to raise anti-Jewish sentiment in neighboring countries by flooding them with Jews, the Germans set up emigration offices in Vienna, Berlin, and Prague. Besides promoting Jewish emigration, the offices also served to speed up the process of confiscating the property of those Jews who left Germany. Despite Germany's support of Jewish emigration, the majority of countries in Europe were unwilling to accept many Jewish refugees. In 1941, however, the government changed their policy, and rather than promoting emigration the Germans prohibited emigration and began killing Jews instead.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1941 EICHMANN INITIATES HIS FINAL SOLUTION
In 1941, the German government decided to initiate what they called the "final solution to the Jewish problem." The Nazis' goal was to totally exterminate the Jewish population throughout Europe. Coordinated by Adolf Eichmann (1906-1962), the Final Solution was centered in Poland, where the largest population of Jews resided. Organized as if it were just another military operation, the plan was to kill approximately 11 million Jews by collecting them throughout Europe, transporting them to central camps, and forwarding them to death camps. The death camps, like the one established at Auschwitz, were equipped with gas chambers hidden as showers. The terrifying Final Solution of Nazi Germany resulted in the deaths of more than 6 million Jews before the end of World War II.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1941 FIRST DEATH CAMP IS ESTABLISHED IN CHELMNO
In the 1930s, along with imposing restrictions on Jews in Germany, the German government began building concentration camps. The camp in Dachau, built in 1933, was one of the first erected. Originally the camps held a variety of people the Germans considered dangerous, not just Jews. By 1936, the German secret police, known as the Gestapo, was placed in charge of running these camps. Within a year, Jews were being sent to camps simply because of their heritage. With the implementation of the Final Solution—the coordinated operation designed to exterminate the Jewish population in Europe—some of the camps were converted to "death camps" to carry out the Nazi plan. The first death camp, where Jews were murdered with carbon monoxide or prussic acid gasses, was established in Chelmno in western Poland in 1941.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1941 GERMANY INVADES SOVIET UNION AND ESTABLISHES EINSATZGRUPPEN
In June 1941, the German army invaded the Soviet Union. As part of their war effort, the Germans formulated killing squads in the Soviet provinces. Known as Einsatzgruppen, or "action groups," the squads were used to murder Jews, communists, gypsies, and anyone else who was perceived as a threat. The Einsatzgruppen possessed authority similar to that of the Gestapo, the secret police of Nazi Germany, and worked their way through Germany's acquired territory gathering Jews for execution. Large groups of Jews were killed by drowning, shooting, and asphyxiation. In one mass murder in September 1941, an Einsatzgruppen composed of Germans and Ukrainians killed at least thirty-three thousand Jews.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1941 NIEBUHR WRITES THE NATURE AND DESTINY OF MAN Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971) was an American theologian who began his career as a religious liberal and political pacifist. But the day-to-day dynamics of his urban-industrial Detroit pastorate, coupled with the onset of World War II, turned him into a champion of social activism and a new heresy called neo-orthodoxy. In 1941, he helped found the journal Christianity and Crisis, challenging the nation's Christians to reject neutralism in the war. The same year, Niebuhr's influential theological work The Nature and Destiny of Man defined the neo-orthodox view of man and criticized both the liberal and Marxist views of human nature.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1941 BULTMANN CALLS FOR DEMYTHOLOGIZATION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
In 1941, Rudolf Bultmann (1884-1976), the influential German theologian and professor of New Testament at the University of Marburg, wrote an essay titled "Neues Testament und Mythologie" (New Testament and Mythology). In his essay, Bultmann argued that both conservatives and liberals were misinterpreting the gospels. He suggested that the conservatives were wrong to accept the history of the gospels and that the liberals were wrong to reject the kerygma, what the early church preached about Jesus. Instead, the historical narratives of the gospels should be "demythologized," with the central kerygma to be reinterpreted and expressed in existential terms. A call for life-changing decision could then be made from this "demythologized kerygma." Bultmann's demythologization theory has remained an influential teaching among liberal theologians during the post-World War II era.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1941 YOUNG LIFE BEGINS
Seeking to advance his evangelistic work among high-school students, James Rayburn Jr. (1909-1970), a student at Dallas Theological Seminary, initiated after-school Bible studies in Gainesville, Texas, in 1938. As he developed his strategy for reaching more students with the gospel, Rayburn targeted leaders in the school and built personal relationships with the students while continuing meetings in homes. Rayburn asked other seminary students to join the effort. In response to their positive results, a Chicago businessman provided financial support, which made it possible for Rayburn to expand the ministry. The ministry was officially incorporated on October 16, 1941, as Young Life. Young Life leaders seek to model the Christian life for students on a personal level, in order to share Jesus Christ with them.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1941 THE UNITED STATES ENTERS WORLD WAR II
On December 7, 1941 the Japanese air force attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, sinking 17 ships and destroying 170 airplanes. The following day, the United States entered World War II. Four years later, in 1945, the Allies were finally able to defeat Germany, Italy, and Japan. The United States suffered casualties of more than 405,000 dead and 670,000 wounded. Many of the returning servicemen had become Christians during the war. They had seen the world in its spiritual poverty and desired to help. After attending school on the G.I. Bill, many returned as missionaries to the lands where they had earlier fought.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1942 MASS TRANSPORTS TO AUSCHWITZ BEGIN
As part of their "final solution" initiative designed to annihilate all European Jews, the Nazis designated certain concentration camps to collect Jews from the ghettos. The Jews were then transported in boxcars to Polish concentration camps. Death camps were constructed, where Jews were gassed in groups of seven hundred or more. One of the main concentration camps converted to a death camp was Auschwitz. Like other death camps, Auschwitz was equipped with a set of gas chambers, which appeared to be large shower rooms. The mass transportation of Jews to Auschwitz began in 1942. In all, approximately two and a half million Jews were murdered at Auschwitz.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1942 NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF EVANGELICALS IS FOUNDED The National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) was founded during a meeting of evangelical leaders at the Hotel Coronado in St. Louis, Missouri, from April 7 to 9, 1942. The NAE was intended to be an evangelical substitute for the liberal-leaning Federal Council of Churches. The NAE's statement of faith is a clear declaration of the Bible's inspiration, infallibility, and authority as the Word of God. Throughout the latter half of the twentieth century, the NAE established a number of subsidiary operations such as missions, politics, relief organizations, and Christian schools.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1943 GERMANY IS DECLARED FREE OF JEWS
Less than two years after implementing the Final Solution, the Nazi plot to kill all European Jews, Germany declared that there were no more Jews living within its borders. Unlike other countries such as Italy, where Germany's plan was in place but not rigorously enforced, the Germans were extremely efficient at expediting the roundup and extermination of entire Jewish communities. By the end of World War II, despite its utter military defeat at the hands of the Allies, Germany had achieved its goal of devastating the Jewish population throughout Europe. There were essentially no Jews left in Germany, and Jews of Eastern Europe, once a center for Jewish culture, were either scattered or dead.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1943 WARSAW GHETTO UPRISING BEGINS
In 1942, after the first mass deportation of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto, the Jewish Fighting Organization formed in the ghetto. Able to smuggle some weapons into the ghetto, the group participated in street fighting in January 1943. Sparked by a second wave of deportations to death camps, the fighting continued for four days and killed twenty German soldiers. As a result, a twenty-four-hour curfew was imposed on Jews. The Gentile Polish resistance movement supplied additional weapons, giving Jews in the ghetto renewed hope. On April 19, 1943, the Germans returned to Warsaw to wipe out the ghetto. Upon arrival they faced a Jewish attack so ferocious that their only strategy was to burn the ghetto. Fighting continued until May 8, when the headquarters of the Jewish Fighting Organization was destroyed.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1943 NATIONAL RELIGIOUS BROADCASTERS IS FOUNDED
In 1943, the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) founded the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB), with the purpose of protecting the Christian broadcaster's right to communicate the gospel. In 2001, the NRB left the NAE and became an independent organization. Now with more than seventeen hundred member organizations broadcasting to more than one million viewers and listeners, the NRB continues to grow. Its headquarters are located in Washington, D.C.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1944 JEWISH BRIGADE IS FORMED
During World War II, the Jews of Palestine were perplexed by the lack of sympathy shown by the British government officials ruling Palestine. Britain, hoping to win the Arabs to the side of the Allies, severely restricted Jewish immigration, frustrating the thousands attempting to escape persecution in Europe. Hoping that the British would favor the Jewish position in the Middle East following the war, Palestinian Jews participated in Britain's war effort. They also wanted to contribute to Germany's defeat and the end of the Holocaust. Thus, a multitude of Jews fought for Great Britain during World War II, and in September 1944, the Jewish Brigade of twenty-five thousand Palestinian Jews was formed within the British army. They carried a flag that included a yellow Star of David.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1944 YOUTH FOR CHRIST IS FOUNDED
Youth for Christ was founded in 1944, in Winona Lake, Indiana, as an interdenominational youth organization seeking to share the gospel with teenagers and young adults. The organization featured Saturday night youth rallies, with Billy Graham and Chuck Templeton as evangelists. Over the years, YFC's emphasis changed to promoting high-school Bible clubs. In the 1960's, these clubs became known as Campus Life. Youth for Christ International was launched in 1968 to reach teens in other countries.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1945 DIETRICH BONHOEFFER IS EXECUTED
In the mid-1930's, some German Christians looked to Hitler (1889-1945) as the savior of their nation. But Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) recognized Hitler's Nazism as the dehumanizing, anti-Christian movement that it was. Prior to and during World War II, Bonhoeffer wrote prolifically about the Christian life and trained ministers in an underground seminary until he was forbidden to publish or preach. Joining a conspiracy against Hitler, Bonhoeffer worked in the military intelligence service as a double agent on behalf of the conspirators. Arrested in 1943, for smuggling Jews into Switzerland, he pastored his fellow prisoners until he was executed for treason on April 9, 1945. His writings have inspired many to be faithful to Jesus' teachings.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1945 LIBERATION OF CONCENTRATION CAMPS IS COMPLETE
In 1945, with the defeat of Germany fast approaching, the Nazis evacuated the concentration camps of Poland. As the armies of the Soviet Union gained ground in Eastern Europe, the prisoners were put on "death marches" heading westward to Germany. It is estimated that at least a quarter of a million Jews died in these marches, only months before the end of World War II. American and Soviet troops liberated the remaining concentration camps. Almost all the victims of the camps who lived to see the liberation were starving, having worked as slave labor for the German war effort. The slave laborers literally were being worked to death; their average lifespan while in the camps was only nine months. The last death camp to be liberated, at Gross-Rosen, Germany, was freed by the Russian army on May 8, 1945.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1945 JEWS STRUGGLE AGAINST BRITAIN'S IMMIGRATION RESTRICTIONS
In 1945, Britain, appointed by the League of Nations to rule Palestine, outlawed the immigration of Jews into the region. Since 1939, the British had been very strict about immigration, turning boats loaded with refugees back to sea. A group of Jews known as the Revisionists declared war on the British, and their campaign to undermine the British government led to the sweeping arrest of Jews and the establishment of confinement camps in Cyprus. Those who immigrated illegally were detained at the camps. As tensions intensified between Britain and the Palestinian Jews, the struggle was approaching full-blown war. In 1947, Britain ceased efforts to reconcile Arabs and Jews in Palestine, deferring to the General Assembly of the United Nations.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1945 ATOMIC BOMB FALLS ON HIROSHIMA
After careful deliberations, the United States government chose not to launch a ground invasion of Japan in 1945. Instead, they decided the most effective way to end World War II would be to unveil a secret weapon that American scientists had only recently perfected. On August 6, 1945, at approximately 8:15 a.m. local time, the American bomber Enola Gay dropped the first atomic bomb, "Little Boy," on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The force of the bomb was so great that every building in a 1.5-mile radius was leveled with ninety-two thousand people killed and a similar number injured. A second atomic bomb, "Fat Man," was dropped three days later on the city of Nagasaki. It destroyed one and one half square miles and killed forty thousand. On August 15, the Japanese army unconditionally surrendered to the Allies, and World War II was over.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1945 EVANGELICAL FOREIGN MISSIONS ASSOCIATION IS FORMED
In 1945, the Evangelical Foreign Missions Association was established. Initially formed in Chicago, today the association has sixty-four members that serve nearly seven thousand missionaries in approximately 120 regions. Still striving to fulfill its original purpose of providing "a medium for voluntary united action among the evangelical foreign missionary agencies," the group's Washington, D.C. office represents missionaries and their purposes to foreign governments.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1945 MISSION AVIATION FELLOWSHIP IS FOUNDED
Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) was founded on May 20, 1945, to assist in transporting missionaries in particularly remote areas. Originally named the Christian Airmen's Missionary Fellowship, the group started in California. Led by Christian military airmen from World War II, by the 1950's, MAF was seen as fulfilling an essential role in international missions. Over the next forty years, MAF established twelve strategically located bases around the globe. The organization, which serves multiple missionary groups, flies more than one hundred planes in more than twenty countries. Each year MAF pilots collectively fly more than 30 million miles.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1945 JOHN STOTT BEGINS HIS MINISTRY AT ALL SOULS CHURCH John R. W. Stott (1921—) was ordained in the Church of England and became curate (1945-1950) and then rector (1950-1975) of All Souls Church, Langham Place, London. At a strategic location on the doorstep of London University and the British Broadcasting Company, Stott's ministry at All Souls launched him into a place of leadership in the evangelical movement around the globe. His numerous books also have served to give him worldwide influence. Stott was a major contributor in the writing of the Lausanne covenant, presented at the International Congress on World Evangelization in 1974.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1946 INTERVARSITY CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP HOLDS ITS FIRST URBANA MISSIONARY CONFERENCE
In May 1941, the British college organization of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship was incorporated in the United States. In 1946, the organization held its first mission convention in Toronto, Canada, with 575 students in attendance from 151 colleges and universities. A number of those college students, fresh from the battlefields of World War II, were burdened to return to those lands with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Two years later, the mission convention relocated to the campus of the University of Illinois in Urbana, Illinois. That year 1,331 students from 254 schools attended the convention and the Urbana tradition was born. Since then the convention has been held every three years, and the attendance has grown to twenty thousand.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1946 REVISIONISTS BLOW UP THE KING DAVID HOTEL
During the fourth aliyah, or wave of immigration, to Palestine in 1924-31, the Revisionists, a group of politically conservative Jews, grew in number. The Revisionists opposed the Labor Zionist party, whose members were more involved in Jewish culture. As disagreements between the parties increased during the 1930's, the Revisionists separated themselves from the Jewish Defense Organization known as the Haganah and formed their own military group, known as the Irgun. Toward the end of World War II, as the British opposed Jewish immigration, the Irgun fought against the British army. In June 1946, their campaign to undermine the government led to the arrests of thousands of Jews. In response to the mass arrests, the Irgun blew up a wing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem and all of the government offices housed there. Ninety-one were killed in the explosion.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
SCROLLS FOR SALE
November 29, 1947
Some important stories don't make the news.
On November 29, 1947, headlines around the world proclaimed that the United Nations had voted to establish two separate states in Palestine, one Jewish and one Arab.
However, another event happened that day that was to influence biblical studies forever. The story begins about a year earlier, when three Bedouin teenagers— Muhammed Ahmed el-Hamed, Jum'a Muhammed Khalib, and Khalil Musa—found three scrolls covered with strange writing, while exploring a cave near the Dead Sea.
In April 1947, an uncle of one of the boys took the scrolls to Bethlehem and showed them to a Muslim sheikh, who sent them to a Bethlehem shoemaker and part-time antiquities dealer, known as "Kando."
Meanwhile, Khalil Musa and some other Bedouins brought George Isaiah, a Syrian Orthodox merchant from Jerusalem, to see the cave. They found four more scrolls. Isaiah told the Syrian Orthodox Metropolitan in Jerusalem about the scrolls, and he offered to buy them. In July, when Jum'a, Musa, and Isaiah tried to bring the four scrolls to the Syrian Orthodox Metropolitan, they were mistakenly turned away. Instead they sold the four scrolls to Kando, the Bethlehem merchant, who in turn sold them to the Metropolitan for $97.20. One of the experts the Metropolitan consulted regarding his purchase was Eleazar Sukenik, a noted professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
When Sukenik learned that an antiquities dealer was offering ancient scrolls for sale, he made a secret trip to Bethlehem. He purchased two of the scrolls on November 29, 1947, the day the United Nations voted to create a Jewish state. A month later he purchased a third.
In 1954, the Syrian Orthodox Metropolitan placed an ad in the Wall Street Journal, offering his four scrolls for sale. Sukenik's son, Yigael Yadin, an Israeli general and leading archaeologist, was in the United States when the ad appeared. Yadin was able to purchase the scrolls for $250,000. Those four together with the three purchased by his father now reside in an exhibit in the Israel Museum called The Shrine of the Book.
The Dead Sea Scrolls, dating from 250 BC to AD 68, are considered by many to be the most important archaeological discovery of all time. They apparently were the library of the Essenes, a Jewish sect that had lived at nearby Qumran. When the invading Roman armies reached southern Judea in AD 68, the Essenes hid their library in caves.
The scrolls range in length from the complete book of Isaiah to thousands of small fragments. At least one fragment from every Old Testament book except Esther has been found. Evidence shows that originally about three hundred books were hidden, a third of them portions of the Old Testament.
The greatest value of the Dead Sea Scrolls is that they demonstrate the accuracy of our current text of the Hebrew Old Testament, showing it to be virtually the same as that in 250 BC.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1947 UNITED NATIONS VOTES TO PARTITION PALESTINE
Since receiving a mandate from the League of Nations in 1920, England had attempted to solve the Arab-Jewish conflict in Palestine. The influx of Jewish immigrants at the end of World War II increased these tensions, and England eventually deferred to the General Assembly at the United Nations. On November 29, 1947, the U.N. voted to partition Palestine into two states. The Negev Desert (in southern Palestine), and the coastal region and eastern Galilee (in northern Palestine) were set aside for Jews, while Arabs were given the Gaza Strip (the southern coast) and the remaining areas of Palestine. Jerusalem was designated as an international city. The motion, which the United States and the Soviet Union supported, was denounced by the League of Arab States, which supported the cause of the Palestinian Arabs.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1947 DEAD SEA SCROLLS ARE DISCOVERED
In 1947, in caves on the northwestern side of the Dead Sea in Israel, ancient scrolls were discovered dating back to the period between 250 BC and AD 68. The scrolls are believed to be the library of the Essenes, a Jewish priestly sect living at Qumran in the Dead Sea region. They vary in length, from the complete book of Isaiah to thousands of small fragments. Many consider the Dead Sea Scrolls to be the most important archaeological discovery of all time.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1947 FULLER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY IS FOUNDED
Fuller Theological Seminary was founded in 1947 as a "Christ-centered, Spirit-directed training school" in Pasadena, California. The school received its name, inspiration, and early funding from Charles E. Fuller (1887-1968), the preacher on the nationally distributed radio program, The Old-Fashioned Revival Hour. Fuller Seminary became controversial as it changed its position on biblical inerrancy and introduced "New Evangelicalism" to the theological scene. As a result, several prominent professors left the faculty and went to more conservative theological institutions.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
BIRTH OF A NATION
May 15, 1948
They came from all over the world.
In 63 BC, the Roman armies invaded the land of Israel and made it part of the Roman Empire. Then Jesus came, and in response to the Jews' rejection of him as their Messiah he predicted just before his death in AD 33 that the Jewish Temple would be completely destroyed (Luke 21:6). In addition, he foretold that a foreign army would conquer Jerusalem and that the Jewish people would be forcibly dispersed throughout the world (Luke 21:20-24). This prediction was fulfilled in AD 70 when, in response to an earlier Jewish revolt, the Roman armies destroyed the city of Jerusalem and its Temple, killing hundreds of thousands of Jews and taking captive most of the survivors.
Since their dispersion by the Romans, Jews have been scattered throughout the world. Then in the late 1800s a Jewish movement called Zionism arose. Its goal was to create an independent Jewish state in Palestine. In a 1917 attempt to win Jewish support for World War I, England issued the Balfour Declaration, declaring England's support for "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people." Following World War I, the League of Nations placed Palestine under England's control.
As Nazi persecution of Jews increased during the 1930s, large numbers of refugees fled to Palestine. In response, the Palestinian Arabs revolted against the British from 1936 to 1939. In 1939, Britain decided to limit Jewish immigration, arousing militant Jewish resistance.
Following World War II, during which six million Jews were murdered by the Nazis in the Holocaust, the British continued to limit Jewish immigration to Palestine. In response, large-scale Jewish resistance movements rose up among the Jews already in Palestine. Finally England decided to turn the problem of Palestine over to the United Nations.
When the matter came to a vote in the UN on November 29, 1947, due largely to U.S. President Harry Truman's strong support, the General Assembly endorsed a plan to create separate Jewish and Arab states, with Jerusalem as an international zone.
The British Mandate was scheduled to end on May 15, 1948, at which time their troops would begin leaving. The day before, a historic meeting was held in the exhibition hall of the art museum in Tel Aviv. At exactly 4:00 p.m. David Ben Gurion called the meeting to order. The audience rose and sang "Hatikvah," the Jewish national anthem, accompanied by the Palestine Symphony Orchestra. Then David Ben Gurion read in Hebrew, Israel's Declaration of Independence. It ended with the words, "We... hereby proclaim the establishment of the Jewish State in Palestine, to be called Israel." Everyone in the audience stood to their feet and applauded, many with tears streaming down their faces.
An independent Jewish state of Israel existed for the first time in over two thousand years
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1948 ISRAEL DECLARES INDEPENDENCE
On November 29, 1947, the General Assembly of the United Nations endorsed a plan to create separate Jewish and Arab states in Palestine. The British mandate over Palestine was scheduled to end on May 15, 1948, at which time the English troops would be leaving. In anticipation of the end of the British presence in Palestine, David Ben Gurion (1886-1973) called to order a historic meeting on May 14, 1948. After the assembled body sang the "Hatikvah," the Jewish national anthem, Ben Gurion read Israel's Declaration of Independence. For the first time in more than two thousand years, there was an independent Jewish state of Israel.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1948 ISRAEL'S WAR OF INDEPENDENCE BEGINS
On May 15, 1948, the day after Israel declared its independence, it was attacked by five Arab nations: Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. Though greatly outnumbered and poorly armed, the Israelis were able to repulse the invading nations. By the end of 1948, they had defeated the Arab nations and in so doing had conquered half of the territory the United Nations had planned for the new Arab nation. The other half was divided between Jordan and Egypt. Israel controlled the western half of Jerusalem and Jordan the eastern half, including the Old City and the Temple mount.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1948 FAR EAST BROADCASTING AIRS ITS FIRST BROADCAST
On December 20, 1945, the Far East Broadcasting Company (FEBC) was incorporated, with John Broger (1913—) as president and Robert Bowman (1915—) as vice president. In April 1946, Broger arrived in Shanghai and began to talk with missionaries about starting a Christian radio station. In August, he traveled to Manila, the Philippines, for the purpose of establishing a FEBC base there. The first signal from KZAS—the station based in the Philippines—went on the air on June 4, 1948. The singing of "All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name" was the first sound transmitted. Today the FEBC broadcasts in Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Australia.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1948 WORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES IS FORMED
At the end of World War II, all that most of the world wanted was to find ways to live in peace. To promote international cooperation, fifty-one nations signed the charter of the United Nations at a 1945 conference in San Francisco. Since early in the century, the church too had been moving toward an international, ecumenical league. On August 23, 1948, delegates from 147 mainline denominations from forty-four nations gathered in Amsterdam to form the World Council of Churches. It is the largest agency of cooperation among liberal Christian churches. Originally claiming to be a "fellowship of churches which confess the Lord Jesus Christ as God the Saviour according to the Scriptures," the Council's focus became increasingly social and more radically political as the decades passed.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1949 EVANGELICAL THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY FORMS
Early in 1949, the faculty of Gordon Divinity School suggested a regular meeting of evangelical scholars to discuss theological issues. The result of this suggestion was the first meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) on December 27-28, 1949, when sixty evangelical theologians met in Cincinnati, Ohio, to found the organization. The doctrinal basis for entrance into the society was simply an affirmation of the inerrancy of Scripture. Affirmation of the orthodox conception of the Trinity was later added as a prerequisite for membership. Both national and regional meetings are held annually in the United States.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1949 BILLY GRAHAM HOSTS HIS FIRST CRUSADE IN LOS ANGELES
In 1949, while serving as president of the Northwestern Schools in Minneapolis, Minnesota, William ("Billy") Franklin Graham Jr. (1918—) held evangelistic meetings in an enormous canvas tent in Los Angeles, California, where several celebrities were converted to Christ. William Randolph Hearst (1863-1951) took note of both the meeting and Graham and instructed his newspapers to "puff Graham." Almost immediately, Graham, an ordained Southern Baptist minister and Wheaton College graduate, became known throughout the United States. Within a few short years he was hosting evangelistic crusades at stadiums in the country's largest cities. In his lifetime, Graham has preached the gospel to more than 110 million people in eighty different countries, more than any person in history.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1949 AWAKENING OCCURS IN NEW HEBRIDES
After World War II, not a single church in the Hebrides Islands off the coast of Scotland had any youth in attendance. Then in 1949, an eighty-four-year-old blind woman named Peggy Smith had a vision of churches filled with young people. As a result, her pastor, James Murray MacKay, began regular prayer meetings for revival. After several months of prayer, the revival began one night when a young deacon prayed, "O God are my hands clean? Is my heart pure?" MacKay invited the Scottish revivalist Duncan Campbell (1898-1972) to preach at a series of meetings. After the second night's service, the congregation remained outside the church and others left their homes to join them. Soon six hundred people streamed back into the church, spending the night in repentance and prayer. The revival spread throughout the islands, so that on Sundays the roads were crowded with people walking to church.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1949 ISRAEL IS ADMITTED TO THE UNITED NATIONS After declaring its independence in 1948, the nation of Israel was attacked by her Arab neighbors. Among her supporters, however, were the Soviet Union and the United States. In addition, the General Assembly of the United Nations had helped to establish the state of Israel by voting, on November 29, 1947, to divide Palestine between the Jews and Arabs. In 1949, while in the midst of waging a war of independence, Israel held national elections, was recognized as a sovereign state by the United Nations, and was admitted as a member of the General Assembly.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1950 BILLY GRAHAM ASSOCIATION IS FOUNDED
As he rose to fame after his 1949 Los Angeles Crusade, Billy Graham (1918—) began to be accused of using his ministry success to enrich himself. During his 1950 Portland, Oregon, crusade, Graham's closest advisors persuaded him that the establishment of a nonprofit organization would be necessary to prevent false accusations, as well as for the management of the financial affairs of his crusades.
On September 17, 1950, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) was incorporated in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Although Graham was the president, day-to-day operations were the responsibility of the secretary-treasurer, George Wilson (1914-1999). Wilson was initially the business manager at Northwestern Schools, where Graham then served as president. The headquarters of the BGEA today are in Charlotte, North Carolina, where it oversees the Billy Graham Training Center, Blue Ridge Broadcasting, and the Samaritan's Purse relief organization, in addition to other international ministries.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1950 CHRISTIAN BOOKSELLERS ASSOCIATION IS FOUNDED Officially organized on November 17, 1950, the Christian Booksellers Association (CBA) is the trade association for the Christian bookstore industry. Its purpose is the "development and retail distribution of Christ-honoring product." At its annual international convention, more than three thousand vendors gather to present their products for the Christian market. In addition to books, the CBA convention showcases Christian music and gift items.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1950 WORLD VISION IS FOUNDED
Founded in 1950 by Robert Willard Pierce (1914-1976), World Vision International became the most well-known evangelical relief organization in the world. Pierce, an evangelist who originally served with Youth for Christ, had also been a filmmaker and a war correspondent. His experience with orphans while covering the Korean War inspired him to found the child sponsorship program for which World Vision is best known. In addition to assisting children, the organization provides disaster relief, coordinates community development projects, distributes Bibles, conducts mission research, and helps establish churches. World Vision operates nearly five thousand programs in more than one hundred countries.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1950 MISSIONARIES ARE FORCED TO LEAVE CHINA
Following World War II (1939-1945), as many as three thousand missionaries returned to China. However, their missions were cut short in 1949, when Chinese communist leader Chairman Mao Zedong (1893-1976) established the People's Republic of China. As a result, missionaries were forced to leave the country in 1950. At the time, there were approximately one million Chinese believers. Yet by the year 2000, the number of Christians in China had grown to approximately 75 million. God chose to have the missionaries removed before the great harvest, that he alone might receive the glory.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
A LIFE-CHANGING PRAYER
January 18, 1951
You never know how God will answer.
Amy Carmichael was born in 1867, in Millisle, County Down, Northern Ireland, a town dominated by the Carmichael flour mills. At the age of twelve, she was sent to a Wesleyan Methodist boarding school in Yorkshire, England. At a service for children when she was fifteen, Carmichael heard the song lyrics "Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so." In the quiet moments following the song, Carmichael realized that, in spite of her mother's teaching that Jesus loved her, she had never opened the door of her heart to invite him in. "In His great mercy the Good Shepherd answered the prayers of my mother and my father and many other loving ones, and drew me, even me, into His fold."
After the death of her father she went to England to live in the home of Robert Wilson, a cofounder and chairman of the Keswick Convention, a summer gathering of English evangelicals. Under Wilson's influence, Carmichael became interested in missions and sailed for Japan in 1893, as the first Keswick missionary with the Church Missionary Society. After spending less than two years in Japan and Ceylon, poor health forced her to return to England.
In November 1895, she again left England to work with the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society in southern India. Traveling on evangelistic trips throughout India she became aware that many young Indian girls were offered by parents or guardians as temple prostitutes, a practice that was later outlawed. Touched by their plight, Carmichael began rescuing young girls from this fate.
By 1901, she, along with the Indian colleagues and converts from her many trips, settled in Dohnavur. In 1926, she founded the Dohnavur Fellowship, a home and school for rescued children. Here the Indian children were educated and trained to serve God as Christian nurses, teachers, and evangelists. These children and workers became her family. Amy Carmichael was known at Dohnavur Fellowship as "Amma" or Mother. So committed was Amy Carmichael to India that from the time she arrived there in 1895, she never returned to England.
In 1931, Carmichael visited a Dohnavur dispensary and was concerned about the Fellowship's financial support. Seeking God's guidance regarding money, she prayed, "Do anything, Lord, that will fit me to serve thee and to help my beloveds."
Later that day she visited a house she had rented for another dispensary. There in the darkness she fell into a newly dug pit, breaking her leg and twisting her spine. As a result of her fall, she was bedridden for the last twenty years of her life. Yet, from her bed she remained in charge of Dohnavur and developed a ministry of writing prose and poetry, through which the work of Dohnavur became known around the world.
In 1938, Carmichael believed that God gave her a promise that she would die in her sleep. This she did on January 18, 1951.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1950 THE ASSUMPTION OF MARY DRIVES WEDGE BETWEEN CATHOLICS AND PROTESTANTS
For years, the Roman Catholic Church had held a tradition that when the Virgin Mary died, she was bodily raised and glorified as a prefigurement of the resurrection awaiting all Christians. On November 1, 1950, Pope Pius XII (1876-1958) declared the Assumption of Mary to be an article of faith in the Roman Catholic Church, thus driving another wedge between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1950 FIRST WOMAN SUCCEEDS HER HUSBAND AS RABBI
With the exception of a nineteen-year period from 1899 to 1919, when a woman acted as the spiritual leader of a Reform Jewish synagogue in England, no woman had ever served as a rabbi until 1950. That year Mrs. Paul Ackerman, the widow of Rabbi William Ackerman of Temple Beth Israel in Meridian, Mississippi, succeeded her husband as rabbi. Although she hadn't had rabbinical training, a ruling from Reform Judaism granted her full powers of rabbi, and the state of Mississippi gave her authority to perform marriages. In 1972, the Central Conference of Reform Rabbis formally voted to accept women into the rabbinate.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1953 BILL BRIGHT FOUNDS CAMPUS CRUSADE FOR CHRIST
In 1951, William R. Bright (1921-2003), a successful California entrepreneur, had a vision of fulfilling the Great Commission by evangelizing college campuses. Campus Crusade for Christ was officially incorporated on August 28, 1953. Bright's goal was to reach college and university campuses throughout America by spreading the gospel and equipping new believers to share Christ with others. Campus Crusade's outreach includes more than forty ministries.
Today, Campus Crusade for Christ International is located in Orlando, Florida. In 2004, the nondenominational group had more than thirteen thousand staff members and one hundred thousand volunteers working in 167 countries.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1954 FELLOWSHIP OF CHRISTIAN ATHLETES IS FOUNDED
The Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) was founded on November 12, 1954, by Don McClanen (1925-), a basketball coach in Norman, Oklahoma. The organization's mission is to "see the world impacted for Jesus Christ through the influence of athletes and coaches." With its headquarters in Kansas City, Missouri, FCA ministers to hundreds of thousands of men, women, boys, and girls through summer camps as well as school chapters known as FCA huddles. With the support of many famous athletes, FCA encourages student athletes to have personal relationships with Jesus.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1955 KENNETH TAYLOR BEGINS WORK ON LIVING LETTERS
In 1955, Kenneth Taylor (1917-) began paraphrasing the King James Version of the Bible into modern English while commuting to his downtown Chicago job. He wanted to provide his ten children with a more readable version of the Bible than the language of the King James Version. However, when Taylor was unable to find a publisher willing to market his paraphrase, he and his wife, Margaret, formed Tyndale House Publishers to publish Living Letters, a paraphrase of the New Testament Epistles. The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association soon offered Living Letters as a premium, and it became a best seller. Taylor eventually completed a paraphrased version of the entire Bible, which was published in 1971 as The Living Bible and subsequently sold more than 40 million copies.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1955 L'ABRI FELLOWSHIP IS FOUNDED
Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984), a graduate of Faith Theological Seminary, was ordained by the Bible Presbyterian Church. He served as a pastor in Pennsylvania and Missouri before moving to Switzerland as a missionary of the Independent Board of Presbyterian Foreign Missions. While in the Swiss Alps in 1955, Schaeffer and his wife, Edith, founded L'Abri Fellowship to combat the development of moral and intellectual relativism in the twentieth century. L'Abri, French for "shelter," consisted of a number of chalets. It became a place for people to come to study both Scripture and the arts, and to receive guidance from the Schaeffers. An English branch of L'Abri was established in 1958.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
PLANTING GOSPEL SEED
July 20, 1953
One plants, another waters, but God gives the increase.
In early 1832, James Taylor, a pharmacist in Yorkshire, England, knelt in the back of his shop beside his pregnant wife, Amelia, and prayed, "Dear God, if you should give us a son, grant that he may work for you in China."
God gave them a son a few months later, and they named him James Hudson Taylor. By the time Hudson was seventeen, he was a typical rebellious teenager and had no interest in being a missionary. But that summer when his mother was visiting her sister, she felt led to lock herself in a room to pray for Hudson's salvation and not come out until she had the assurance that her prayer had been answered. Back home that afternoon, Hudson picked up a gospel tract on Christ's death on the cross for sinners and accepted the Savior.
Within months after Hudson experienced his new birth, his call to China was confirmed during a night of prayer, which he described as being filled "with unspeakable awe and unspeakable joy."
With a sense of urgency, Hudson finished school and sailed for China at the age of twenty-one. At that time there were 350 baptized Chinese believers. During his first term he married and made several evangelistic trips into the closed interior of China but was forced to return to England because of illness.
In England he regained his health and felt an increasing burden for the millions in China's interior. When the interior of China was opened to Westerners and Hudson could find no mission willing to back him, he founded the China Inland Mission (CIM) in 1865.
Initially Hudson prayed for twenty-four workers, two for each unreached province. The first fifteen sailed in May 1866 and by 1882, the China Inland Mission had workers in every province. By 1895, it had 641 missionaries, and by 1914, the China Inland Mission was the largest missionary organization in the world, reaching its peak in 1934 with 1, 368 missionaries ministering to five hundred thousand baptized believers. But then civil war broke out between the Chinese Nationalists and the Communists. The two enemies joined forces to fight Japan; but after the war they went back to fighting each other. By September 1949, the Chinese Communists had won, and the Nationalists retreated to the island of Taiwan. The last CIM workers left China on July 20, 1953, leaving behind about one million believers.
The first two decades under Communism were ones of intense persecution. Yet by 1980, there were two million believers.
Since the early 1980s, the growth of the church in China has no parallels in history. In 2000 there were approximately seventy-five million Christians in China.
The sacrificial seed sown by the missionaries of CIM and other missions bore fruit a thousand fold, yet God chose to have the missionaries removed before the harvest that he alone might receive the glory.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
FULFILLING THE VISION
August 28, 1953
His mother's prayers had far-reaching effects!
In Coweta, Oklahoma, in 1921, a mother prayed over her yet-unborn son, dedicating him to the Lord's service. When the baby was born, his parents named him William Bright. As a child he showed little interest in spiritual things, but his mother continued to pray.
Bill Bright graduated from college in 1943 and went west to Los Angeles to seek his fortune in business. There he quickly achieved his dream of financial success.
After receiving repeated invitations, Bright began attending meetings for college students and young professionals led by Dr. Henrietta Mears at Hollywood Presbyterian Church. There, after a particularly challenging teaching on finding happiness at the "center of God's will," Bill went home yearning for this inner happiness. He later recalled,
As I returned to my apartment that night I realized that I was ready to give my life to God.....I knelt down beside my bed that night and asked the questions which Dr. Mears had challenged us to pray, "Who art Thou, Lord? What wilt Thou have me to do?"
In a sense this was my prayer for salvation. It wasn't very profound theologically, but God knew my heart and He interpreted what was going on inside of me. Through my study I now believed Jesus Christ was the Son of God, that He died for my sin, and that, as Dr. Mears had shared with us, if I invited Him into my life as Savior and Lord, He would come in.
Bright enrolled at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena. In 1948, he married his wife, Vonette, whom Henrietta Mears had also led to Christ.
Late one night in 1951, while studying for an exam, he had a powerful vision of helping to fulfill the Great Commission by evangelizing college campuses. He shared it the next morning with Dr. Wilbur Smith, his professor and mentor. Smith responded with, "This is of God! This is of God!" The next day Smith told him, "I believe God has given me the name for your vision—Campus Crusade for Christ."
After much prayer, Bill and Vonette decided that he should leave seminary to pursue his vision. Bright sold his business and rented a house one block from the UCLA campus. He formed Campus Crusade for Christ, and within a few months 250 students had given their lives to Jesus.
Campus Crusade quickly spread to other campuses throughout the country, and Bright officially incorporated it on August 28, 1953.
Bill Bright's vision and ministry shaped Campus Crusade into one of the largest interdenominational mission agencies in the world, with approximately twenty-two thousand full-time workers in 156 countries by 2001. Its most substantial mark on world missions is the Jesus film, which has been viewed by more than 4 billion people in more than 650 languages, with 121 million reported conversions since 1979!
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1956 AMERICAN MISSIONARIES ARE MARTYRED IN ECUADOR American missionaries Nate Saint (1923-1956), Jim Elliot (1927-1956), Peter Fleming (1928-1956), Ed McCully (1927-1956), and Roger Youderian (1924-1956) had spent three months preparing for a face-to-face meeting with the primitive Auca Indians of Ecuador. It was to be the first step in establishing relationships that the men and their families hoped would eventually lead the Aucas to Christ. Instead, on January 6, 1956, after the men reported landing and meeting with a few Aucas, they were ambushed and killed. Nevertheless, within two years, Elisabeth Elliot (1926-), Jim Elliot's widow, and Rachel Saint (1914— 1994), Nate Saint's sister, were living among the Aucas. Over time, many of the Aucas repented, turned to Christ, and became ministers to their own people. The martyrs' story became a touchstone for the modern Protestant missionary movement.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1956 FIRST ISSUE OF CHRISTIANITY TODAY IS PUBLISHED The Christian periodical Christianity Today was founded as a result of Billy Graham's (1918-) desire for a magazine to provide ministers and laypeople with theological depth. The first issue was dated October 1956. To counterbalance mainline Protestantism's widely circulated Christian Century, the new magazine sought to encourage a biblically conservative worldview. Now exceeding the circulation of Christian Century, Christianity Today is quoted in the secular press more than any other religious periodical. Headquartered in Carol Stream, Illinois, the magazine continues to maintain a conservative theological and political stand.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1956 ISRAEL EVACUATES THE SINAI Unwilling to accept the formation of Israel, Jordan and Egypt developed guerrilla operations known as fedayeen, from the Arabic word for "one who sacrifices himself for his country." In addition to fedayeen attacks in Israel, Arab states boycotted Israel and all who did business with her. In the 1950's, Egypt, backed by the Soviet Union, increased raids and conquered the Suez Canal. On October 29, 1956, Israel responded by seizing the Sinai Peninsula, annihilating many of the Egyptian forces in less than a week. The action, though planned with France and England, was not tolerated internationally. In exchange for a secure Israeli-Egyptian border and removal of the Egyptian blockade, Israel evacuated the Sinai.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1958 PAUL YONGGI CHO'S CHURCH BEGINS After graduating from the Full Gospel Bible Institute in Korea, Paul Yonggi Cho (1936-) founded the Yoido Full Gospel Church in Seoul, Korea. The first service was held on May 15, 1958, with six people in attendance. In its beginning stages, the church met in a simple shelter of army tents that were pieced together. In 1960, Cho was ordained by the Korean Assemblies of God, and the Yoido church joined the Assemblies of God denomination in 1962. A vigorous strategy of multiplying home cell groups led to the explosive growth of the membership. By 2003, the church claimed a membership of 780,000. Because of the church's prominence, Cho became a world leader in the Pentecostal movement.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1958 BILL BRIGHT FINALIZES THE FOUR SPIRITUAL LAWS Bill Bright (1921-2003), founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, worked for years on the evangelistic tool he called "God's Plan," later renamed the "Four Spiritual Laws." In 1958, he completed the project by adding the first law, deciding to emphasize God's love first, instead of starting with man's sinfulness as he had in prior versions. The Four Spiritual Laws are 1) God loves you and offers a wonderful plan for your life; 2) Man is sinful and separated from God; thus he cannot know and experience God's love and plan for his life; 3) Jesus Christ is God's only provision for man's sin. Through him you can know and experience God's love and plan for your life; and 4) We must individually receive Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord; then we can know and experience God's love and plan for our lives.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
THE GATES OF PEARLY SPLENDOR
January 9, 1956
On New Year's Day 1956, five missionaries packed for their attempt to contact the fierce Auca Indians of Ecuador. Nate Saint, the pilot, was going to fly them to Palm Beach, where they had previously exchanged gifts with the Aucas from the air. Jim Elliot, Pete Fleming, Ed McCully, and Roger Youderian collected what they would need for their mission. As Elisabeth Elliot helped her husband, she wondered, Will this be the last time I'll help him pack?
On January 3, their departure date, after breakfast and prayer the five men sang one of their favorite hymns:
We rest on thee, our Shield and our Defender, Thine is the battle, thine will be the praise. When passing through the gates of pearly splendor Victors, we rest with thee through endless days.
Once on the beach they waited for contact with the Aucas. On Friday, January 6, the missionaries were encouraged by a visit from three Aucas.
No Aucas appeared on Saturday, but on Sunday morning Nate spotted some tribesmen walking toward their beach. At twelve thirty Nate made his prearranged radio call to his wife, Marj: "This is the day! Will contact you at 4:30."
When 4:30 came, the missionary wives switched on their radios. Silence. Sundown came, and still no word. The wives slept little that night.
On Monday morning, January 9, 1956, Johnny Keenan, another missionary pilot, flew to the beach. As Elisabeth Elliot awaited his report, a verse ran through her mind: "When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee" (Isaiah 43:2, KJV).
At 9:30 a.m., the pilot's report came in. Marj Saint shared it with the other wives. "Johnny has found the plane on the beach. All the fabric is stripped off. There is no sign of the fellows."
Radio station HCJB in Ecuador flashed the news to the rest of the world: "Five men missing in Auca territory." By noon a ground party was organized to go to the site. The search party located four of the five bodies, but Ed McCully's had been swept away by the river. The other four were buried on Palm Beach.
What happened to the Aucas? By the end of 1958, Elisabeth Elliot and Rachel Saint, Nate's sister, were living among them, and one by one the Aucas put their faith in Jesus Christ.
The five men who murdered the missionaries each, not only became Christians, but also spiritual leaders. After they believed, they shared how, after murdering the missionaries, they heard singing from above the trees. Looking up they saw what appeared to be a canopy of bright lights. God was welcoming his children home.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1959 MGGAVRAN ESTABLISHES THE INSTITUTE OF CHURCH GROWTH In 1959, the Institute of Church Growth was established in Eugene, Oregon, by former missionary to India, Donald A. McGavran (1897-1991). The institute examined the forces behind the success of large churches and determined that the most successful congregations contained "a section of society in which all members have some characteristics in common." McGavran's practical philosophy of church growth, which was adopted by a number of evangelical pastors, targeted specific communities of individuals. From 1964 to 1980, McGavran published his ideas in the Church Growth Bulletin; and his theories, especially about allowing Christians to maintain cultural barriers, were particularly influential in white, middle-class suburbs. In 1965, the Institute of Church Growth joined Fuller Theological Seminary, as part of the School of World Mission.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1960 THE CHARISMATIC MOVEMENT BEGINS In November 1959, while meeting with a group often Episcopalians from a neighboring church, pastor Dennis Bennett (1917-1991) of St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Van Nuys, California, reported experiencing the "baptism of the Holy Spirit." Others at the meeting also claimed to have had the experience. On April 3, 1960, Bennett shared his experience with his parishioners at each of the church's three services. After the second service, an associate pastor resigned in protest, and at the third service Bennett himself resigned. Jean Stone (1924-), a member of the church, contacted Newsweek and Time magazines, both of which picked up the story. As the story went public, the charismatic movement was born and soon spread throughout the world.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1960 YOUTH WITH A MISSION IS FOUNDED In December 1960, Loren Cunningham (1935-) founded Youth with a Mission (YWAM). Cunningham's vision focused on engaging energetic young people in mission activities. Although his intention was to align YWAM with the Assemblies of God, the denomination in which he was raised, the denomination declined. After a successful eight-week mission trip to the Bahamas in 1964, Cunningham decided to make YWAM an interdenominational organization. In addition to operating the Pacific and Asia Christian University in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, YWAM sends more than fifty thousand young missionaries on short-term mission trips to countries around the world each summer. YWAM's mission efforts usually include distributing Bibles, performing drama or music, and holding evangelistic assemblies.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1960 EICHMANN IS BROUGHT TO ISRAEL In 1960, Adolf Eichmann (1906-1962), the Nazi official primarily responsible for coordinating the near extermination of Jews during World War II, was captured by Israel's security service in Argentina. The trial of Adolf Eichmann took place in Jerusalem and revealed that in 1941, Eichmann was authorized to implement a systematic annihilation of the entire Jewish population in Europe, as the "final solution of the Jewish problem." The Polish work camp at Auschwitz became a major death camp under Eichmann's direction, and by 1942, gas chambers disguised as showers, able to kill seven to eight hundred Jews at one time, were in place. In 1962, Eichmann was hanged for committing crimes against humanity, the only crime in Israeli law that carries the death penalty.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1960 SEVENTEEN AFRICAN NATIONS ACHIEVE INDEPENDENCE For centuries, the continent of Africa was dominated by colonial powers. However, 1960 was the great year of independence for African nations, when seventeen were set free from colonial domination. The seventeen were Benin, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Gabon, Ivory Coast, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Republic of Congo, Senegal, Somalia, Togo, Upper Volta, and Zaire. By 1994, every nation in Africa had achieved independence. Independence brought increased religious freedom to much of Africa, but the persecution of Christians by Muslims also escalated in Sudan and northern Nigeria. At the same time, many African nations have been led by corrupt rulers, who have enriched themselves and their own ethnic groups. Ethnic cleansing has brought death and refugee status to millions in Rwanda, Burundi, Congo, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Sudan, and Uganda.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1962 THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION BY EXTENSION BEGINS By the mid-twentieth century, the church was rapidly expanding in Latin America. The rate at which pastors were needed exceeded the rate at which the few seminaries could train them. In addition, many pastors were men who had full-time jobs to support their families, limiting their options to leave to attend a seminary. In 1962, with almost sixty thousand pastors lacking adequate training in Scripture and theology, the Evangelical Presbyterian Seminary of Guatemala started Theological Education by Extension (TEE), to help pastors obtain knowledge of Scripture and training in ministry. The programmed textbook, which allowed for personalized study, became the foundation for the new style of seminary education. Counseling, supervision, and testing took place during regular student meetings with a seminary professor at a central location. From Guatemala, the TEE movement moved throughout Latin America, as well as to Africa and Asia.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1962 VATICAN COUNCIL II BEGINS In 1958, Archbishop Angelo Roncalli became Pope John XXIII (1881-1963) and brought to the office his goal of aggiornamento, "bringing the Church up to date." On October 11, 1962, at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, the pope opened the Second Vatican Council, which consisted of two thousand clergy from around the world. Unlike previous popes, John allowed the council free discussion, and the resulting decrees of Vatican II were far reaching. The council redefined the church, changed its relationship with Protestants, accepted religious liberty, encouraged Bible study, and permitted worship in local languages, rather than in Latin. The response was mixed. By 1976, thousands of priests and nuns had joined the laity, church attendance was down by one-third, and confessions by over half; but, at the same time, many Catholic laypersons had begun reading their Bibles.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1965 THE JESUS REVOLUTION IS BIRTHED In 1965, Chuck Smith (1927-), a Pentecostal pastor in Southern California, had a burden to reach counterculture young people for Christ. Smith and his wife began by leading a few hippie youths to Christ and starting a commune dedicated to Bible study and evangelism. His church grew rapidly, with more than two hundred coming to Christ each week. More than nine hundred were baptized in the Pacific Ocean each month, in front of thousands of spectators. Full-page photographs of the "Jesus People" revival appeared in many secular magazines. Eventually Smith's California congregation, called Calvary Chapel, grew to become one of the twenty largest churches in the world. The revolution moved throughout the country, recruiting new Jesus People from among the countercultural ranks. There are currently more than six hundred Calvary Chapels, each pastored by a convert of the movement.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
A DATE WE REMEMBER
November 22, 1963
Who died on November 22, 1963? Many will correctly answer, "President John F. Kennedy."
But another person, who was mightier than President Kennedy in God's kingdom, died that day. His name was C. S. Lewis.
"C. S." stood for Clive Staples, but to his friends he was "Jack." Born near Belfast, Ireland in 1898, Lewis was raised as an Anglican. But when he was ten, his mother died of cancer, and Lewis wanted nothing to do with a God so cruel as to take his mother. Before long he had become an atheist.
After graduating from Oxford, he spent the first thirty years of his academic career as a fellow of Magdalen College. From there he became chair of Medieval and Renaissance English at Cambridge University.
Lewis' spiritual pilgrimage began in 1926, with a conversation with another fellow of Magdalen College. Lewis was surprised to learn that his cynical friend believed in the Trinity. This revelation challenged Lewis' atheistic presuppositions.
His next step was a memorable spring day in 1929. While riding on a bus, Lewis pondered the various philosophers he had read. Taking Hegel's idea of the absolute and combining it with Berkeley's concept of Spirit, he conceived of a being he could call "God." He didn't know anything about this God, but when he got off the bus, he knew he believed something he hadn't before—that an absolute Spirit or God existed.
Some months later he began to formulate a mental vision of Absolute Spirit, conceiving of it as someone who said, "I am the Lord." Lewis finally admitted that God was God, and for the first time in years he prayed.
But the real turning point came two years later, in 1931. On this particular afternoon, Lewis and his brother rode a motorcycle forty miles to visit the Whipsnade Zoo. Following them by car were three friends and their dog. Lewis stayed behind with the dog, which wasn't allowed in the zoo.
As Lewis relaxed in the park, he came to the realization that sometime during the previous few hours he had come to an important conclusion. He knew that when he had left for Whipsnade he did not believe Jesus Christ was the Son of God, but somehow when he arrived, he believed! Without consciously thinking about it, he had passed from merely believing in God to trusting in Christ as his Savior.
In 1941, Lewis burst onto the literary scene as author of The Screwtape Letters. Books then began to flow from his pen at an amazing rate, one or more a year. Titles such as Mere Christianity, Surprised by Joy, A Grief Observed, and The Chronicles of Narnia have been used by God to change lives of people of all ages around the world.
C. S. Lewis is considered the most influential Christian author of the twentieth century—quite a leap from the atheism of his youth.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THAT DANCING INSTRUCTOR? February 20, 1967
Listening to the radio changed his life.
D. James Kennedy grew up in the 1930's in Chicago and attended the University of Tampa on a music scholarship. Jim became an Arthur Murray dance instructor, and before long was a nationally competitive dancer.
When nineteen-year-old Anne Lewis entered the Tampa Arthur Murray studio for a lesson one evening, Jim told a friend, "That's the girl I'm going to marry." Three and a half years later, his prediction came true!
During their courtship, Anne, who was a Christian, challenged Jim about what he believed. He believed in God and assumed he was a Christian, but Anne's questions threw him.
One Sunday in 1955, Jim woke up with a hangover. The radio was on and tuned to a message by Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse from Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. Dr. Barnhouse asked, "Suppose that you were to die today and stand before God and He were to ask you, 'What right do you have to enter into My Heaven?'—what would you say?" Jim listened to Barnhouse's explanation of salvation and redemption. Realizing he had no right to enter heaven at that point, he gave his life to Christ.
He made an overnight, 180 degree turn away from his former lifestyle. Shortly thereafter, he drove to see Anne with an engagement ring in his pocket. He said, "I have quit my job at the studio, which means I'm almost flat broke. I am going into the ministry, and I know you always said you wouldn't want to be a preacher's wife. Will you marry me?" Anne was taken aback but said yes.
After graduating from seminary, he went to Fort Lauderdale in 1959 to start a church. After ten months, attendance at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church was down to seventeen! Jim and Anne were discouraged but didn't give up. Jim went to Atlanta to conduct an evangelism conference with a seminary friend, and there he discovered what he felt were the tools for successful one-on-one evangelism. He went home to teach these tools to his little flock. In one month, his church grew from 17 to 66, and then to 122 the next year. By 1974, Coral Ridge had over three thousand members.
Pastors from all over wanted to know how he did it. In answer, Jim held his first Evangelism Explosion (EE) clinic on February 20, 1967, to train pastors in his unique method of lay evangelism. Thirty-six pastors attended his first clinic. Since 1967, EE clinics have trained thousands of pastors, and in 1996, EE International reached its goal of planting EE teams in all 211 of the world's nations.
D. James Kennedy, the former dancer from Tampa, continues to evangelize the world through Evangelism Explosion and his radio and television ministries from Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1965 EAST TIMOR, INDONESIA, EXPERIENCES REVIVAL
During the 1960's, the majority of professing Christians in the Timor Evangelical Church in Indonesia were also involved in magic, sorcery, promiscuity, and drunkenness. In response to this challenge, the church at Soe, East Timor, Indonesia, began conducting evangelistic meetings early in 1965. A revival began and quickly spread from Soe to Kupang, on to Niki-Niki, and then beyond Timor. From 1965 to 1972, one hundred thousand people in East Timor were converted to Christ from animism, in addition to large numbers of nominal Christians who experienced a new awakening.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1966 CHINESE CHURCH EXPERIENCES GROWTH THROUGH PERSECUTION
In 1966, perhaps fearing he was losing his grip on China, Communist Chairman Mao Zedong (1893-1976) began a brutal campaign known as the Cultural Revolution. By creating distrust of all foreign influences, a hatred for the Christian faith developed. Due to the Cultural Revolution's terrible persecution of Christians, the Chinese church of about one million was forced underground. When the oppression diminished and Christian churches were allowed to reopen after more than a decade, they resurfaced stronger than ever. Meeting as small groups in private homes had strengthened the Christians in China, similar to the way persecution had strengthened Christians in the early fourth century. As horrible as the Cultural Revolution was, it removed the trappings of Western culture from Christianity in China, allowing the Chinese to embrace true faith. The church grew so explosively that there were approximately 75 million Christians in China by 2000.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1967 FIRST EVANGELISM EXPLOSION SEMINAR IS HELD
In 1959, D. James Kennedy (1930-) started Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Forty-five people attended the first service, but in less than a year the congregation dwindled to only seventeen. While conducting a conference on evangelism with a seminary friend, Kennedy realized he needed to provide his congregation with the tools for one-on-one evangelism. Within one month of receiving Kennedy's evangelism instruction, Coral Ridge had sixty-six members, and a year later there were one hundred and twenty-two. Because other pastors inquired about Kennedy's technique of lay evangelism, he held the first Evangelism Explosion (EE) clinic on February 20, 1967. By 1974, Coral Ridge had more than three thousand members, and by 1996, EE International had teams in all 211 of the world's countries.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1967 SIX DAY WAR
In 1967, Egypt and Syria, falsely claiming that Israel was preparing war, sent troops to the Sinai Peninsula and forced the United Nations Emergency Forces based there to leave. On June 5, 1967, Israel responded with a preemptive strike, demolishing the Egyptian air force in just three hours. Israeli forces captured the Gaza Strip and the Sinai, then conquered the Old City of Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights. The conquest took six days. Israelis celebrated their rescue of the holy sites in Jerusalem, planning to exchange the captured Arab territories for recognition of the state of Israel and a peace treaty with their Arab neighbors. The Arab nations, however, continued to reject Israel's existence, and as a result the captured territories were not relinquished.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1968 MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. IS ASSASSINATED
On April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968), a leading voice for civil rights, was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. King had served as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and as pastor for two Baptist churches, in Montgomery, Alabama, and Atlanta, Georgia. As a leader of the civil rights movement, his message was one of nonviolence. Known for his "I Have a Dream" speech, King also led the "Walk for Freedom" in Montgomery, which ended the segregation of public buses in the city. While many, including some white Christians, resisted his demand for equal rights, King was Time magazine's Man of the Year in 1963, and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
THE OLD CITY UNDER JEWISH CONTROL
June 7, 1967
On June 7, 1967, the army of Israel captured the Old City of Jerusalem. The previous month the Egyptians had decided to attempt once more to conquer Israel. They poured one hundred thousand troops into the Sinai Peninsula, ordered the UN peacekeepers out, and made a military alliance with neighboring Jordan. Israel felt its only hope was to launch a preemptive strike, which it did on June 5. Jordan and Syria immediately entered the war. Two days later, the Israelis captured the Old City, which had been part of Jordan. As a result of this military victory in what is known as the Six Day War, Israel once again possessed her ancient capital. It had been 1, 897 years since Jews last had controlled Jerusalem in AD 70.
During Jesus' ministry he had predicted that Jerusalem and its Temple would be destroyed.
He said, "The time is coming when all these things will be so completely demolished that not one stone will be left on top of another." (Luke 21:6) When his disciples asked him, "When will all this take place? And will there be any sign ahead of time?" Jesus answered, "When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then you will know that the time of its destruction has arrived.....There will be great distress in the land and wrath upon this people.
They will be brutally killed by the sword or sent away as captives to all the nations of the world." (Luke 21:7, 20, 23-24)
From the beginning of Jesus' ministry he warned the Jews of God's coming wrath unless they repented (Matthew 3:7). In response to the Jews crucifying their Messiah, God sent the Roman armies to conquer Galilee and Samaria and then to surround and destroy Jerusalem (cf. Matthew 21:37-22:7). It happened in AD 66, when the last Roman prefect stole from the Temple treasury, triggering a Jewish rebellion. To quell the rebellion the Romans sent four legions, which arrived the following year. After a siege, Jerusalem fell in AD 70. The Roman general Titus completely destroyed the city and Temple.
Jesus had also prophesied that following its defeat "Jerusalem will be ... trampled down by the Gentiles until the age of the Gentiles comes to an end" (Luke 21:20, 24). Does this mean that "the age of the Gentiles," or as other translations put it, "the times of the Gentiles," ended on June 7, 1967, when the Jews gained control of Jerusalem?
Revelation 11:2 seems to answer no. It states that the Gentiles "will trample the holy city for forty-two months," apparently the three and a half years prior to the second coming of Christ, implying that the Jews will not be in control of Jerusalem at that time. If this explanation is correct, the times of the Gentiles did not end on June 7, 1967. They will end at the Second Coming.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1968 THE FOURTH ASSEMBLY OF THE WORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES SPURS LIBERATION THEOLOGY
The World Council of Churches was founded in Amsterdam in 1948. Throughout the twentieth century it became increasingly involved in political activities, especially within developing nations. In 1968, the World Council's fourth assembly, in Uppsala, Sweden, defined mission in a horizontal way, as "humanization." By its action and decisions, the World Council made the purpose of the church more about saving the oppressed from the oppressor, and less a matter of bringing saving faith to the world. This emphasis on salvation as liberation grew in popularity, while evangelicals argued that liberation theology meant supporting man-centered goals, as opposed to proclaiming a uniquely Christian message.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1969 REVIVAL SWEEPS THROUGH INDEPENDENT BAPTIST CHURCHES
In 1969, revival occurred throughout the Independent Baptist Churches of America, regardless of location. The revival was fueled by weekly evangelistic services, as well as by large Sunday school and Saturday morning programs that relied on extensive busing ministries. Independent Baptists became role models for other American churches on how to grow by reaching the lost. Of the one hundred largest churches in America, more than sixty are Independent Baptist, including six of the ten largest churches.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1970 ASBURY COLLEGE EXPERIENCES REVIVAL
In 1970, Asbury College in Wilmore, Kentucky, experienced its greatest revival. Similar revivals had taken place in 1905 and in the 1940's, laying the groundwork for what happened in 1970. Although many on campus had been praying for revival all fall, it unexpectedly arrived during a routine chapel meeting one morning in February. The college dean, Custer Reynolds, decided not to speak on the scheduled topic, but instead offered a testimony and encouraged the students to share what God was doing in their lives. The routine fifty-five-minute chapel service ended up lasting 185 hours, having a profound impact on the students, faculty, and the larger community. Students experienced the presence of God as they recommitted their lives to him. As Christian magazines and major American newspapers carried the stories of what was happening at Asbury, similar revival spread to an estimated 130 other colleges.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1971 SASKATOON EXPERIENCES REVIVAL
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, located in the heart of Canada's "Bible Belt," had more churches per capita than any other Canadian city. However, the area's pastors believed the community was in need of revival. Several pastors from different denominations met weekly for more than a year to pray for revival. On October 13, 1971, the Saskatoon revival began at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where twin evangelists Ralph and Lou Sutera (1932-) were holding meetings. Their emphasis on forgiveness and reconciliation spoke powerfully to the members of the church, and the revival quickly spread to other local churches. Daily meetings with thousands in attendance lasted for eight weeks, profoundly affecting not only local Christians, but the entire community. The Canadian Revival Fellowship was formed as a result of the Saskatoon Revival, and it helped bring revival to many other communities across Canada, the U.S., and Europe.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1972 ISRAELI ATHLETES ARE KILLED AT THE MUNICH OLYMPICS
At 4:30 a.m. on September 5, 1972, eight Arab terrorists stormed into the Olympic village and raided the apartment building that housed the Israeli athletes. Two Israeli athletes were killed in the assault and nine more were taken hostage. The terrorists demanded the release of two hundred Arab prisoners held in Israeli prisons. After day-long negotiations proved unsuccessful, the terrorists headed for the military airport in Munich to fly back to the Middle East. German sharpshooters killed three of the Palestinians as they were boarding helicopters, and in the ensuing gun battle the terrorists killed all nine hostages. Two more terrorists were also killed.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1973 THE U.S. SUPREME COURT SUPPORTS ABORTION
On January 22, 1973, the United States Supreme Court issued its controversial Roe v. Wade decision. The majority decision of the Court was that states could not restrict the right of a woman to have an abortion in the first two trimesters of a pregnancy, and they could allow an abortion in the third trimester, if the circumstances warranted it. In so doing, the Court essentially opened the door for abortion on demand. Between 1973 and 2004, since Roe v. Wade, approximately 40 million legal abortions were performed in the United States. Every January 22, on state capital grounds all over the country, pro-life advocates gather to protest the devastating effects that abortion has had on millions of mothers and children. The abortion issue is a constant source of controversy, as Americans continue to deb.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1973 PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN AMERICA IS FORMED
What is today the Presbyterian Church in America was organized in December 1973, as the National Presbyterian Church, with approximately 260 churches and forty thousand communicant members. At its second general assembly in 1974, the denomination changed its name to the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). In 1982, the Reformed Presbyterian Church Evangelical Synod joined the denomination, bringing with it Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia, and Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri. The PCA Church adheres to the Westminster Confession of Faith, and the Longer and Shorter Westminster Catechisms. The PCA is one of America's fastest-growing denominations, with approximately thirteen hundred congregations in 2004 and more than three hundred thousand members.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1973 JEWS FOR JESUS IS FOUNDED
Jews for Jesus was founded on September 17, 1973, in the San Francisco Bay Area, by Moishe Rosen (1932-), a long-time missionary to the Jewish people. During his twenty-three years as executive director of the organization, Rosen formulated evangelistic methods and materials to communicate the gospel to Jews. As the group gained momentum, many Jewish leaders began to oppose its ministry. Jews for Jesus is now an international ministry, with offices in Israel, Brazil, and Germany.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1973 WAR BEGINS IN ISRAEL ON YOM KIPPUR F
ollowing the Six Day War in 1967, Israel experienced economic growth and renewed hope. Israel's lack of focus on defense during this period led to Egyptian and Syrian attempts to regain the Suez Canal and the Golan Heights, sites lost in the Six Day War. On October 6, 1973, supported by the Soviet Union, Syria attacked Israel from the north, and Egypt attacked in the Sinai region.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
THE PRESIDENT'S HATCHET MAN
August 12, 1973
God's dealings with us may be a painful process.
Charles Colson was a senior partner in a prestigious Washington D.C. law firm when in 1969, he received a phone call from President Richard Nixon. The president needed him. A Wall Street Journal headline summed up his role as special counsel to the president: "Nixon Hatchet Man. Call It What You Will, Chuck Colson Handles President's Dirty Work." Then came the Watergate scandal, and Colson resigned his position to form his own law firm.
In March 1973, he went to visit Tom Phillips, a previous client and president of the Raytheon Company. When Colson mentioned that he had heard Phillips had become involved in some religious activities, Phillips replied, "Yes, that's true, Chuck. I have accepted Jesus Christ. I have committed my life to him, and it has been the most marvelous experience of my whole life."
That summer, while on vacation with his wife in the Boston area to get away from the Watergate hearings, Colson found himself calling Tom Phillips, who invited him to his home the evening of August 12, 1973. That evening Phillips straightforwardly told Colson about Jesus and read to him from C. S. Lewis' book Mere Christianity. Lewis' description of pride as a cancer hit Colson like a torpedo. Phillips gave Colson a copy of the book.
Back in his car, Colson began crying uncontrollably and tearfully prayed to God, "Take me! Take me!"
A short time later, words that he initially hadn't understood now fell naturally from his lips: "Lord Jesus, I believe you. I accept you. Please come into my life. I commit it to you."
Colson soon became part of a small prayer group that included Congressman Al Quie of Minnesota. Supported by these new brothers in Christ, Colson decided to plead guilty to a Watergate crime of which he had not been charged—passing derogatory information to the press about antiwar activist Daniel Ellsberg. He was sentenced to a prison term of one to three years. After Colson had been in prison for nearly seven months, his family began falling apart. His wife was near the breaking point, and his son was in jail for narcotics possession.
At this point Al Quie called and said, "There's an old statute someone told me about. I'm going to ask the president if I can serve the rest of your term for you." Overwhelmed, that night Chuck Colson completely surrendered himself to God. Two days later, the judge at his trial released him from prison because of his family problems. As he left prison a Christian federal marshal told him that he had felt God would set Chuck free that day. Colson replied, "Thank you, brother, but he did it two nights ago."
In 1976, Chuck Colson founded Prison Fellowship, which ministers in six hundred prisons in eighty-eight countries with fifty thousand volunteers.
The incursions began on Yom Kippur, a religious holiday observed even by nonreligious Jews, catching the nation by surprise. However, Israel, backed by the United States, quickly recovered and had penetrated twenty-five miles into Egypt by the time a cease-fire was called. Although Israel's military once again demonstrated its superior skill, the initial trauma of the surprise attack had a devastating effect on Israel's sense of security.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1974 LAUSANNE CONGRESS ON WORLD EVANGELIZATION IS HELD IN SWITZERLAND
The Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization was held July 16-25, 1974, in Lausanne, Switzerland. Assembled by 142 evangelical leaders from around the globe, the council consisted of nearly four thousand participants from 150 nations and was chaired by Billy Graham (1918-). The conference theme was "Let the Earth Hear His Voice." The congress maintained that Western missionaries should continue work in Third World developing countries, countering suggestions that Third World missions should be suspended. The congress adopted the Lausanne covenant, drafted by John R. W. Stott (1921-), which is a document that emphasizes the authority of the Bible and its call to missions.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1974 FIRST VINEYARD CHURCH IS ESTABLISHED
The first Vineyard congregation was established in July 1974, by Kenn Gullickson, who had been ordained by Calvary Chapel in Southern California. It all began with a meeting of five people at a friend's house. At each gathering, Gullickson sat on a stool, playing his guitar to lead worship, and then taught from the Bible. Weekly attendance quickly grew to more than a thousand. Another strand of the Vineyards began in October 1976, in a home fellowship led by Carol Wimber, wife of John Wimber (1934-1997), then pastor of the Calvary Chapel of Yorba Linda, California. In 1982, with his ministry emphasizing "signs and wonders," John Wimber left Calvary Chapel to join the Vineyard movement, soon becoming its leader. In 1985, the Association of Vineyard Churches was founded. By 1997, there were more than four hundred Vineyard congregations in the United States and nearly two hundred overseas.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1974 CAMPUS CRUSADE "EXPLO" IS HELD IN KOREA
In June 1972, more than 180,000 people gathered in Dallas, Texas, for Explo '72, a Campus Crusade for Christ-hosted event intended to motivate Christians to fulfill the Great Commission. On the heels of Explo 72, Bill Bright (1921-2003) and the leaders of Campus Crusade began planning a larger evangelistic training event in Seoul, South Korea. Explo 74, which opened in August 1974, far surpassed everyone's expectations. Delegates from every province in South Korea and seventy-eight other countries attended the event. Official police estimates numbered the crowd at more than 1.3 million during two of the evening rallies, making the convention the largest Christian gathering in history. In the four years following Explo 74, the South Korean church grew from 3 to 7 million members.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1975 NORTH VIETNAM CONQUERS SOUTH VIETNAM
In 1945, North Vietnam declared itself a Communist republic. Continual warfare plagued Vietnam from 1941 to 1985, first under the Japanese, then against the French, the Americans, and their neighboring countries. In 1975, North Vietnam defeated South Vietnam and its American allies. It also ruled Cambodia from 1978 to 1985. As a result of the Communist victory, there is no religious freedom in the country. Persecution of Christians is as severe as almost anywhere in the world. The Vietnam War also was a major event in the history of the United States, as many young Americans rejected not only their nation's participation in the war but traditional American values as well.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1975 WILLOW CREEK COMMUNITY CHURCH IS FOUNDED
Market research revealed to Bill Hybels (1951-) that suburbanites found church hard to relate to, as well as dull, and they liked to remain anonymous. Desiring to minister to people in Chicago's suburbs, Hybels began Willow Creek Community Church at a movie theater in Palatine, Illinois, on October 12, 1975. Within the year, one thousand people were attending, and by the year 2004, Willow Creek's five weekly services regularly attracted seventeen thousand people to the church's enormous mall-like building in South Barrington, Illinois. Church services, held in a seven-thousand-seat auditorium, require minimal participation and include entertaining music, drama, and a sermon. Willow Creek focuses on five "core values" (grace, groups, growth, gifts, and good stewardship), and coordinates three thousand small groups. Today, ten thousand churches follow Hybels' example and participate in the Willow Creek Association, established in 1992.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1976 CHARLES COLSON FOUNDS PRISON FELLOWSHIP
After the Watergate scandal leading to the resignation of President Richard Nixon (1913-1994), Charles Colson (1931-) resigned from the White House staff and started his own law firm. In 1973, one of Colson's clients shared his Christian testimony with him, and shortly thereafter, Colson put his own faith in Jesus Christ. Supported by a group of Christian friends, Colson decided to plead guilty to a Watergate crime, even though he had not been charged. He was sentenced to a prison term of one to three years. During his incarceration and after his release, Colson developed a burden for the spiritual welfare of other prisoners, and in 1976, he founded Prison Fellowship, a Christian ministry active in six hundred prisons throughout the world.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1977 FOCUS ON THE FAMILY BEGINS BROADCASTING
In 1977, after working for fourteen years in the University of Southern California's School of Medicine, licensed psychologist Dr. James C. Dobson (1936-) began broadcasting a radio program called Focus on the Family, from a two-room office suite in Pomona, California. Dobson was distressed by the disintegration of the American family that he had observed during his years as a psychologist, and he felt that God was calling him to address the problem. On his radio program, Dobson presents biblical solutions to family problems. By 2004, the daily program was syndicated on more than six thousand radio stations worldwide. The Focus on the Family organization, now headquartered in Colorado Springs, Colorado, has become a leading evangelical organization and an active proponent of family values, lobbying against pornography, gay marriage, and other family-related issues.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1977 THE ALPHA COURSE IS FIRST OFFERED
In 1977, Charles Marnham, a clergyman at Holy Trinity Brompton, an Anglican parish in London, England, devised a simple plan to present the basics of the Christian faith to new believers in a casual setting. His relaxed and informal program was called the Alpha Course. Alpha represents an acronym: A—anyone interested in learning more about Christianity; L—learning and laughter; P—pasta (eating together to build community); H—helping one another; A—ask anything. Each session of the program begins with a meal at which people can get acquainted. After this, the larger group is divided into small groups for discussion. In 1990, Nicky Gumbel began leading the Alpha Course, reshaping it into a ten-week course to reach the unchurched, and placing emphasis on evangelism. Through the year 2004, more than 2 million people will have taken the Alpha Course.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1978 ASSOCIATION OF CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS INTERNATIONAL IS FOUNDED
On July 10, 1978, three Christian school associations merged to form the Association of Christian Schools International (ACSI) in LaHabra, California. In 1994, ACSI moved to Colorado Springs, Colorado, as it continued to grow and expand. Currently the ACSI has eighteen regional offices in North America and includes in its membership more than five thousand Christian schools in more than one hundred countries.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1978 CAMP DAVID ACCORDS LEAD TO AGREEMENT
Following a diplomatic visit to Israel by Egyptian president Anwar Sadat (1918— 1981) in November 1977, the two long-time enemies began peace talks in 1978, at Camp David, in the Catoctin Mountains of Maryland—largely as a result of the persistent urging of U.S. president Jimmy Carter (1924-). Organized by Carter, the conference between Sadat and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin (1913— 1992) led to an agreement in which Israel surrendered the Sinai region to Egypt, in exchange for Egypt's political recognition of Israel and a more stable alliance between the two nations. For their efforts, Sadat and Begin received the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize. Unfortunately, Sadat was assassinated in 1981 as a result of his stand.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1979 JESUS FILM IS INTRODUCED
Campus Crusade for Christ, International, founded in 1953, is known for its innovative evangelistic efforts. In 1979, Campus Crusade purchased the rights to a feature-length production depicting the life of Jesus, based on the Gospel of Luke. The project was made possible by a substantial donation from billionaire Nelson Bunker Hunt. Following the success of the film's release in the United States, efforts were turned abroad. By January 1, 2004, more than five billion people worldwide had viewed the JESUS film since 1979, the audio having been translated into 857 languages. Nearly 200 million people have made professions of faith as a result of seeing the film.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1979 EVANGELICAL COUNCIL FOR FINANCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY IS FOUNDED In 1977,
Congress threatened to pass legislation to regulate the financial activity of evangelical organizations unless they policed themselves, and the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA) was founded on May 9, 1979, in response. In an effort to regulate and promote the trustworthiness of evangelical nonprofit organizations, the ECFA requires that members have an independent board of directors and adhere to a code of financial ethics and accountability. The ECFA gained prominence in the wake of the televangelist scandals in the mid-1980s, when the Christian public wanted to ensure that the money they were contributing was not being misused. Membership in the ECFA is voluntary, and each organization submits itself to an annual financial review.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1979 JERRY FALWELL FOUNDS THE MORAL MAJORITY
Jerry Falwell (1933-) was converted to Christ in 1952, and ordained by the Baptist Bible Fellowship in 1956, after graduating from Baptist Bible College in Springfield, Missouri. That same year he founded the Thomas Road Baptist Church in his hometown of Lynchburg, Virginia. Falwell initially avoided political involvement, but beginning in the 1970's, his articulation of conservative positions became more public, especially in regard to abortion and prayer in public schools. His increasingly political concerns led Falwell to found the Moral Majority in 1979. The Moral Majority registered millions of voters who helped elect Ronald Reagan (1911-2004) as president of the United States in 1980 and 1984. Falwell, who disbanded the Moral Majority in 1989, remains active in politics, speaking out on such issues as abortion, homosexuality, and pornography.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1979 SOUTHERN BAPTIST TAKEOVER
After many years of control by more liberal leadership, the conservative membership of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC)—a denomination consisting of more than forty thousand congregations in the southern part of the United States—decided in 1979 to campaign for the election of one of their own. They succeeded in electing Adrian Rogers (1931-) as SBC president. As president, Rogers had the authority to select leaders for committees, including missionary boards, Sunday school, and even the trustees of SBC seminaries. Following this success, conservatives have been successful in electing their SBC presidential candidate every year since. By the late 1980's, all SBC seminaries and mission boards were run by conservatives. In the 1990's, moderates formed the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, which remains in the SBC but supports its own seminary, missionaries, and publishing efforts.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1980 JOHN PIPER ENTERS THE PASTORATE
Born in Tennessee and raised in South Carolina, John Piper (1946-), the son of a Southern evangelist, is a graduate of Wheaton College and Fuller Seminary. He received a doctorate in theology from the University of Munich in 1974. Piper spent the next six years teaching Bible at Bethel College in St. Paul, Minnesota. Feeling God's call to the pastorate, he preached his first sermon as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on July 6, 1980. Deeply influenced by the writings of theologian Jonathan Edwards, Piper began to articulate the doctrine of Christian hedonism, that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. In 1986, his publication of Desiring God launched a global speaking and writing ministry that catapulted him into leadership of the growing movement toward Reformed theology.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1982 ISRAEL LAUNCHES WAR IN LEBANON
In 1982, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin (1913-1992) commenced Israel's first offensive military initiative where the existence of Israel was not directly threatened. The mission was to destroy the bases of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in southern Lebanon, from which attacks were being launched against northern Israel. After Israel invaded Lebanon and destroyed the PLO camps, General Ariel Sharon (1928-) marched his troops to Beirut, Lebanon's capital city. General Sharon incurred much criticism by allowing Lebanese Christians into the Palestinian refugee camps of Sobra and Shatila, where they massacred the Palestinian refugees under Israel's care. While the Lebanon War achieved its objective by inhibiting the PLO, the campaign spawned significant unrest within Israel and cost Israel much international sympathy. The Israeli army withdrew from Lebanon in 1985.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
PHYSICIAN OF SOULS
February 26, 1981
His was an unusual path to the pulpit.
David Martyn Lloyd-Jones was born in Wales in 1899, and at twenty-two earned a medical degree under the most renowned physician in England. But Lloyd-Jones believed there was a soul sickness that ran far deeper than any physical ailment. He determined that what people needed most is life from God. As he studied and pondered these truths and came to understand that through Christ's death on the cross people could have eternal life, Lloyd-Jones himself was born again. This experience changed his life—and its direction from medicine to the pastorate. His theological education came from books of great theologians like John Owens and Jonathan Edwards. "I devoured these volumes and just read them and read them," Lloyd-Jones wrote. "It is certainly true that they helped me better than anything else." In 1927, he was ordained in George Whitefield's Tabernacle in London as a Calvinistic Methodist.
In 1938, after an eleven-year evangelistic and preaching ministry in South Wales, Lloyd-Jones was invited by the aging G. Campbell Morgan to become copastor with him of Westminster Chapel in London. His formal induction service in September 1939 was canceled, for fear of a Nazi bombing raid.
Lloyd-Jones spent the next thirty years preaching at the church, seeing it through the difficult war years. He became the sole pastor when Morgan retired in 1943. Under his leadership, Westminster Chapel became recognized as the leading evangelical pulpit of England. His ministry there was characterized by his careful exposition of the Bible and his uncompromising Reformed theology. At the same time, he was known for his genuine piety, his family life, his sense of humor, his skill as a counselor, and his deep desire for renewal in the evangelical church. Thousands found Christ and grew in their faith under Lloyd-Jones's preaching. He deserves to be included among the great preachers of all time.
In 1968, illness forced him to end his ministry at Westminster. But Lloyd-Jones was later convinced that God removed his preaching ministry so that he could write. He began editing his sermon transcripts for publication and wrote many books that still remain in print.
Lloyd-Jones was a student of church history, and among the quotes he treasured most was a statement by John Wesley, who said of the early Methodists, "Our people die well." Lloyd-Jones knew the power behind those words. Physical death did, indeed, lose its sting for those who were confident of their life in eternity.
His turn to die came in the waning days of winter in 1981. On Thursday evening, February 26, 1981, in a trembling hand Lloyd-Jones wrote a note to his dear wife and children: "Do not pray for healing. Do not hold me back from glory." His request was honored. The next Sunday, Dr. David Martyn Lloyd-Jones entered glory to meet face-to-face the God he so cherished.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1985 GORBACHEV BECOMES GENERAL SECRETARY OF SOVIET COMMUNIST PARTY
In March 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev (1931—) became general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In an effort to salvage the failing Communist system, Gorbachev initiated a program designed to make the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) a more open society. Gorbachev then became president of the USSR in 1989. His regime was noted for glasnost (openness) and perestroika (reform), and in 1990, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. His administration saw the disintegration of the USSR, and in 1991, he resigned as president of a USSR that no longer existed. The breakup of the Soviet Union under Gorbachev's policies opened up the entire region for the gospel.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1987 INTIFADA BEGINS ON WEST BANK
On December 6, 1987, an Israeli shopper was stabbed to death in the Gaza Strip. The next day, four Palestinians from the Jabalya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip were killed in an unrelated traffic accident. Some Palestinians, however, surmised that the crash was not accidental but an act of vengeance. This accusation led to mass rioting in Jabalya, and a seventeen-year-old Palestinian was killed by Israeli police during the riots. The riots spread throughout the West Bank and continued to intensify. Although the riots of this period, which has come to be known as Intifada or "shaking off," were at first disorganized, Palestinian leaders soon organized the violence into a guerrilla war against the Israelis. The violence and rioting continued until 1993.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1987 TELEVANGELISM SCANDALS ARE REVEALED
In the 1970s, evangelicals combined evangelism and entertainment in several popular and profitable television programs. However, scandals unmasked several high-profile televangelists. On March 19, 1987, Jim Bakker (1940-) resigned from his ministry because of sexual improprieties and was sentenced to prison for financial misconduct. Jimmy Swaggart (1935-), who sought to debunk Bakker, confessed during his broadcast on February 21, 1988, to voyeuristic liaisons with a prostitute. Oral Roberts (1918—), on one of his television broadcasts, declared that God would "call me home" if viewers did not donate millions to save his financially troubled empire. As a result of these scandals, the ratings for the programs plummeted, and financial support for Christian television programs fell drastically.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1989 BERLIN WALL COMES DOWN
On November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall was dismantled, after standing for nearly thirty years as an international symbol of division. The wall, erected in August 1961 by Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971), the leader of the Soviet Union, had divided East Berlin (under the control of the Russians) from West Berlin (under the control of the Allies). The Berlin Wall was demolished by a joyful crowd of young men, celebrating the reunion of Berlin and East and West Germany. The tearing down of the wall was a direct answer to the prayers of Germany's Christians. The subsequent reunification of Germany marked the end of the persecution of Christians in East Germany.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1990 JEWISH EMIGRATION FROM SOVIET UNION PEAKS
The Soviet Union and its succeeding nations have been the greatest source of Jewish immigrants. Until 1971, the Communist government allowed only a trickle of Jews to leave the country. In 1959, only three were permitted to emigrate. In 1971, because of the pressure from worldwide Jewry, Jewish emigration was allowed to increase. With the onset of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (reform) under Mikhail Gorbachev (1931—), emigration peaked in 1990, when 213,437 Jews were able to leave the Soviet Union. Most immigrated to either Israel or the United States.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1990 PROMISE KEEPERS IS CONCEIVED
On March 20, 1990, Bill McCartney (1940-), head football coach of the University of Colorado, had a conversation with a friend on the way to a Fellowship of Christian Athletes meeting. They discussed a vision to fill the university's football stadium with men worshiping God. Their first event brought more than four thousand men to the stadium, and by 1993, they were attracting crowds of fifty thousand. Promise Keepers had become a full-fledged evangelical movement and organization, aimed at discipling men to be leaders at both home and church. Holding rallies in sports stadiums throughout the nation, Promise Keepers enjoyed much success throughout America. However, by 1998, they had fallen on financial hard times and were forced to cut back on their rallies.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1993 OSLO ACCORDS ARE SIGNED
In the summer of 1993, the Israeli government and leaders from the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) met secretly in Oslo, Norway, and negotiated a peace treaty. On August 20, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (1922-1995) and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat (1929-2004) "announced the agreement in Oslo, with a formal signing ceremony on September 13, 1993, in Washington, D.C. The heart of the agreement was mutual recognition of the PLO and Israel, with the goal of Palestinian autonomy. The Israeli government agreed to withdraw their troops from the Gaza Strip and West Bank and allowed for Palestinian self-government in those areas for five years, during which a permanent agreement would be negotiated. In the ensuing years, however, agreement was not reached, and when the two parties met in 2000, the negotiations ended in failure. Since 2000, violence has escalated, with frequent Palestinian suicide bombings followed by Israeli retaliation.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1994 ISRAEL SIGNS A PEACE TREATY WITH JORDAN
On July 25, 1994, King Hussein I (1935-1999) of Jordan and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (1922-1995) met in Washington, D.C. and signed the Washington Declaration, which affirmed five principles for reaching a lasting peace between the two nations. Then on October 26, 1994, at Wadi Araba on the border between Israel and Jordan, King Hussein and Rabin signed a peace treaty which established a solid framework for future relations. Jordan thus became only the second Arab nation to make peace with Israel, following the example of Egypt's treaty in 1978.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
1995 RABIN IS ASSASSINATED
The signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993 by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (1922-1995) infuriated many Orthodox Jews. They were upset at the prospect of losing control of certain holy sites, and many Israelis, religious or not, refused to trust the Palestine Liberation Organization. In reaction, a Jewish fanatic assassinated Rabin on November 4, 1995, following a peace demonstration in Tel Aviv, Israel. Rabin's death postponed indefinitely any hope of peace with the Palestinians, because Rabin's successor, Shimon Peres (1923-), was unable to garner public support amid continued terrorist attacks.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The