- HOME
- MESSIAH
- THE BODY OF MESSIAH
- ONE NEW MAN
- THE OLIVE TREE
- THE BRANCHES
- LAW AND GRACE
- UNITY
- OBEDIENCE
- KINGDOM LIVING
- UNIVERSAL CHURCH
- BIBLICAL HOLIDAYS
- MESSIANIC
-
SCRIPTURE INSIGHTS
- WISDOM
- WORSHIP
- TRUTH
- PRAYER
- THE TRINITY
- THE ANNOINTED ONE
- WHAT IS SIN?
- FORGIVENESS
- ANTICHRIST
- FAITH BUILDERS
- BRIDGE OF UNDERSTANDING
- TABERNACLE
- THINGS TO PONDER
- DISTORTIONS OF CHRISTIANITY
- ISRAEL
-
RELIGIOUS HISTORY
- FAITH THROUGH THE CENTURIES
- THE END TIMES
- RAPTURE
- OUR COMMISSION
- HEAVEN
- GLOBAL VISION
- BIBLICAL WORLD VIEW
- DEVOTIONALS
- SALVATION
- ENCOURAGEMENT
- GIVING
- BIBLE TOOLS
- RESOURCES
- ABOUT THIS SITE
- MISSION STATEMENT
- DEDICATION
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
- GUEST BOOK
- BLOG
601 KING ATHELBERT OF KENT IS BAPTIZED
Athelbert (552-616), son of the Saxon king of Kent, England, succeeded his father as king in about 580. In about 578, he married the Christian daughter of the king of the Franks. As part of a marriage agreement she was allowed to bring her chaplain, Liudhard, with her. Liudhard then was permitted to restore the old Roman church at Canterbury that had stood vacant for two hundred years. When Augustine arrived in England in 597, Athelbert met him under an oak venerated by the Saxons. Athelbert believed that the sacred tree would be able to cancel out any magic the Christians might use. He nevertheless allowed Augustine to establish a house in Canterbury and to use Liudhard's church. Within the year Athelbert was converted to Christ. Soon hundreds were baptized, and in 601 Athelbert himself was baptized, becoming the first Christian English king.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
614 PERSIANS CONQUER JERUSALEM
The one period of respite for the Jews of Palestine from the domination of the Byzantine Empire came in 614 during the final war between Rome and Persia. In 603, King Chosroes II of Persia (r. 591-628) began attacking the eastern province of Rome, and in 614 he conquered Jerusalem with assistance from the Jews, who looked to Persia as their liberator. Chosroes killed and deported many Christians and turned control of the city over to the Jews. However, he soon realized that the Jews were not strong enough nor sufficiently numerous to defend Palestine by themselves. As a result, in 617 Chosroes returned Palestine to Christian allies. In 629, the Romans reconquered Jerusalem and restored Palestine to Byzantine control.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
627 KING EDWIN OF NORTHUMBRIA, ENGLAND, IS BAPTIZED Edwin (585-633), king of Northumbria, married Ethelburh, the daughter of King Ethelbert (552-616) of Kent in 625. A Christian like her father, Ethelburh was accompanied to Northumbria by her chaplain, Paulinus (d. 644). On the same day the following year, Edwin narrowly escaped an assassination attempt, and his wife gave birth to a daughter. Sobered by these experiences, he told Paulinus that he would become a Christian if Paulinus' God would give him victory over the West Saxons. Edwin won the battle and thereby became the most powerful king in England. Edwin was baptized in 627 and then sanctioned the conversion of the Northumbrians to Christianity.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
634 SIGEBERT'S EFFORTS HELP CONVERT THE EAST ANGLES One of the last pagan areas of England was the fiercely independent kingdom of East Anglia, including modern Norfolk and Suffolk on the southeastern coast. Redwald, who ruled East Anglia from about 599-625, was converted to Christianity at the court of King Athelbert (552-616) in Kent, but he reverted to paganism because of the influence of his wife. His son Eorpwald (r. 625-632) was converted to Christ by King Edwin (585-633) of Northumbria but soon was murdered because of his faith. Eorpwald's brother Sigebert, also a devout Christian, fled to France to avoid the wrath of his pagan stepfather, Redwald. After ten years Sigebert returned and successfully took the throne in about 634. As a result of Sigebert's efforts, the East Angles were converted to Christianity from paganism. After reigning until about 638, Sigebert retired to a monastery.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
635 NESTORIAN MISSION TO CHINA
Nestorius (380-451) had been made Patriarch of Constantinople in 428 but was deposed three years later by the Council of Ephesus. He was probably orthodox but had not adequately stated his view of the relationship between Christ's human and divine natures. In 1623, a monument was discovered in China that chronicled the Nestorian missionary Alopen's arrival there in 635. Churches and monasteries were established, Christian literature was distributed, and the movement received the emperor's approval. Nestorian Christianity reached all the way to the border of Korea. Churches flourished until the tenth-century fall of the dynasty that had supported them. Traces of the Nestorian church remained until the thirteenth century, at which time it largely disappeared.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
637 MUSLIM ARMIES CONQUER JERUSALEM
In 636, near where the Yarmuk River enters the Jordan, the armies of Islam engaged in what was to be the decisive battle against the armies of the Byzantine Empire for the control of Palestine. Though vastly outnumbered, the Muslims were victorious with few of the Byzantine army escaping. The following year the two principal Muslim armies converged in a siege on Jerusalem. The siege lasted four months as the Christians zealously defended their Holy City. When further defense appeared hopeless, Sophronius (560-638), the patriarch of Jerusalem, offered to surrender to Caliph Omar of Medina (581-644) if he would come to Jerusalem. The caliph came riding on a camel, accepted the surrender, and promised the Christians of Jerusalem freedom of worship and possession of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. The Jews of Jerusalem also survived as a tolerated minority.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
A MAN NAMED MUHAMMAD
June 8, 632
He successfully invented a new religion.
Muhammad, the founder of Islam, the world's youngest major religion, was born in Mecca around 570. An orphan at a young age, he grew up in relative poverty, but at the age of twenty-five, Muhammad entered the service of a wealthy widow, fifteen years his senior, named Khadija. His marriage to her shortly thereafter provided him with instant wealth. Her affluence provided him with the luxury to indulge in a life of religious contemplation.
When he was about forty, Muhammad claimed that he received a prophetic call from Allah through the angel Gabriel. He began preaching monotheism, a final judgment, alms, prayer, and surrender to the will of Allah. In three years he attracted only twelve converts. Persecuted in his hometown of Mecca, he fled to Medina in 622. His flight to Medina is called the Hegira and is traditionally dated July 15, 622, which marks the beginning of the Muslim calendar.
During his time in Medina, Muhammad's revelations became more legalistic and secular. Islam, as his new religion was called, became both a community and a state with Muhammad as both its ruler and lawgiver.
Once he centralized his power in Medina, he was able to return to Mecca and conquer it in 630. By the time Muhammad died on June 8, 632, almost all of Arabia had embraced Islam. In the hundred years following his death, Islam spread like wildfire.
The successors of Muhammad encouraged jihad, or holy war, against non-Muslims and within a century built an empire stretching from northern Spain all the way across North Africa to India. Many of the areas conquered, such as Iraq, Syria, Palestine, and North Africa, were formerly Christian strongholds where the Christians chose conversion to Islam over death by the sword. Even western Europe was threatened until Charles Martel of France finally halted Islam's expansion, when he defeated the Muslims at the battle of Tours, France, in 732, exactly one hundred years after Muhammad's death.
Islam has continued to grow, and today more than one-fifth of the world's population is Muslim. In 1900, only 12 percent of the world's population embraced Islam; by 2000 the number had grown to 21 percent. Today, Islam is the fastest growing of the major religions. Most Muslims live in a belt stretching from West Africa to Southeast Asia. Islam is the majority religion in forty-two countries and territories, most of which prohibit Christian evangelism and exclude Christian missionaries.
In spite of the fact that Muhammad's followers have greatly increased their numbers and their political power, there is encouragement in that more Muslims came to Christ between 1980 and 2000 than in any earlier period of history.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
664 THE SYNOD OF WHITBY MEETS
Seventh-century English Christianity was divided into the Roman Catholic Church and the Celtic church. One of the divisive issues was the date for Easter. This issue came to a head in 663 when King Oswy (611-670) of Northumbria, a Celt, realized that he would be celebrating Easter when his Roman Catholic wife was observing Lent. King Oswy called a synod at Whitby in Yorkshire in 664, with delegates from both movements. The Celts argued that their position could be traced through Columba (521-597) and Polycarp (69-155) to St. John, while the Romanists declared that their view went back to Peter and Paul. King Oswy decided in favor of the Roman position, stating that he would rather be on good terms with the keeper of heaven's gate than with Columba. This decision aligned the English Church with the Roman Catholic Church for the next 875 years.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
676 CAEDMON CREATES CHRISTIAN POETRY IN ENGLISH
In about 676, an illiterate English herdsman named Caedmon (d. 680), following an evening of revelry, had a vision in which he was commanded to write poetry. In the vision he recited verses that he had never before heard. To his great surprise, the next day he could repeat the verses from his vision and create more. His employer introduced him to Hilda (614-680), the abbess of Whitby, who verified his gift by reading portions of Scripture to him and asking him to put them into poetry. He was able to do so by the next morning. Hilda then hired him for the abbey, and he spent the rest of his life turning Bible stories into verse. He is the earliest known Christian Anglo-Saxon poet.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
680 THE THIRD COUNCIL OF CONSTANTINOPLE MEETS
In response to the rise of Islam in the mid-seventh century, Eastern Emperor Heraclius (575-641) sought to strengthen the church by unifying it. This meant trying to bring the Monophysites, who held that Christ had only one nature instead of two, back into the church. In 638, he proposed a compromise called Monothelitism that described Christ as having two natures, divine and human, but only one will. A few leaders in Egypt accepted the compromise, but most Eastern churches rejected it. The Third Council of Constantinople, the sixth ecumenical council, dealt with this issue. The council desired to achieve unity between the churches of Constantinople and Rome. It therefore rejected the compromise of Monothelitism and declared that Christ not only had two natures but also two wills. As a result of this council, the Nestorian and Monophysite churches separated themselves permanently from orthodoxy.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
686 WILFRID COMPLETES THE EVANGELIZATION OF ENGLAND The son of a Northumbrian noble, Wilfrid (634-709) studied Roman Catholicism at Canterbury. At the Synod of Whitby in 664, he was the leading spokesman for the Roman dating of Easter. Following the synod he was appointed bishop of York. In 678, the archbishop of Canterbury, concerned about Wilfrid's aspirations for power, divided the diocese of York into four sections, taking away three-quarters of Wilfrid's territory. Wilfrid appealed to Rome and won his case, but when he returned to England he was imprisoned by the king of Northumbria, whose new queen had an intense hatred for Wilfrid. In 686, after his release from prison, he went to Sussex, where he had success evangelizing the heathen Saxons of southernmost England, thereby completing the evangelization of England.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
691 THE DOME OF THE ROCK IS COMPLETED
Less than seventy-five years after the founding of Islam, Caliph Abd al-Malik (646-705) completed the Dome of the Rock mosque on the Temple mount in Jerusalem. The building is the oldest surviving Muslim structure in the world. According to Muslim doctrine, during his Night Journey, the prophet Muhammad (570-632) traveled to Jerusalem, set foot on the giant rock on the Temple mount, and then ascended to heaven. The Dome was built directly over this rock, which is also the traditional site of Abraham's near-sacrifice of Isaac. After construction was completed, Abd al-Malik commemorated his accomplishment with an inscription that read, "This dome was built by the servant of God Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan, emir of the faithful, in the [Muslim] year seventy-two."
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
694 JUDAISM IS OUTLAWED IN SPAIN
The Jewish communities of Spain had flourished under the Roman Empire. By 415, a barbarian tribe called the Visigoths had taken control of Spain after conquering Rome in 410. The Visigoth king Recared (586-601) converted to Catholicism in 598, and the majority of the nobles followed suit. The church held successive councils in Toledo, the Visigoth capital of Spain, which increasingly instigated vicious anti-Semitism. This culminated in the Seventeenth Council of Toledo in 694, at which all Jews living in Visigoth Spain were declared slaves. Their possessions were confiscated, and Judaism was outlawed. All Jewish children over the age of seven were taken from their homes and raised as Christians.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
Athelbert (552-616), son of the Saxon king of Kent, England, succeeded his father as king in about 580. In about 578, he married the Christian daughter of the king of the Franks. As part of a marriage agreement she was allowed to bring her chaplain, Liudhard, with her. Liudhard then was permitted to restore the old Roman church at Canterbury that had stood vacant for two hundred years. When Augustine arrived in England in 597, Athelbert met him under an oak venerated by the Saxons. Athelbert believed that the sacred tree would be able to cancel out any magic the Christians might use. He nevertheless allowed Augustine to establish a house in Canterbury and to use Liudhard's church. Within the year Athelbert was converted to Christ. Soon hundreds were baptized, and in 601 Athelbert himself was baptized, becoming the first Christian English king.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
614 PERSIANS CONQUER JERUSALEM
The one period of respite for the Jews of Palestine from the domination of the Byzantine Empire came in 614 during the final war between Rome and Persia. In 603, King Chosroes II of Persia (r. 591-628) began attacking the eastern province of Rome, and in 614 he conquered Jerusalem with assistance from the Jews, who looked to Persia as their liberator. Chosroes killed and deported many Christians and turned control of the city over to the Jews. However, he soon realized that the Jews were not strong enough nor sufficiently numerous to defend Palestine by themselves. As a result, in 617 Chosroes returned Palestine to Christian allies. In 629, the Romans reconquered Jerusalem and restored Palestine to Byzantine control.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
627 KING EDWIN OF NORTHUMBRIA, ENGLAND, IS BAPTIZED Edwin (585-633), king of Northumbria, married Ethelburh, the daughter of King Ethelbert (552-616) of Kent in 625. A Christian like her father, Ethelburh was accompanied to Northumbria by her chaplain, Paulinus (d. 644). On the same day the following year, Edwin narrowly escaped an assassination attempt, and his wife gave birth to a daughter. Sobered by these experiences, he told Paulinus that he would become a Christian if Paulinus' God would give him victory over the West Saxons. Edwin won the battle and thereby became the most powerful king in England. Edwin was baptized in 627 and then sanctioned the conversion of the Northumbrians to Christianity.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
634 SIGEBERT'S EFFORTS HELP CONVERT THE EAST ANGLES One of the last pagan areas of England was the fiercely independent kingdom of East Anglia, including modern Norfolk and Suffolk on the southeastern coast. Redwald, who ruled East Anglia from about 599-625, was converted to Christianity at the court of King Athelbert (552-616) in Kent, but he reverted to paganism because of the influence of his wife. His son Eorpwald (r. 625-632) was converted to Christ by King Edwin (585-633) of Northumbria but soon was murdered because of his faith. Eorpwald's brother Sigebert, also a devout Christian, fled to France to avoid the wrath of his pagan stepfather, Redwald. After ten years Sigebert returned and successfully took the throne in about 634. As a result of Sigebert's efforts, the East Angles were converted to Christianity from paganism. After reigning until about 638, Sigebert retired to a monastery.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
635 NESTORIAN MISSION TO CHINA
Nestorius (380-451) had been made Patriarch of Constantinople in 428 but was deposed three years later by the Council of Ephesus. He was probably orthodox but had not adequately stated his view of the relationship between Christ's human and divine natures. In 1623, a monument was discovered in China that chronicled the Nestorian missionary Alopen's arrival there in 635. Churches and monasteries were established, Christian literature was distributed, and the movement received the emperor's approval. Nestorian Christianity reached all the way to the border of Korea. Churches flourished until the tenth-century fall of the dynasty that had supported them. Traces of the Nestorian church remained until the thirteenth century, at which time it largely disappeared.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
637 MUSLIM ARMIES CONQUER JERUSALEM
In 636, near where the Yarmuk River enters the Jordan, the armies of Islam engaged in what was to be the decisive battle against the armies of the Byzantine Empire for the control of Palestine. Though vastly outnumbered, the Muslims were victorious with few of the Byzantine army escaping. The following year the two principal Muslim armies converged in a siege on Jerusalem. The siege lasted four months as the Christians zealously defended their Holy City. When further defense appeared hopeless, Sophronius (560-638), the patriarch of Jerusalem, offered to surrender to Caliph Omar of Medina (581-644) if he would come to Jerusalem. The caliph came riding on a camel, accepted the surrender, and promised the Christians of Jerusalem freedom of worship and possession of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. The Jews of Jerusalem also survived as a tolerated minority.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
A MAN NAMED MUHAMMAD
June 8, 632
He successfully invented a new religion.
Muhammad, the founder of Islam, the world's youngest major religion, was born in Mecca around 570. An orphan at a young age, he grew up in relative poverty, but at the age of twenty-five, Muhammad entered the service of a wealthy widow, fifteen years his senior, named Khadija. His marriage to her shortly thereafter provided him with instant wealth. Her affluence provided him with the luxury to indulge in a life of religious contemplation.
When he was about forty, Muhammad claimed that he received a prophetic call from Allah through the angel Gabriel. He began preaching monotheism, a final judgment, alms, prayer, and surrender to the will of Allah. In three years he attracted only twelve converts. Persecuted in his hometown of Mecca, he fled to Medina in 622. His flight to Medina is called the Hegira and is traditionally dated July 15, 622, which marks the beginning of the Muslim calendar.
During his time in Medina, Muhammad's revelations became more legalistic and secular. Islam, as his new religion was called, became both a community and a state with Muhammad as both its ruler and lawgiver.
Once he centralized his power in Medina, he was able to return to Mecca and conquer it in 630. By the time Muhammad died on June 8, 632, almost all of Arabia had embraced Islam. In the hundred years following his death, Islam spread like wildfire.
The successors of Muhammad encouraged jihad, or holy war, against non-Muslims and within a century built an empire stretching from northern Spain all the way across North Africa to India. Many of the areas conquered, such as Iraq, Syria, Palestine, and North Africa, were formerly Christian strongholds where the Christians chose conversion to Islam over death by the sword. Even western Europe was threatened until Charles Martel of France finally halted Islam's expansion, when he defeated the Muslims at the battle of Tours, France, in 732, exactly one hundred years after Muhammad's death.
Islam has continued to grow, and today more than one-fifth of the world's population is Muslim. In 1900, only 12 percent of the world's population embraced Islam; by 2000 the number had grown to 21 percent. Today, Islam is the fastest growing of the major religions. Most Muslims live in a belt stretching from West Africa to Southeast Asia. Islam is the majority religion in forty-two countries and territories, most of which prohibit Christian evangelism and exclude Christian missionaries.
In spite of the fact that Muhammad's followers have greatly increased their numbers and their political power, there is encouragement in that more Muslims came to Christ between 1980 and 2000 than in any earlier period of history.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
664 THE SYNOD OF WHITBY MEETS
Seventh-century English Christianity was divided into the Roman Catholic Church and the Celtic church. One of the divisive issues was the date for Easter. This issue came to a head in 663 when King Oswy (611-670) of Northumbria, a Celt, realized that he would be celebrating Easter when his Roman Catholic wife was observing Lent. King Oswy called a synod at Whitby in Yorkshire in 664, with delegates from both movements. The Celts argued that their position could be traced through Columba (521-597) and Polycarp (69-155) to St. John, while the Romanists declared that their view went back to Peter and Paul. King Oswy decided in favor of the Roman position, stating that he would rather be on good terms with the keeper of heaven's gate than with Columba. This decision aligned the English Church with the Roman Catholic Church for the next 875 years.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
676 CAEDMON CREATES CHRISTIAN POETRY IN ENGLISH
In about 676, an illiterate English herdsman named Caedmon (d. 680), following an evening of revelry, had a vision in which he was commanded to write poetry. In the vision he recited verses that he had never before heard. To his great surprise, the next day he could repeat the verses from his vision and create more. His employer introduced him to Hilda (614-680), the abbess of Whitby, who verified his gift by reading portions of Scripture to him and asking him to put them into poetry. He was able to do so by the next morning. Hilda then hired him for the abbey, and he spent the rest of his life turning Bible stories into verse. He is the earliest known Christian Anglo-Saxon poet.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
680 THE THIRD COUNCIL OF CONSTANTINOPLE MEETS
In response to the rise of Islam in the mid-seventh century, Eastern Emperor Heraclius (575-641) sought to strengthen the church by unifying it. This meant trying to bring the Monophysites, who held that Christ had only one nature instead of two, back into the church. In 638, he proposed a compromise called Monothelitism that described Christ as having two natures, divine and human, but only one will. A few leaders in Egypt accepted the compromise, but most Eastern churches rejected it. The Third Council of Constantinople, the sixth ecumenical council, dealt with this issue. The council desired to achieve unity between the churches of Constantinople and Rome. It therefore rejected the compromise of Monothelitism and declared that Christ not only had two natures but also two wills. As a result of this council, the Nestorian and Monophysite churches separated themselves permanently from orthodoxy.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
686 WILFRID COMPLETES THE EVANGELIZATION OF ENGLAND The son of a Northumbrian noble, Wilfrid (634-709) studied Roman Catholicism at Canterbury. At the Synod of Whitby in 664, he was the leading spokesman for the Roman dating of Easter. Following the synod he was appointed bishop of York. In 678, the archbishop of Canterbury, concerned about Wilfrid's aspirations for power, divided the diocese of York into four sections, taking away three-quarters of Wilfrid's territory. Wilfrid appealed to Rome and won his case, but when he returned to England he was imprisoned by the king of Northumbria, whose new queen had an intense hatred for Wilfrid. In 686, after his release from prison, he went to Sussex, where he had success evangelizing the heathen Saxons of southernmost England, thereby completing the evangelization of England.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
691 THE DOME OF THE ROCK IS COMPLETED
Less than seventy-five years after the founding of Islam, Caliph Abd al-Malik (646-705) completed the Dome of the Rock mosque on the Temple mount in Jerusalem. The building is the oldest surviving Muslim structure in the world. According to Muslim doctrine, during his Night Journey, the prophet Muhammad (570-632) traveled to Jerusalem, set foot on the giant rock on the Temple mount, and then ascended to heaven. The Dome was built directly over this rock, which is also the traditional site of Abraham's near-sacrifice of Isaac. After construction was completed, Abd al-Malik commemorated his accomplishment with an inscription that read, "This dome was built by the servant of God Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan, emir of the faithful, in the [Muslim] year seventy-two."
—Complete Book of When and Where, The
694 JUDAISM IS OUTLAWED IN SPAIN
The Jewish communities of Spain had flourished under the Roman Empire. By 415, a barbarian tribe called the Visigoths had taken control of Spain after conquering Rome in 410. The Visigoth king Recared (586-601) converted to Catholicism in 598, and the majority of the nobles followed suit. The church held successive councils in Toledo, the Visigoth capital of Spain, which increasingly instigated vicious anti-Semitism. This culminated in the Seventeenth Council of Toledo in 694, at which all Jews living in Visigoth Spain were declared slaves. Their possessions were confiscated, and Judaism was outlawed. All Jewish children over the age of seven were taken from their homes and raised as Christians.
—Complete Book of When and Where, The