2020
The Death of J. Gresham Machen, 1937
Week of December 27
The First World War shattered, for many intellectuals, what remained of the philosophical and theological presuppositions that had undergirded Western Civilization for centuries...
The Martyrdom of Hugh M’Kail, 1666
Week of December 20
The roll of Christian martyrs extends back in time to the days following the resurrection of Our Lord. It continues daily in many far-flung nations of the earth. Jesus Himself told the Apostles to expect...
Ratification of the Bill of Rights, 1791
Week of December 13
The creation of the American Republic under the Constitution of the United States, in 1787, came into being through extremely contentious debates and competing visions of the place of a central...
The Death of the Duke of Alba, 1582
Week of December 6
Fernando Álvarez de Toledo y Pimentel, 3rd Duke of Alba, 4th Marquess of Coria, 3rd Count of Salvatierra de Tormes, 2nd Count of Piedrahita, 8th Lord of Valdecorneja, Grandee of Spain, Knight of...
Warren Commission Established, 1963
Week of November 29
On November 22, 1963, someone assassinated President John F. Kennedy at Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas. Those are the only facts that have not been contended since that day. The President...
The Death of Isaac Watts, 1748
Week of November 22
The Protestant Reformation in the 16th Century changed the music used in the worship of God. No longer the sole provenance of choirs or professional singers, the congregation began singing in...
The Gettysburg Address, 1863
Week of November 15
The events of July 1-3, 1863 in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, forever changed the historical landscape of America. General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia and Major General...
The Synod of Dort Begins, 1618
Week of November 8
Once the Protestant Reformation of the 16th Century had swept across Europe, various countries were able to stabilize their borders and establish their new-found faith, although political...
The Bolshevik Revolution Begins, 1917
Week of November 1
Russia was rocked by revolution several times during the First World War. Multiple parties vied for power, but agreed on only one policy decision—that the Tsar had to be toppled. Revolution since 1789...
The Battle of Agincourt, 1415
Week of October 25
Crispin and Crispian were Christian twins martyred for their faith c. 286 A.D. The Medieval Church added a feast day in their memory, later removed by the Second Vatican Council. Ironically, a number...
The Death of Archibald Alexander, 1851
Week of October 18
In centuries past, the name given an individual at birth often had significant meaning. Among Scottish families, Archibald and Alexander were common and had strong definitional and historic...
The Death of Obadiah Holmes, 1682
Week of October 11
The little band of Puritan dissenters crammed into the diminutive Mayflower made landfall in 1620, naming their colony Plimoth. Ten years later, with King Charles I on the throne, ten percent of the...
The Birth of Rutherford B. Hayes, 1822
Week of October 4
It was called the most corrupt election in American history. Electoral votes from Florida, South Carolina, and Louisiana, where bayonet-enforced Republican governments barely clung to power, were delayed...
New York City Revival, 1857
Week of September 20
What historians have deemed “The Second Great Awakening”—a wide-spread religious revival in America—began around the turn of the 19th Century and continued sporadically in different...
The Battle of Antietam, 1862
Week of September 13
After fifteen months of brutal combat—stretching from Arizona Territory to the eastern seaboard, as well as across the Atlantic Ocean—Union and Confederate armies met in the rolling countryside...
The Battle of Lake Erie, 1813
Week of September 6
The most unpopular war in American history took place from 1812 to 1815 between the United States and Great Britain. It was so unpopular that New England representatives met in Hartford...
Captain Hugh White Killed at Second Manassas, 1862
Week of August 31
Hugh Augustus White was the fifth son and the seventh child of the Rev. William and Jane White. He was born in the Presbyterian manse in...
The Baptism of Karl Marx, 1824
Week of August 23
Two sets of Marx brothers, one of three sons, the other of five, descended respectively, from Jewish families in Prussia and Alsace. The five Marx brothers performed comedy in Vaudeville Acts...
Return to the Lost Colony of Roanoke, 1590
Week of August 16
Disappearances from history have intrigued researchers for centuries. Where did the Confederate gold go after the government fled...
The Birth of Napoleon Bonaparte, 1769
Week of August 9
The British called him all sorts of things: The Beast, The Monster, the Man of Blood, the Little Corporal, and Old Boney. No doubt other European nations had their special names for him. He was the most...
Atomic Bomb Dropped on Hiroshima, 1945
Week of August 2
Certain events in history changed the world for all time. Gutenburg’s printing press in the 16th century revolutionized the publication of books and other...
The Victory of William Wilberforce, 1833
Week of July 26
Providence is indeed inscrutable. Had Britain retained her American colonies in the late 18th Century, slavery might have been abolished in America by English Parliamentary legislation in...
John Day the Printer Dies, 1584
Week of July 19
When most people think about the Protestant Reformation, they think of Martin Luther and John Calvin, or other Reformers, or their aristocratic benefactors who enabled the preaching of the...
Royal Family of Russia Murdered, 1918
Week of July 12
Tsar Nicholas II was the last emperor of “All Russia.” He and his family were arrested during the Bolshevik Revolution which engulfed Russia in 1917. Nicholas and the German Kaiser, Wilhelm...
Mary Surratt Executed, July 7, 1865
Week of July 5
On April 14, 1865, the popular stage actor John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Abraham Lincoln. Booth was the leader of a conspiracy to kidnap the President and hold him for ransom to...
Gone with the Wind Published, 1936
Week of June 28
Does Hollywood just reflect the mores and viewpoint of the popular culture, or does it create and perpetuate the popular culture? It is an age old debate. In the case of the blockbuster 1939 film...
Schaeffers Meet at Unitarian Thrashing, 1932
Week of June 21
Francis Schaeffer became one of the most famous and effective evangelical theologians and philosophers of the 20th Century. His writings...
Order Issued for the Arrest of William Tyndale, 1528
Week of June 14
Translating the Bible into English has a long and bloody history; long because the Roman Catholic Church sanctioned only the Latin versions, which...
Robespierre and the National Convention Inaugurate New Religion, 1794
Week of June 7
The French Revolution became the template for revolutions since the 1790s—especially in the 19th Century—and then its ideological heirs of the 20th...
The Death of Justin Martyr, 166 AD
Week of May 31
There is not an abundance of reliable sources concerning individual Christians in the immediate post-apostolic era (i.e. second century), but there are some. One of the best known stories, told...
Erasmus Writes a Letter to Martin Luther, 1519
Week of May 24
Not all church reformers joined the Protestant Reformation in the 16th Century. Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536) was the most...
General/Bishop Polk Baptizes Generals, 1864
Week of May 17
In the midst of the American War Between the States, a great spiritual awakening occurred through the preaching and teaching of the Gospel...
Leland Stanford Drives the Golden Spike, 1869
Week of May 10
Few engineering projects in American history had such immediate far-reaching effects. Prior to the transcontinental railroad, the cost of travelling...
The Death of William Tennent, 1746
Week of May 3
Someone taught Augustine of Hippo, someone taught John Calvin, someone taught Jonathan Edwards. Sure, they were gifted men, called by God to minister to people and gain a standing in...
The Battle of Derna and the ‘Shores of Tripoli’, 1805
Week of April 26
At the beginning of the 19th Century, the most dangerous maritime area in the world lay between Gibraltar and the shores of North Africa, at the...
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Begins, 1943
Week of April 19
Not all battles of the Second World War (1939-1945) were fought by regular armies in the major theatres of the war. Not all the Jews and other hated minorities went quietly to their deaths...
Sudan Interior Mission Forced Out of Ethiopia, 1937
Week of April 12
The Bible mentions Ethiopia sixty times, and that country boasts the oldest Christian Church in the world. The Ethiopian Eunuch led to Christ by...
Christmas Evans Wrestles with God, 1802
Week of April 5
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom, along with England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Some Welshmen still speak a form of “Britonic” Gaelic, which is especially...
William H. Seward Purchases Alaska, 1868
Week of March 29
Providence surely is mysterious. But in looking back, we see the remarkable ways and means ordained of God to bring about the historical consequences. On the afternoon of April 5, 1865...
Arthur St. Clair Born, 1737
Week of March 22
There are ten towns, three counties, three streets, and a hospital in the United States, and a three-star hotel in Caithness, Scotland named after Arthur St. Clair, but if you list American generals of the War...
The Cambridge Seven Arrive in Shanghai, 1885
Week of March 15
Americans became aware of a great Scottish athlete by the name of Eric Liddell through a popular theatrical-release film in 1981, Chariots of...
The Ulster Revival, 1859
Week of March 8
The North of Ireland, known collectively as Ulster, had been settled in previous centuries primarily by Scottish immigrants. Some had been brought there by the English landlords to work the land, others...
Queen Mary Tudor Outlaws Protestantism in England, 1554
Week of March 1
King Henry VIII married six times, hoping to father a male successor to the throne of England. In the process, he also abandoned his allegiance to the...
Asahel Nettleton and the Second Great Awakening, 1820
Week of February 23
Jonathan Edwards is one of best known characters of American history. He was a preacher greatly blessed by God during a period in the 18th...
James Guthrie Arrested for Treason, 1661
Week of February 16
By the 17th century, every country in Europe possessed a state church to which everyone in their respective jurisdictions, theoretically, belonged. France, half the Germanic states, Austria, Spain...
Athanasius Escapes Attack on Church, 356 AD
Week of February 9
Athanasius, the pastor of the Church in Alexandria, Egypt, was a Post-Apostolic Christian Church Father of immense importance. His bold and...
The Death of Scottish Historian Thomas Carlyle, 1881
Week of February 2
Thomas Carlyle was one of the most controversial of British historians in the 19th Century. He wrote best-selling books on the role of heroes in history...
Adolf Hitler Becomes German Chancellor, 1933
Week of January 26
Lord High Chancellor of England Sir Thomas More published a book in 1516 entitled Utopia. He created the word out of a Greek language pun...
Lott Carey Sails for Africa, 1821
Week of January 19
Lott Carey was born into a Christian family on the plantation of John Bowry, around 1780, five years into the War for American Independence. His grandmother helped raise Lott, and she was a...
Francis I Bans the Publishing of Books, 1535
Week of January 12
The University of Paris, commonly known as the Collège de Sorbonne, led the way intellectually in France during the period of history known as the...
The Death of Timothy Dwight, 1817
Week of January 5
Timothy Dwight IV was the oldest of thirteen children whose maternal grandfather, Jonathan Edwards, was destined to be regarded as one of the most brilliant men produced in American...