I have been called many things but “Christian intellectual” isn’t one of them. Francis Schaeffer on the other hand was both. Before Schaeffer died on May 15, 1984, he and his wife Edith began the L’Abri ministry that became a safe-haven for people who were trying to intellectually comes to terms with Christianity and God. L’Abri is a French word …

When Annie Armstrong and other women from across Southern Baptist circles wanted to support mission work from a church-wide perspective, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) leaders insisted on delegates being sent from participating states to organize the group. The first meeting of these delegates was on May 14, 1888 in Richmond, VA and formed what today is known as the …

The Pantheon in Rome is one the best-preserved examples of ancient Roman architecture. Commissioned during the reign of Caesar Augustus and rebuilt during the reign of Emperor Hadrian in 126 AD, the building housed statues to many Roman gods. On May 13, 609 Pope Boniface I, having accepted the building from the Byzantine Emperor Phocas, turned it into a Catholic …

William Carey is rightfully given a lot of credit as being a founding father of modern missions. One of the earthly cornerstones to his success was the publishing of his pamphlet known as “Enquiry” on May 12, 1792. The full title of the pamphlet, An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians, to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens …

How would you like to be a fly on the wall when J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis first sat down for a “chat”? That happened on May 11, 1926 at the Eagle and Child Pub in Oxford, England. This “chat” would later involve a dozen literary giants, may who taught at Oxford University, for over two decades to form a …

It seems there must be some truth to the idea of the “temperamental artist” as Pope Julius II would learn. One of the highlights of a tour of St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican is the Sistine Chapel which is the very spot where a new pope is selected. Michelangelo’s famous paintings on the chapel ceiling are, quite literally, a …

The first commentary of the Bible I every used for my teaching and study was “the Big Boy” Matthew Henry Commentary (pictured here). The one sitting on my shelf is about 5″ thick. Henry wanted to be a priest in England at a time when non-conformists like him were opposing the power of the Church of England so he was …

The doctrinal discussions over man’s free will to choose salvation have gone on for over a thousand years but they became much more pointed and developed when John Calvin spelled out the idea of predestination in very clear terms. The other side of Calvin’s arguments (I mean that in a nice church-going way) is typically called Arminianism named for Jacob …

The biggest church split ever was between what we today call the Roman Catholic Church headquartered in Rome and the Greek/Russian Orthodox Church in Constantinople (now Istanbul). It happened in 1095 and was called The Great Schism (I would make the point the Reformation was not a split but a total “do-over”). On May 7th, 1274 the two groups met …

On May 6, 1536 King Henry VIII mandated that a Bible be printed and chained to every church in England (kind of like they do pens at the bank – use them while you are here but don’t think about taking them with you). They were known as the Great Bibles. We shouldn’t have in our mind that Henry was …