The Preamble to the Australian Constitution starts: Whereas the people of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, and Tasmania, humbly relying on the blessing of Almighty God, have agreed to unite in one indissoluble Federal Commonwealth under the Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and under the Constitution hereby established. A devout Roman Catholic member …

Keeping in Scotland from Saturday’s post, this picture is of the Martyr’s Memorial in the shadows of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club – Ground Zero for golfers – in St. Andrews, Scotland. One of the martyrs memorialized is George Wishart who was burned at the stake March 1, 1546. His crime was challenging the Roman Catholic Church on its …

When Reverend Samuel Parris accused his Native American female servant, named Tituba, along with another woman named Sarah Good of witchcraft in their town of Salem, Massachusetts a firestorm followed. Thus, the Salem Witch Trials began on February 29, 1692 and before other pastors would calm everyone’s fears 19 “witches” had been hanged and over 150 put in jail. In …

The Scottish National Covenant was born from the idea that Christ was the head of the church and not the king (or queen). On February 28, 1638 many nobles joined clergymen in making this Covenant only to find themselves martyred for signing. It was signed at Greyfriars Kirk in Edinburgh.

Missionaries had been attempting to bring Christianity to New Zealand for decades when Henry Williams landed there on February 27, 1823. Williams took the focus on the Maori people (who you can see in this picture) learning more about Christ than teaching them agriculture as previous mission leaders had done.

John Chrysostom was one of the greats of the ancient church fathers who wrote and preached during a critical time in the church’s history. His “last name” is the anglicized version of the Greek word that means “golden mouthed” because of his great oratory skills. He became archbishop of Constantinople on February 26, 398 and would be exiled a couple …

Too often we forget that places mentioned in the Old Testament are real places – maybe it’s because they are hard to pronounce. Ur (not hard to pronounce even for me) was the place Abram-later-Abraham came from and it was the site of a major archaeological dig that ended on February 25, 1934. The dig was conducted by Sir Leonard …

For a couple of hundred years Roman emperors had a sort of “don’t ask don’t tell” policy about Christians. Since the emperors thought they were gods the idea of worshiping someone else wasn’t high on their list, but they tended to turn blind eyes. But on February 24, 303 AD Emperor Diocletian issued what was called the Edict Against the …

A simple reading of the New Testament reveals Jesus left a lot of authority to the apostles – those 12-then-11 that followed Him in His three-year ministry. But what about the next generation after the apostles were martyred? One of the next generation church leaders was Polycarp, the bishop of the church at Smyrna. He was under the tutelage of …

One of my favorite devotional books, Streams in the Desert, was written by Lettie Cowman (also known as Mrs. L.B. or Mrs. Charles). Lettie and her husband Charles were missionaries to Japan where they would form the Oriental Mission Society. They first landed in Japan on February 22, 1901 and their tenure in the Far East was a difficult one …