Eli Smith wanted to understand the Arabic people so much that he lived on a farm in Beirut and immersed himself in Arabic culture. Why? So he could print the Bible in Arabic. A printer by trade and trained at Yale and Andover Seminary, he eventually took over the press operations in Malta and even invented a font called American …

When William Laud became Archbishop of Canterbury (meaning he was the head of the Church of England) it should have been no surprise because he was an astute politician who was able to “climb the church ladder” very quickly. He preached and taught the idea that the King of England (then Charles I the son of King James) had the …

Education is a broad enough term that we have to think of it as relative to the times when it’s discussed. In medieval England, education was offered to many in Canterbury because of the efforts of St. Adrian who died on January 9, 710. This is the same Canterbury as in the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Canterbury Tales and …

How cool do you have to be in order to be made into an action figure?  Pope Innocent III made the cut.  When he was elected Pope on January 8, 1198, Innocent III ushered in a renewed era of increased papal authority after one of the lowest occasions in the Church’s history called the Avignon papacy when 3 different men …

Athanasius was the bishop of Alexandria who led the fight against his fellow African Arius in what would culminate in the Council of Nicea in AD 325. After Athanasius’ successful efforts against Arius, he became the first to use the term “canon of Scripture” when he divided the books of the Bible into 3 parts: Holy Scripture, the Apocrypha, and …

Raise your hand if you are glad Charles Haddon Spurgeon accepted Jesus Christ on January 6, 1850? Mine is raised for sure. He was one of the most prolific writers and pastors of the 19th century and his pastorate of the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London for 38 years made a huge impact. This is a picture of the church before …

This beautiful picture is of the Limmat River as it runs through Zurich, Switzerland. It was also the site of the first Anabaptist to martyred named Felix Manz. Manz and his fellow Anabaptists disagreed with the Protestant Giant Huldrych Zwingli on infant baptism because it was not scriptural. But Zwingli’s Zurich City Council outlawed “re-baptizing” adults and Manz refused to …

Have you heard of the Confessing Church? As the Nazis began to take more and more power in Germany during the 1930’s one of Hitler’s goals was to silence the church. He knew as the country began to see what evil lurked in his heart he didn’t need the church’s morals to get in his way. Because the pastors were …

Each country in Europe had to figure out how they were going to deal with the Protestant Reformation. In Italy and Spain, it was really easy: We ain’t budging. But in countries like Denmark, it took war. The Danish King Christian III not only won a battle against Catholic bishops but preached in the pulpits and one of his key …

In addition to all of the work John Calvin did in the area of theology, he also ran an entire city-state-republic in Geneva, Switzerland. On January 2, 1542, his Ecclesiastical Ordinances were ratified as church law and thus the law of the land. It spelled out such things as how children would be educated when sermons were to be preached …