December 4
749: John of Damascus, the famous Greek Orthodox theologian and poet, passes away near Jerusalem. Being a great doctor of the Greek church, he was a strong defender of the use of icons.
963: John XII, the wicked Pope who was elected as he was just eighteen years old, deposed by a Roman synod.
1093: Episcopal ordination of St. Anselm as the Archbishop of Canterbury. Being a famous philosopher of the middle ages Anselm had formulated the ontological argument for God’s existence and is known as the father of scholasticism.
1154: Nicholas Breakspear from near St. Albans in England elected Pope and takes the name Adrian IV. He was the only Englishman ever to head the catholic church.
1532: The much venerated Shroud of Turin gets tarnished as drops of silver fall on it during a fire.
1674: Jacques Marquette, a French Jesuit missionary, establishes a mission on the shores of Lake Michigan (today’s Illinois). His wooden cabin became the first building of a settlement which afterwards developed into a city, namely Chicago.
1809: Founding of the International Bible Society (I.B.S) in New York City, as an inter-church agency for translating, producing and distributing the Bible. It has distributed the Bible to over 150 countries in the world ever since.
1854: Birth of Mary Reed, who became an American Methodist missionary, who ministered to the lepers of India for 52 years.
1896: Demise of Peter Cameron Scott in Kenya, the founder of the African Inland Mission.
1917: The Russian government confiscates all the ecclesiastical property.
1942: Repose of Roland Victor Bingham, the co-founder of the Sudan Interior Mission and who worked hard to evangelize Sudan.
1964: Time magazine publishes the medical missionary Dr. Paul Carlson on its cover page as a symbol for the atrocities in the Congo, when he was seized by Simba rebels who executed him.
1972: Uganda’s  President Idi Amin expels fifty missionaries from, on accusations of having connections with Israel and South Africa.
Edited by: T. Chempilayil MCBS
Courtesy:Â https://studylight.org