April 2
307: Theodosia of Tyre, having praised the jailed Christians publicly, for their strong faith, is arrested and persecuted. She refuses to comply with the demand of her persecutors to stop praising them and is thrown into the sea.
1139: Pope Innocent II opens the Second Lateran Council in the Vatican, which dealt with the abuses in the church and condemned Peter of Bruys and Arnold of Brescia, due to different heresies. Peter of Bruys opposed chantings in the church and venerating the cross (cross should be hated, he said), denied the Eucharist as Christ’s Body and blood, negated purgatory and accepted only adult baptism; Arnold of Brescia denied the validity of sacraments administered by unworthy priests, refused to admit the judicial power of the Church and denounced the cardinals as hypocrites and a shame to the church.
1234: Consecration of Edmund of Abingdon as Archbishop of Canterbury. He had to struggle a lot under corrupt King Henry III, who refused to allow him to fill church vacancies and looted the money from them instead.
1524: Swiss reformer Ulrich Zwingli, a former Catholic priest, marries the widow Anna Meyer in public at the age of 40. He later died at the Battle of Kappel in 1531.
1548: Martin Bucer refuses to sign the Augsburg Interim from Emperor Charles V until certain changes are made; the emperor doesn’t give up and Bucer is placed under house arrest and then in close confinement until on April 20, when he surrenders.
1582: John Payne, a Catholic, is executed at Tyburn, England, for alleged treason under Queen Elizabeth.
1739: Wesley preaches for the first time in the open air to miners at Kingswood, England. It was this decisive step that made him independent from the favor of Church of England clergy for access to pulpits.
1767: As a result of a sealed letter from Charles III of Spain, every Jesuit is arrested and expelled from the country.
1787: Death of Francisco Saverio Clavigero in Bologna, a Jesuit who had written a history about the American Indians wiped out by the conquistadors.
1844: Demise of Radhanath Das, a well-educated Hindu convert to Christianity, who was a great educator in Christian schools, a catechist for families and a peacemaker among Christians and Hindus.
1877: Birth of American evangelist Mordecai Ham, whose preaching in the late 1930s led Billy Graham into a living faith.
1914: Three hundred Pentecostals meet in Hot Springs, Arkansas, for a ten-day conference, which led to the formation of the Assemblies of God.
1952: Death of Samuel Zwemer in New York, a notable missionary to Muslims.
1955: C. S. Lewis, British apologist, wrote in his work Letters to an American Lady “Fear is horrid, but there’s no reason to be ashamed of it. Our Lord was afraid (dreadfully so) in Gethsemane. I always cling to that as a very comforting fact.”
1978: Mary Simpson, the Episcopal Canon of New York, speaks from the pulpit of the Westminster Abbey in London, as the first ordained woman to preach there since the Abbey was founded in 1065.
Edited by: T. Chempilayil MCBS
Courtesy: www.studylight.org