April 08
1378: Bartolomeo Prignano is elected Pope and takes the name Urban VI. His strange behavior soon after assuming the office led to rumors that he was insane. The cardinals then left Rome and elected a rival pope (Clement VII), marking the beginning of the Great Western Schism.
1530: A Diet (a formal deliberative assembly)Â summoned by Emperor Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire meets at Augsburg to handle the religious dissension in Germany.
1546: The fourth session of the Council of Trent adopts Jerome’s ‘Latin Vulgate’ as the official Bible of the Roman Catholic Church. Vulgate O.T. contains also the 15 apocryphal books which Protestants reject in their biblical canon.
1586: Demise of protestant theologian Martin Chemnitz, known as ‘The Second Martin’ (after Luther) for his efforts to defend conservative Lutheran positions.
1669: Turkish Muslims on the island of Kos burn John Naukliros to death, for recanting from Islam. He had told his persecutors that he despises Islam and is prepared even to endure torture for the love of Christ. He dies stating, “I believe with all my soul and heart in my Lord Jesus Christ and I confess him as true God Who will judge all the world, both the living and the dead.”
1730: Shearith Israel, the first Jewish congregation organized in America, consecrate their synagogue in New York City.
1807: Thomas Campbell sails from Ireland for Philadelphia, where he later became a leader of the movement ‘Back to Bible Essentials.’
1839: James Thomson, agent for the Montreal auxiliary of the British and Foreign Bible Society and eleven other Protestants form ‘the French Canadian Missionary Society’ with the exclusive aim  “to provide means for preaching and otherwise disseminating the Gospel of Christ among the inhabitants of Canada using the French language.”
1857: A small group of Dutch immigrants meet in Zeeland, Michigan, to form the first Christian Reformed Church.
1868: Ordination of George Matheson, a blind hymn-writer and pastor in Scotland. He wrote the hymn “O Love that Will not Let Me Go.”
1901: James Chalmers and his associates are clubbed to death by cannibals, while visiting the Fly River in New Guinea.
1912: The American Theological Society was formed at Union Theological Seminary, in New York, with the aim of discussing religious, theological and philosophical problems.
1929: Religious associations in Russia are forbidden from helping their members financially and from entering into mutual aid agreements. All previous anti-religious laws are summarized into one “Law Concerning Religion.”
1945: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German theologian and martyr, said in the night before he was hanged by the Nazis, “This is the end – – for me the beginning.” These last words could be recorded.
1974: Demise of Baptist leader and educator George Morling in Sydney, Australia. Morling College was named after him.
1988: Televangelist Jimmy Swaggert defrocked by the Assemblies of God following the disclosure of his relationship with a prostitute.
2002: Muslims in Kano state, Nigeria, demolish a Christian church, the first of eleven church buildings they destroyed that month, in their attempts to eliminate Christianity from the state.
2012: A car bomb, apparently targeting All Nations Christian Assembly Church, kills dozens of Nigerians in the street outside the place of worship in Kaduna, Nigeria on an Easter morning.
Edited by: T. Chempilayil MCBS
Courtesy:Â www.studylight.org