February 4
856: Death of Archbishop Rabanus Maurus, Christian educator and encyclopedist from Germany.
1441: Pope Eugene IV publishes the encyclical “Cantante domino,” asserting the biblical canon of the Roman Catholic Church as containing both the 66 proto-canonical books (i.e., the complete Protestant Bible) and 12 deutero-canonical (“apocryphal”) books, fixing the total number of the canonical books at 78.
1555: English reformer John Rogers is burned at the stake, the first of many martyrs during the reign of Mary Tudor, queen of England and Ireland, also known as “bloody Mary” among the Protestants.
1686: Muslims in Aleppo execute Joseph of Aleppo, calling him an apostate, claiming that he had promised to become a Muslim but didn’t.
1810: following the Great Revival of 1800, the Cumberland Presbyterian Church was organized in Tennessee as a middle way between Calvinism and Arminianism; it holds a “medium theology” which accepts unlimited atonement, universal grace, conditional election, eternal security of the believer and salvation of all children dying as infants.
1873: Birth of George Bennard, American Methodist evangelist, who wrote over 300 Gospel songs. He is primarily remembered for the song: “The Old Rugged Cross.”
1928: Teenager Manche Masemola is killed by her parents in South Africa, because she had refused to abandon Christianity, worshiping in the Anglican Church whenever it was possible. Later she was honored with a statue at Westminster Abbey.
1950: Jim Elliot, American missionary and martyr, confesses in his journal: ‘I may no longer depend on pleasant impulses to bring me before the Lord. I must rather respond to principles I know to be right, whether I feel them to be enjoyable or not.’
2018: Merger of the International Pentecostal Holiness Church and the First Methodist Pentecostal Church of Chile in Santiago, enlarging the International Pentecostal Holiness Church to over two million members.
Edited by: T. Chempilayil MCBS
Courtesy: www.studylight.org