January 21
1118: Death of Pope Paschal II, who had a troubled pontificate since he was faced with four anti-popes and was held captive by the Roman Emperor Henry V, who also extorted concessions from the Pope.
1217: Matthew Paris, who was later known as the monk who chronicled English history, is clothed as a novice at the Abbey of St. Albans in England.
1549: Parliament passed the first of four British Acts of Uniformity, the first of which required the exclusive use of the Book of Common Prayer (later called the First Prayer Book of Edward VI) in all public services of the Anglican Church.
1609: Death of Joseph Justus Scaliger, a Franco-Italian Calvinist religious leader and scholar, at Leyden in Netherlands, who first put ancient chronology onto a scientific footing. He was known for expanding the notion of classical history also to Persian, Babylonian, Jewish and Ancient Egyptian history, instead of confining it exclusively to Greek and Ancient Roman history.
1738: English revivalist George Whitefield expressed a strange but great wish in his journal: ‘I desire to have no greater portion than the prayers of the poor.’
1750: A Newly-ordained missionary from London Christian Friedrich Schwartz leaves for Tranquebar, the seat of the Danish Mission in India. Barely four months after his arrival, he started preaching in Tamil and became a successful missionary.
1781: Robert Aitken requests the U.S. Congress to officially permit the publication of his first English-language Bible printed in America. The Aitken Bible was approved in 1782 by the Congress.
1901: Charles Parham preaches at the Academy of Music in Kansas City about the experience of the baptism of the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues.
1931: Soviet Union executes an Orthodox priest named Peter Alexeyevich Bulgakov for “agitation against Soviet power.” He had long resisted the efforts of the state to get him abandon his faith.
1956: Elders of the Little Flock Baptist Church and twenty-eight other Christian leaders in Shanghai are arrested, for continuing the evangelisation work begun by Watchman Nee, who was already in jail for the same “crime”.
1986: Charismatic Bible Ministries (CBM), a fraternal fellowship of charismatic organizations, was founded in Oklahoma.
1999: Pope John Paul II embarks on a visit to Cuba, where he talked loud about the need for fundamental human freedoms.
Edited by: T. Chempilayil mcbs
Courtesy: www.studylight.org