November 9
1518: Pope Leo X issues the bull Cum Postquam defending indulgences as a treasury of merits. This was in response to Martin Luther’s criticism of indulgences.
1786: Ordination of Jedidiah Morse as a Congregationalist minister, a lifelong opponent of Unitarianism, founder and editor of a journal to defend orthodoxy. He resisted Harvard’s (Unitarian) liberal theology by helping to create the Andover Theological Seminary.
1800: Birth of Asa Mahan, an American educator and a Congregational clergyman. As the President of Oberlin College in Ohio, he was instrumental in establishing interracial enrollment at the college and in the granting of college degrees to women.
1836: Birth of Christian business traveller Samuel Hill one of the cofounders (with John Nicholson and W.J. Knights) of the Gideons, a Christian organization that ministers through distribution of the Scriptures. The Gideons have distributed over 12 million Bibles and 100 million New Testaments till date.
1837: British philanthropist Moses Montefiore, becomes the first Jew to be honoured with knightship in England. As a banking executive, he had devoted his life to the political and civil emancipation of English Jews.
1844: Death of evangelist Barton W. Stone in Hannibal, Missouri, a founding leader of the Stone-Campbell movement, which later came to be known as the Christian Church and the Disciples of Christ.
1865: Demise of Henry Ballantine, a missionary to India, who helped translate the Bible into Marathi, the language in Maharashtra.
1929: Soviets arrest the Orthodox priest Michael Gordeyevich Zaitsev accusing him of counter-revolutionary agitation. He was executed the following March.
1938: The worst Jewish genocide take place in Germany, as Nazi rowdies lead a “spontaneous” campaign of terror. In the following night 267 synagogues were plundered, 7,500 shops were wrecked, 91 Jews were killed and 20,000 others were arrested and sent to concentration camps. It was later known as “Kristallnacht” because of the thousands of windows which were broken that night.
1987: Repose of Reuben Akinwalere George, the founding general overseer of the Gospel Faith Mission International of Nigeria, a movement which grew rapidly also because of his faith and zeal, and even founded schools and a publishing house.
Edited by: T. Chempilayil MCBS
Courtesy: https://studylight.org