October 21
1126: The stone at church of St. Paul and St. Peter Armagh, Ireland, is consecrated at the monastery founded by Imar O’Hagan.
1223: Pope Gregory IX permits the inquisitor Conrad of Marburg to take proper action against the heretics but instructs him not to harm innocent people.
1532: Martin Luther declares, “For some years now I have read through the Bible twice every year. If you picture the Bible to be a mighty tree and every word a little branch, I have shaken every one of these branches because I wanted to know what it was and what it meant.”
1641: The English Parliament discussed a bill which intended to exclude bishops from the House of Lords and to remove the clergy from the Commission of the Peace and other positions of governmental authority. The bill was passed due to the troubled situations in England, and King Charles signed it after being persuaded by his wife.
1692: William Penn deposed as Governor of Pennsylvania, after he was accused by William and Mary to be a papist, since he exaggerated in thanking James II for permitting religious freedom for dissenters of the Church of England.
1751: The first Baptist association in the American South organized at Charleston, SC, formed under the initiative of Oliver Hart.
1773: Death of Fifteen-year-old John of Monemvasia (a town in Grecian island), two days after being stabbed for refusing to convert to Islam.
1808: Birth of American Baptist clergyman Samuel Francis Smith, who authored over 100 hymns, and best remembered for his poem “America” (“My Country, ‘Tis of Thee”).
1866: Gerard Manley Hopkins, who left the Church of England, enters the Roman Catholic church. He later became a Jesuit priest and worked in the slums. His poems were published posthumously and he became an acclaimed poet.
1892: Birth of James L Kelso, an American Presbyterian archaeologist, who also participated in the excavations at the biblical sites of Debir, Bethel and Jericho, and authored the book Ceramic Vocabulary of the O.T.
1961: Armando Valladares, a Christian political prisoner, and some of his companions escape from a Cuban prison but are re-arrested soon.
1990: Demise of Matilda Schmidt Epp, a soul-winner, Bible teacher, and role model to women apart from the work of her better-known husband Theodore H. Epp, the voice of the radio broadcast “Back to the Bible.”
Edited by: T. Chempilayil MCBS
Courtesy: https://studylight.org