September 20
1246: Tatars, the Turkic-speaking ethnic groups in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, persecute and behead Prince Michael of Chernigov and his boyar (noble attendant), Theodore of Chernigov, because they refused to renounce their Christian faith.
1378: The Great Schism in the Catholic Church begins, after Gregory XI passed away, shortly after returning the papal seat from Avignon, in France, to Rome. The Schism went on for nearly 40 years and even witnessed three concurrent popes at one point!
1565: Pedro Menendez gets the Huguenots massacred at St. Johns River, Florida, considering them the enemies of the holy catholic faith.
1646: Gabriel Lalemant, a Jesuit priest and missionary, arrives in Quebec, where he was soon martyred.
1838: Marie Rafaravavy, a persecuted Christian in Madagascar, meets with a former missionary of the London Missionary Society secretly, and he helped her escape to England with some of her fellow believers.
1852: Demise of Philander Chase, the first Episcopal Church bishop for Illinois and an ardent missionary among Indian tribes. He had founded two seminaries on the American frontier, one of which survived as Kenyon College.
1883: Birth of Albrecht Alt, a German Lutheran and an Old Testament scholar who edited “Biblia Hebraica” (13th ed., 1962) with Rudolph Kittel. This work became a standard critical Hebrew text of the Old Testament among students of the Bible for years.
1884: Dr. Horace Newton Allen arrives in Chemulpo, Korea, where preaching Christianity was illegal. He got an opportunity to treat the ailing nephew of the king and the prince recovered miraculously. Recognizing that western medicine is a product of Christianity, the grateful king removed restrictions on Christianity.
1921: Repose of William J. Kirkpatrick, the composer of the famous hymn tunes such as JESUS SAVES (“We Have Heard the Joyful Sound”), KIRKPATRICK (“He Hideth My Soul”), REDEEMED (“Redeemed, How I Love to Proclaim It”), TRUST IN JESUS (“‘Tis Sweet to Trust in Jesus”), and both the words and music to “Lord, I’m Coming Home.”
1932: Formation of the Methodist Church of Great Britain and Ireland through the union of four branches of Methodism in England: the Wesleyan Methodists (founded 1784), the Primitive Methodists (1811), the United Methodist Free Churches (1857) and the United Methodists (1907).
Edited by: T. Chempilayil MCBS
Courtesy: www.studylight.org