#Death of Jan Van Ruysbroek

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

Today in Christian History

Today is Friday, December 2nd, the 336th day of 2022. There are 29 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

1381: Death of Jan Van Ruysbroek, “the Ecstatic Doctor,” so called because of his mysticism. He had written The Spiritual Espousals (1350), a commentary on Matthew 25:6: “Behold, the bridegroom comes,” which will influence contemporaries such as John Tauler and Gerard Groote, and later writers such as Thomas à Kempis.

1697: Dedication of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, designed by Christopher Wren. It replaces a medieval cathedral that had burned in the Great Fire of 1666. The Right Reverend Henry Compton, Bishop of London, preaches the dedication sermon based on Psalm 122: “I was glad when they said unto me: Let us go into the house of the Lord.”

1751: A Consistory of the Dutch Reformed Church writes with frustration from Colombo, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), complaining that Roman Catholicism has greatly increased, despite severe penalties meted out by Dutch governors.

1873: After years of struggle, Frances Havergal, Christian singer, sees the importance of complete Christian surrender “as a flash of electric light,” and makes it.

1906: The first of Paulo Mwamribwa’s pupils are baptized in Digoland, Tanzania (formerly Tanganyika). He had founded the first indigenous Protestant mission school in the Gombero area.

1910: Death in Richmond, Virginia, of Bishop Channing Moore Williams, who had served as an Episcopal missionary in the Far East, founding a divinity school in Japan.

1916: The Suwa Maru docks at Kobe carrying missionary Irene “Sensei” Webster-Smith, who will later rescue Geisha children and convert Japanese war criminals.

1947: Death of Alexis Kabaliuk, Apostle of Carpatho-Russia, who had played a major role in reviving the Orthodox Church in Transcarpathia (a region on the western edge of the Ukraine) in the early twentieth century despite persecution by Austrian-Hungarian authorities.

1948: Romania’s Official Gazette #281 publishes a decree transferring Uniate church property to the Romanian State without compensation.

1994: Death of Sir James Norman Dalrymple Anderson, a legal scholar and missionary to Islamic regions.