Historical Writings

(traditional date) Death of Paul of Thebes in Egypt at the remarkable age of one hundred and thirteen years. He had been one of the earliest Christian hermits and friend of Antony of the Desert, and inspired many others to adopt the lifestyle.

Death in County Limerick, Ireland, of Ita, who had founded a famous monastery of holy virgins, called Cluain-cred-hail, where she practiced severe mortifications and urged everyone to live perpetually recollected in God as the great means of attaining to perfection.

Elizabeth Dirks is arrested in the Netherlands. An Anabaptist, she will make a good confession under severe torture before being drowned.

Six Protestants are executed by fire at Canterbury for their religious views - Kempe, Waterer, Prowting, Lowick, Hudson, and Hay.

Jeanne D’Albret, Queen of Navarre, publishes a Code of Ecclesiastical Ordinances, making Huguenot worship forms mandatory in her province.

The citizens of Massachusetts spent a day of fasting and repentance for their roles in the 1692 Salem Witch Trials. Judge Samuel Sewall, who had presided over many of those 20 capital judgments, published a written confession acknowledging his own "blame and shame."

Isaac Watts is called as pastor to Newington where he will set a high standard of preaching and overcome the resistance of the established church to the introduction of new hymns.

Pliny Fisk reaches Smyrna, commencing missionary labors in the Middle East that will take him to Alexandria, Jerusalem, Aleppo, Tripoli, and Beirut. He will distribute four thousand copies of the Bible or parts of Scripture, and twenty thousand tracts.

Carl F.W. Walther is ordained in Braunsdorf, Saxony. He will become a leading planter of Lutheran churches and schools in the United States.

The University of Notre Dame was chartered under Roman Catholic auspices in Indiana.

Mt. Sinai Hospital was incorporated by Sampson Simson and eight associates in NY City. It was the first Jewish hospital in the U.S.

Lutheran founder of the Missouri Synod, C.F.W. Walther warned in a letter: 'Inactivity is the beginning of all vice.'

Chukwujindu "Sampson" Anene brings Christianity to his village of Ohita, which still practiced traditional African religion. The first church service is held in the shade of a big tree in the center of the town. He will see most of his generation converted, establish churches, and start schools.

Alice Wood, a Canadian Methodist Holiness missionary, arrives in Argentina where she will become one of the first missionaries to establish a permanent Pentecostal presence in Buenos Aires. By about the middle of the twentieth century, Pentecostals will have converted as many as one tenth of Argentina’s people.

Birth of James Edwin Orr in Belfast, Ireland. January 15th will be an important day in his life: on it he will be converted, married, and ordained.

Death in New Zealand of evangelist Harry Ironside, who had pastored Moody Church, Chicago, for many years and had authored more than sixty Christian works.

Stanley Tam, internationally successful Christian businessman, gives his business to God and will have legal documents drawn up confirming it.

Israeli archaeologists reported uncovering the first evidence supporting the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. by military forces of the ancient Roman Empire.

Death of Harold Lindsell at Lake Forest, California. A fundamentalist controversialist, he was well-known for his book The Battle for the Bible.

Muslims in Niger throw Molotov cocktails through the windows of sixty-eight churches, burning them to the ground in an effort to eliminate the Christian presence from the nation. The Christians, however, will regroup, pray for their attackers, and with the help of the Samaritan’s Purse organization rebuild fifty of their churches within two years, many of them stronger and in more defensible locations.