Robert Raikes

Robert Raikes inherited a publishing business the Gloucester Journal from his father in 1757.  Wanting to serve God my making a difference with his platform, Robert looked into the prison system in England and advocated for reform – arguing it was preferable to prevent crime than to punish it.

In investigating the prisons and the poverty that fed them, Robert was made aware of a dark underbelly of English society.  The slums of England housed many children employed in the factories.  In their time off, usually just on Sundays, they ran unsupervised and uncontrolled through the city.

Speaking to some adults about the children roaming the area, a woman replied to him, “Sir, if you could take a view of this part of town on a Sunday, you would be shocked indeed, for then the street is filled with multitudes of these wretches, who, released on that day from employment, spend their time in noise and riot, playing at a throwing game, and cursing and swearing in a manner so horrid, as to convey to any serious mind an idea of hell rather than any other place.”

Wondering what he could do to bring improvement to this situation, he was struck by God with a single word in his heart – “TRY.”  Speaking it over with his pastor, he broached the idea of a school for the children on Sundays.  With volunteer teachers, the children would be taught to read and write part of the day and receive Bible lessons the rest of the day.  Initially, the school was derisively called “Raikes’ Ragged School.”

His initial attempt had minimal attendance.  When he explored why, he found that many children did not want to come because they were ashamed of the clothes they had.  Raikes assured the children that all they needed was a clean face and combed hair.  He also instituted a matching program – for every penny the children brought for clothing, donors were lined up to match it.  This taught the children and their families the benefits of saving and thrift.

One anecdote shows how Robert handled children.  One girl had an attitude, and was causing her mother a great deal of grief.  Raikes met with the girl and her mother and pleaded with the child to ask her mother’s forgiveness as the first step toward changing course.  When she refused, Raikes replied, “If you have no regard for yourself, I have a great deal of regard for you…If you will not humble yourself, I must humble myself.”  He then knelt in front of the child’s mother and asked her forgiveness for failing to reach her daughter.  Seeing this grown man on his knees in humility before her mother broke the child.  She fell on her knees and was much changed after that.

Before long, Robert had over a hundred children ages 6 to 14 attending his Sunday School.  While this wasn’t the first attempt in England at a task like this, it was the first to really gain traction.  Using his paper to publish what was happening, Raikes’ schools became a model for dozens of similar schools around England.  By 1788 there were 300,000 children attending Sunday Schools around England.  Police commented that crime had drastically dropped.

Some criticized the schools – complaining that they would weaken home-based religious education and that Christians should not be employed on Sunday.  Some politicians worried that the Sunday Schools could be used to propagandize children into radical ideas.  Nevertheless, the idea stuck.

Robert Raikes passed away on April 5^th, 1811, age 75.  His Sunday Schools became the forerunner of the English public education system.  Robert used what he had and had great success.  Perhaps that is why he wrote, “I can never pass by the spot where the word ‘TRY’ came so powerfully into my mind, without lifting up my hands and heart to heaven, in gratitude to God, for having put such a thought into my heart.”

Christian History e-mail: 05 April 2022, Dan Graves

https://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/church-history-for-kids/robert-raikes-and-how-we-got-sunday-school-11635043.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Raikes

Fabian

Fabian was born in the early 200s to a noble family in Rome.  History does not record much more about his early life, but it is a fair assumption that he was well-educated and raised in the Faith.

Fabian came to Rome in the year 236 as an observer to the selection of a new Bishop.  It was a difficult election – Pope Pontian had reigned only five years before he was deported, following him Anterus held the position only a few months before he died.  Discussions over the next Bishop were somewhat heated with many prominent Christians in contention.

According to the Church Historian Eusebius, who lived less than a century after this, among the assembled crowd a dove flew down and landed on the head of Fabian.  Though he was not a leader in the church, the crowd noticed this and acclaimed Fabian as the next bishop.  According to Eusebius, “the whole body exclaimed, with all eagerness and with one voice, as if moved by the Spirit of God, that he was worthy; and without delay they took and placed him upon the episcopal throne.”

Despite the unusual manner of his election, Fabian proved a very capable bishop.  He organized the city of Rome into seven ecclesiastical districts to better provide for the spiritual needs of the residents.  Deacons were assigned to administer these regions.  He also organized charitable work within the city.  Fabian also had a great concern for the lost.  He sent a number of missionaries to Gaul (modern-day France) and established at least seven churches there.  A surviving letter he sent reflects this passion for the lost:

“We beseech you also to be zealous in praying in your pious supplications, that our God and Lord Jesus Christ, who will have all men to be saved and not one to perish, may, by His vast omnipotence, cause their hearts to turn again to sound doctrine and to the Catholic faith, in order that they may be recovered from the toils of the devil…”

Fabian also had a great interest in preserving the history of martyrs.  He advocated with Rome for the return of the bodies of two martyrs who had been sentenced to hard labor in Sardinia.  Fabian initiated repairs on the catacombs where many Christians had been buried and gathered eyewitness accounts and court records of martyrs over the (then) two centuries of the existence of the Church.

Finally, Fabian exhibited a passion for sound doctrine, roundly condemning a new heresy begun by an individual named Privatus in North Africa.

In the year 249, Decius ascended as Emperor of Rome.  Part of his agenda being a restoral of the Roman stage religion, this led to another round of persecutions for Christians.  Decius put out a decree that every person should offer a sacrifice to the Roman gods within a certain period of time.  This sacrifice would be witnessed by and recorded by the magistrates.  Bishop Fabian, being one of the few vocal opponents of this edict, was one of the first victims of Decius’ persecution.  He was thrown in prison.  Historical accounts vary as to whether he died in prison or if he was beheaded but it is know that he died on January 20^th, 250 – fourteen years and ten days after his remarkable ascension.

Bishop Cyprian of Carthage, a contemporary of Fabian, and one who would himself die a martyr, wrote to the church of Rome about Fabian:

“I greatly congratulate you that you honor his memory with so public and illustrious a testimony…For just as the fall of a bishop tends to bring about the ruinous fall of his followers, so it is a useful and helpful thing when, by the firmness of his faith, a bishop becomes manifest to his brethren as an object of imitation.”

E-mail from Christian History Institute, 10 January 2022.

https://popehistory.com/popes/pope-st-fabian/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Fabian

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decius

Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus

Stand Up, Stand up for Jesus

Episcopal Reverend Dudley Tyng was forced to resign from his pastorate in Philadelphia for preaching forcefully against slavery.  Undaunted, he became a Presbyterian and planted a church in his home town.  In addition to his church plant Dudley, along with other ministers, preached at the local YMCA to young men and were used by God to spark a revival of thousands in the city.

In March of 1858, the thirty-three-year-old Tyng preached a sermon to about 5,000 young men in the YMCA hall where over a thousand made professions of faith.  During his sermon he remarked, “I would rather that [my] right arm were amputated at the trunk than that I should come short of my duty to you in delivering God’s message.”

That week, Reverend Tyng went to visit a local farm where he saw a mule-powered corn-shelling machine.  As he reached out to pat one of the mules, the sleeve of his coat caught in the gears and his arm was quickly pulled in to the machine.  The injury was severe and his arm was amputated.

Infection set in and it soon became clear that Dudley was going to die.  His friend and fellow preacher Pastor George Duffield was at his bedside and asked him if he had any message for the men in the city.  “Tell them to stand up for Jesus,” he replied.

Duffield preached the funeral sermon for his friend Dudley Tyng.  He used as his text Ephesians 6:14, “Stand, therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness.”  He closed his sermon by having a hymn he wrote sung, a hymn based on his friend’s final words to him:

Stand up, stand up for Jesus, Ye soldiers of the cross;

Lift high His royal banner, It must not suffer loss:

From victory unto victory His army shall He lead,

Till every foe is vanquished, And Christ is Lord indeed.

Stand up, stand up for Jesus, The trumpet call obey;

Forth to the mighty conflict, In this His glorious day:

Ye who are men, now serve Him Against unnumbered foes;

Let courage rise with danger, And strength to strength oppose.

[note the allusion to Dudley Tyng’s injury]

Stand up, stand up for Jesus, Stand in His strength alone;

The arm of flesh will fail you, Ye dare not trust your own:

Put on the gospel armor, Each piece put on with prayer;

Where duty calls, or danger, Be never wanting there.

Stand up, stand up for Jesus, The strife will not be long;

This day the noise of battle, The next, the victor’s song:

To him who overcometh A crown of life shall be;

He, with the King of glory, Shall reign eternally.

[the fifth stanza, omitted from most hymnals today, allude to Tyng’s death in the third line]

Stand up, stand up for Jesus, Each soldier to his post;

Close up the broken column, And shout through all the host:

Make good the loss so heavy, In those that still remain,

And prove to all around you That death itself is gain!

https://wordwisebiblestudies.com/the-strange-case-of-dudley-tyng-stand-up-stand-up-for-jesus/

https://www.hymncharts.com/2015/07/27/the-unusual-story-behind-stand-up-stand-up-for-jesus/

https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/resources/history-of-hymns-stand-up-stand-up-for-jesus

Agape, Chionia, and Irene

In the year 303, the Roman Emperor Diocletian, then in his 19^th year of power, desiring to restore Rome to his vision of its prior glory, instituted what was the final major persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire, and arguably the most severe.  The emperor issued a number of edicts removing legal protections from Christians and mandating they comply with religious practices only to gods officially sanctioned by Rome.  Later edicts required universal sacrifice to Roman gods and were targeted at Christian clergy.  This persecution lasted ten years.

Born in the city of Aquileia, on the northern Adriatic coast of Italy, the orphaned sisters Agape, Chionia, and Irene were living devout lives under the supervision of a priest named Xeno.  As young women, they each declined numerous offers of marriage, preferring lives of service and prayer.

When the edicts from Rome were announced, they hid their Christian writings but were arrested for refusing to eat meat sacrificed to the Roman idols.  Diocletian had been passing through the area on his way to Macedonia and they were brought before him.  Seeing their beauty, he encouraged them to renounce their faith and find grooms from among the men in his entourage.  The sisters replied that they had no bridegroom but Christ and were ready to suffer for Him.  Enraged, and seeking to make an example of them, the emperor ordered they be brought with him and put on trial in front of the governor of Thessalonica.

Standing firm, though alone, the sisters refused to bow to the demands of the governor.  They were ordered to stand before yet another official, and they were subjected to yet another trial.  At this second trial, they were found guilty of not renouncing their faith.  The official sentenced the older two, Agape and Chionia, to be publicly burned at the stake.  According to tradition, in death the sisters appeared to be sleeping as the bodies themselves had not burned.

Irene, the youngest, was ordered to be taken to a brothel.  En route, the escort was met by two soldiers who instructed them that their orders had changed and instead they were to take her to a certain mountain and abandon her to her death there.  They did so and reported back, enraging the official who had given no such order.  He sent a contingent of soldiers to bring her back and, in the melee, she was shot with an arrow in the throat and died on the mountain, allowing her dignity to be preserved.

Their names in the Greek mean, respectively, ‘love’ (Agape), ‘snow’ (Chionia – indicating purity), and ‘peace’ (Irene).  Word of their martyrdom helped buttress the Church for the remaining nine years of persecution that was to follow.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agape,_Chionia,_and_Irene

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diocletianic_Persecution

https://www.oca.org/saints/lives/2019/04/16/101106-virgin-martyrs-agape-irene-and-chionia-in-illyria

Robert Sheffey

Born in 1820 in the little town of Ivanhoe in far southwestern Virginia, which today has a population of about 550, Robert Sheffey was known as an odd preacher.  His contemporaries were in agreement that he “couldn’t preach a lick” but his influence and spiritual power were known far and wide.

Born to people of relative upper class his parents encouraged him, like his siblings, to enter a professional career but his salvation experience at age nineteen revectored his life and he sought God’s will for his life.  At age 24 he married a young woman named Elizabeth.  He tried his hand at farming, clerking at a local store, and even teaching children, but God directed his heart into the proclamation of His Word through preaching as a Methodist circuit-rider. 

Widowed after ten years of marriage, Robert Sheffey developed some eccentricities.  Many stories speak of his concern over animals.  He regularly righted turned-over beetles or turtles and even halted funeral processions to gently move insects out of the road to keep them from being crushed by wagon wheels.  One story has him stopping by a puddle and collecting all the tadpoles, transferring them to a creek where they would have a better chance at survival.  He took special care of his horse, often dismounting and walking beside the horse when going up a grade.

His concern for the lostness of people was even more prevalent.  He often gave his socks those in need, many times pulling them off of his own feet.  He gave his coat to those shivering on cold days.  He even once gave his own horse to a stranger whose horse had died while pulling a heavily loaded wagon.

As noted before his rhetorical skills were somewhat lacking, but nobody could dispute the work of God as he preached.  Sometimes, he would step up to the pulpit and prostrate himself on the floor in prayer, leaving the congregation in awkward silence.  Despite the oddities, his altar was usually full of the penitent and many lives were changed.

His powerful prayers, however, evoked the most awe.  He publicly prayed against liquor stills and those who ran them.  One local minister recounted his prayers against three stills on a creek near to where they were meeting.  The owner of the first, a man of good health, suddenly dropped dead.  The second caught fire.  The third was obliterated when a large tree fell on it.  Men were said to have left the area rather than become the subject of his prayers.

Sheffey held several weeks of meetings in his hometown of Ivanhoe.  When the citizens rejected his message, preferring the life of sin that was characteristic of many prosperous mining towns, Sheffey publicly shook the dust off his feet and left the town.  One resident later remarked, “Whether you believe in it or not, after that happened, we lost everything.”  The fortunes of the town took a sharp downturn.  Entire buildings and houses disappeared into sinkholes.  The town was never the same.

Robert Sheffey died in 1902.  His stories were collected and placed into a book that was published in 1974.  A movie was made about his life entitled ‘Sheffey’, which was re-released in 2020, the 200^th year after his birth.

Christian History e-mail, 04 July 2021

https://today.bju.edu/perspective/rescuing-bugs-cursing-towns-eccentricities-robert-sheffey/

https://iblp.org/robert-sheffey-the-power-of-prayer/

John Hunt

As a boy in the early 1800s, John Hunt prayed.  He prayed for protection from the many things that made him afraid: dogs and thunder among them.  As he grew older, his prayers grew less frequent and his faith drifted.  He was clumsy and was bullied on the farm where he worked.  He realized his own lack of faith and often promised the Lord that he would change, but did not.

Then, illness set in and John faced a literal fight for his life.  He knew then that his promises were in vain.  Desperately, he vowed that if God would spare his life that he would serve Him the rest of his life.  Upon his recovery John told godly neighbors about his promise, in a bid to keep himself accountable for his own spiritual growth.  He attended church and read the Bible and other books in his spare time.  He prayed about what God would have him to do.

God drew his heart toward missions.  He had a mind to go to South Africa – an arm of the British Empire at the time.  South Africa had a modicum of civilization and some advanced medical care available for his fiancée, Ms Hanna Summers, who was in poor health.  John, however, received a direct appeal to go to Fiji.  At the time, Fiji was known as the home of savage cannibals.  Despite the incivility of the place, Hanna agreed to go.

The couple sailed from England in 1838.  En route, they refused a lucrative offer to remain in Australia and arrived near Christmas Day of that year.  John and Hanna mastered the language fairly quickly, but initially saw few conversions as they moved from island to island.  At times, they were treated cruelly – one king threatened them with death if they closed the windows to dull the smell of roasting bodies near to their home.  Eventually, however, they found an island that was receptive and revival broke out. 

Lives of the natives were changed dramatically.  John translated the New Testament into the native language and worked tirelessly to fan the embers of this small flame.  Overwork led to dysentery and John became deathly ill.  The islanders who were taught so well by John and his example gathered around him praying, asking God to take any ten of them rather than him.  Despite their prayers, John Hunt slipped into eternity as the young age of 33.

The seeds he planted, the zeal of the islanders he nurtured, and missionaries who followed him were all used by God for a great awakening in the Fiji Islands.  Within 50 years of John Hunt’s arrival on the islands, there was not a single person remaining who professed the old religions.

Almost entirely from:

https://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/1801-1900/john-hunt-arrived-in-fijis-cannibal-land-11630453.html

Martin Rinkart

The Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) was the most destructive war ever fought in Germany, including the two World Wars.  While a lot of political drama added to the tinder, the main conflict was between the fragmented Catholic states of the Holy Roman Empire and the various Protestant states.  The war began when Ferdinand II, the Holy Roman Emperor, made moves to conquer the various Protestant states in Bohemia, precipitating this deadly conflict which eventually drew in most of the states in Europe, including Denmark, Sweden, and France.  Complex alliances were formed: the Catholics in France supported the Protestants in Germany, the Swedes and Danes allied with the Lutherans, Spain sided with the Emperor, France got involved to weaken their rival Spain.

Eilenburg, in today’s Eastern Germany, was a walled city and therefore a refuge for war-displaced people.  As soldiers from each side came through, they compelled the citizens of Eilenburg to quarter and provision them.  As you can imagine, food was scarce and times were very hard.

When the Thirty Years’ War began Eilenburg had a new pastor, Martin Rinkart.  Martin did his very best to tend to his flock as well as provide for his young family.  Overcrowding and hunger led to plague in 1637.  Of the four pastors in Eilenburg one fled and two others succumbed to disease, leaving Martin the sole pastor for the town.  In addition to giving spiritual counsel, he performed as many as 50 funerals a day, including that of his wife.  At times, large trenches were dug for mass burials.  Over 8,000 died in the city.  Following the plague came famine.

In the midst of this famine the Swedish army returned in 1639, demanding 300,000 florins (roughly $2-3M) as a tribute.  Rinkart, now the leading spokesman for the city, spoke with the General requesting they lower their demands.  Up the general’s refusal, Martin returned to the town and addressed the survivors saying, “Come, my children, we can find no hearing, no mercy with men, [so] let us take refuge with God.”  The sight of this pastor leading his town in prayer so moved the General that he lowered his demand to 2,000 florins.

The war continued.  As the long war finally drew to a close, Martin found himself the object of much criticism from his own townspeople.  He has indebted himself tremendously to be able to feed himself and his children, all the while giving generously.  He had also indebted the town in his efforts to feed those survivors in his city.  When a permanent peace finally came in 1648, Martin Rinkart was exhausted and the following year the 63-year-old pastor passed away.

Sometimes, the most trying times drive God’s people to the deepest faith.  It was in the midst of literal war, famine, and plague that Martin penned a hymn of Thanksgiving for his church:

Now thank we all our God; With heart and hands and voices;

Who wondrous things hath done; In whom His world rejoices;

Who, from our mother’s arms; Hath blest us on our way;

With countless gifts of love; And still is ours today.

O may this bounteous God; Thro’ all our life be near us;

With ever joyful hearts; And blessed peace to cheer us;

And keep us in His grace; And guide us when perplexed;

And free us from all ills; In this world and the next.

All praise and thanks to God; The Father now be given;

The Son and Him who reigns; With them in highest Heaven;

The one eternal God; Whom earth and heav’n adore;

For thus it was, is now; And shall be evermore.

 

https://historyguild.org/the-thirty-years-war/

https://g3min.org/thanksgiving-during-a-plague-martin-rinkart-1586-1649/

https://breakpoint.org/giving-thanks-in-dark-times-the-life-and-labors-of-martin-rinkart-1586-1649/