Minnie Watson

Minnie Watson

Minnie Cumming came to what is now Kenya, Africa, from her native Scotland in 1899 to marry her fiancé, missionary Thomas Watson.  The young couple began the work of planting a Presbyterian church in a city called Kikuyu.  Soon after she arrived, the town was hit with a locust swarm, resulting in famine, which was followed by a severe Smallpox plague.  The back-to-back disasters resulted in hundreds of people dying, many dropping in the fields where they labored and expiring there.

Thomas and Minnie labored tirelessly to minister to the sick, but before the crisis had passed Thomas contracted pneumonia and passed away - less than a year after their marriage - leaving Minnie, a young widow, to run the entire enterprise on her own - a task she performed with energy and enthusiasm.  A year later, the Presbyterian Church of Scotland assumed responsibility for the effort.  Minnie was asked to stay on and supervise the refugee school established by the mission.

She adopted two children and ensured their education.  She became a fearless advocate for the education of girls in Kenya, something that aroused opposition, sometimes the form of violence.  She also advocated against the cruel practice of female circumcision, a practiced which declined steeply in the country under her influence.

One of the children that attended her school was a boy named Jomo Kenyatta.  Five years after arriving at the school in 1914, Jomo came to faith and was baptized at the local church.  This young man became the founder and the first president of the modern nation of Kenya, serving in that role from 1964-1978.  

Minnie stayed in this role for 32 years, establishing an extensive network of schools in Kenya and laying down the standards that guided Kenyan education for generations.  Minnie had the nickname "Granny Watson" among her pupils.  She was remembered by her students as the model of a Christian lady: strict when necessary but always loving, humble, and patient.  Her diligence in her task blazed the trail for many missionaries who followed her.

Minnie retired to Scotland, where she lived the last few years of her life.  When she passed away in 1949, her ashes were returned to Kenya and were buried beside her husband.

Feb 13, 2022 Christian History E-mail

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-39351913

 

John Roberts

Rev John Roberts was a Welsh missionary to Native Americans in Wyoming.  Born in North Wales in 1853, he came to faith at an early age and yearned to be a missionary.  As a young man, he was ordained as a Deacon in his Anglican church and served there briefly before sailing to the Bahamas to minister in Nassau.  There, he was ordained as a Priest and concentrated his ministry among the poor and outcast, including lepers. 

However, John was restless and wanted a greater challenge.  His heart was drawn to Native Americans, so John made his way to Colorado where, meeting with his Bishop, he asked for the most difficult field in the region.  He was told that was among the reservation of the Shoshone and Arapahoe tribes which would later be known as the Wind River Indian Reservation, but his Bishop first wanted him to gain some experience so John was assigned to minister to coal miners in Greeley, Colorado, and to a community in Pueblo.  There, Roberts established a mission church in South Pueblo.  When a smallpox epidemic quarantined the community, he fearlessly worked in the hospital tending the sick.

Finally given permission to go to the reservation, he left in late January of 1883.  He traveled by train, then took the last 150 miles by stagecoach.  They journeyed for 8 days in the middle of a blizzard where temperatures neared 60 degrees below zero, and arrived at Fort Washakie, on the reservation, on February 10^th.  John established a church there and was offered a government-paid position as principal of a school – a job he accepted both for outreach and to learn local customs.  He branched out from there, establishing congregations in eight outlying communities, five of which remain active today.  He traveled extensively on horseback between congregations officiating numerous baptisms, communion services, weddings, and burials.  One such burial was a woman who estimated herself to be a hundred years old who claimed, and Roberts believed, to be Sacajawea.  (Note: South Dakota also claims to be the burial place of Sacajawea.)

While in the Bahamas, Roberts had become engaged to a young church organist named Laura Brown.  They corresponded by mail until the year after Roberts arrived in Wyoming.  She traveled by train and stage to meet him there (in much fairer weather) and they were married on Christmas Day of 1884.  Laura was his faithful partner through his missions.  John and Laura were blessed with five children. 

Roberts also became friends with the Shoshone Chief Washakie, in his early 80s when Roberts arrived.  One story of their friendship comes soon after John’s arrival.  The Chief’s son was involved in a liquor purchase, which led to an argument and culminated in the young man being shot to death.  Two contradictory accounts of the Chief’s response exist: the first account is recorded by a woman who interviewed Rev Roberts late in his life and attributed the account to him.  In her account the elderly Chief, upon hearing of his son’s death, vowed to kill every white man he could find until he himself was killed.  Roberts, hearing of this vow, interceded with the Chief and offered his own life if it would assuage the Chief’s anger.  The Chief’s heart softened and he came to faith as a result of John’s intervention.  The second, less dramatic account comes from Roberts’ children.  In this account, Roberts did visit the Chief after the killing.  During his visit the Chief remarked, “The white man did not kill my son.  Whiskey killed him.”  Regardless of which accounting is true, the two had a remarkable friendship which lasted the remainder of Chief Washakie’s life.  The Chief, in his old age, was a vibrant Christian, leading many to Christ until his death in 1900 at age 102.  He was buried with full military honors at the post cemetery, given his many years as a US Army Scout.

Rev Roberts, early in his ministry, established a school for girls is Fort Washakie with the Chief’s blessing and financing.  It operated as a school until 1949, the year of John Roberts’ death.  He translated the Bible into numerous Native languages.

The success of the Shoshone mission attracted the attention of the Arapaho tribe, which was also settled on the Shoshone reservation.  Roberts energetically expanded his mission and his vision to include them, establishing churches among their people, learning their languages, and translating the Bible for them as well.

The Bishop over his region thought very highly of Roberts and once offered him a more prominent position.  Roberts wrote back, “Thank you, Bishop, but I hope you will never take me away from my Indians.  I prefer to spend my life here among my adopted people.”  Roberts served with full vigor and enthusiasm his entire life.  He was a bridge for the Indian people with the white culture that surrounded them.  He died in January of 1949, and is buried in Wyoming.  His ministry in Wyoming lasted 66 years.

Christian History e-mail: 22 Jan 2022.

https://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/reverend-john-roberts-missionary-eastern-shoshone-and-northern-arapaho-tribes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Roberts_(missionary)

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/