In compiling a list of 40 historical faith moments, I will consider things which I will later toss. I will expand on the forty as I settle on them. The non historical faith moments will be placed in a subsection of 'faith' and will include biblical miracles for which archaeology provides no support. What is included may surprise people. David V Goliath is historical, and there is evidence something happened with King David commemorating the battle with a structure during his reign. Jonah's story is likewise historical without anyone asserting the whale did it. Jonah's mission to a foreign empire which led to a revival and the eventual capture of Jerusalem happened. Also, a king uprooting his entire kingdom to chastise the Greeks, and meeting and being stymied by 300 happened.
My focus is Christian faith, but I'm not limited to that.
Faith events
Beethoven was growing deaf. He contemplated suicide. He retired. He came back to write his ninth symphony, Ode to Joy, which was an ode to his deafness winning, but, he embraced it and wrote the conversation was over. Nothing more to be said. All that was left was joy.
Pastor Jean Omari praying over his son that the Kenyan hospital has declared dead. They wanted to know how to dispose of the body. Jean begged God .. and the boy woke up.
Sermon on a Miracle, where a girl who could not conceive prayed to God for family. She adopted a few children, and He responded.
Death of Jesus medical. Where we know from the written accounts Jesus died from a heart attack.
Shroud of Turin where we know from the written accounts why it is real and how it came to be. Nothing explicitly stated, but an image is fixed on linen from wet cleaning fluid of the time being in contact with a body over time. This was not usually the case, but Jesus was placed in burial clothes that were rushed .. and wet ..
Conversion of Paul
Charles Spurgeon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Spurgeon
Corrie Ten Boom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrie_ten_Boom
Roman persecution of Christians strengthen them
AD 312 Battle of Melvin Bridge
Miracle of Dunkirk where the British had lost their entire army, but saved it after a time of national prayer
Oskar Schindler was not a devout religious man but did much, risking much
Potato Famine tested the faith of many. The problem was relying on a single breed of potato which does not happen in nature where potato evolved. The result was an exodus of Irish and their culture.
Discovery of Penicillin, and many other medical things
vaccination, despite the awful failure of Covid vaccination, the history of it is profound
1382: John Wycliffe creates the first complete English Translation of the Bible. Originally written in Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic, The Bible was translated into Latin in 405, but translations into common languages made it available to common people who could finally read it for themselves. During the 14th Century one man worked to make the Bible available in English. As part of the reformation, John Wycliffe translated the Bible from Latin to English against Rome’s wishes. The church accused the theologian of being vulgar and persecuted him relentlessly. After he died, his accusers were afraid of him, still. They returned to Wycliffe’s burial site to burn the body. He told his enemies "You say it is heresy to speak of the Holy Scriptures in English. You call me a heretic because I have translated the Bible into the common tongue of the people. Do you know whom you blaspheme? Did not the Holy Ghost give the Word of God at first in the mother-tongue of the nations to whom it was addressed? Why do you speak against the Holy Ghost? You say that the Church of God is in danger from this book. How can that be?"
1456: Johann Gutenberg produces the first printed Bible, making it more widely accessible. Up until his press, the Bible was anything but the household commodity it is today. It became readily available not only to scholars, monks, and clerics, but the general population, spreading Christian teachings, according to the Christian History Institute.
1517: Martin Luther posts his 95 Theses, challenging many of the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church. Luther is the first to publicly denounce the church's practice of selling indulgences to renounce sin, stating that it was the Bible, not the church that was the central religious authority, according to Christianity Today. He says only faith and not deeds could bring salvation.
1740: The Great Awakening, a widespread revival in North America, changes the religious landscape of the country by igniting a renewal of faith. Revivals that spread throughout the early colonies gave rise to new denominations, a break in strict religious practices, and a personalization of faith.
1947: The Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest set of Biblical manuscripts, are discovered. These scrolls predate others of their kind by centuries, offering scholars older manuscripts of the Scriptures. They date from the third century BC to the first century AD.
Pope John Paul 11 Visited Poland in 1979
St Augustine
Constantine
Pope Leo vas Hun who sacked Rome .. but left the churches
Charlegmane and Holy Roman Empire (Germany)
St Francis of Assisi
John Wesley
US Civil War (Swing Low, Sweet Chariot)
Pentecostal movement circa 1900
Persecution of Mrs Mao (China)
Mother Teresa
Frankenstein
Medical revolution (Science)
Gutenberg press (potato press)
Colonialism 20 20 window
French Revolution
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945), Confessing Church
Nancy Wake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Wake Not religious faith? Righteous faith
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/10828328/holocaust-memorial-day-2020-auschwitz-nazi/
https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/the-tragic-story-of-the-girl-who-was-beheaded-by-the-nazis-b16a4eff6788 sophie scholl
13 Christians killed for their faith every day https://www.opendoorsusa.org/christian-persecution/stories/13-christians-killed-every-day/
Joan of Arc
The Great Martyr Saint Catherine found God after experiencing a vision. Under the tyranny of Gaius Valerius Galerius Maximinus, Christians were tortured and killed. Catherine debated many regarding faith and subsequently helped convert many others to the Christian faith. Maximinus ordered her death on the wheel but it broke. She was then beheaded.
St Andrew Andrew was a follower and disciple of John. He went on to preach and plant churches causing Greek authorities to worry about his influence. The governor stepped in to stop Andrew from swaying people away from the Roman Gods. Andrew responded “I would not preach the honor and glory of the cross if I feared the death of the cross.”
Manche Masemola witnessed Christian missionary Father Augustine Moeka speaking to her tribe in South Africa during the 1920s. She became a believer and avid learner of the Word. Masemola was then beaten by her parents to reject Christianity so she could be married to another in her tribe. Masemola held onto the Gospel and refuse to give in. Her parents were so angered that they led her to a place where they killed and buried her.
St Stephen
Simon Peter
Polycarp
As with many people in the early centuries, Polycarp’s exact birth and death dates are not known. Even his date of martyrdom is disputed; though it was some time between AD 155 and 167. Polycarp was probably a disciple of the Apostle John who wrote the books of the Gospel of John, the three Epistles of John and the book of Revelation. Polycarp may have been one of the chief people responsible for compiling the New Testament of the Bible that we have today.
Because of his refusal to burn incense to the Roman Emperor he was sentenced to burn at the stake. Tradition says that the flames did not kill him so he was stabbed to death.
Read more: https://www.whatchristianswanttoknow.com/10-famous-christian-martyrs/#ixzz7p1naErsq
John Huss
Huss was a Czech priest who was burned at the stake for heresy against the doctrines of the Catholic Church. Particularly he fought against the doctrines of Ecclesiology and the Eucharist as taught by the Roman Catholic Church. He was an early reformer living before the time of Luther and Calvin (other well-known reformers of Roman Catholicism).
Huss was martyred on July 6, 1415. He refused to recant his position of the charges that were brought against him. On the day he died he is said to have stated, “God is my witness that the things charged against me I never preached. In the same truth of the Gospel which I have written, taught, and preached, drawing upon the sayings and positions of the holy doctors, I am ready to die today.”
Read more: https://www.whatchristianswanttoknow.com/10-famous-christian-martyrs/#ixzz7p1nfZUx9
William Tyndale
Most known for his translation of the Bible into English, William Tyndale was a reformer who stood against many teachings of the Catholic Church and opposed King Henry VIII’s divorce, which was one of the major issues in the Reformation. Tyndale’s English translation of the Bible was the first to draw significantly from the original languages.
Tyndale was choked to death while tied to the stake and then his dead body was burned. The date of commemoration of Tyndale’s martyrdom is October 6, 1536 but he probably died a few weeks earlier than that.
Read more: https://www.whatchristianswanttoknow.com/10-famous-christian-martyrs/#ixzz7p1nriN2z
Jim Elliot and Four Missionary Friends
Jim Elliot, along with four of his missionary colleagues was killed on January 8, 1956 while trying to establish contact with the Auca Indians in Ecuador (now known as the Waodani people). Jim Elliot, Nate Saint, Ed McCully, Pete Flemming and Roger Youderian had been working to make friendly contact with the Auca tribe which they had seen from the air. Though they had only met one tribesman face to face, they had participated in trades with the Auca from a plane to ground system. When Elliot and his friends landed on a river beach on that fateful January day they were slaughtered by the waiting men.
Their deaths were not in vain though. The widows continued to try and make peaceful contact and eventually won the hearts of the tribe. God has used this recent missionary martyr story to inspire new generations of missionaries willing to give their lives for what they believe.
Read more: https://www.whatchristianswanttoknow.com/10-famous-christian-martyrs/#ixzz7p1o5CqXX
Nag Hammadi Massacre
On the night of January 7, 2010 a group of eight Egyptian Christians were killed as they left their church after celebrating a Christmas mass in Nag Hammadi, Egypt. The motive behind the massacre is disputed, but it was carried out by militant Islamic believers. It may have been done in retaliation for an alleged crime against a Muslim girl by a Christian man. Even if that was the reason, the retaliation was not targeted at the man who committed the crime but at Christians because of their association through religion.
This type of martyrdom happens in many parts of the world today. There are still wars being fought on small and large scales because Christians hold strongly to their beliefs. The Christians are not the aggressors in most cases. They are being targeted because of their religion.
Read more: https://www.whatchristianswanttoknow.com/10-famous-christian-martyrs/#ixzz7p1oBMOuT
Christopher Columbus
Patomic model of brain development
In November 1803, the Spanish frigate Maria Pita departed the port of Corunna and set sail for the new world.
On board was a gentleman called Francisco Javier de Balmis, and 15 orphans, one of whom had been deliberately infected with cowpox. Balmis was carrying out an ambitious plan; the mass vaccination of Spain’s American colonies.
Five years earlier, an English doctor called Edward Jenner had pioneered modern vaccination when he had deliberately infected a boy with cowpox and then demonstrated that this prevented him from getting the far worse disease smallpox.
(a method of disease immunisation did already exist, called viriolation, but that was riskier as it involved deliberately infecting a patient with a weak strain of smallpox.)
Word had of course got out, and one of the first countries to catch on had been Spain, who had embarked on a mass vaccination programme that same year by order of King Charles IV.
Charles had lost his three year old daughter to smallpox along with several other members of the Royal Family, and had already had the rest of his family viriolated, so he had developed an interest in combating the disease. When a major smallpox outbreak hit New Granada in the first years of the 19th century, he called his advisors together and instructed them that Something Must Be Done.
And so something was done.
At the urging of Doctor Joseph Flores, an expedition was approved by the Council of the Indies, who prepared for a mass vaccination campaign in America, but there was a problem; actually getting the vaccine there would be difficult as Atlantic voyages were long and someone infected with cowpox on one side would have long recovered by the time they reached the other.
The plan, then was to take 15 orphans on the ship with them. The first would be infected just before the Maria Pita sailed, and then eventually they would transfer the infection to the second child, and this would go on until the Maria Pita made landfall. This was a clever system, but Balmis arrived in Puerto Rico to discover that they had already acquired the vaccine from the Danes.
Still, Balmis set about organising a mass vaccination campaign on Puerto Rico before carrying on to New Granada where he vaccinated 12,000 people in less than a month, and set up a central vaccination board, to make the process of vaccinating the population more efficient and continue Balmis’ work after he had gone. Spain’s empire was far bigger than just New Granada and so Balmis had a lot of ground to cover.
Because of this, Balmis split his expedition, with one going south, to Peru (where 200,000 people got vaccinated) and the Rio de la Plata to bring vaccination to South America. Meanwhile, he would go north, to the Caribbean, New Spain and the Philippines.
Cuba already had a vaccination programme going when he arrived, so he didn’t stay long there before moving on to New Spain. He found that while they too already had a vaccination programme underway, it wasn’t very efficient. Balmis set about overhauling it, and then took on more local orphans. He used them to ferry the vaccine across the Pacific, and came to the Philippines where he vaccinated a further 20,000 people. From there it was onwards to China, where Balmis offered the vaccine in the port of Guangzhou, and then he set sail for home.
There was one other stop first though. Balmis stopped at Saint Helena, the island later famous as the place Napoleon was dumped by the British so he couldn’t come back. Balmis offered the use of his vaccine to the British authorities on the island.
Balmis came home in July 1806, nearly three years after having left, and presented his report to the Council of the Indies. The mass vaccination he played such a huge role in would eventually go on to completely eradicate smallpox.
He answers prayer
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Patton’s prayer during Battle of the Bulge
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Catholic chaplain James Hugh O’Neill composed the “Weather Prayer” for General Patton to advance to victory during the Battle of the Bulge.
“Anyone in any walk of life who is content with mediocrity is untrue to himself and to American tradition.” – General George S. Patton
Eight days before the German surprise attack that opened the Battle of the Bulge on December 16th, General Patton called the Catholic chaplain on his staff, James Hugh O’Neill, and asked him: “This is General Patton; do you have a good prayer for weather? We must do something about those rains if we are to win the war.”
O’Neill replied that he would “know where to look for such a prayer” and “would locate, and report within the hour.” Looking through his prayer books, he found none for fair weather that would be fit for the Army commander. He instead composed his own prayer and added a Christmas greeting from Patton to it.
“I pondered the question, what use would General Patton make of the prayer? Surely not for private devotion. If he intended it for circulation to chaplains or others, with Christmas not far removed, it might he proper to type the Army Commander’s Christmas Greetings on the reverse side.”
He returned to General Patton and presented the prayer card to him, who replied: “have 250,000 copies printed and see to it that every man in the Third Army gets one.” Patton also asked O’Neill to instruct the other chaplains and men in the ranks on the importance of prayer.
“We’ve got to get not only the chaplains but every man in the Third Army to pray. We must ask God to stop these rains. These rains are that margin that hold defeat or victory. If we all pray, it will be like what Dr. Carrel said [prayer is “one of the most powerful forms of energy man can generate”], it will be like plugging in on a current whose source is in Heaven. I believe that prayer completes that circuit. It is power.”
Army engineers worked day and night to reproduce 250,000 copies of the prayer card, which reached all troops less than a week later by the end of December 14th. Two days later on the 16th, Germans launched a surprise attack in the midst of heavy rains, thick fog, and “swirling ground mists that muffled sound, blotted out the sun, and reduced visibility to a few yards.”
Four days after the German surprise attack, and to the surprise of weather forecasters, the collective prayer of all the soldiers in the Third Army was answered. The rains stopped, the fog ceased, and Patton was able to advance to win the Battle of the Bulge.
“For the better part of a week came bright clear skies and perfect flying weather. Our planes came over by tens, hundreds, and thousands. They knocked out hundreds of tanks, killed thousands of enemy troops in the Bastogne salient, and harried the enemy as he valiantly tried to bring up reinforcements. General Patton prayed for fair weather for Battle. He got it.”
After the Allied victory at the Battle of the Bulge, O’Neill saw Patton again in late January of 1945, who congratulated him on the prayer he composed.
“He stood directly in front of me, smiled: ‘Well, Padre, our prayers worked. I knew they would.’ Then he cracked me on the side of my steel helmet with his riding crop. That was his way of saying, ‘Well done.'”
The Patton Prayer
“Almighty and most merciful Father, we humbly beseech Thee, of Thy great goodness, to restrain these immoderate rains with which we have had to contend. Grant us fair weather for Battle. Graciously hearken to us as soldiers who call upon Thee that, armed with Thy power, we may advance from victory to victory and crush the oppression and wickedness of our enemies, and establish Thy justice among men and nations. Amen.”
Read Chaplain O’Neills account of the story written himself here.
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Scratch. Impressive but mundane
Hill 192 WW2 Normandy? US 2nd ID facing 3rd German Paratroop. A war thing. https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/the-heroes-of-hill-192/
The invention of Soup
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