Author: Fred Sanders
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Today is Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Birthday
If you were only going to say one thing about theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), you would tell the story that led up to his death in a Nazi prison on April 9, 1945, at age 39. But today is the anniversary of his birth, so here is a reflection Bonhoeffer’s way of living a Christian…
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The Prayer Meeting That Launched My World-Wide Ministry
In 1900, following up on a personal request from Dwight Moody, R. A. Torrey wrote a book entitled How to Pray. It became an international best-seller and was translated into many languages. Here is the story behind R. A. Torrey’s historic world tour as an evangelist and revivalist, as told by Basil Miller in his…
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Today is Felix Mendelssohn’s Birthday
Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) was a musical wunderkind, a prodigy who was performing by age 9, composing symphonies by age 12, and publishing works by age 13. He was largely responsible for the revival of interest in Bach after decades of neglect, because it was his conducting the St. Matthew Passion that helped place that composition…
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Today is Hannah More's Birthday (1745)
Hannah More (1745 – 1833) was, according to the title of a recent biography, The First Victorian. That is, though she died before the beginning of Queen Victoria’s reign (1837-1901), she was ahead of her time in so many ways that her lifework makes more sense as part of the story of the nineteenth century…
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The Shack: Four Walls, Five Reviews
The Kids-Book Author: Have you read the Shack of Mack? Have you read this paperback? Would you give it to your friends? Will you spoil how it ends? I have read the Shack of Mack. I have read this paperback. I would not give it to my friends. I might just spoil how it ends.…
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Today Started Black History Month
February is recognized as Black History Month in America. Why? Because Carter G. Woodson (1875-1950) decided it was a good idea to set aside a month for special attention to black history in a month that contained the birthdays of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. A lot of people agreed, and that’s how traditions get…
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Today is Thomas Merton’s Birthday
Thomas Merton was born on this day in 1915. Merton’s autobiography Seven Storey Mountain has been a book that has helped many people find their way to Christian faith, or at least to feel the attraction of it. Merton’s persuasiveness came partly from his oddness: A well-educated cosmopolitan type who had lived a fairly dissolute…
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Today is Francis Schaeffer’s Birthday
Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984) has been gone for a quarter of a century now, and responsible evaluation of his impact on Christian culture is just getting underway. Two major biographies have been published recently: Barry Hankins’ Francis Schaeffer and the Shaping of Evangelical America (Eerdmans, 2009) and Colin Duriez’s Francis Schaeffer: An Authentic Life (Crossway, 2008).…
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Hearing the Echoes
This week in church we prayed Psalm 130 together: “If you, O Lord, kept a record of sin, O Lord, who would stand?” Well, actually, we prayed together through an extended paraphrase of it written by John Owen, the 17th-century Puritan theologian who wrote a great big book on that one little psalm that was…
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Today Pope Benedict XII Explained the Beatific Vision (1336)
On January 29, 1336, Pope Benedict XII issued a letter which made official pronouncements on a controversy that had been raging for several decades. The letter was Benedictus Deus, and it sorted out the following problem: When people die, their souls leave their bodies. That’s their personal eschatology, their own endings. But the world goes…
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Today is R. A. Torrey’s Birthday (1856)
R.A. Torrey was a big deal about 100 years ago, and he still is. Though he was already world-famous when he came to us, he was the first academic dean of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, and once wrote that he had given this school “twelve of the best years of his life” (1912-1924).…
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Today Pelagianism Was Condemned (417)
“Da quod iubes, et iube quod vis!” prayed Augustine: “Give what you command, and command what you will!” This line from Book 10 of Augustine’s Confessions is a perfect crystallization of Augustine’s recognition that he was desperately in need of God’s grace: “My whole hope is in thy exceeding great mercy and that alone. Give…