November 12: Today in Christian History

November 12, late 500's 

Day for celebrating Machar (also called Mochreiha or Mochumma), a Irish missionary companion of Columba in 561 when he founded a training center at Iona to use as a base for evangelizing Scotland. In 580 Machar was sent by Columba to found a church at Aberdeen, Scotland.

November 12, 1035

Death of Canute the Great, of Denmark. The sometimes ruthless king considered himself a Christian and had restored churches and monasteries throughout his kingdom and built several new ones.

November 12, 1562

Death in Zurich of Peter Martyr Vermigli, an Italian theologian with reformation tendencies. He had fled to England from Italy and, with the restoration of Catholicism under Mary Tudor, had fled again to Switzerland.

November 12, 1660

John Bunyan is arrested for unlicensed preaching and sentenced to prison. During his various incarcerations, he will pen Pilgrim’s Progess and Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, the greatest Puritan spiritual autobiography.

November 12, 1704

Forty-two year old Matthew Henry writes in his journal that he means to prepare a commentary on the entire Scripture. A couple days later he adds, “I set about it, that I may endeavour something and spend my time to some good purpose and let the Lord make what use he pleaseth of me.” He will complete most of the project before his death in 1714. Friends will put it into final form and publish it.

November 12, 1836

(or the 13th) Death of Charles Simeon, one of the Church of England’s most famous evangelical clergyman.

November 12, Amanda Smith, African-American evangelist, arrives in Bombay, India.

November 12, 1886

Death in Shanghai of Huang Guangcai, who had been the first Chinese deacon and the first Chinese clergyman of the Protestant Episcopal Church in China.

November 12, 1918

Burial of two Orthodox monks Callistus and Jacinthus at the church of St. Neophytus in the Province of Perm. The Bolsheviks had shot them two weeks earlier, when they refused to renounce Christ, and dumped their bodies into a frozen bog.