Calvinism throughout History

Calvinism throughout History

354 Augustine: Bishop of Hippo Regius; a philosopher and theologian. Augustine, a Latin church father, is one of the most important figures in the development of Western Christianity.

1320 John Wycliffe: an English theologian, translator and reformist. Wycliffe was an early dissident in the Roman Catholic Church during the 14th century. He is considered the founder of the Lollard movement, a precursor to the Protestant Reformation (for this reason, he is sometimes called "The Morning Star of the Reformation"). He was one of the earliest opponents of papal authority influencing secular power. Wycliffe was also an early advocate for translation of the Bible. He completed his translation directly from the Vulgate into vernacular English in the year 1382

1372 John Huss: martyred for believing that every man should be able to read the Bible in his own language and his stand against the sale of indulgences, his followers were called the Moravian Hussites.

1483 Martin Luther: theologian, known as the Father of Protestantism, church reformer famous for his 95 Theses nailed to the to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg that sparked the Prostestant Reformation; translated the Bible into German.

1484 Ulrich Zwingli: pastor, leader of the Reformation in Switzerland.

1494 William Tyndale: 16th-century Protestant reformer and scholar who translated the Bible into the Early Modern English of his day. Tyndale's was the first English translation to draw directly from Hebrew and Greek texts, and the first to take advantage of the new medium of print, which allowed for its wide distribution In 1535, Tyndale was arrested, jailed in the castle of Vilvoorde outside Brussels for over a year, tried for heresy and burnt at the stake. Much of Tyndale's work eventually found its way into the King James Version (or "Authorised Version") of the Bible, published in 1611, which, as the work of 54 independent scholars revising the existing English versions, drew significantly on Tyndale's translations.

1500 The Huguenots: members of the Protestant Reformed Church of France (or French Calvinists) from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Above all, Huguenots became known for their violent criticisms of worship as performed in the Catholic Church, in particular the focus on ritual and what they viewed as an obsession with death and the dead. They believed the ritual, images, saints, pilgrimages, prayers, and hierarchy of the Catholic Church did not help anyone toward redemption. Like other religious reformers of the time, they felt that the Catholic church needed radical cleansing of its impurities, and that the Pope represented a worldly kingdom, which sat in mocking tyranny over the things of God, and was ultimately doomed. Rhetoric like this became fiercer as events unfolded, and eventually stirred up a reaction in the Catholic establishment. Huguenots faced periodic persecution from the outset of the Reformation. In what became known as the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre of 24 August – 17 September 1572, Catholics killed thousands of Huguenots in Paris. Similar massacres took place in other towns in the weeks following, with death toll estimates again ranging wildly, from thousands to as high as 10,000. An amnesty granted in 1573 pardoned the perpetrators.

Eight American Presidents (George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, William Taft, Harry Truman, Gerald Ford and Lyndon Johnson) had significant proven Huguenot ancestry, as did founding fathers Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and Paul Revere. Twelve other U.S. Presidents had credible but unproven claims to Huguenot ancestors.

Davy Crockett, celebrated 19th-century American folk hero, frontiersman, soldier and politician was of Huguenot stock. The Crockett's were the descendants of Huguenots who fled France in the 17th Century and migrated to Ireland. Crockett is an Anglicized version of the name "de Crocketagne".

1509 John Calvin: French Protestant theologian during the Protestant Reformation and was a central developer of the system of Christian theology called Calvinism or Reformed theology.

1510 John Knox: leader in the Protestant Reformation in Scotland.

1517 John Foxe: author of what is popularly known as Foxe's Book of Martyrs.

The Puritans: A Puritan of 16th and 17th century England was an associate of any number of religious groups advocating for more "purity" of worship and doctrine, as well as personal and group piety. Puritans felt that the English Reformation had not gone far enough, and that the Church of England was tolerant of practices which they associated with the Church of Rome.

1519 Theodore Beza: a French Protestant Christian theologian and scholar who played an important role in the early Reformation. A member of the monarchomaque movement who opposed absolute monarchy, he was a disciple of John Calvin and lived most of his life in Switzerland.

1599 Oliver Cromwell: an English military and political leader best known for his involvement in making England into a republican Commonwealth and for his later role as Lord Protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland. He was one of the commanders of the New Model Army which defeated the royalists in the English Civil War. After the execution of King Charles I in 1649, Cromwell dominated the short-lived Commonwealth of England, conquered Ireland and Scotland, and ruled as Lord Protector from 1653 until his death in 1658.

1606 Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn: Dutch artist

1616 John Owen: English Nonconformist church leader, author, and theologian.

1620 Thomas Watson: English, non-conformist, Puritan preacher and author.

1628 John Bunyan: Christian writer and preacher, born at Harrowden, England. Author of The Pilgrim's Progress, the second largest selling book in history, second only to the Bible.

1697 John Gill: English Baptist, a biblical scholar, pastor, and author.

1703 Jonathan Edwards: pastor, author, missionary, revivalist during the Great Awakening. Best known for his sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”.

1713 Daniel Rowland: one of the foremost leaders of the Welsh Methodist revival along with William Williams and Howell Harris.

1714 George Whitefield: revivalist during the Great Awakening in England, missionary to the USA, preached more than 18,000 sermons.

1714 Howell Harris: revivalist during the Great Awakening in Wales, preached in the open air for more than 15 years planting more than 400 home churches.

1718 David Brainerd: missionary to the native Indians, future son-in-law of Jonathan Edwards died of tuberculosis at the age of 29, famous for his diary published after his death.

1722 Os Moravios: As a result of extreme persecution and moving to the property of Count Zinzendorf the Moravian Hussites became simply the Moravian. The Moravian Community of Herrnhut in Saxony, in 1727, commenced a round-the-clock “prayer watch” that continued nonstop for over a hundred years. By 1791, 65 years after commencement of that prayer vigil, the small Moravian community had sent 300 missionaries to the ends of the earth.

1725 John Newton: Anglican clergyman and former slave-ship captain. He was the author of many hymns, including Amazing Grace.

1728 James Cook: English explorer, was the first to map Newfoundland prior to making three voyages to the Pacific Ocean during which he achieved the first European contact with the eastern coastline of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands as well as the first recorded circumnavigation of New Zealand.

1740 Augustus Toplady: author of the hymn "Rock of Ages".

1754 Andrew Fuller: pastor, author, and founder of the Baptist Missionary Society.

1759 William Wilberforce: a British politician, a philanthropist and a leader of the movement to abolish the slave trade. He was a founding member of the Church Missionary Society. Wilberforce also devoted himself to other causes and campaigns such as the limiting of the hours children should work. He also fought for prison reforms, and he was also passionate about policing, education, healthcare, gambling. He appealed for amendments to the Poor Law (to improve the conditions for the poor) and in 1796 became a founding member of the ‘Society for the Bettering Condition and Increasing Comforts of the Poor’. This organisation worked to reform Parish Relief and Workhouses for the poor and improve their general living conditions. Wilberforce was also one of the founding members of the RSPCA (the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals). Wilberforce was also instrumental in forming the Proclamation Society which was dedicated to promoting virtue in public life. Their aim was to make the idea of humanitarianism popular. It is estimated that almost 70 separate causes were significantly advanced by Wilberforce's involvement.

1761 William Carey: considered the "father of modern missions" actually followed the Moravian missionaries. In fact, after reading a Moravian missionary journal (first published in 1790), Carey exclaimed, 'See what these Moravians have done! Can't we Baptists at least attempt something in fealty to the same Lord?'” Carey was one of the founders of the Baptist Missionary Society. As a missionary in the Danish colony, Serampore, India, he translated the Bible into Bengali, Sanskrit, and numerous other languages and dialects.

1766 Christmas Evans: a Welsh Nonconformist minister, regarded as one of the greatest preachers in the history of Wales.

1781 Henry Martyn: an Anglican priest and missionary to the peoples of India and Persia. He translated the whole of the New Testament into Urdu, Persian and Judaeo-Persic.

1782 Robert Morrison: a Scottish missionary, the first Christian Protestant missionary in China. After twenty-five years of intense work he translated the whole Bible into the Chinese language and baptized ten Chinese believers. He served for 27 years in China with one furlough home to England.

1783 Luther Rice: helped form a missionary-sending body that became the modern Cooperative Program of the Southern Baptist Convention. As a young man at Williams College he became part of a group of young ministers and aspiring missionaries who called themselves "the Brethren" (Rice was a leader in this group famous for the "Haystack Prayer Meeting," although he was not present that day.). In 1812, he sailed to India with Adoniram Judson as Congregationalist missionaries and met with William Carey.

1788 Adoniram Judson: the first Protestant missionary sent from North America to preach in Burma. Born in Massachusetts in 1788. He helped form the American Baptist Missionary Union. In 1834 he completed a translation of the whole Bible into the Burmese language. During the Anglo-Burmese War, he spent twenty-one months in prison. Three months after his release, his wife died. Six months later his third child died. He entered into a depression for one year. He later remarried and had eight more kids, three died as did his second wife. From 1845-1847, after thirty-four years in Burma, he took his only furlough to his native land. Returning to Burma, he spent his remaining years working on his English-Burmese dictionary. He died in 1850 and was buried at sea. Although he had waited six years for his first convert, sometime after his death a government survey recorded 210,000 Christians, one out of every fifty-eight Burmans!

1795 Robert Moffat: a Scottish Congregationalist missionary to Africa. In September 1816, he was formally comissioned at Surrey Chapel in London as a missionary of London Missionary Society. In 1820 Moffat and his wife left the Cape and proceeded to Griquatown, where their daughter Mary Moffat (who was later to marry David Livingstone) was born.

1797 Charles Hodge: the principal of Princeton Theological Seminary between 1851 and 1878, author.

1805 George Mueller: a Christian evangelist and coordinator of orphanages in Bristol, England, cared for 10,024 orphans in his life. He never asked a single person for financial help. Instead he trusted the Lord to meet all of his needs.

1813 David Livingstone: a Scottish Congregationalist pioneer medical missionary with the London Missionary Society and explorer in central Africa.

1816 JC Ryle: the first Anglican bishop of Liverpool a prolific writer, vigorous preacher, and faithful pastor.

1824 John G Paton: Protestant missionary to the New Hebrides. John G. and Mary Paton landed on the island of Tanna, in the southern part of the New Hebrides, on November 5, 1858 and built a small house at Port Resolution. In those days the natives of Tanna were reported to be cannibals. Three months after their arrival, a son, Peter Robert Robson, was born on 12 February 1859. But just 19 days later his wife Mary died from tropical fever soon to be followed to the grave by the newly born Peter at 36 days of age. Despite these devastating bereavements, John G. continued unfailingly with his missionary work in spite of constant animosity from the natives and many attempts on his life. In August 1866, John G. and his new wife Maggie established a new Mission station on Aniwa Island, the nearest island to Tanna. There they lived in a small native hut while they built a house for themselves and two houses for orphan children. Later, a church, a printing house, and other buildings were erected. In Aniwa they found the natives to be very similar to those on Tanna - "The same superstitions, the same cannibalistic cruelties and depravities, the same barbaric mentality, the same lack of altruistic or humanitarian impulses were in evidence." Nevertheless, they continued in their missionary work and it was there in Aniwa that 6 of their 10 children were born, 4 of whom died in early childhood or in infancy. In 1899 he saw his Aniwa New Testament printed and the establishment of missionaries on twenty five of the thirty islands of the New Hebrides.

1828 Andrew Murray: a South African writer, educationist and Christian pastor.

1832 Hudson Taylor: missionary to China, and founder of the China Inland Mission (CIM) (now OMF International). Taylor spent 51 years in China. During his 51 years of service there, his China Inland Mission established 20 mission stations, brought 849 missionaries to the field (968 by 1911), trained some 700 Chinese workers, raised four million dollars by faith (following Mueller's example), and developed a witnessing Chinese church of 125,000. It has been said at least 35,000 were his own converts and that he baptized some 50,000.

1834 Charles Spurgeon: author, a British Reformed Baptist preacher who remains highly influential among Christians of different denominations, among whom he is still known as the "Prince of Preachers." He also founded the charity organization now known as Spurgeon's, that works worldwide with families and children, as well as a famous theological college which after his death was called after him: Spurgeon's College. His sermons were translated into many languages in his lifetime.

1840 Lottie Moon: one of the first single women to serve as a Baptist missionary, taught and ministered in China from 1873 until 1912.

1851 BB Warfield: the principal of Princeton Seminary from 1887 to 1921. Some conservative Presbyterians consider him to be the last of the great Princeton theologians before the split in 1929 that formed Westminster Seminary and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

1860 CT Studd: remembered both as a cricketer and missionary. As a cricketer he played for England in the famous 1882 match won by Australia which was the origins of Ashes. As a British Protestant Christian missionary to China he was part of the Cambridge Seven, and later was responsible for setting up the Heart of Africa Mission which became the Worldwide Evangelisation Crusade (now WEC International).

1878 Evan Roberts: a leading figure of the 1904-1905 Welsh Revival – “Bend me Oh Lord.”

1886 AW Pink: Christian evangelist, pastor, author, and Biblical scholar.

1899 DM Lloyd Jones: Protestant Christian minister who was hugely influential in the reformed wing of the British evangelical movement in the 20th century. For almost 30 years, he was the minister of Westminster Chapel in London, and author.

1902 Eric Liddell: was a Scottish athlete and Rugby Union international and also the winner of the Men's 400 metres at the Olympic Games of 1924 held in Paris. He refused to run the final of his event, the 100m, because it fell on a Sunday. He then served as a Protestant Christian missionary to China. He was portrayed in the film Chariots of Fire.

1926 J.I. Packer: author “Knowing God”, British-born Canadian Christian theologian He currently serves as the Board of Governors' Professor of Theology at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia. He is considered one of the most influential Evangelicals in America.

1927 Jim Elliot: a missionary to Ecuador who, along with four others, was killed while attempting to evangelize the Waodani people through efforts known as Operation Auca.

Elizabeth Elliot: (widow of Jim Elliot, present day teacher of women and author)

1930 D. James Kennedy: pastor, televangelist, author

RC Sproul: author, theologian and pastor, founder and chairman of Ligonier Ministries

John MacArthur: United States Reformed evangelical writer and minister, noted for his radio program entitled Grace to You and as the editor of the Gold Medallion Book Award winning MacArthur Study Bible.[1] MacArthur is a fifth-generation pastor, a popular author and conference speaker, and has served as pastor-teacher of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California since 1969, and as President of The Master's College (and the related Master's Seminary) in Santa Clarita, California.

John Piper: a Reformed and Baptist theologian, preacher, and author “Desiring God”, currently serving as Pastor for Preaching and Vision of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Louie Giglio: a Christian pastor/evangelist and founder of Choice Ministries and Passion Conferences

Beth Moore: founder of Living Proof Ministries, women’s teacher and author

Tom Ascol: an evangelical Christian pastor, author, and Executive Director of Founders Ministries. He has served as Pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Cape Coral, Florida since 1986.

Paul Washer: a conference speaker, founder of the HeartCry Missionary Society

Mark Driscol: an American pastor and author. The co-founder and preaching pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Washington, he co-founded the Acts 29 Network, and has contributed to the "Faith and Values" section of the Seattle Times. He helped start The Resurgence, a repository of missional theology resources.

Joshua Harris: was a leader among his generation even before he published “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” in 1997. But the bestseller introduced him to a wider evangelical audience, earning many fans and at least as many detractors. Now he pastors Covenant Life Church, a congregation of 3,800 in Gaithersburg, Maryland.

Mary Slessor – Missionária ao Nigéria

Jonathan Goforth – Missionário ao China

Lyman Beecher – Pai de Harriet Beecher Stowe – “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”

Samuel Rutherford – 1600 – Escócia - teólogo

William Bradford – Leader Plymouth

Amy Carmichael – Missionária a India

Sam Walton - Walmart

Oswald Chambers – famoso por seu devocional que a sua esposa montou depois a sua morte.

Matt Redman

Tim Hughes