Jul 30, 2021 | This Sunday in Baptist History
John Comer was born on this day (August 1) in 1704. He grew up hearing the religious instruction of the famous Increase Mather, father of Cotton Mather. But that preaching didn’t produce any eternal effect. And then Comer became deathly ill. Through that disease, he...
Jul 22, 2021 | This Sunday in Baptist History
John Mason Peck was born in 1789 in Litchfield, Connecticut, where he was raised as a Congregationalist. Twenty years later he married Sally Pane. Despite the lack of Biblical preaching in their church, the Lord saved the souls of both John and Sally. Then when God...
Jul 15, 2021 | This Sunday in Baptist History
Some of you are going to shake your heads at this story, but it is reportedly true. The Gum Spring Baptist Church of North Carolina was constituted on this day in 1829 after Elders Hezekiah Harmon, Isaac Kerby, and another man named Hicks, had ministered in the area...
Jul 8, 2021 | This Sunday in Baptist History
The Baptists in England had been slandered and persecuted for some time when the churches of London decided to defend their doctrines by publishing an outline of what they believed. In a note to “the judicious and impartial reader,” the 1689 Confession of Faith reads,...
Jul 1, 2021 | This Sunday in Baptist History
I have mentioned pastor and evangelist John Waller many times, but you probably won’t remember him until I remind you that his nickname was “Swearing Jack,” due to his very worldly former life. After his conversion, Waller became an highly successful Baptist preacher...
Jun 24, 2021 | This Sunday in Baptist History
History records many unusual events which ultimately lead to people’s salvation and the beginning of their service of Christ. We have one here today. Roger Holland was raised in the affluent home of Sir Robert Holland. Eventually the family fell on hard times, and...
Jun 17, 2021 | This Sunday in Baptist History
On this day in 1768, a Baptist church was formed at Gorham, Massachusetts. Joseph Moody was called as pastor, but soon after his installment the tax assessors visited him, demanding that he pay the parish tax for the support of the Congregational state church. The tax...
Jun 10, 2021 | This Sunday in Baptist History
In my reading of early Baptist history in this country, some names often come up – Shubal Sterns, Daniel Marshal, and John Gano, for example. But Joseph Breed is not usually one of them. The Great Awakening brought many true converts into the Congregational churches...
Jun 3, 2021 | This Sunday in Baptist History
John Waller, a Virginian, was raised in the Episcopal denomination. It is said that he was a brilliant and well-educated student, but in subsequent the years he became somewhat dissipated, eventually earning the nickname “Swearing Jack Waller.” One day, as a member of...
May 27, 2021 | This Sunday in Baptist History
George Pearcy, was born in the year 1813. He was raised in a Christian home and was born again while still a teenager. He yearned to be of service to his Saviour, but because his family was poor, he was unable to finish his education until he was thirty years old,...
May 20, 2021 | This Sunday in Baptist History
John Comer was born in 1704; the place was Boston. His parents were Presbyterians, but an uncle on his mother’s side was a Baptist pastor. When Comer was a student at Yale, he fled Connecticut to escape yet another smallpox epidemic. The nearness of death was used by...
May 13, 2021 | This Sunday in Baptist History
George Williams in his religious history of the Netherlands wrote, “Persecution of the Anabaptists in the southern Netherlands (Belgium) had been especially severe from the outset. In the period of our narrative the number of Belgium martyrs was about three thousand,...
May 7, 2021 | This Sunday in Baptist History
Would you say that a person could be both a Christian and a Democrat? Should a Christian have fellowship with a believer who is a member of another political party? If you were an American patriot in 1776, could you have Christian fellowship with a Tory – a British...
Apr 29, 2021 | This Sunday in Baptist History
James Barnett Taylor was born in England in 1804. His family moved the next year to New York City. At the age of 13, James was born again – he placed his faith in the sacrifice which Christ Jesus made on the cross. After that he was baptized and joined the First...
Apr 22, 2021 | This Sunday in Baptist History
John Koontz died on this day in 1832. He was buried in a small family graveyard on a hill overlooking the Shenandoah river. Bro. Koontz was perhaps the first Baptist preacher to proclaim the gospel in what was then known as Shenandoah County, Virginia. His ministry...
