January 14

At the close of the War Between the States, southern civilians fled before the advancing Union armies, leaving some communities with nothing but chaos and confusion.  During the war there had been scores of Baptist church buildings which had been stripped of their...

January 7

Ezekiel Skinner was the only child of Ezekiel and Mary Skinner, born in Connecticut in 1777.  When both his parents died, his uncle apprenticed him to a blacksmith, but Ezekiel’s sharp mind made him disinterested in the work.  Through diligence he was able to redeem...

December 31

Oliver Hart, a particular favorite of mine, was born in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, in 1723. Early in life he was exposed to the preaching of George Whitefield, the Anglican, the Tennents, a father and son who were Presbyterians, and Edward and Able Morgan, two...

December 24

James Barnett Taylor, was born in England in 1804, but a year later his family moved to New York. When James was about ten, the family was passing by a church, probably the First Baptist Church, pastored by John Gano. The little boy persuaded his father to go in to...

December 17

Barnet Grimsley was born in Culpeper County, Virginia on this day (Dec. 17) in 1807. This was after some degree of religious peace had been won through the sacrifice of earlier Baptist brethren. Barnet had a prodigious intellect and memory. When he was but...

December 10

Dutton Lane was born in Maryland in 1732, but when he was young his father moved the family to Virginia near the North Carolina border. Shubal Stearns and Daniel Marshall, after establishing the Sandy Creek Baptist Church, began to minister in the vicinity where the...

December 3

Baptists owe a great debt to the country of Wales, where our forefathers lived and thrived long before the Protestant Reformation. In addition to many individuals, during the days of American colonization, more than one entire church emigrated from Wales to the Middle...

November 26

Baptist associations and organized fellowships always (almost always???) take upon themselves more authority than the Bible allows. One case in point involves John Newton. This John Newton was born in Kent County, Pennsylvania, in the year 1732. After his salvation...

November 19

This is more of a lesson than a point of history, yet it begins in our usual way. Barnstaple, England was without a Baptist witness until 1815. A year earlier, a nineteen-year-old man, Charles Veysey came under conviction and was born-again by the grace of God....

November 12

Three years after his first wife died, John Bunyan married Elizabeth. This was 1659. Elizabeth was an outstanding Christian lady. She immediate took Bunyan’s four children from his first marriage and raised them as her own. And then just a year later, on this day...

November 5

Under Britain’s Toleration Act of 1649, which also applied to all her colonies, officials of neither the State nor the Church could prosecute Baptists for merely preaching the gospel. But our Baptist brethren in Virginia were so hated that the State trumped up other...

October 29

William Harris, was the pastor of the Goose Creek Church in Buckingham County, Virginia, before moving to the wilderness of Bedford County. As one of the first settlers in the area, he worked with his hands and back throughout the week before preaching the gospel on...

October 22

Stephen Parsons was a Congregationalist from Middletown, Connecticut. He was ordained into the ministry of that denomination in 1788, becoming one of the rising stars. During the next seven years his fame and influence grew. But then in 1795, after a careful study of...

October 15

During the early 1700s settlers began occupying the Hopewell Valley northwest of Trenton, N.J., west of Princeton. For many years the Baptist believers in Hopewell met in the home of one of the first settlers, gladly receiving the ministry of various traveling...

October 8

In 1668, Benjamin Keach became the pastor of the Baptist Church in Horsleydown, London. First meeting in homes, in 1672 they built their first building. Eventually, they had a meeting house which seated over a thousand. Before becoming that famous pastor, Benjamin...