September 17

Brother John Kerr was the pastor of the First Baptist Church of Richmond, Virginia. Even while serving his state as a member of the United States Congress, the Lord blessed his church with at least two periods of great revival. In 1831 the church recorded 555...

September 10

I have often referred to the religious persecution which was legal in many of the first American colonies and which was then carried over into some of this country’s first states. Over time, and with much hard work, eventually religious liberty became a matter of law....

September 3

Henry Jessey, the son of an Anglican minister, was born on this day in 1601. His father wanted Henry to follow him into his Protestant ministry, so he was sent to some fine British schools. It was quite apart from that education, that the Lord brought him to his knees...

August 27

Adoniram Judson was this country’s first foreign missionary – serving in Burma. When he and his wife left this country, sailing for the Orient, the couple were going as missionaries of the Congregational denomination. During the long voyage, in preparation for his...

August 20

Jehu Shuck was a Virginian, born in that state in 1812. He was born again as a young man, and the Lord called him into the ministry. Two days after marrying, Henrietta, the daughter of Dr. and Mrs. J.B. Jeter, the Shucks set sail for China as missionaries. Mrs. Shuck...

August 13

How many people are required for the proper establishment of a Baptist Church? Gustaf Palmquist was born in 1812 into a family of seven children in Sweden.  At some point, his mother came under Holy Spirit conviction, but turning to her Lutheran priest, she was told...

August 6

Today, I am going to combine our history vignette with our testimony of the day. Jesse Babcock Worden was born on July 18, 1787, into a Christian home. He was the youngest of nine children. Because of his large family, and because there were no schools there in...

July 30

Thomas Patient was born in England. After attending either Cambridge or Oxford and becoming a Congregational minister, he came to America to serve the Lord in an atmosphere of freedom. While here, he discovered that he hadn’t been scripturally baptized, so he turned...

July 23

By the middle of the 16th century the Dutch city of Nijmegen had become famous for its weaving industry, and the family of Jan Block had become wealthy in that trade. Jan became a local celebrity, well-known for his lifestyle of sin and partying. Attracted to this...

July 16

The history of, John Clough, an early American missionary is too astounding for the average Christian to believe. Certainly it can’t be possible that his ministry lead to the salvation of so many souls that during a period of six weeks, over 8,500 Telugu nationals...

July 9

Joseph Binney was born again at the age of twenty. He joined a Congregational church in Boston, and began to prepare himself to take the gospel to the heathen in the Orient. In one of his courses at Yale College he was to debate another student on the subject of...

July 2

The work of planting Baptist churches in America’s Midwest was difficult. That was due in part to the cosmopolitan makeup of the settlers and the nature of the terrain along the lakes. Michigan, for example, was described by America’s surveyor-general as low and...

June 25

Most people have heard about the infamous, 1692, witchcraft trials of Salem Massachusetts. Two, often highly respected names, Increase Mather and his son Cotton, were at the epicenter of that horrible travesty. “If a woman was seen to gather herbs to boil, she was...

June 18

I am told that the Severns Valley was blessed to have the first Baptist Church in what was to become Kentucky. It was established on this day (June 18) in 1781 between today’s Louisville and Elizabethtown. Eighteen rough frontiersmen and women constituted the original...

June 11

Hervey Jenks was the son of Godly parents. But like so many others, he grew up with his father’s religion, but not his Saviour. With plans to become a lawyer, he began attending Brown University, America’s first Baptist school of higher education. During his final...