Biography

Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntington “And what if you save (under God) but one soul?” [1] This question, addressed to a still hesitant John Wesley, is a good summary of the life goal and drive of Selina Hastings, countess of Huntingdon. Selina’s Early Life Born in 1707 to an upper-class family...

Catherine Willoughby – An Outspoken Reformer When fourteen-year-old Catherine Willoughby married Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, in 1533, she became one of the wealthiest and most powerful women in England. Thirty-five years her senior, Brandon had been married three times before. His latest wife...

Gerasim Kyrias – Zealous Evangelist and National Hero On 16 February 2000, eight months after the end of the Kosovo War, Rexhep Meidani, then President of Albania, gave a glowing accolade to the Evangelicals who had promptly banded together to help the huge number of Kosovar refugees. “In this they...

Tiyo Soga – The First Ordained Black South African Many things had changed in South Africa since Tiyo Soga had first traveled to Scotland in 1846. And he had changed as well. He had left a young seventeen-year-old graduate of the Lovedale Institution in South Africa, an outpost of the Glasgow...

Byang Kato and the Universal Nature of the Historical Gospel During the second half of the twentieth century, many African nations declared their independence from the European countries that had ruled them. In 1960 alone, the so-called “African year,” seventeen African nations claimed this...

Gudina Tumsa – Martyr and Thinker On July 28, 1979, Gudina Tumsa led a Bible study at Urael Church in Addis Ababa, one of the congregations of the Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus (EECMY). He had barely left the church when he was kidnapped, together with his wife, Tsehay Tolessa, by some...

On December 24, 1920 Benjamin B. Warfield fell ill after being struck with angina pectoris. He died on February 16, 1921. Why should we pause this week to remember a Princeton theologian who has been with the Lord for one hundred years? Perhaps Isaac Newton’s reason is enough, “If I have seen...

Onesimos Nesib, Aster Ganno, and the Oromo Translating Team In my last post, I wrote about Pauline Fathme, Christian Rufo, and their efforts to bring the gospel to Ethiopia. Rufo worked with the German Johann Ludwig Krapf to translate portions of the Bible into the language of the Oromo, which at...

Liang Fa – The First Chinese Ordained Pastor In 1804, fifteen-year-old Liang Fa moved to the big city of Guangzhou (then known as “Canton”) to find work, first as a brush-maker, then as an apprentice printer. His parents had provided a good classical Chinese education as long as their means had...

[Originally submitted in December of 2019, but retracted; see footnote number six.] Two weeks ago my wife went to Urgent Care during our morning Sabbath service to get important treatment. When she returned while I was leading our singing of the closing Psalm, she jubilantly waved at me through the...