An "appalling" truth

"One must face the fact that all the talk about His love for men, and His service being perfect freedom, is not (as one would gladly believe) mere propaganda, but an appalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself – creatures whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His. We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over.”

Screwtape Letters, CS Lewis

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Bury, Greater Manchester - Timeline of churches

979? First Church on the site of the present Parish Church (the picture below is an artist's impression of Bury parish church in 1485). This was the only church in the town of Bury until 1719 (see below). 1585 Parish church (re)built in the gothic style . 1650 During the Commonwealth, Henry Pendlebury was ordained for Holcombe Chapelry. 1662 Having been ejected from the Church of England, Henry Pendlebury of Holcombe (1626-1695) held services at a Chapel on Bass Lane by Richard Kay, and others ejected from the C of E (replaced in 1712 by Dundee Chapel, Holcombe) 1669 The vicar of Bury parish reported to the Bishop of Chester that he heard several conventicles were "constantly kept at private houses of Independents, Presbyterians, Dippers and other such like jointly, of the bset rank of the yeomanry and other inferiors." 1689 ...

The history of the Christian Church in twenty places

α. Jerusalem (30 or 33 AD) The place where Christ, the Son-of-God-become-man, died on the Cross, was raised from the dead on the third day, and from where he ascended back to heaven. This is also where the Holy Spirit was poured out on the first disciples. Sometime after AD 44 (Acts 12), Peter, John and other Apostles dispersed across the world to bear testimony to the risen Christ. 1. Ephesus (approx. 100 AD) The place where the Apostles, Paul and John, handed over to the next generation of Christian leaders, which included the “Apostolic Fathers”. One such “Apostolic Father”, Ignatius of Antioch, passed through Ephesus on his way to martyrdom at Rome, and addressed a letter to the church at Ephesus. 2. Athens (second century) The centre of Greek thought, which Justin Martyr and other Second Century Apologists addressed in their presentations of the Christian faith, proclaiming Christ as the Logos (the Word or principle underlying the universe). 3. Lyon (from 177) The church in ...

History of Christianity in Latvia - great "saints" and heroes of the faith in Latvia

The Baltic region, including what is now Latvia , was one of the last outposts of European paganism, and was only evangelised and converted from the 1100s. Bishop Meinhard (1134-1196) was one of the first to successfully plant the gospel in Latvian soil. An Augustinian canon (similar to a monk), he served as the first bishop of the see of Üxküll (now Ikšķile , Latvia ). However, the murder of his successor led to a more violent imposition of Christianity. This was in the context of the Northern Crusades (Livonian Crusade) whereby peoples/tribes inhabiting this region, including the Latgalians, Selonians, Semigallians and Curonians, came to embrace the Christian faith. Andreas Knoepken (1490-1539), a disciple of Luther, was the one who "brought" the Protestant Reformation to Latvia in its Lutheran form. 1521 is considered the date of the Protestant Reformation in Latvia; by the mid 1500s the majority of people had become Protestant. The Bible was ...

Crumbs from the Table

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