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APRIL

 
16, 1894 --Russia. Nikita Khruschev is born. His father is a coal miner. In 1956, he will take the place of Joseph Stalin as "leader of the Soviet people." In 1959, he will begin a new era of persecution aimed against the churches of Christ, and will set 1980 as the goal to completely extirpate the presence of religion in Russia and her satellites. Newspapers will again attack church leaders. Pastors will again be for-bidden to catechize children, while young people under eighteen years of age will be forbidden to attend church. The "Anti-parasite" law, which was intended for people whose work was considered unfit by the government, will be applied to full-time Christian workers.
      In 1960, a set of "New Statutes" will be made governing the Church and a "Letter of Instructions" will be sent to all pastors. It will decree that baptisms among young people between the ages of eighteen and thirty years of age are to decline; that "evangelistic" preaching will be discouraged, while "unhealthy missionary tendencies" are to be curtailed. Restrictions will be made as to who will be permitted as well as who will be allowed to pray in public worship. Musical instruments will be limited to the organ, the harmonium and occasionally a piano. All dissenting churches will he considered "outlaws."

16, 1937 --Ethiopia. As the Italian army advances into the tribal regions 0f Ethiopia, today they demand the missionaries from the Sudan Interior Mission to leave. The Italians will attempt to extirpate the church. People refusing to kiss crucifixes extended to them by Catholic priests will be jailed.

17, 1222 --England. At Osney, Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, opens a Church council at which he will present decrees which are provincial canons. These decrees, known as "The Constitutions of Stephen Langton" are still recognized as binding by English church courts.

17, 1529 --France. At Paris, Louis de Berquin is burned to death and becomes the first Protestant martyr of France.

17, 1595 --Spain. Pedro Gales arrested while at Rome in 1559 because he contended it was unnecessary to confess to a priest and to abstain from meat on certain days, was compelled to recant. In 1582 while on his way to Bordeaux with his wife and children, he became professor in Geneva. Captured by members of the Holy League, he was surrendered to Spain in 1593. Imprisoned by the Inquisition at Saragossa, he declared the doctrine of Rome frequently contradicted the doctrine taught by Christ and His Apostles. Following his Death, the court of the Inquisition again tried him and being found guilty, his remains are today exhumed and burned.

17, 1666 --Massachusetts. The county court at Cambridge fines Thomas Gould, Thomas Osburne and John George four pounds each and to post bond of twenty pounds each for "absenting themselves from the public worship." As Baptists they have rejected the tyranny of the Church of England. When they refuse to post bond, they are committed to prison.

17, 1788 --England. Adam Clarke marries Miss Mary Cooke, the eldest daughter of a clothier. He has asked her, "As I am at the disposal of Mr. Wesley and the conference, and they can send me whither they please, will you go with me whithersoever I am sent?"
     "Yes!" she has responded, "if I take you I take you as a minister of Christ and shall go with you to the ends of the earth." In forty-two years of marriage, they will have six sons and six daughters.

17, 1933 --China. Muslim rebel rulers in Sinkiang condemn to death Oskar Herman Hermansson and four other Christian leaders. One Turki will be martyred, and the others reprieved. Mr. Hermansson is a missionary of the Swedish State Church and has also served as missionary to East Turkestan and India. From 1934-1936 he will translate the Bible into Turki almost single-handedly.

17, 1941 --Yugoslavia. The nation of Yugoslavia today capitulates to the German Army. The Nazis will put to death more than seven hundred Orthodox priests as well as thousands of the Orthodox Serbs. The Ustashi militia will act with inhuman cruelty and Metropolitan Josip's protest will be ignored. Ante Pavelic, the rebel leader, loyal to the Catholic Church has proclaimed a crusade against the Serbs. One rebel will present Pavelic with forty pounds of eyes. Hammers are used to break Serbian skulls. Others wear belts on which are sewn Serbian ears and noses, while another is given a medal for cutting the throats of one thousand Serbs. The medal reads, "The King of the Cut-Throats." Ustashi Catholic priests will announce 250,000 "conversions" in mass baptisms.


 

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