Non-Catholic Christians

    From BelieveTheSign
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    In 1520, there were four main government-approved churches: the Roman Catholic Church, The Eastern Orthodox Church, The Ethiopian Church, and the Assyrian (Indian) Church - divided primarily by location. By 1750, there were numerous organized Protestant denominations, including the Anglicans, Lutherans, Mennonites, Baptists, Hutterites, Moravians, Pilgrims, Armenians, Puritans, Quakers, and Huguenots. Many of these groups were persecuted by the Catholic Church, but also persecuted the Catholic Church and each other when the opportunity arose.

    • William Tyndale: Translated the Bible into English, and was burned alive on 6 October 1536. His final words reportedly were, "Oh Lord, open the King of England's eyes". Tyndale is quoted as saying "I defy the Pope, and all his laws; and if God spares my life, I will cause the boy that drives the plow in England to know more of the Scriptures than the Pope himself!" (Foxe's Book of Martyrs, Chap XII) Tyndale introduced the following phrases into English during his translation: "let there be light", "the powers that be", "my brother's keeper", "the salt of the earth", "a law unto themselves", "filthy lucre", "it came to pass", "gave up the ghost", "Jehovah", "Passover", "atonement", and "scapegoat".
    • Isaac Watts: (July 17, 1674 – November 25, 1748) is recognised as the "Father of English Hymnody", as he was the first prolific and popular English hymnwriter, credited with some 750 hymns.
    • John Bunyan (November 28, 1628 – August 31, 1688), a Christian writer and preacher. He wrote The Pilgrim's Progress, arguably the most famous published Christian allegory.
    • George Fox: (July 1624 – January 13, 1691) was an English Dissenter and a major early figure — usually considered the founder of the Religious Society of Friends, commonly known as the Quakers. Toward the end of his life, he wrote a letter for general circulation pointing out that Abel, Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Moses and David were all keepers of sheep or cattle, and that a learned education should not therefore be seen as a qualification for ministry. (Marsh 1847, 364)
    • Menno Simons: (1496–January 31, 1561) was an Anabaptist religious leader from Friesland. Quoted as saying "Christ is our fortress; patience our weapon of defense; the Word of God our sword. ... Iron and metal spears and swords we leave to those who, alas, regard human blood and swine’s blood of well-nigh equal value." "
    • Jacob Hutter (died February 25, 1536) was an Anabaptist religious leader who practiced community of goods, nonviolence, and baptism of adult believers. He was tortured and burned alive on February 25, 1536.

    George Whitefield (December 16, 1714 - September 30, 1770), was a minister in the Church of England and one of the leaders of the Methodist movement. He travelled through America, England, Scotland, Ireland, Bermuda, Gibraltar, and The Netherlands. Benjamin Franklin calculated, by pacing the area around George Whitefield where his voice was audible while preaching, that he could indeed speak to tens of thousands of people in a single sermon.

    Francis Asbury (August 20, 1745 – March 31, 1816) became a local preacher at 18 and was ordained at 22. In 1771 he volunteered to travel to America. When the American War of Independence broke out in 1776 he was the only Methodist minister to remain in America. [1]

    William Carey (August 17, 1761 – June 9, 1834) was an English Protestant missionary and Baptist minister. Carey was one of the founders of the Baptist Missionary Society. As a missionary in Serampore, India, he translated the Bible into Bengali, Sanskrit, and numerous other languages and dialects.

    Adoniram Judson: (9 August 1788 - 12 April 1850) An American Baptist missionary who translated the Bible into the Burmese language, and suffered severe persecution and imprisonment. His work inspired and equipped Ko Tha Byu, a Karen native, to become the first apostle to the Burmese. [2]

    Charles Grandison Finney (August 29, 1792 – August 16, 1875), was a major leader of the Second Great Awakening in America.

    George Müller (September 27, 1805 – March 10, 1898), a Christian evangelist and coordinator of orphanages in Bristol, England, cared for a total of over 100,000 orphans in his life. He was well-known for his constant faith in God and for providing an education to the children under his care, to the point where he was accused of raising the poor above their natural station in life. In 1875, at the age of 70, he began a 17 year period of missionary travel. In that time, he preached in the United States, India, Australia, Japan, China, and nearly forty other countries. [3]

    Dwight Lyman Moody (February 5, 1837 - December 22, 1899), also known as D.L. Moody, was an American evangelist, setting up Sunday Schools, and preaching accross America, and visiting China and England. [4]

    James Hudson Taylor (May 21, 1832 – June 3, 1905), was a British Protestant Christian missionary to China, and founder of the China Inland Mission (CIM) (now OMF International). [5]

    WITHIN about one-half century, a very considerable body of religionists have arisen in the United States, who, rejecting all names, appellations, and badges of distinctive party among the followers or Christ, simply call themselves CHRISTIANS.
    ...this people originated from the three principal Protestant sects in America. The branch at the south, from the Methodists; the one at the north, from the [165] Baptists, and the one at the west, from the Presbyterians. The three branches rose within the space of eight years, in sections remote and unknown to each other, until some years afterwards...
    The adopting of the Holy Scriptures as their only system of faith, has led them to the study of shaping their belief by the language of the sacred oracles. A doctrine, which cannot be expressed in the language of inspiration, they do not hold themselves obligated to believe. Hence, with very few exceptions, they are not Trinitarians, averring that they can neither find the word nor the doctrine in the Bible. They believe "Lord our Jehovah is one Lord," and purely one. That "Jesus Christ is the only begotten Son of God." That the Holy Ghost is that divine unction with which our Saviour was anointed.
    Rev. David Millard, History of all the religious denominations in the United States, 1848.



    Footnotes

    1. America's Bishop: The Life of Francis Asbury (2003) by Darius Salter (ISBN 1-928915-39-6)
    2. Burmese Bible & Adoniram Judson Biography
    3. (Works by George Muller at Project Guttenberg [1])
    4. (Sermons of D.L. Moody [2])
    5. James Hudson Taylor, OMF Website


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