by Peter James | Aug 31, 2023 | A. J. Gordon
A. J. Gordon (1836-1895) didn’t pay much attention to dreams until one changed his life. It was late on a Saturday evening and A.J. was burning the midnight oil to finish a sermon. He fell asleep and dreamt about leading worship at Clarendon Baptist Church in...
by Peter James | Aug 30, 2023 | Titus Coan
A large company of friends gathered at Boston Harbor on a blustery day in December 1834 to bid a tearful farewell to Fidelia and Titus Coan (1801-1881). They knelt for prayer and sang a final hymn together. The couple boarded the merchant ship Hellespont and set sail...
by Peter James | Aug 29, 2023 | Billy Sunday
There’s a bar in Chicago called Billy Sunday, which I find ironic, given that its namesake was a temperance activist. His “Get on the Wagon” abstinence sermon was instrumental in passing Prohibition in 1920. Billy Sunday (1862-1935) never knew his...
by Peter James | Aug 28, 2023 | Philipp Nicolai
The COVID pandemic caught us by surprise. Nothing like it has ever happened in our lifetime. Plagues were common in the Middle Ages. Philipp Nicolai (1556-1608) was a pastor in Unma (Germany) when the bubonic plague swept through the town. More than 1300 people died...
by Peter James | Aug 27, 2023 | Ursula Niebuhr
I have served my entire ministry with a church aligned with what many regard as a liberal mainline denomination. H. Richard Niebuhr critiqued the liberal social gospel in 1937 with stinging words, “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom...
