This Day in Baptist History
November 27 The Testament of a Godly Mother Scripture: Isaiah 59:1-8 A godly woman named Soetgen van den Houte fell into the hands of the same persecutors that her husband had fallen into previously. She was left a widow with three children. After experiencing the fierce assaults and imprisonments described before in this volume by others who shared like sufferings and martyrdom, she witnessed to the truth she professed and sealed it with her blood and death November 27, 1560, in the city of Ghent. Just prior to her death, Soetgen left a...
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November 26 The Word of God, the Dictates of Conscience Made Me a Baptist Scripture: Acts 24: 14-27 John Holcombe was born in 1762. When he was still a child, his family moved from Virginia to South Carolina. By eleven years of age, he completed all the education to be received from a living teacher. He had a naturally inquiring mind which desired knowledge of every kind. He especially dwelt on the vast number and grandeur of the heavenly bodies. At the commencement of the Revolutionary War, Holcombe was quite young. However, he was...
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November 25 From One Generation to Another Scripture: Matthew 16:16-18 Two previous entries have focused expressly on the Wightman family of England and early America. Valentine Wightman was born April 16, 1681, in Rhode Island. On February 10, 1702, he married Susannah Holmes, who was the granddaughter of the Reverend Obadiah Holmes who had been severely whipped at Lynn, Massachusetts, and the great-granddaughter of Roger Williams, the dauntless apostle of freedom of conscience. Mr. and Mrs. Valentine Wightman surely came from Baptist...
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November 24 Swallowed Up in the Will of God Scripture: Matthew 26:37-46 Susanna Mason was born in Rehoboth, Massachusetts, in 1724 or 1725. Her great-grandfather had been a soldier in Oliver Cromwell’s Roundhead Army. The families were Baptist in background. She was converted in 1745, joined the Separate church, and maintained her Baptist convictions when she married Isaac Backus. Backus, not fully persuaded of Baptist principles relating to pedobaptism at that time, was aware of her views when he asked her to marry him. Later he became...
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November 23 Any Truth Rationalized to an Extreme Becomes a Heresy Scripture: Matthew 15:1-14 In the early eighteenth century, many General Baptists embraced extreme liberalism in the form of Arian and Socinian views. They had been influenced by the apostasy of the state churches. Between 1715 and 1750 the General Baptists experienced a severe decline—the number of their churches fell from 146 to 65. The winds of false doctrine are dry and deadly, withering the spiritual vitality of the body. During the same period, there were winds of...
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