Sermons & Devotionals by Short Biographies

Roland Allen 1868-1947 "Christ has given the apostles a world-wide commission, embracing all the nations; but intellectually they did not understand what He meant. They found that out as they followed the impulse of the Spirit." -from Pentecost and the World, 1917 Roland Allen, a young English missi... Read More

Russell is the oldest of Chad & Pat’s four children. At the age of four while his family was living in Minneapolis, Minnesota, he prayed and asked God to call his parents to be missionaries. God answered that prayer and within just a few years the whole family was in Colombia as missionaries. He mar... Read More

PREFACE The words of Christ - "Ye call me Master and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am." (John xiii.13) "Take my yoke upon you and learn of me . . . and ye shall find rest unto your souls." (Matt. xi.29) There is nothing so perfect in the world as to be quite above objection and criticism. The very... Read More

Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky was born in Lithuania in 1831, went to Germany to study for the rabbinate, there became a Christian, emigrated to America, trained for the priesthood, and in 1859 was sent by the Episcopal Church to China, where he devoted himself from 1862 to 1875 to translating t... Read More

Born: February 22, 1805, Har­low, Es­sex, Eng­land. Died: August 14, 1848, St. Mar­tin-in-the-Fields, Mid­dle­sex, Eng­land, of tu­ber­cu­lo­sis. Buried: Foster Street, near Harlow, Essex, England. Daughter of jour­nal­ist and pol­i­ti­cian Ben­ja­min Flow­er, she mar­ried Wil­liam Bridg­es Adams in... Read More

BEGINNINGS OF HEALING MINISTRY Smith Wigglesworth had a plumbing business in Bradford, England. Every Tuesday he would take people to Leeds to a group who practiced divine healing because they could not persuade Smith that the people could be healed in Bradford. Smith's wife Polly was healed in Leed... Read More

St. Symeon (c. 949-1022) is called a theologian because of the importance of prayer in his life. The scion of a wealthy family in the provinces, Symeon was, at 11, sent to Constantinople to live with an uncle and to study. Symeon entered imperial service but resigned to enter the monastery at Studio... Read More

Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada (later known as Teresa de Jesus) was born in Avila, Spain, 28 March 1515, one of ten children whose mother died when she was fifteen. Her family was of partly Jewish ancestry. Teresa, having read the letters of Jerome, decided to become a nun, and when she was 20, she ente... Read More

Susanna Wesley and the Unauthorized Meetings by J. B. Wakeley, 19th Century Methodist Historian While her husband was absent in London in 1711, attending Convocation, Mrs. Wesley adopted the practice of reading in her family, and instructing them. One of the servants told his parents and they wished... Read More

Born: February 28, 1844, Salisbury, England. Died: February 6, 1933, Cardiff, Wales. Son of Will­iam Price Ayl­ward (or­gan­ist at St. Mar­tin, and lat­er, St. Ed­mund, Sal­is­bu­ry), The­o­dore stu­died at Sal­is­bu­ry Ca­thed­ral un­der C. J. Read, with Sam­u­el Wes­ley to whom he was ar­ti­cled, ... Read More

In the thirteenth century, when Thomas Aquinas lived, the works of Aristotle, largely forgotten in Western Europe, began to be available again, partly from Eastern European sources and partly from Moslem Arab sources in Africa and Spain. These works offered a new and exciting way of looking at the w... Read More

Thomas Merton, known in the monastery as Fr. Louis, was born on 31 January 1915 in Prades, southern France. The young Merton attended schools in France, England, and the United States. At Columbia University in New York City, he came under the influence of some remarkable teachers of literature, inc... Read More

Toyohiko Kagawa was born in 1888 in Kobe, Japan. Orphaned early, he lived first with his widowed stepmother and then with an uncle. He enrolled in a Bible class in order to learn English, and in his teens he became a Christian and was disowned by his family. In his late teens, he attended Presbyteri... Read More

Uncle John Vassar by David Smithers The central fact of true Christianity is a Holy and intimate union with Jesus Christ. Uncle John Vassar was never content with anything less than true Christianity. First and foremost he was a loyal lover of Jesus. John Vassar was known as the Apostle of Personal ... Read More

Beginning in the sixteenth century, many Protestant missionaries were sent to China from Europe and America. In the opening years of the twentieth century, following centuries of faithful labor and catalyzed by the martyrdom of many Christians in the Boxer Rebellion, the Lord's move in China advance... Read More

On April 9,1865, Lee met Grant in the parlor of a private home at Appomattox Court House. He surrendered his army and brought an end to four long years of death and devastation called the Civil War. In the same year a 36 year old Englishman by the name of William Booth declared war on the powers of ... Read More

William Carey 1761-1834 by Fred Barlow English Baptist missionary to India. Born in England in 1761. Pastor before going to the mission field, he spent an active forty-one years serving the Lord in India, including translating the Scriptures. "Shoemaker by trade, but scholar, linguist and missionary... Read More

Born: 1821, Pendlebury (near Manchester), England. Died: November 23, 1894. Pseudonym: A.C.C. (“A Canon of Chester”) Cooke was educated at Trinity Hall, Cambridge (BA 1843, MA 1847). Ordained a Deacon in 1844, and Priest in 1845, by Bishop Blomfield of London, he served as assistant Curate at Hillin... Read More

William Joseph Seymour (1870 - 1922) William Joseph Seymour was the co-founder of modern Pentecostalism. Brother Seymour will surely go down in history as one of Americas greatest African American religious leaders. You have heard lots about Azusa. Now meet the man who, during times of intercession,... Read More

William Law, born in 1686, became a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge in 1711, but in 1714, at the death of Queen Anne, he became a non-Juror: that is to say, he found himself unable to take the required oath of allegiance to the Hanoverian dynasty (who had replaced the Stuart dynasty) as the la... Read More