Sermons & Devotionals by Short Biographies

Bernard, third son of a Burgundian nobleman, was born in 1090. His brothers were trained as soldiers, but Bernard from youth was destined for scholarship. One Christmas Eve as a child he had a dream about the infant Christ in the manger; and the memory of it, and consequent devotion to the mystery o... Read More

Billy Bray (1794-1868) The Man With A Shout Billy Bray was born in 1794 at Twelveheads, a village near Truro, in Cornwall England. Billy's father had died when he was quite young and Billy lived with his grandfather who had joined the Methodists under the preaching of John Wesley. When he turned sev... Read More

William Ashley Sunday, Sr. was born November 19, 1862, to William and Mary Jane (Corey) Sunday. His father was in the Union Army on the day of his son's birth and died, probably of measles, at Camp Patterson in Missouri without ever seeing his third and youngest child. Jane Sunday married again, to ... Read More

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) Mathematician, physicist, and theologian, inventor of the first digital calculator, who is often thought of as the ideal of classic French prose. Pascal lived in the time when Copernicus' discovery - that the earth moves round the sun - had made human beings insignificant f... Read More

Wynfrith, nicknamed Boniface ("good deeds"), was born around 680 near Crediton in Devonshire, England. When he was five, he listened to some monks who were staying at his father's house. They had returned from a mission to the pagans on the continent, and Boniface was so impressed by them that he re... Read More

Clive Staples Lewis ("Jack" Lewis to his friends) was a tutor and lecturer at Oxford University, and later Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English Literature at Cambridge University. In the judgement of many, he is the most popular and most effective explainer and defender of the Christian fai... Read More

English missionary. C.T. Studd was the son of a wealthy man, Edward Studd, who was converted to Christ under the ministry of Dwight L. Moody in 1877. Young C.T. Studd became an excellent cricket player, and at the age of 19 was captain of the team at Eton. He attended Cambridge University from 1880 ... Read More

Elder Charles Harrison Mason, who later became the founder and organizer of the Church of God in Christ, was born September 8,1866, on the Prior Farm near Memphis, Tennessee. His father and mother, Jerry and Eliza Mason, were members of a Missionary Baptist Church, having been converted during the d... Read More

So many people came to hear him preach, he is still a legend. One story, undoubtably true, is that one Sunday morning before a worship service, he came out and ask all the members to leave and come back later as the crowd on the street wanting to come in was huge and many were new to the church and ... Read More

Christmas Evans 1766-1838 Welch Baptist minister. Christmas Evans was born near the village of Llandyssul, Cardiganshire, on Christmas day, 1766. His father, a shoemaker, died soon after, and Christmas grew up as an illiterate farm laborer in the care of a godless, cruel uncle. At the age of 17, he ... Read More

Clement, a native of Athens, was converted to Christianity by Pantaenus, founder of the Catechetical School at Alexandria (then the intellectual capital of the Mediterranean world), and succeeded his teacher as head of the School about 180. For over 20 years he labored effectively as an apologist fo... Read More

Clement is counted as the third bishop of Rome (after the apostles). His predecessors are Linus and Cletus (or Anacletus, or Anencletus), about whom almost nothing is known. They are simply names on a list. Clement is a little more than this, chiefly because he wrote a letter to the Corinthians, whi... Read More

In the troubled and violent Dark Ages in Northern Europe, monasteries served as inns, orphanages, centers of learning, and even as fortresses. The light of civilization flickered dimly and might have gone out altogether if it had not been for these convent-shelters. Columba, a stern and strong monk ... Read More

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES Corrie (short for Cornelia) ten Boom was born in Haarlem in Holland on 15 April 1892. The youngest child of Caspar and Cornelia ten Boom, she had two sisters, Betsie and Nollie, and a brother Willem. Caspar ten Boom was a watchmaker. When Corrie grew up she became the first women ... Read More

About the same time with Origen lived St Cyprian, bishop of Carthage. He was born about the year 200, and had been long famous as a professor of heathen learning, when he was converted at the age of forty-five. He then gave up his calling as a teacher, and, like the first Christians at Jerusalem (Ac... Read More

Cyril (originally Constantine) and Methodius were brothers, from a noble family in Thessalonika, a district in northeastern Greece. Constantine was the younger, born in about 827, and his brother Methodius in about 825. They both entered the priesthood. Constantine undertook a mission to the Arabs, ... Read More

Ten years after the death of Athanasius, the great champion of faith in Christ as fully God, the bishopric of Alexandria was bestowed on one Theophilus. He was a man of fiery temperament, and ruthless and violent in the pursuit of what he conceived to be his duty. Having obtained the consent of the ... Read More

Dwight Lyman Moody BORN: February 5, 1837 DIED: December 22, 1899 Northfield, Massachusetts LIFE SPAN: 62 years, 10 months, 17 days DWIGHT LYMAN MOODY was the first evangelist since Whitefield to shake two continents for God. It was on his mother's birthday that Moody was born on a small New England... Read More

Dag Hammarskjöld, Peacemaker 18 September 1961 Dag Hjalmar Agne Carl Hammarskjöld (pronounced HAM-mar-shold) was born in 1905, the son of the Prime Minister of Sweden. He studied law and economics, and taught economics at the University of Stockholm. He became president of the board of the Bank of S... Read More

David Brainerd 1718-1747 by Fred Barlow Missionary to the American Indians in New York, New Jersey, and eastern Pennsylvania. Born in Connecticut in 1718, he died of tuberculosis at the age of twenty-nine in 1747. Jonathan Edwards preached the funeral sermon and published the diary which David had k... Read More