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Christian History

Today in Christian History

August 19

August 19, 1099: Three years after setting out, the First Crusade armies defeat the Saracens at the Battle of Ascalon, a Palestinian city. For more than a century afterwards, Christians controlled the Holy Land (see issue 40: The Crusades).

August 19, 1662: Blaise Pascal, French scientist, polemicist, and Christian apologist, dies at the age of 39 after an extended illness. In 1654, he experienced his "definitive conversion" where he discovered the "God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, and not of the philosophers and men of science" (see issue 76: Christian Face of the Scientific Revolution).

August 19, 1843: C.I. Scofield, dispensationalist creator of the Scofield Reference Bible, is born near Clinton, Michigan (see issue 61: The End of the World).

August 19, 1886: Richard G. Spurling, a Baptist minister, founds the Christian Union in Tennessee. In 1923 the organization took the name the Church of God, Cleveland, Tennessee, a Pentecostal denomination that now has hundreds of thousands of members.

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July 16, 1519: The Disputation of Leipzig, in which Martin Luther argued that church councils had been wrong and that the church did not have ultimate doctrinal authority, ends (see issue 34: Luther's Early Years).

July 16, 1769: Spanish Franciscan friar Father Junipero Serra founds the San Diego de Alcala mission in California, the first permanent Spanish settlement on the west coast of America (see issue 35: Christopher Columbus).

July 16, 1931: Missionary C.T. Studd, one of the famous "Cambridge ...

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