October 1, 1509: Birth of John Calvin (below right), French Protestant reformer, in Noyon, France.
In 1536 he published his first edition of his classic Institutes of the Christian Religion (Google Books preview), which became the most systematic Protestant doctrinal statement of the Reformation.
October 6, 1536: English reformer William Tyndale, who translated and published the first mechanically-printed New Testament in the English language (against the law at the time) is strangled to death. His body is then burned at the stake.
October 10, 1821: Law student Charles Finney, 29, goes into the woods near his home to settle the question of his soul’s salvation. He experienced a dramatic conversion, full of what seemed “waves of liquid love” throughout his body.
Finney later became American history’s greatest revivalist. Some 500,000 people were converted during his revival services.
October 14, 1735: John and Charles Wesley, cofounders of Methodism, set sail for ministry in America.
October 15, 1900: Former Methodist Charles Fox Parham opens Bethel Bible Institute in Topeka, Kansas, where Agnes Ozman and other students would speak in tongues on New Year’s Eve and begin the 20th-century Pentecostal movement.
October 19, 1609: Dutch theologian Jacob Arminius, founder of an anti-Calvinist Reformed theology, dies at age 49 in Leiden, Netherlands.
October 26, 1950: Mother Teresa founds the first Mission of Charity in Calcutta, India.
October 27, 1771: Francis Asbury (left), sent from England by John Wesley to oversee America’s 600 Methodists, lands in Philadelphia.
During his 45-year ministry in America, he traveled on horseback (or in carriage) an estimated 300,000 miles, delivering some 16,500 sermons. By his death, there were 200,000 Methodists in America.
October 27, 1978: The complete New International Version (NIV) of the Bible is published. It became the most popular English Bible translation of late 20th and early 21st centuries.
October 28, 1949: Jim Elliot, missionary to Ecuador’s Auca Indians (Huaorani people), writes in his journal the most famous of his sayings: “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”
Elliot and four fellow missionaries were murdered while trying to evangelize a violent tribe. A group of 10 warriors killed them in a brutal attack on January 8, 1956. Later, many of the Huaorani came to faith in Christ.
October 31, 1517: A monk named Martin Luther (right) posts a list of 95 complaints and concerns about the Roman Catholic Church on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, sparking what became known as the Protestant Reformation.
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Adapted with permission from ChristianHistory.net.
