THIS DAY IN HISTORY: December 22 | Posted Dec. 22, 2007

Researched and written by Gloriscope staff

2005: Singer Peter Schreier gave a famous performance of “Christmas Oratorio.” – Peter Schreier, a son of a Protestant cantor and a famous conductor and lyrical tenor in former East Germany, sold about 1.4 million copies of his album “Peter Schreier Sings Christmas Songs” in the Communist-ruled East Germany – more than any other recorded album in the history of East Germany. He continued as a singer after the reunification of Germany. On December 22, 2005, in Prague, Czech Republic, he appeared in his farewell performance, singing the role of the Evangelist in Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Christmas Oratorio.”

1997: Massacre of Christian peace activists in Mexico – Paramilitary forces killed 45 innocent people - 9 men, 21 women and 15 children - during a prayer meeting in the village of Acteal in the Mexican state of Chiapas. The adults were member of the indigenous Roman Catholic pacifist group “The Bees” (Las Abejas), which had organized a peace and justice caravan to Oaxaca in November 2006 in sympathy of the Popular Assembly of the Oaxacan People (APPO). The massacre caused an international outrage.

1990: Lech Walesa became Poland’s President – After decades of the Communist rule in Poland, the trade union leader Lech Walesa, a fervent Roman Catholic, became a popularly elected President of Poland. Christmas was celebrated across Poland with great joy and much thanksgiving to the Lord.

1981: Pope John Paul II proclaimed his solidarity with protesting workers in the Communist-ruled Poland.

1969: Anglican Church of Canada ordained its first woman deacon.

1917: Death of Mother Cabrini, Italian-American missionary and Catholic saint – Frances Xavier Cabrini (English version of her Italian name Francesca Saverio Sabrini), popularly known as Mother Cabrini, was born in northern Italy in 1850 and died in 1917 in Chicago. She was naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 1909 and canonized by Pope Pius XII in 1946 as the first U.S. saint. She was one of the seven founders of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart (MSC) in 1880, which founded many charitable Catholis institutions in the United States, Europe and South America. Because of her work for the benefit of Italian immigrants in America, she is considered a Catholic patron saint of immigrants.

1899: Death of D.L. Moody, a great American evangelist – Dwight L. Moody was born born 1837 in a poor farmer family in Northfield, Massachusetts, U..S..A.. He moved to Chicago in 1856, where he eventually became a nationally influential Protestant evangelist. He founded the Chicago Avenue Church, a Christian book publishing house (now operating as Moody Publishers) and Chicago Bible Institute (now operating as Moody Bible Institute). He also led the largest Sunday School in the United States. In 1872 he made a very successful evangelistic tour in England as a guest of the British Baptist preacher Charles H. Spurgeon. He supported Christian missions to China by the China Inland Mission and was a friend of Hudson Taylor, a pioneer British Protestant missionary in China. During his most successful evangelistic period, D.L. Moody preached to American and British crowds of 10,000 to 20,000 people at a time. Some people consider him the greatest evangelist of the nineteenth century.

1854: Birth of Ralph Horner, a great Canadian evangelist and churchman – Ralph Horner was born in Quebec and became a Methodist pastor. In disagreement with the Montreal Conference of the Methodist Church, he formed an independent Holiness Movement Church in 1897 and founded a Bible college and a publishing house. He died in 1921.

1522: Turks defeated Christian Hospitallers on Rhodes – On the Greek island of Rhodes in eastern Mediterranean, about 7,000 Knights Hospitaller – also known as Knights of Malta, Knights of Rhodes, and Chevaliers of Malta – capitulated to the overwhelming Muslim forces of the Turkish sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, who had besieged the Christians for half a year with about 200,000 soldiers and 400 ships. The Hospitaliers were allowed to evacuate to Sicily. Those Christian knights, belonging to the Christian Sovereign Order of Saint John of Jerusalem of Rhodes (known as Johanniter in German) had established a famous Christian hopital in Jerusalem in 1080 to serve poor pilgrims to the Holy Land.

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TO GOD BE ALL THE GLORY!

Published in the U.S.A. Copyright © 4T4C News Corp. 2007. All rights reserved.