The oldest charities in Britain have been around for nearly nine hundred years, an example of which would be The Hospital of St Cross in Winchester which still cares for old people, started by Bishop Henry de Blois, William the Conqueror's grandson. Steeped in tradition, it still offers bread...
Today in 1885 the Salvation Army was officially organized in the USA, a year later it was endorsed by President Grover Cleveland. Now they assist approximately 23 million Americans annually through local programs designed to offer immediate relief, short-term care, and long-term growth in a...
Today in 1946 Ravi Zacharias was born in Madras, India . He inspired a generation of apologists and founded the RZIM (Ravi Zacharias International Ministry). The author of more than 30 books on Christianity and the host of multiple radio shows, he was widely esteemed in the Evangelical...
Berkley posited that everything exists only insofar as it is perceived by the senses, and this has led him to being called the father of empiricism. A talented metaphysician he became famous for defending idealism, which struck many as counter-intuitive, but was strong and flexible enough to...
In the year 313, the Emperor Constantine had issued an edict granting Christians religious freedom, and officially recognizing Christianity as equal with paganism under the law. The eastern provinces had been entrusted to Licinius who had the half-sister of Constantine. Their marriage was the...
Today in 1983 in Orlando Florida, president Ronald Reagan in an address to the National Association of Evangelicals used the phrase "evil empire", in what was seen as a significant escalation of rhetoric around the Cold War. What became known as the Reagan Doctrine of active intervention was...
It's been fascinating reading through this thread - it strikes me that finding the middle ground beyond the extremes of fears of a theocracy and living separately from the world is a good place to be. It seems to me that Jesus himself was not naive, no political ingenue, knew his teachings...
Michelangelo was born today, in 1474. His achievements as a sculptor, painter, architect and poet mean that he is often considered to be the archetypal Renaissance man, some even see him as the greatest artist of all time.
His output through his life was prodigious, often called Il Divino, the...
On March 4 1681, King Charles II of England, handed over a large piece of his North American land holdings along the North Atlantic coast to William Penn in order to pay off debts that king had owed to Penn's father, an admiral and politician. This land included the present-day states of...
On this day in Christian History we go back to year 1791 and travel to London to remember the death of John Wesley. An Anglican priest and theologian, the founder of Methodism, he was described as the best-loved man in England. In the 1700s, when travel was by walking, horseback or carriage...
On this day in Christian History, we go back to year 1857 and travel to New York and mark the birth of Charles Sheldon, one of the leaders of the Social Gospel movement. In the winter of 1896 Sheldon developed a sermon story that he read as a weekly series from the pulpit of Central...
Today, listening to a homily in the chapel of St. Mary of the Angels, in Portunicula, a young man named Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone was inspired to devote himself to a life of poverty. He was to become known in history as Francis of Assisi. Born into a wealthy family of a prosperous silk...
Today in 1686 we travel to Germany and the city of Halle and remember the birth of George Frederick Handel, composer of the oratorio "Messiah," which is now one of the best-known and most frequently performed choral works in Western music. The text, based on scripture compiled by Charles...
I think the long-held idea of the Beatific Vision here might be helpful. The immediate knowledge of God which angels and the souls of the just enjoy in Heaven. I think owing a lot to Aquinas - in beholding God face to face the created intelligence finds perfect happiness
It maybe that NDE...
But being asleep doesn't rule out consciousness (which I think was the original question) ..... the REM stage of sleep for instance is linked to dreaming, the brain is still functioning and sorting out the days experiences..... it is interesting how dreams can be one of the main channels in the...
Today we travel to the Phillipines. where a sustained campaign of civil resistance against President Ferdinand Marcos led to the end of his 20-year presidential term and the restoration of democracy in the Philippines. The majority of the demonstrations took place on a long stretch of Epifanio...
The World Council of Churches (or WCC) was inaugurated in 1948, as the world was emerging from the destruction of another world war, the policy of this inter-church organization is to work for the cause of ecumenism, that is Christian Unity and cooperation amongst denominations. Its...
On this day in Christian History we go back to year 1895 and travel to Washington DC in the United States and remember the death of Frederick Douglass an American social reformer, abolitionist, and statesman.
Douglas had been born as Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, and had been born into...