The Great Awakening – Beginning in 1735, the concept of spiritual awakening went to a whole new level. God showed that He could awaken several nations simultaneously! An extraordinary downpouring of the presence of God in Northampton, Massachussetts spread to dozens of other communities in America. Then, as several pastors in the region of Cambuslang, […]

Protestant Persecutions – The spiritual awakening of Scotland could not go unopposed. As King James VI of Scotland became (also) King James I of England (thus creating a new entity called Great Britain), he championed the Divine Right of Kings—meaning, he considered himself—not Jesus—as the de facto head of the Church. In doing this, He […]

Scottish Awakening – The Lollard movement also went north, to Scotland, where it eventually produced the Scottish Reformation. Leaders in Scotland, called into the prayer of faith in God’s word, were to experience spiritual regeneration on a scale not known for centuries. During the time of George Wishart, John Knox, John Welch and Andrew Melville, […]

Moravians! In the 14th century, there emerged in England a grass-roots movement known as the Lollard movement, resulting from translations of the Bible into English at Oxford. John Wycliffe became associated with this and provided some leadership for it. This back to the Bible movement was picked up by John Hus in Bohemia, leading to […]

God’s Track Record – What we are tracing here is not Church history, but the track record of the mighty deeds of God over the last 2000 years. However, there have been four movements that have tried to cover up those mighty deeds, making it difficult for us to see and acknowledge them: Roman Catholicism, […]

Mediaeval Mercies – During the Middle Ages, God reached out to the Roman Catholic Church with two monastic movements, to remind people of the original “by my Spirit” vision. The first was the Cistercian movement (led eventually by Bernard of Clairvaux), which sought to revive the original Rule of St. Benedict, which was based on […]

The Middle Ages – Power and might Christianity corrupted the Church of the Middle Ages, until the whole concept of “Christianity” became unrecognizable.  Control of the Papacy fell to a few Italian families who vied for control of vast wealth and influence.  In the end, a second “Vatican” was established at Avignon in France, with […]

The Next 700 Years. The advance of the Kingdom of God can be seen as a conflict between two versions of Christianity.  During the first 700 years, “by my Spirit” Christianity prevailed in the West, up to the Synod of Whitby in 644 A.D. “Power and might” Christianity prevailed during the Middle Ages, leading to […]

The Triumph of Rome. For fifty years, there were two contrasting Christian churches in Britain: a “power and might” church and a “by my Spirit” church, growing side-by-side.  This unstable situation was resolved at the Synod of Whitby in 644 A.D., in which the Roman Church edged out the Celts, who began the slow and […]

Reintroducing Rome.  Just as Aidan (from Iona) established the outreach to Anglo-Saxons at Lindisfarne, Rome came back into the picture in 597 A.D.  It’s first archbishop, a Benedictine monk named Augustine, set up shop at Canterbury, and challenged the Celts to accept his authority.  Lacking the one quality (humility) that would have won their allegiance, […]