Sunday, May 16, 2021

*** Notes for Today’s Show ***

It is the 16th of May 2021. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org. I’m Dan van Voorhis.

The Story of Dirk Willems in 1569

Arrested, escapes across the ice, guard chasing him falls through, Dirk goes back to save him. He does and then the guard puts him into an even more severe cell until the next day when he is dragged out to a pyre and burned to death.

Why?

As an Anabaptist Mennonite, he was considered a heretic and an enemy of the state

This story seems, simplified?

It comes from the Martyr’s Mirror (also called the Bloody Theatre) a martyrology.

What’s martyrology?

The telling of the story of martyrs

Consider Jesus.

And Acts.

And we are called to take up our crosses.

“Mirror” Literature did this in the Middle Ages,

Foxe’s Book of Martyrs

Martyr’s Mirror

It can be:

Self-aggrandizement and the abuse of history for theologically partisan purposes.

It’s a model of transmitting an idea, a virtue through the selective telling of a person's life.

We remember a story of sacrifice that was told to point the original hearer to the story of the one sacrifice. So, a tip of the hat to whatever happened to Dirk Willems, a member of the church triumphant since this, the 16th of May in 1569.

The last word comes from St. Paul in Romans 8:18-21

18 I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 16th of May 2021 brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a Cubs fan and thus a Martyr, Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day. And remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.