Friday, September 25, 2026

It is the 25^th of September 2026. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org. I'm your guest host, Sam Leanza Ortiz.

 

What a week of shows we’ve had together – from the Gospel writers of the first century to twentieth-century Japan––it’s been quite a tour! Dan will have a weekend edition for you tomorrow, and then he’ll be back to business as usual on Monday.

For today’s show, it was a bit of a treat for me, as the calendar landed on a character I was surprised I had not heard of! For context, my graduate research back at Baylor was on the conversations and cooperations between different Protestant traditions in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. This wasn’t just a happy-go-lucky gathering but a strategic coalition. Lutherans, Anglicans, and the Reformed perceived a serious threat from the absolutism of the Catholic powers on the continent, particularly in France, which prompted a coordinated effort from these groups.

In 1685, King Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes and sent thousands of Protestants packing, or worse. These refugees from France needed care–homes, schools, ministers- and these Protestant groups jumped into action. One such minister, a Frenchman who served exile populations in Berlin, London, and Ireland, was Jacques Abbadie, who died on this day in 1727.

Jacques was born in the town of Nay, in Bearn (like the sauce) in the southwest of France, most likely in the year 1654. He grew up in obscure poverty in a Huguenot family but showed an aptitude for learning that inspired local leading Protestants to pay for his schooling.

Abbadie excelled, such that he received his doctorate of divinity by the age of 22.

Not long after he finished his schooling, the young doctor received a call from Frederick Wilhelm, the elector of Brandenburg, to serve a French church in Berlin. Records indicate he arrived in Berlin sometime between 1680 and 1681, and his congregation would grow exponentially over the decade as refugees sought a safe haven in the electorate.

As he ministered, Abbadie was also writing profusely–over his tenure in Berlin, he would make several trips to Holland to deliver manuscripts, the most famous of which was the two-volume apologetic work titled “A Vindication of the Truth of the Christian Religion,” published in 1684.

Abbadie’s tenure in Berlin came to an end in 1688 with the death of the elector, Frederick Wilhelm. His next appointment came from within his congregation, from a displaced marshal of France, the duke of Schomberg. The elector of Brandenburg lent Marshal Schomberg Prussian forces to support William, the Prince of Orange, in his “glorious Revolution” that would topple the Stuart monarchy in England in favor of a new, firmly Protestant monarchy. Schomberg invited Abbadie to come along, and he did, traveling to London, then to Ireland where the real battles of this supposedly bloodless revolution raged.

Schomberg was killed at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, and Abbadie returned to London to minister to another French church. He was a favorite of the now King William III, who charged him to write occasional sermons, including a funeral oration for the late Queen Mary. King William wanted to promote him to the deanery of St. Patrick’s in Dublin, but Abbadie's English was not proficient enough at this point for him to ably minister there.

Over the course of the decade, his linguistic skills must have improved, as Abbadie would go to Ireland in 1699 to become the dean of Killaloe in County Clare.

He continued to write and travel during his two decades in Ireland, including a second edition of his Vindication series, as well as pointed apologetics against the “Romish” church that had a strong foothold on the Emerald Isle.

In 1720, he departed for Holland to oversee the printing of a massive four-volume work with the comically verbose title: “The Triumph of Providence and Religion; or, the Opening of the Seven Seals by the Son of God, wherein will be found the first part of the Apocalypse clearly explained by what is best known in History and least contested in the Word of God. With a new and very perceptible Demonstration of the Truth of the Christian Religion.”

He returned once more to Ireland in 1723, to find his position in dire straits and the income of the deanery drying up. He obtained an introduction to Edmund Gibson, then the bishop of London, and moved to Marylebone, where he began to work on a pair of treatises on philosophy, responding to the Enlightenment figure Pierre Bayle, a Huguenot refugee like Abbadie, who had championed a more critical perspective on the Christian religion.

But Abbadie would only leave traces of these works in his diaries, as they would ultimately go unfinished. The man who had ministered to the Huguenot diaspora, established himself in the firmly Protestant court of William of Orange, and promoted the truths of Scripture through the pen and the pulpit would die on the 25^th of September in 1727. Most likely born in 1654, Jacques Abbadie was about 73 years old.

 

The last word for today comes from Acts 13:

³² “We tell you the good news: What God promised our ancestors ³³ he has fulfilled for us, their children, by raising up Jesus. As it is written in the second Psalm:

“‘You are my son;
today I have become your father.’

³⁴ God raised him from the dead so that he will never be subject to decay. As God has said,

“‘I will give you the holy and sure blessings promised to David.’

³⁵ So it is also stated elsewhere:

“‘You will not let your holy one see decay.’

³⁶ “Now when David had served God’s purpose in his own generation, he fell asleep; he was buried with his ancestors and his body decayed. ³⁷ But the one whom God raised from the dead did not see decay.

 

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 25^th of September 2026, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

This show has been produced by Christopher Gillespie.

This episode has been written and read by Sam Leanza Ortiz, filling in for Dan van Voorhis, who prefers a Bearnaise sauce with his steak frites.

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.