Medieval Christians were fascinated by the character of the Samaritan woman, whose story is presented in the fourth chapter of the Gospel of John. Numerous legends celebrating her life history recounted in imaginative detail the heroic deeds of this convert to Christ. The Bible itself, of course, gives no information about her following her encounter with Jesus, nor does it even mention her name. But medieval hagiographers named her Photina and recounted her brave witness to the gospel, leading to her ultimate martyrdom. One legend reports that she converted the daughter of Nero and was martyred in Rome. Another places her in Carthage, where she preached the gospel and died in prison. Although ancient and medieval commentaries on the fourth Gospel do not commemorate these extracanonical accomplishments, they portray the Samaritan woman's personality and discipleship in equally flattering ways. Not only does she beautifully model the sinner's conversion to Christ, but she also demonstrates admirable zeal in bearing witness to Christ among her fellow Samaritans. On the basis of her testimony, a host of the citizens of Sychar come to faith in Christ, a feat matched by none of Jesus' disciples in the pages of the Gospels.

Imperial law strictly prohibited religious novelty in eighteenth-century Germany. The Westphalian Peace accords of 1648, which served as the constitutional framework for the German empire until Napoleon, banned all public expression objectionable to the three sanctioned churches: the Roman Catholic, Lutheran, and Calvinist or Reformed. Various ordinances applied the Westphalian definitions broadly, but the jurisdictional quilt of the empire frustrated implementation. In particular, noble patrons could enable a writer accused of spreading heterodox, antichurch, or even anti-Christian views to remain active and influential.

On a Sunday morning in January of 1827, “all the taste and fashion” of Washington, D.C., streamed toward the Capitol to witness one of the most remarkable events to take place in the gentlemanly preserve of the Hall of Representatives: Harriet Livermore, a devout evangelical and the daughter of a former Congressman, had convinced the Speaker of the House to allow her to preach to Congress. With crowds of eager spectators spilling out of the Hall and into the street, Livermore ascended into the Speaker's Chair, which served as a makeshift pulpit, and silenced a crowd of a thousand with a sermon on the text, “He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God.” Included among her audience were congressmen, senators, and President John Quincy Adams himself, who sat on the steps leading up to her feet because he could not find a free chair. According to published reports, many in the audience wept quietly as she spoke. “It savored more of inspiration than anything I ever witnessed,” one woman marvelled. “And to enjoy the frame of mind which I think she does, I would relinquish the world. Call this rhapsody if you will; but would to God you had heard her!” Livermore's sermon was such a success that she was permitted to preach to Congress again in 1832, 1838, and 1843, each time to large crowds.

As news of the great Welsh Revival of 1904 reached Southern California, Frank Bartleman, an itinerant evangelist and pastor living in Los Angeles, became convinced that God was preparing to revitalize his beloved holiness movement with a powerful, even apocalyptic, spiritual awakening. Certain that events in Wales would be duplicated in California, Bartleman reported in 1905 that “the Spirit is brooding over our land.… Los Angeles, Southern California, and the whole continent shall surely find itself ere long in the throes of a mighty revival.” In 1906 he speculated that theSan Francisco earthquake “was surely the voice of God to the people on the Pacific Coast.” Bartleman indeed witnessed such a revival, for in early April 1906, this “Latter Rain” outpouring had begun to fall on a small gathering of saints led by William J. Seymour, a black holiness preacher. At a vacant AME mission at 312 Azusa Street, countless pentecostals received the baptism of the Holy Spirit evidenced by speaking in other tongues—a “second Pentecost” replicating the first recorded in Acts 2. Bartleman, who also experienced this, would soon become integral to the revival's growth by reporting the events at Los Angeles within a vast network of holiness and higher life periodicals. As during other religious awakenings, such reports not only generated the perception of widespread divine activity but also provided an interpretive scheme for understanding the meaning of such activity. For Bartleman, Azusa was the starting point of a worldwide awakening that would initiate Christ's return. He reported: “Los Angeles seems to be the place, and this the time, in the mind of God, for the restoration of the church to her former place.”

German Seventh-day Adventists entered the Nazi era with apprehension. As a foreign sect which resembled Judaism in many respects, Adventists were particularly threatened by a society based on the principle of völkisch racism. Yet the new state also had much to offer them, for it held the prospect of new opportunities for the church. The Nazi state banished the scourge of liberalism and godless Bolshevism, it restored conservative standards in the domestic sphere, and it took effective steps to return German society to a life in harmony with nature—a life Adventists had long championed.