This week in Christian history: Megachurch dedicates a 62-foot statue of Jesus; Damasus becomes pope

Charles Finney contracts cholera – Sept. 28, 1832

This week marks the anniversary of when Charles Grandison Finney, an influential 19th-century revival preacher credited with bringing hundreds of thousands of people to Christ, contracted cholera at the age of 40.

Finney began to experience the symptoms of the disease, which is typically spread through bad drinking water, during the service where he was to be installed as pastor of Chatham Street Church in New York.

“Others who contracted the disease the day he did died,” wrote Dan Graves of the Christian History Institute. “His life hung in doubt for several days, but he lived, although so weakened it would be months before he could take up his full duties again.”

Finney’s experience was part of a broader outbreak of cholera in New York in 1832, which resulted in thousands of deaths and the temporary shuttering of many churches and businesses.

Finney died on Aug. 16, 1875, at the age of 82.