The Life and Work of John Knox with Douglas Bond (Part 1 & 2) DMW#240

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Part two of the life and works of John Knox with Douglas Bond. Here we go exploring theology doctrine and all of the fascinating subjects in between Broadcasting from an undisclosed location dead men walking starts now

00:31

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Joe's coffee You're just playing squirrely. So guys, welcome back to another episode Last week you heard part one of our series on John Knox.

03:56

We had Douglas bond on Today you're gonna hear part two of that series part one kind of covered maybe the first 30 or 40 years of his life part two will finish up his life and death and then move into Kind of the theology that he left behind the political ramifications that he had during his time

04:17

We did a little personality profile on him as well. I'm not gonna spoil it for you that was very exciting to kind of find out his personality and what type of guy he was and Douglas bond just a great brother in the

04:29

Lord just met him recently Spent I think an hour and a half with us going through the life of John Knox I thought it was very important to do that just for me personally

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I knew some things about John Knox and he's one of my favorites, but didn't know everything and Doug just did a great

04:46

Job of really I'm giving us all the details you can tell he's very excited When he's talking about history and church history and the

04:54

Reformers and you can find out more about Doug at bond books net he's written over 30 books and Some of them fiction some of them historical fiction some of them not some of them biographies.

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I mean just great books And he's carried everywhere, you know Reformation books and Banner of Truth I think have him and I mean all the good publishing companies sell his books.

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So check them out at bond books net That's also linked up below here But I don't have too much more to say than that then set that up for part two

05:23

I'm sure if you listened last week to part one you go boy. I got to hear the end of this Because it's just such a great story part two with Douglas bond starts right now.

05:33

Yeah, so Doug Thanks so much for being on the podcast. Appreciate it brother. My pleasure entirely So what we wanted to do with this episode was

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I really wanted to focus in on John Knox the great reformer You know, I know a lot of people will throw around his name

05:47

It'll come up with some quotes and I kind of want to do a deep dive on his life We haven't really done a profile on a reformer in quite a while in the five years of this podcast it's probably been three or four years and I was scrolling through some stuff on Ligonier and came across your book the mighty weakness of John Knox And I said man,

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I would like to know more about John Knox I'm sure my listeners would too and like I've said on this podcast many times before doing a podcast

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It's kind of selfish because I just bring on much smarter men than me. I ask him questions I'm interested in and then

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I get to sit here and learn and hopefully brings value to the listeners to you know But before we get into John Knox Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

06:26

Maybe family testimony kind of your your travels and journey? Sure, well, thanks for having me

06:32

Greg. It's a it's a delight to be here. I I have the great privilege of giving you a very boring testimony

06:41

I'll be honest, you know I I was I was I was raised in an earnest and godly

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Christian home by a godly father godly mother Praise God. We had family worship every day.

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You know, we would every time the church doors were open we were there And I'm just so grateful for that.

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I you know, I think of what it says in Isaiah It's almost repeats it to that. God has hemmed me in behind him before that's my life

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You know, I I live in an area. We live here in an area where I know lots of people

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You know, I was at the grocery store, you know a couple days ago and you know, here's somebody I hadn't seen for a little while chatting with her

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She's expecting their fifth baby and just catching up and tell her to greet her parents and siblings and all that and then well

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Here comes somebody else, you know, and and I had taught all their kids and in a classical Christian school And you know, that's that's my life, you know,

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I can't go to Costco You know, I can't you know, I'm gonna bump into people all the time and that's just a wonderful wonderful thing

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It's kind of the way I think God intended things to be that you know, he wants us to know that you know, the eyes of the

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Lord are in every place beholding the evil and the good and growing up in a Christian home growing up in a community a solid solid church and God God blessing me with a

08:02

Christian family myself and six children and Heading off right after this to take a strawberry milkshake to my newest a granddaughter

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Bridgette she'll get a couple hours actually, but Regular routine, but anyway, just so so blessed

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By The the providence of God his kindness his sovereignty. Yeah, I could have been born anywhere

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I could have grown up in any other family and here I Was placed in in a godly home and and then by the grace of God Absolutely desperately wanted more than anything else for my family to be a godly

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Christian home as well and Perfectly. So, oh I wish Heaven's coming

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You know Daily, you know, we can we have to start over every day, you know, and we get to say, you know help help me

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Lord I need your word speak to me in your word your servants listening, you know And and then teach your kids to do the same thing a family worship is such a central part of my testimony really

09:18

Singing the the praises reading the Word of God. I remember my father dyslexic he was very much a

09:26

Mathematician -engineer pipe. I think he was a genius. I didn't get any of it but but you know, he would read one word at a time in the scriptures and He always read and As I got older I realized you know,

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I Maybe it maybe in my teen years. I was a little embarrassed because my dad it wasn't this eloquent reader.

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My mother was she was English side of the English literature side of the brain and all that and And yet my father loved the

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Word of God every word, you know each word and so, you know God gave him dyslexia so that he would read one word at time and we would hear him read slowly and with with this reverence and awe and dignity and Huge impact on my life

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Godly parenting it can never be underestimated doesn't always bear fruit at the time.

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I have many friends who Struggle with with prodigal children and and it's a it's such a grievous thing

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But the story's not over yet, you know, you know, it's you know,

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I Think I think it's so easy to be the the LFS build out and so far and go to people and prognosticate why they're having

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All their problems why their kids? Oh, please don't do that, you know to people love them you know

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Embrace them as the as the father of the prodigal kid I think that's that's what the church and body of Christ is for it's for compassion

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Not condemnation those who suffer in in those kinds of things and of course, there's an epidemic of it right now, isn't there?

11:10

in the church and and There are kids wandering at the moment because of being encircled by pressures in our culture that are just Hammering away at them but greater is he who's in us than he who's in the world and the gates of hell will not prevail against the

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Church and God makes promises to his children family covenantal promises and we can embrace those and we can live faithfully in the midst of sorrow and sadness and and hold our kids up to the

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Lord and and And see him see him in all of his power Income and and answer prayer and raise up those who are who are falling

11:55

Yeah, so that's my deal. It's really my testimony is that over and over again God's had me in behind it before and he's placed his gracious hand on me

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You know, the hoary hair, you know, I'm not I didn't actually color it this way the Bible says, you know

12:12

So, um, but you know, that's just kind of what it is now and and God is faithful to all but yeah

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You know, I heard you say something in the beginning And I just got to push back on it a little bit not push back in a negative way

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But I always do when I hear this when you say I have a boring testimony, right? I just was raised in a

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Christian home and I have a friend who's now a pastor and He's a younger guy and as a young man, he was knew he's called the ministry and he said that once to me

12:40

Well, I don't have a very exciting or it's kind of a boring testimony and I think of the Western Christian Church We think there has to be this this crazy, you know

12:50

Conversion story I was in sin and the Lord. Oh and I was you know dead in the street But then the

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Lord lifted me up and it's like no generational salvation is is Biblical and I would argue probably one of the most beautiful things number one

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Number two for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and every single one of us deserve help

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So in his graciousness that he's decided to save us is amazing in and of itself and I actually celebrate

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When I hear testimonies like yours where you were hemmed in and you were a generational

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Christian And there's generational salvation there and hearing God bless your family your family's family and on and on I think it's a beautiful thing and I would love it if in the

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Western Christian Church that became the norm Instead of kind of the you know, anxious seat altar call make a choice and you know

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And you'll feel better in the morning. Like there's something about being raised with biblical godly parents and I kind of like that my friend he goes.

13:52

I don't know if I could point to one single day I just always knew God and surrendered to him since a young child.

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I said, that's a beautiful thing You know, we even see it with Timothy and the scriptures that his grandmother

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Probably raised him in the faith and his mother. So Yeah, I always like to point that out. Let's let's celebrate when we hear of generational

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Christians like that and that's awesome but Yeah, let's get into it here.

14:20

John Knox One of my personal heroes

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I think I think there was a rowdy side to him that I kind of identify with a little bit of a

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Rebellious spirit that the Lord has to keep in check with me raging against tyrants and shaking my fist and making sure

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I'm not doing It out of pride but doing it out of wanting to see justice served through the glory of God But I want to know a little bit more about him and you seem to be the guy to come to you

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So can we start at the beginning maybe like who was John Knox? Who is he influenced by maybe start as a younger man and we'll kind of work through life

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Yeah, absolutely. Let me let me launch in and dive in and and and you know

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Ask questions along the way or or push back whatever, you know, that's great yeah, I think it's it's helpful to get

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John Knox in it in the larger context of The Renaissance of the 16th century.

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It's a high Renaissance. I'm I'm I'm with CS Lewis on this I think that that the

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Renaissance owed an enormous debt to the high Middle Ages and Takes far too much credit, you know to itself, you know, it named itself the rebirth, you know of all things

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Greek and Roman and Recovery of culture from the Dark Ages and all of that. That's bogus in my opinion

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I think that you have you go back to the greats. One of my heroes is John Wycliffe, you know And you know what was happening in England in the 14th century with the recovery of the vernacular

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Which was Middle English and you know was not fully or English that we would understand it. It's already happening over in Bohemia Which gets me on to a book

15:57

I'm writing right now. So I'll try to avoid that right now But you know, this is high Middle Ages. This is early 1300s

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They've already got a vernacular Bible in Prague Before Wycliffe is even present.

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There was enormous Enormous learning enormous love of the scriptures that was beginning to happen.

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I mean Wycliffe is standing on the shoulders of Thomas Bradford. He, you know, who was already one of the giants of the

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The Middle Ages as a man of learning, but as a godly man, a man of the scriptures and a theologian

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So that is a really important thing to keep in mind. Nobody knows for sure. Here's here's john

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Knox emerging on the scene. And he's a nobody. I mean, he is like, you know, he doesn't come from.

16:45

He's not well born. He's from the wrong side of the tracks. He came from a town called Haddington just outside of Edinburgh and nobody knows historians haven't really agreed, even to this day, although there's more consensus about it now but About when he was born.

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There's no month and day of the month when john Knox was born and the year was disputed for 150 years would pretty much settle in and I lead tours related to my book.

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So in 2014 we we had a we had a knocks Quincentenary tour for his 1514 birth.

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Not everybody would agree that that was a quincentenary some put a little bit earlier, but I think that's a mistake. So think of the timeline of history.

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It's linear horizontal thing definite beginning in the beginning, God, and a definite and Think of 1514 as sort of a hinge point at the moment.

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And I'd like to fill in some of what was going on in Knox's world for a few minutes here at the beginning.

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If I may, so If we go back two years before that.

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In 1512 in Paris, you have the first burning at the state. The first Huguenot martyrs in 1512 which gets me on to a whole other topic which

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I absolutely love. And that's the Huguenots hammer the Huguenots one of my books to be trailed with Calvin and on the

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Huguenots all And The Reformation of the 16th century began in Paris at the

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University of Paris, not in not in Wittenberg with an alien, the 95 theses. It was well underway.

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There was already a vernacular Bible based on based on the bowl game translated by Jacques Lefebvre de

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Tamples. And that's what people were reading and hearing preached and all even in the even in the halls of the

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University of Paris, which Calvin would come to as a 14 year old. So another hobby horse, but I'll leave it there for the moment.

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There's already martyrs in Paris and then 1542 years later, he's

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Knox is born. He's a two year old. Well, let's see when he's a one year old, we got to go there. Maybe your coffee lover.

18:57

I don't know. But, you know, when he's a one year old coffee is introduced to Europe and some people like to connect what happens the next year when

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Knox is a two year old, and that is Erasmus is Greek New Testament is, you know, compiled from the best manuscripts and published and that's 1516 and some people say, oh, that's because coffee, coffee was there.

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And that was helping Erasmus was work. That's a little bit, a little bit Conjectural there but but then when when

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Knox is three years old, you know, three year old toddler. I've got a three year old grandson right now.

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And, you know, he's toddling around the house, you know, talking and laughing and having a great time.

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Luther, you know, marches down the street to the castle church. In Bittenberg and nails his 95 theses on the on the on the castle door.

19:47

Bear in mind to that Luther is is protesting particularly protesting As in Protestant this practice of indulgences and of course you go back 200 years before that and Wickliffe is writing out and decrying this

20:03

This this fraud of of indulgence selling you can buy indulgences today in the

20:10

Roman Catholic Church, you can use American Express MasterCard visa, you know, you can do it today.

20:16

That's not something that Trent altered And so practice of buying and selling indulgences and thinking that you're buying forgiveness of sins on some level for yourself or for someone else is still very central to Roman Catholicism.

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But 1517 so when he's a four year old all Rick's family is eating sausage during lent and then he's he's preaching at the gross monster in Zurich preaching the gospel.

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The five solace the justification is by, you know, by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone to the glory of God alone.

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We never want to forget the fifth of souls and where do we get that The first one, the word of God alone, not the traditions, not the conclusions of of councils and all of that over the over the centuries, but the

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Word of God alone. And then we fast forward to 11 year old john Knox. 11 year old.

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I got one of those two grandson granddaughter. 1525 and Tyndale has translated the

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New Testament into Ben modern English, you know, there's been the Wycliffe Bible in Middle English couldn't understand that today.

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My, my English students that had me at the classical Christian high school.

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They can all recite from the Wycliffe's Bible but 1525 you got his preface.

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He had to teach people in the preface how to read the Bible. They didn't even know how to do that. You know, they didn't have a vernacular

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Bible. They didn't need one because of the doctrine of papal supremacy, which said I'm just going to tell you what it means.

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Anyway, you don't need to read your Bible just do what the Pope says just nod and say okay and light the candle and put the money into the little

21:58

And everything's going to be And so Tyndale has to first publish this preface, which in its own right was a classic and was being smuggled in Scotland in in in bales of cloth from Antwerp, where he where Tyndale was doing his work and correspondingly, and this is also a big passion of mine.

22:20

Is the wedding of Martin Luther to Katie on Bora Katerina bomb or happens in 1525 my tour next

22:30

June is a quincentenary of that wedding. It's an anniversary tour and we started in Frankfurt, Vienna and Prague and all

22:38

But, um, so this is 11 year old john Knox. At this point, if we fast forward to when he's 20 years old,

22:45

Henry, the eighth Issues his act of supremacy, which was really just a greedy covetous king who looked around his, his, his realm and saw that the

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Roman Catholic Church on half the property in In in what is called the UK today and he wanted you wanted his fair share.

23:06

So he Issues an act of supremacy, which declares himself to be the head of the church, the disillusionment of the monasteries, he seizes all of the shrines and all the wealth and And and and prosperity in the lands and all of the revenue from those lands for himself.

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That's 20 year old Knox at the same time that that's happening. You've got the Jesuits and Ignatius Loyola the move move toward the move toward the counter reformation coming

23:36

So very quickly, let me interject here. So you're saying as a 20 year old, if we put it into our minds.

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If there's a young person out there now and they're saying, oh, we're going through all this political and spiritual theological tyranny and weird crazy stuff.

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This is kind of what was happening with john Knox. He's a young man and he's seeing the shifting of power between king and in church and being taken over and right so pretty pivotal moment,

24:01

I would think, in the mind of a 20 year old young man. Absolutely. And at this point, we don't The records aren't really very clear begin because he was a nobody

24:10

You know, we don't have records of where he went to university was at St. Andrews was a Glasgow. Nobody knows for sure he did attend some university.

24:17

There's no record of him, you know, graduating having a theological degree or anything from any of these universities.

24:25

He was just a nobody and But, you know, let's, I think it is good to sort of role play in our own minds.

24:32

We've got we got 20 year olds right now who are just bombarded with political rhetoric.

24:40

They're bombarded with theological conflicts going on progressive Christianity is gaining steam and it's so subtle.

24:49

You know, what is it Ambiguity is is sort of the the the necessary ingredient to heresy you you have to say the same words, but you mean something different.

25:02

So it's an old It's the playbook that was happening back in nation's day 120 years ago, and we shouldn't be surprised, but we if we don't learn our lessons from history.

25:12

We're just going to repeat them over and over again. And that's one of the reasons why I'm so passionate about guys like john

25:17

Knox and Greats like Anna Bohemia back in Wycliffe's day and and all that were, you know, godly godly people standing against a world politically and theologically that was dead.

25:32

And that was much in need of the light of the truth of the gospel as as ours is and it's so incumbent on us that we that we raise up that generation of 20 year olds and beyond who really get the passion for this.

25:48

You know, we fast forward two years past the the act of supremacy there in Britain, which was affecting

25:55

Scotland, of course, too, because Scotland was a subordinate kingdom to to the crown in London.

26:03

But you have john Kalman who's been on the lam for three years writing his Institutes of Christian religion and trying to stay one head one step ahead of the

26:12

The king of France, who wanted his head on a platter, but in 1536 you have the first draft of five drafts of the

26:21

Institutes, which would be so defining would be a runaway bestseller it went viral, we would say today.

26:27

After its first printing there in Basel, Switzerland, Switzerland, and at the same time is is when we see john

26:36

Knox completing not not completing a degree, but ending his time in university.

26:43

And and trying to any and the reason we know that is that he was ordained a priest at St. Mary's collegial church to south of Edinburgh, a little ways.

26:52

And I love to take my people to these particular places that you know don't really have a tourist attraction.

26:57

Otherwise, but that's where he was ordained and by the Bishop of Dundling And so he's ordained a priest, but he was a priest without a parish.

27:07

Again, we say priest. Remember, by this time, the the

27:14

Britain was under the King of England. Henry VIII is still alive for another 10 years or so.

27:23

And he is he doesn't really care about a theological reformation. He's just, he's just kind of riding in on the skids of theological reform happening in Cambridge, particularly

27:33

But he wants to seize more stuff. He was the quintessential covetous man who wanted things and more more things for his coffers and the power that he gained from having more stuff and more a bigger bank account, as it were.

27:48

And he wanted the control over the church control of of the, you know, of lay investiture, you know, who's going to be the

27:58

Archbishop of Canterbury, who's going to be the Archbishop of York, who's going to be the Archbishop of St. Andrews up in Scotland, you know,

28:03

Henry the control of those things so Knox doesn't have a parish and it would be

28:12

Roman Catholic and Scotland at this time because the Queen Regent would marry James V was the

28:20

Princess of France. And there's a lot of Mary's in this particular moment to you've got Mary Tudor coming on here pretty soon.

28:26

You've got You've got Mary geese Mary Lorraine, the, the, the

28:32

French princess who's married to the King of Scotland, James V. They have a child son who's going to be eventually,

28:40

I mean, that's a daughter, who's going to be Mary Queen of Scots is going to have a son. Who's going to be James VI of Scotland, James I.

28:47

This gets very confusing and people, you know, the Mary's and all that. But it's, it's fascinating. This is where Knox is plopped down in the midst of all of this political controversy.

28:57

And the thing was, Mary geese was actually the functional A ruler of Scottish politics.

29:05

She had a standing French army to back her up and she wanted without she wasn't even thinly veiled she wanted to turn

29:13

Scotland over to France. And of course, the Scots and the English haven't been getting along for centuries.

29:19

And so there was there was this impulse to maybe that's a good move for some in Scotland thought that it would be mostly the

29:27

Roman Catholic leaning ones. Under. So Knox has got to get a job. He's got to feed himself and he is offered a

29:36

Tutor position with Hugh Douglas, who was a minor Laird old castle there south of in Long Nidre.

29:45

It's still a place there near the coast, south of Edinburgh. He has two sons and a neighbor kid who come in our daily their daily going to be tutored by this

29:55

You know, wet behind the ears. He has no experience, you know, as a priest or anything, but he's going to be training them in Latin and so forth and And all it's about this time that you have the rise of you have the rise of Other greats.

30:13

Now, again, one thing. One thing that's so wonderful about church history is we think john Knox brain. He's the guy that started it all and not in Scotland.

30:21

No, actually not. There were, there were several Leading edges before that, including the

30:26

Lawler from back in the 1300s. The, the Christians who had come under the influence of Wycliffe's poor preachers.

30:34

Had been up in Scotland, too. And there were whole Lawler families that generationally for 200 years had been passing on the

30:43

Word of God, not in its completeness at this point, but in you know what they did have in their own language and they were

30:51

They were raising their children and the things of God, the, the Dukes of Camp Campbell there at Loudoun Castle and and and and many others along the way.

31:02

You had Patrick Henry much earlier. One of the first martyrs of the 16th 16th century and and well before before Knox, but you have another man that felt that came, you know, grew up out of the

31:15

The, the blood of the martyrs there in Scotland named George Wishart and Wishart was was an amazing, amazing man who came on the scene on in a

31:27

Scotland, it was had had the most in Europe, probably the most corrupt political political

31:36

Realm at the time and also corrupt ecclesiastical ecclesiastical realm to so you have these to the church and state, both of which were rank and full of graft and problems.

31:48

You've got the Queen Regent as the head of the civil government entirely corrupt.

31:54

We want to, we want to pass this thing off to the French And in the, the, the, the

32:01

Bishop of St. Andrews, the card Cardinal beaten was this corrupt ecclesiastical guy.

32:08

I mean, he was really, really bad. I can't overstate it. If you wouldn't, if you don't mind if I read just a little bit from the mighty weakness, just to give you a little bit of a vignette of what's going on here at the time.

32:21

Knox world was a turbulent one. There was perhaps no place in 16th century Europe more in need of reformation and Scotland.

32:28

In Murray described it as a brutal backwater kingdom dominated by covetous bloated clerics, as well as by a corrupt civil power.

32:35

Yet in such a just such a world. God was providential at work. Don Wickless Lawlords have proclaimed the gospel

32:41

Christ in Scotland since the late 14th century and more recently, the zealous young nobleman Patrick Hamilton.

32:47

Have preached Christ been arrested tried and subjected to a gruesome six hour burning before St. Salvator's College. By 1523

32:54

Luther's teaching on justification by faith alone had made its way into Scotland by his books and pamphlets devoted smugglers spirited

33:01

English Bibles into Scotland by cartload And solo scripture and the reform gospel was penetrating the corrupt universities of the realm.

33:10

Meanwhile, peasants saying popular ballads exposing clerical abuses celebrating goth proof medieval church men were not amused.

33:18

There were a few bloated Clerics more corrupt and Cardinal Beaton of St. Andrews. He was a tyrant and inquisitor sumptuous and ruthless.

33:27

This is Ian. Ian Murray again the historian with his guards and his ladies and his seven bastard children determined to stamp out the rising tide of reformation beaten it

33:38

Influence the passing of a savage parliamentary act against quote damnable opinions, contrary to faith and the laws of Holy Kirk.

33:47

But teeth to the new policy on January 26 1544 beaten ordered for men hanging for breaking lent and refusing to pray to saints probably a hegemony.

33:58

Not satisfied he arrested a man's wives as a young mother her crime praying in Christ's name instead of Mary's during her labor pains beatens henchman sees the woman's newborn infant and condemned the mother to public drowning.

34:14

This is in Perth. It was Brutal time and Knox is surrounded by this and he sees the corruptions all around him and the people of Scotland, the grassroots people are are really tired of it.

34:29

They hear this young mother first child her. She just sees her husband hanged and then they sees her little baby and they put her in a dunking stool there in Perth and they drown her in the river.

34:41

Because she prayed to Mary in her labor pains. I mean, she didn't pray to Mary.

34:47

She prayed to Jesus. This was this country. So in need of reformation.

34:52

It was just, it was just horrible. Well, Knox is going to come under the influence of George which which is like,

35:00

Philip, you know, he's ubiquitous. He's appearing everywhere. How did he get, you know, up there in Inverness.

35:05

He was just down in, you know, in In Galston, you know, in Ayrshire. How did he do that, you know,

35:12

I mean, the roads are terrible. You know, there's no helicopters. Anyway, that's how that's the schedule that you see for George Wishart.

35:19

God is using him mightily and protecting him. He was much sought after by Cardinal Beaton and by Mary, the

35:27

Queen Regent Mary Geese, mother of Mary, Queen of Scots. And so it was, he was the most wanted guy in Scotland.

35:38

Well, Knox, by this time, and we don't have a blow by blow of his conversion. You know, it's like Calvin.

35:44

Calvin didn't write it. With Luther, we've got it. You know, it's like I've entered into the gates of paradise. He's writing all about all this stuff, you know,

35:51

I mean, he was just He processed it that way. He wrote letters and all. Well, you know, Calvin, we get hints about his conversion through like prefaces through his commentary on the psalm, commentary on Genesis, little snippets along the way.

36:04

Well, Knox wasn't as prolific a writer as Calvin. Calvin's, you know, you got, you got a big, big shelf for Calvin's complete works.

36:14

Knox, you got five, you got five volumes, you know, that fits on the whole. We only have two sermons, written sermons of Knox.

36:20

We have 4 ,000 written sermons of John Calvin. Plus all these commentaries and all.

36:25

Of course, Knox was running to keep ahead of the henchmen that wanted to, you know, wanted to assassinate him.

36:31

There were hits put out on Knox as things would progress here. But Knox, at this time, with some other young men, had gathered around George Wishart as his supporters and as his defenders.

36:42

Now, these guys were not trained knights and all that, but one of them came up with a claim or, you know, you think of, you know,

36:49

Mel Gibson and the blue face and all that, and the, you know, the claymore you had to put on your back because it was too long to go on your hip.

36:55

Well, they had a claymore, none of them knew how to use it, but they would stand guard over George Wishart as he preached. I'm sure

37:01

Wishart probably just indulged him, maybe like Jesus when Peter drew the sword and said, here's a sword, you know.

37:07

Yeah, that's enough, says Jesus, you know. But in any case, but word was getting out and Cardinal Beaton had actually spread a rumor that George Wishart wanted to assassinate the cardinal, which was anybody who knew

37:23

George Wishart, knew his message of the gospel of grace alone that was being proclaimed in the streets and in great halls of castles and all of that, knew that that couldn't possibly be true.

37:35

But Beaton wanted to get that word out there so that he could justify what he was about to do, which, to make a long story short, he seizes

37:44

George Wishart just the night before he seized him. George Wishart sent away these young men and he told

37:51

John Knox, he said, return to your bands back there in Long Midry, go back to those three boys and keep tutoring them.

37:58

One is enough for any sacrifice. Wishart knew that he was going to be taken, he knew that he was going to be condemned, would be a kangaroo court, and he knew he was going to be burned at the stake, and he was okay with that, you know, and God would use that mightily in Scotland because, you know, the enemies of the gospel need to read church history too, you know, and they wouldn't do the same playbook because the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church, that was true back in, you know, first century, first, second, third century.

38:31

You know, over and over again, these faithful Christians, I take people to the

38:36

Roman amphitheater in Lyon, where Blandina, 13 -year -old

38:43

Blandina, you know, stands and delivers before this mob and doesn't, doesn't, you know, worship the emperor, you know,

38:53

Jesus alone, and she, God gives her grace, gives her strength, just Herculean strength, the strength of Christ in her dying, and what does it do?

39:06

The very opposite of what they intend for it to do, and God may be so today, in our world today, we have people that are persecuted in our world today, in fact, some speculate that there are far more persecution of Christians in our moment today than there was in the early church.

39:21

They have much greater populations, don't we? And the church and kingdom are advancing in Africa and in South America and China and in North Korea and in so many places, where suffering is what you get if you follow

39:37

Christ, if you confess your faith in Christ, and if you live consistently. And what's happening in America?

39:43

American churches are compromising, not all of them, thanks be to God, but many of them, many denominations,

39:49

I won't even name it, but the denomination I'm a part of has its whole progressive wing, and it's, it is utterly heart, it makes me, it makes my heart sick to think of it.

39:59

This is the time we need to stand and deliver, like Knox is going to do, fearless of what the enemies of the gospel are going to say or do to you.

40:08

And that's the kind of 20 -year -olds, Greg, back to your point earlier, that's the kind of 20 -year -olds we need right now.

40:14

That's the kind of 11 -year -olds we need. We need to be nurturing them in the things of God so that nothing will turn them away from following Jesus, whatever that cost may be.

40:24

That's what I want for me at this stage in my life, and I want it for my kids and grandkids and all extended family there.

40:32

Let me jump in here really quickly. So what age is John Knox here when

40:39

George Wissert sends him back to the boys' mentoring? Well, by this time, he's 32.

40:48

So now he's older and unmarried, of course, because he's still, at this point, a priest.

40:55

He hasn't figured it out yet. He will marry twice, first wife will die, and we can get to that more hastily here.

41:04

But Knox is going to be back in Long Nidre, which is quite a few miles away from the castle there at St.

41:16

Andrews, and Wissert in March of 1546 is going to be tied to a stake, and he's going to be burned in front of the castle.

41:25

And Beaton is going to sit at this upper chamber window and velvet cushions looking out as Wissert is burned at the stake.

41:34

And the town of St. Andrews is going to be watching, and they're not going to be cheering and clapping.

41:40

No, they're going to be grieving. And they're going to look with hostility at this fat, bloated cleric sitting on velvet cushions in his castle, known to have all of these mistresses, known to have fathered at least seven children through his mistresses.

42:01

And this is when, of course, he's supposed to be a celibate Roman Catholic cleric there, the highest ranking one in Scotland.

42:12

So the momentum begins to build. And you have to bear in mind that in Scotland, as in England at this time in the feudal system, which was still very much in place, that lords, noblemen, were also endowed with the responsibility of being judges.

42:31

They held court in their great halls, and they had responsibilities that were civil responsibilities to rule justly over their tenants, over the people in their care.

42:48

I say that because I think it's important to understand what happens next in the story. And it's going to have long tentacles, what happens next.

42:56

And that is that a group of young men led by a man named James Wallace, who could trace his heritage right back to William Wallace, but who was from a godly family, a young man in his early 20s, younger than Knox, gets other

43:12

Laird's sons together who were believers in Jesus Christ. They had professed their faith in Christ alone, the grace of God alone, for the glory of God alone.

43:21

They were true believers. And they believed that justice had been suspended, civil justice had been suspended in Scotland.

43:30

They knew that ecclesiastical justice had been suspended. There was no biblical church discipline happening when you've got the highest prelate in the land, the

43:41

Cardinal Beaton, consorting with mistresses and all of this.

43:47

He was not a godly man at all. And you have the Queen Regent wanting to hand all of Scotland over to France, Roman Catholic France.

43:53

They didn't have justice in either state or church. You probably can tell by how

44:00

I'm setting this up, where I stand on all this. So what happens is James Wallace leads these young men with a claymore in hand, and they wait till early hours in the morning.

44:11

The Cardinal's routine was known to the townsfolks. And when he would let out one of his favorite mistresses out the gate, she has a name,

44:20

I won't even give it, but they let her out the posturing gate, the little gate in the big castle door.

44:25

And when she's let out, they overtake the guard. They go in, and in the name of Jesus Christ, and they said that, they run him through with the claymore.

44:38

And they hang his body out the same window that he sat in those velvet cushions watching

44:45

George Wishart two and a half weeks or so before be burned at the stake. And they take over the castle.

44:52

Now what happens is Beaton was so hated, and he was paranoid because of that.

44:59

He had fortified his castle. He had extra cannons and gunpowder and all the rest and weaponry.

45:06

And he had provisioned it with barrels of food and pickled herring and cheese and barrels of wine and all this.

45:13

He'd provisioned it so that it was provisioned to the gunnels. So these guys take that over, and they have lots of provisions and lots of weaponry.

45:23

Don't necessarily know how to use the weaponry very well yet, but so now this castle is taken over.

45:29

Word is spreading down to London even. They send a message down to Henry VIII, who's still alive, older man, gonna die.

45:38

His son Edward VI is going to follow him, who is an earnest and godly Christian. But they said, we need help.

45:44

We know you're not part of Roman Catholicism. And here's a

45:50

French -leaning Catholic Scotland controlled by this French queen regent.

45:56

And we've taken over this important strategic castle. Can you send the

46:02

English Navy and support for us? And so there were all kinds of inner workings going on.

46:09

Meanwhile, the queen regent sends messages over to France to send the French Navy.

46:16

Because the castle is right on this promontory and all of St. Andrews, a wonderful town to visit, sticks out into the

46:24

North Sea. And it's like on a peninsula that's surrounded by the sea.

46:29

And so she sends for them. She marches her standing French army up to the town and they lay siege to St.

46:40

Andrews Castle, which is held by these Christians. Well, meanwhile, the momentum among nobles all around Scotland is this is a wonderful turn.

46:49

You know, maybe we can throw off these unjust civil leaders and these unjust ecclesiastical leaders.

46:56

Maybe this is our moment. And Hugh Douglas, that was John Knox's boss down there in Long Midry, sends

47:03

John Knox with the three boys up to the castle. They believed that this was like the safe place to be in, you know, as it would turn out otherwise in some respects.

47:13

But, you know, so they sent him up there and Knox continues teaching them there. And it's important.

47:19

We think of Knox's, you know, his nickname is the Thundering Sky. We think of this guy who's breaking pulpits and, you know, he has no fear and all that.

47:26

That wasn't Knox by his wiring. You know, he said, I quake, I fear,

47:32

I tremble when he steps in to the pulpit to preach. The first time he was asked to preach there to these noblemen that had taken over the castle, he bolts out of the room in tears because he just doesn't feel like he can do that.

47:49

He liked being a tutor of three boys, you know, in a back room of the chapel. And he didn't like this front row and center.

47:59

Well, I could go into lots of details. There's all kinds of military stuff going on here over these next number of months.

48:05

But eventually the castle is going to fall to a 21 -ship Navy of the

48:11

French who are going to begin a bombardment by sea. And there's mining under the walls as well as bombardment from the town.

48:19

And the castle is going to fall. And Knox and many of these others are rounded up as galley slaves.

48:27

Knox is going to spend the next 19 months, you know, almost dying as a galley slave in a

48:33

French galley. And, you know, the English by this time had he who sails without oars stays on good terms with the wind.

48:40

Well, the French didn't have that, nor did the Spanish. And also they needed slaves to, you know, so they would get prisoners and they would chain them to an oar and, you know, feed them just enough to keep the boat going when there was no wind.

48:52

And then they'd dump them overboard when they died. And the nobles were actually able to negotiate themselves.

49:00

And they were put in, you know, castle arrest in French castles throughout. The amazing thing is throughout all of this,

49:09

Knox and none of the other men that were there in the castle died, which is just astonishing considering the conditions that they were living under.

49:19

Well, by this time, Henry VIII has died. Edward VI with Protestant counselors around him negotiates an exchange of all of these prisoners that were taken there at St.

49:31

Andrew's Castle. This is three years later where the exchange actually takes place.

49:37

It takes place in February of 1549. And they all, including Knox, end up in London.

49:43

You know, gaunt, hungry, you know, sick and all that. And they start fattening them up.

49:49

Knox then meets three very important men, Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who is actually the orchestrator of more of the theological reformation that's happening in the

50:01

Church of England. It never got finished. And that's the big plague of the Anglican Church today.

50:06

And Calvin writes letters to Cranmer and says, you've got to finish this. But good start, but you're not there yet.

50:14

But he meets Cranmer, and he actually assists in the Book of Common Prayer and the work on the

50:22

Common Prayer. But he's always sort of the guy out of sorts with the English way of doing it.

50:29

And there's lots of details of that, which I won't go into at this moment. But then he also meets Latimer, Hugh Latimer.

50:35

They end up calling Latimer the Knox of England. God, man.

50:41

You know, he'd been the Bishop of Worcester, and he was one of the professors there at Cambridge. You know, Cambridge grew them.

50:47

Oxford slew them. And Nicholas Ridley, who was the Archbishop – or was the Bishop of London, which was your pathway to the

50:57

Archbishopric of Canterbury. Almost all of them would go through being, you know, Bishop of St. Paul's here in London, even today.

51:04

Not all of them, but many of them. In any case, so Knox is in high places when he's there, and he's called on to preach.

51:13

And he is preaching with real power. And he doesn't care who he pleases.

51:19

Even these allies in the Church of England, you know, he calls a spade a spade and a fig a fig, he says.

51:26

And that gets him in trouble sometimes with some of his friends as well. They decide that Knox really belongs farther north there, although he has a very good relationship with Latimer.

51:39

And there's an opening for a chaplaincy at the garrison at Berwick -on -Tyne, which the

51:46

Tyne River was the – or on Tweed, sorry – was the border between Scotland and England then.

51:52

The border's a little higher now. And so Knox goes up, and he's really close to Scotland. And, you know, he wants, he longs to get back to Scotland.

52:01

He goes up there, and he preaches. And his first two converts there were the sister -in -law and her daughter of the commander of the garrison.

52:17

And they were, you know – and this is a really important part of the story later, and I'll fast forward to it because I'm sure we're going to run out of time here pretty soon.

52:23

You're going to pull the plug on me. But Elizabeth Bowes was the daughter, and she was one of Knox's first converts up there at Berwick -on -Tweed.

52:35

And later in the story, if we fast forward, this is 49 and 50. If we fast forward to 1555,

52:41

Knox is going to leave Geneva, where he was in exile, and come back, and he's going to marry

52:46

Elizabeth Bowes. And she's going to give him two little boys. So it's a wonderful part of the story, and Knox was quite a romantic.

52:55

He came back in 1555, when the same year that Bloody Mary – that would be not the same

53:02

Mary as Mary, Queen of Scots, or the Mary, the Queen Regent, but the first daughter of Henry VIII by Catherine of Aragon – was

53:12

Mary I, Mary Tudor, given the nickname Bloody Mary. She's come back, and Knox called her the

53:21

Jezebel and the persecutrix of God's people there in England.

53:27

And so she comes back, and Knox's friends and supporters are going to get him out of England and to Geneva.

53:40

John Fox is one that went to Geneva, and many, many others that otherwise would have been killed.

53:47

They seized Cramner because, of course, Cramner, Ridley, and Latimer had approved of Henry VIII's divorce to Catherine of Aragon, mother to Mary Tudor.

53:59

So Mary Tudor's got a chip on her shoulder about these three guys, and they'd done so sort of pragmatically, because they were hopeful that this would lead to more openness in England for the actual theological, substantive

54:15

Reformation. Henry VIII just wanted a political Reformation so that he could have all the stuff, but they wanted more of that, of course.

54:28

So Knox is going to be rubbing shoulders with some of the finest theologians of the

54:35

Reformation, the English -speaking Reformation, there in Geneva. And, of course, the finest

54:40

French reformer. Geneva was Swiss by this time, but had been part of the

54:46

Duke of Savoy, France territory that had basically annexed itself to the cantons of Switzerland just before Calvin gets there in 1536.

54:59

And so Calvin's going to put Knox to work on what is called the Geneva Bible. And we might think that the

55:06

Geneva Bible would be in French, because that's the French -speaking part of Switzerland. Geneva Bible was the project of all of these

55:13

English -speaking exiles in Geneva. Geneva becomes the exile center of Europe.

55:21

Exiles from all over France, these Huguenots and all were fleeing to Geneva, the

55:26

English -speaking ones, Spanish ones, Italian reformers. There were Italian and Spanish reformers.

55:32

Many of them were just getting mowed. So we don't hear as much about that as we ought to. And some of those stories need to be told today, certainly.

55:43

And Geneva was also the sending center. Calvin was training them in the academy there, and he was sending out all these young men, ordaining them and sending them out as missionaries.

55:53

Sometimes Calvinists get a bad rap about missions. Geneva was the mission training center of the

56:01

Reformation. They were sending missionaries as far away as Brazil and to Eastern Europe, Hungary and other places.

56:09

They were sending these missionaries back from their training in the gospel and the word of God and preaching and teaching and evangelism.

56:17

Calvin said, you know, because we don't know who are the number of the predestined, I want to make everyone

56:23

I meet a sharer in my peace. That's Calvinism, you know, that's

56:28

Calvinist evangelism right there. And at its source, but the source was

56:33

Paul. Calvin wasn't innovating anything there. And all the reformers were on board with these teachings.

56:43

Luther was, and all of them, and Wycliffe had been so before and all that. It's bizarre how much

56:49

Calvin gets maligned for these things. But Knox is getting refined as a preacher and as a teacher by sitting under Calvin week in a week out and by the work that he was doing there.

57:01

And many of these young men were Scots. And there were young men there that were beginning to formulate an

57:07

English Psalter for the Scottish Psalter would come out very soon after Knox gets back to Scotland.

57:14

But he can't go back now because he's a wanted man. And the Queen Regent is still there and she still has power.

57:22

And her daughter was back in the French court, Mary, Queen of Scots.

57:28

And so, as I mentioned, Knox would be called by letters.

57:35

He would be called by the English nobles. This is 1555, the worst time to come back to Britain, to Scotland, and to England, because that's when

57:44

Bloody Mary blows her off. And she's rounding up. She burned about 300 preachers, pastors at stake during her time.

57:57

And others were imprisoned and so forth. And so Knox, OK, I'm called to preach.

58:03

I'm going to go over there. And, you know, others are saying this is really a bad time to go over there. He goes over and he preaches.

58:09

He's staying one step ahead of the Bishop of St.

58:15

Andrews. The hit that he put out on Knox. If he preaches publicly, anybody can shoot him on sight.

58:22

Wow. I don't care. I'm going to do it anyway. So he preaches and he's shot at and he has to flee

58:29

Perth under fire. And it's quite an exciting story what was actually happening to the

58:37

Knox during this time. And meanwhile, persecution of the church is horrible.

58:45

In the town of Leith, outside of Edinburgh, the Queen Regent actually sends her

58:51

French troops to a gathering at a church. And when the people came out of the church, she just has them open fire on them.

59:01

And it sounds like Nigeria today, right? You know, like weekly.

59:08

That was happening there in Scotland. But so Knox marries

59:13

Elizabeth, both takes her and her mother, a widow, back to Geneva with him.

59:20

Stays there for another four years until the death of Bloody Mary. And then returns to Scotland.

59:28

Now, one thing that Knox does, and he's much maligned for this, and that is just before leaving

59:36

Geneva, frustrated as he was by Bloody Mary, by Mary, the

59:42

Queen Regent. You know, the civil authority in Scotland, brutal civil authority.

59:48

And by her daughter, Mary, Queen of Scots. He got three Marys here, and they happen to all be females.

59:55

He drafts a treatise, and he called it, sort of infamously called it, the first blast of the trumpet against the monstrous regiment of women.

01:00:05

And Calvin reads it and suggests, John, you know, maybe this wouldn't be, this might not be the best time to publish this.

01:00:16

Knox feels strongly about this. This is his country. This is his land. And so he publishes it.

01:00:22

Meanwhile, Bloody Mary gets sick, keels over, and dies. And who's next?

01:00:28

The second daughter of Henry VIII, you know, by Anne Boleyn, you know,

01:00:36

Elizabeth, who had been held in, you know, house arrest at the Tower of London. And she comes to, first day at the office.

01:00:44

Think of it this way. First day of the office there in London, you know, at Windsor Castle or, you know, of course, the

01:00:52

Tower of London was actually a royal residence as well. And what's in her inbox? The first blast of the trumpet against the monstrous regiment of women.

01:01:01

Elizabeth was already very Protestant -leaning, Protestant -friendly anyway. She never, there was some compromises, and she never was as fully orbed in being

01:01:11

Protestant. Hence, we have the name Puritan for the next, you know, century or so.

01:01:17

Puritans who wanted to purify the Church of England of its papacy, of the, of potpourri and the rest of that.

01:01:25

Because Elizabeth wasn't going to clean house as thoroughly as she needed to, thought our great

01:01:30

Puritan forebearers. And so anyway, Knox essentially alienates somebody who could have been more of an ally in what

01:01:41

Knox wants to do. Elizabeth did not like John Knox, you know. But Knox comes back.

01:01:47

He begins preaching there at St. Giles. He's ordained as the pastor of St. Giles, Highkirk Edinburgh, 11th century cathedral in the

01:01:57

Scottish sperm, you know, stony style. And that is, that becomes the center where Knox is proclaiming the gospel.

01:02:06

He's traveling a lot and commissioning and installing young men in pulpits all around Scotland.

01:02:13

And there is a revival of enormous proportion in Scotland. Calvin's writing letters because he's hearing word.

01:02:20

He says, you know, I can almost not believe how in such a short period of time, the gospel is going forth with such power.

01:02:27

When Knox was asked about what's going on, you know, I mean, today we want celebrity preachers and all of that.

01:02:34

And they take celebrity to themselves, don't they? They like that. So, you know, unfortunately, they set themselves up to be, you know, the latest thing, the latest guru.

01:02:45

And if more preachers would put a mask over their whole face, I'm not talking about the mask.

01:02:51

But, you know, just forget themselves and step into the pulpit and proclaim Christ. Knox didn't care about himself at all.

01:02:59

His rejoinder, when people ask, he writes this in his Reformation of the Church in Scotland, two -volume work of what happened in Scotland in the 16th century.

01:03:12

You have this transformation of this really corrupt culture there, both in the church and in the state.

01:03:20

What happens? It is transformed into a godly kingdom, really. And Knox's explanation is wonderful, and we would do well to study it.

01:03:31

He says, oh, the Spirit of God raised up gracious and godly men in great abundance.

01:03:42

What does he do? He deflects away from his role. He was the one training many of those men. But he gives the credit where the credit's due.

01:03:49

It's the Spirit of God that raised up men, godly men, in great abundance.

01:03:54

And it was. And this is going to reflect in the next century, in the covenanting period of time, the 17th century in Scotland.

01:04:01

I write a lot about that in my Crown and Covenant Trilogy. You're going to see just this whole generation of people that were so schooled on the

01:04:12

Word of God and on Christian doctrine and teaching. One of the things that Knox, when he gets back, is going to do is he's going to go to Parliament.

01:04:19

And this gets us to Christian nationalism and all those topics which need to be discussed, I think, today. Significantly, he is called on by Parliament to convene himself and draft a confession of faith.

01:04:35

What is it we really believe? And confessions of faith are really, really important. Read Carl Truman's Creedal Imperative.

01:04:44

He wrote several years ago. Marvelous book that, you know, why we need confessions of faith.

01:04:50

You know, no creed but Christ, no law but love did not do us a good service in Christianity in America.

01:04:58

Because it made us think, you know, that, you know, well,

01:05:03

Peter, you know, when Jesus says to Peter, you know, who do you say that I am? Peter could say, well, what the

01:05:10

Bible says, right? Peter says, thou art the Christ, you know, the

01:05:17

Son of God. And what is that? That's a mini confession of faith. We need confessions of faith.

01:05:23

I think the Bible calls us to have confessions of faith. So anyway, Knox and four other guys named John. Imagine the work they did in the next five days at a little chapel, a pretty new chapel.

01:05:37

It was a 16th century chapel just down the hill from Edinburgh Castle.

01:05:43

They convened there with a pile of paper and pots of ink and dead goose quills, you know, feathers.

01:05:50

And they go to work and their Bibles and the Bible opened in front of them. And they drafted

01:05:55

Scott's confession in five days. And it is a remarkable document.

01:06:01

The Westminster Standards. I'm copper bottom. Calvin is Presbyterian. I don't I don't apologize for that to anybody.

01:06:09

And you can do a lot worse. Let me tell you. And it's not worse. I think the

01:06:15

Westminster Standards are just like the most mature, the most taking into account of all of the other confessions of faith and all that were happening in the 16th century.

01:06:26

The Belgian Confession, the canon, all of that, the Heidelberg Catechism, all of that.

01:06:32

I love my continental reform brethren, you know, the three forms of unity and all. But I think that the

01:06:38

Westminster Standards are the most mature. They covered these guys didn't leave a stone unturned. They spent five years and 120 delegates, you know, some of the some of the wisest, clearest thinking theologians doing it.

01:06:52

This is five days, not five years. And you only got, you know, you got five guys named John. You know, John, pass the pot.

01:06:59

I can imagine there was some confusion. But in any case, they draft it. They read it.

01:07:04

They pray over it. They read scripture. All of this. They head back up the hill to the Great Hall of the

01:07:11

Edinburgh Castle. And they present before Parliament in August of 1560.

01:07:16

They present the Scots confession. They read it out loud there. And when they were done, there was some deliberation by some of the some of the parliamentarians, the

01:07:28

Scottish parliamentarians. Without going into a lot of history, Scots had its own parliament at this time. And they recovered that back,

01:07:35

I think, in 1996. And then built one of the ugliest buildings on the planet there at the end of the

01:07:42

Royal Mile. It's as ghastly as it can be. Right next to Holyrood Palace, which is a marvelous building.

01:07:47

But anyway, that's one of my rabbit trails. But in any case, Parliament listens to this.

01:07:53

There's a few still kind of Roman Catholic -leaning parliamentarians, nobles.

01:07:58

But the vast majority of these guys are reformational. And not just on some check -the -box sort of way.

01:08:06

Many of these men were godly, converted Christian men. They got it.

01:08:11

They loved their Bibles. They loved King Jesus. They were ready to shed their blood for King Jesus, as would happen in the next century with the

01:08:20

Covenanting period, the killing time. When 18 ,000 Scots would shed their blood for the crown rights of the

01:08:27

Redeemer and the Kirk. Knox set all that up. Knox prepared to lay for all of that by the grace of God.

01:08:34

And then deflects away from himself to all the men that God raised up to proclaim and preach

01:08:40

Jesus, King Jesus. It's just a marvelous story. Knox, eventually his wife died, leaving him with two little boys.

01:08:52

One's still a baby. One's a toddler. And in those days, what do you do? There's no safety net.

01:08:58

He has a mother -in -law who's helping take care of the boys as much as possible.

01:09:04

But she's getting aged and all. So what is Knox going to do? He remarries. And in those days, it was common to remarry a much younger woman so that you could have more children.

01:09:13

Because back in those days, you know what they thought about love and marriage? Babies! You know?

01:09:20

Let's have lots of babies. Let's have lots of grandkids. And a biblical view of marriage is that you love your wife and you love her more than anything else in all the world.

01:09:36

And you take her interests and concerns highly to heart.

01:09:43

And what do godly women want? They want babies! They want those babies around them, too.

01:09:49

And so Knox marries a much younger woman. And it was kind of scandalous. He was, by this time, in his early 50s.

01:09:56

And he marries a 17 -year -old. It was a consensual marriage. She turns out to be a cousin a few times removed from Mary, Queen of Scots.

01:10:05

And Mary, Queen of Scots was not happy about this because there was a bloodline connection to royalty.

01:10:12

There wasn't permission asked there. And she, this dear woman, his second wife, becomes such a faithful woman to Knox.

01:10:21

And has daughters after that. And three more daughters. And takes care of and loves

01:10:29

John Knox's sons. And just an incredible godly woman.

01:10:35

I wrote the last chapter of The Mighty Weakness of John Knox. I've written a much larger adult novel that PNR published called

01:10:42

The Thunder. Which is a historical fiction of Knox's life. But in any case,

01:10:49

I wrote the final chapter on Knox's death. In a room that likely

01:10:55

Knox would have died in at his home there on Trump Close on the Royal Mile. And how did

01:11:02

Knox pass away? Well, he got old. And in those days, he continued to preach.

01:11:09

It's 1572. You have the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre on August 24th.

01:11:16

In Paris, thousands of Huguenots mowed by Catherine de' Medici.

01:11:22

And that brings up Rene of Ferrara, who was a godly Christian queen.

01:11:28

And all that in the royal family there. She's hiding in a closet and could have been slaughtered herself.

01:11:35

Anyway, Knox hears about this with great grief. He saw great kinship with the

01:11:41

Huguenots. The Huguenots theologically in the La Rochelle Confession was written by Calvin. And received in 1559 by the

01:11:49

Huguenot Church in France. Knox grieved deeply over the great slaughter of Christians in France.

01:11:57

In August and two months later, Knox would die. He preached his last sermon in April of 1572 at St.

01:12:05

Giles. And they actually had to carry him physically down the street, up the street actually from his home and into the pulpit.

01:12:14

And he was just aging. In those days, it was a lot easier to age sooner than it is now.

01:12:22

And people would come to visit him. His wife is by his side. In fact, we know, though Knox didn't talk about his conversion much, we know where sort of his saving passage of scripture, the spirit of God used.

01:12:37

Because he asked his wife and students that were writing all these things down, his final words and this interaction.

01:12:43

He asked his wife to read aloud to him where he first cast his anchor.

01:12:52

She knew the story. She opens the Bible and turns to 1 Corinthians 15.

01:12:58

The great passage on the resurrection. And taken right out of Hosea's prophecy is where Paul is drawing for 1

01:13:10

Corinthians 15. And reads this marvelous passage about, oh death, where is thy sting?

01:13:16

Oh grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death and the strength of sin is the law, but thanks be to God. And she reads this out to her dying husband.

01:13:25

And when he's finished, he smiles and says, isn't that a comfortable passage? And he couldn't speak in his final hours, but they asked him where his hope lay.

01:13:38

Where does your hope lie? And he raised his finger toward heaven and died there.

01:13:44

He was buried in the churchyard of St.

01:13:50

Giles. Now today the churchyard is a parking lot next to a municipal building.

01:13:57

He's under stall 23. And sometimes when I take my, I've been leading these tours since 1996.

01:14:03

But when I take my people there, if you want to really see the grave, number 23. You're going to have to get down on your knees under this

01:14:09

Mercedes. You'll see it right now. Knox is one of the most maligned and forgotten people in Scotland.

01:14:17

Some people call him a misogynist, a hater of women. Because he wrote the first blast of the trumpet against the monstrous regiment of women.

01:14:25

Which I think was probably very much unwise. But nevertheless, he makes a lot of good points nevertheless.

01:14:31

But who were the misogynists? Knox, who in subsequent visits to Parliament, proposes to Parliament.

01:14:40

And it's approved by Parliament. The first national education system in the

01:14:46

Western world. That's in Scotland. And we think, well, wait, we don't like public schools, right?

01:14:54

We don't like government schools. This was entirely a Christian school.

01:15:01

A Christian education. Its core curriculum was the

01:15:07

Geneva Bible. With its 300 ,000 commentary notes that Knox had helped draft.

01:15:14

This was a study Bible. Long before study Bibles existed. It was also the first Bible where they had chapters and verses.

01:15:21

Verses, yeah. When the man was up there preaching, when Knox was preaching, Calvin was preaching. They wanted to be able to reference.

01:15:28

They wanted their people to be informed biblically and to know their Bibles. That's why you have this covenanting generation 100 years later that knew their

01:15:35

Bibles inside and out. The crofter's daughter, the farmer out on the hillside. His daughter knew the

01:15:41

Bible. She knew the catechism. She knew the teachings of the scriptures. And she could articulate them.

01:15:47

And that's what Knox wanted. Knox wanted this national education system to be not just for rich kids.

01:15:55

That was happening anyway with tutorials like Knox had been a tutor. But for poor kids too.

01:16:01

And not just for boys who were Knox's students. Three boys. Knox wanted the girls, all the girls, rich and poor girls, to be trained in the

01:16:12

Geneva Bible and in Calvin's catechism. Translated into English. That's the core curriculum in this national education system.

01:16:22

Who were the misogynists? Well, Mary, Queen Regent, who did not want a vernacular

01:16:31

Bible, was burning people at the stake for vernacular Bibles. Didn't want a national education system that included women, girls, rich and poor.

01:16:41

Mary, Queen of Scots, her daughter. Bloody Mary didn't want any of those things. So it's burning people who wanted this.

01:16:47

I'm getting worked up here. I'm sorry, Greg. Who were the misogynists?

01:16:54

It doesn't matter what gender you are. You can be a hater of women and be a powerful female too. You can be in a role that says, let's kill all the babies.

01:17:03

Let's kill them after they're born even. Just because of your gender doesn't make you pro -women.

01:17:13

Knox was the lover of women. You should read his letters. I include excerpts of them. Two women in his congregation who were doubting and fearing and didn't have assurance of their salvation.

01:17:25

Knox was the most tender shepherd, encouraging them, bringing them along.

01:17:30

He wasn't this hard -fisted condemner. He saved that, and he could do it. He could thunder.

01:17:36

He could blow pulpits. He saved that for the tyrants, male or female. He didn't care which.

01:17:43

He saved it for the tyrants. Who wanted to oppress the poor? Who wanted to oppress women in his culture?

01:17:49

And they were doing it. At Cardinal Beaton's behest, this young woman who had just given birth to her baby, has her baby torn from her breast.

01:18:01

And she's tied to a dunking stool because she prayed in Jesus' name while she was in the agony of her labor.

01:18:09

Who were the haters of women? Well, the haters of the gospel, the haters of the word of God, the haters of the church and kingdom of God, the haters of Christians.

01:18:22

Those are the ones that are the haters of women. Yeah, that's good. So as we look back over the life of John Knox here, and thank you for that beautiful explanation.

01:18:35

As we go back over and look at this, as we wind this down here, I just wanted to ask, too. So as a historian yourself, what are the biggest theological contributions and the biggest maybe political contributions that Knox had that were either very big while he was alive or even stood the test of time to today?

01:18:55

Yeah, yeah. Well, Knox had in that fairly small canon of work, he had two treatises on prayer that are great contributions to the church and kingdom.

01:19:08

They're very accessible to Christians today, too, on prayer. But let's face it, prayer is one of the things we don't do very well.

01:19:17

We feel like we're giving up doing anything. And we men, I think particularly, it's like, no,

01:19:22

I want to fix this. I want to be up and doing. Well, what does Bunyan say? You can do more than pray after you've prayed.

01:19:32

But before you've prayed, you can't do anything. I'm paraphrasing it. And it's true. And Knox does such a fine job.

01:19:38

What is prayer? It's earnest and familiar talking with God. And so what do you have?

01:19:46

Spurgeon says later that the most fearful thing to the civil authority in Scotland was when

01:19:52

John Knox fell to his knees and started praying, that the Queen Regent feared that more than an army of 10 ,000 armed soldiers.

01:20:01

Knox's prayers fall on his knees. His grandson was a covenanter. And after he died, they found, as they were laying him out after he was executed, they found that his knees were like ox bone.

01:20:17

Because they didn't have nice cushy things to kneel on in those days. They're kneeling on hard earth in their croft or on hard flagstone floors.

01:20:24

And this guy had, why? Because he stopped dropping and praying all the time. And so Knox had a great legacy of prayer.

01:20:34

And that alone should make him a giant in church history. And it does. Knox was a very humble man.

01:20:44

As much as he could rail and thunder in the pulpit, he was a very, very humble man.

01:20:50

He didn't take to himself celebrity. He pushed it away. And, oh, how much do preachers need to learn today?

01:20:59

And many have. I have great living heroes today that are preachers. One would be

01:21:05

Sinclair Ferguson. I think he's endorsed several of my books. I think he endorses

01:21:11

The Mighty Weakness of Knox. But what a godly man. What a humble man.

01:21:16

What a man of prayer he is. And Knox was a man of the word of God. And when

01:21:21

Knox went into the pulpit, he always went in with great humility. I fear.

01:21:27

I quake. I tremble. And with this, I would say, too,

01:21:32

Knox was Christ -centered. You would never listen to John Knox preach and think, wow,

01:21:40

I should go out and pull myself up by my bootstraps and obey God's law. You'd never think that.

01:21:47

You'd think, no, I need Jesus. I need the spirit of Christ in my heart and in my life.

01:21:55

You know, wherever Knox was preaching, like Spurgeon later, he would bolt to the cross.

01:22:01

He wanted to placard Jesus Christ. And he wanted—and this is another great important part of Knox's legacy—anything that came between the hearer and Jesus Christ was an idol.

01:22:16

And Knox could rail against idolatry. And what happens? I mean, again, he's criticized for this.

01:22:23

Artists criticize him for this. Because you go into Scottish churches today, and guess what you don't see a whole lot of? Statues.

01:22:29

You know why? Because after Knox preaches at St. John's in Perth, that's where one of the first ones started.

01:22:35

You know, what are they doing? All these young men, these zealous young men are grabbing a rope, and they're slinging it around, you know, the statue of John, the apostle.

01:22:46

And they're pulling it down and busting it up. Or the statue of Mary with Jesus. Oh, that's coming down and busting it up.

01:22:53

These iconoclasts happened wherever John preached, because he preached against idolatry.

01:23:00

Why? Because he didn't like statues? Because he was an artistic meathead Philistine? No. Because he was a lover of King Jesus.

01:23:08

And he didn't want anything to come between the hearer and an encounter with King Jesus.

01:23:15

He wanted them to fall at the feet, on their knees, and worship and extol

01:23:21

God, the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And anything that got in the way of that was idolatry.

01:23:27

So no kneeling during the Lord's Supper, right? During communion. Because, you know, in medieval theology, and in theology today in the

01:23:37

Roman Catholic Church, there's a transubstantiation. That bread isn't just bread anymore.

01:23:43

It's been, like Elvin and Hobbes, it's been transmogrified into the body of Jesus. And that's wine isn't wine anymore.

01:23:50

That's actually been transmogrified. It's transfigured into, it's been transubstantiated into the blood of Jesus.

01:24:01

And Knox didn't want anybody confused about what you're seeing. There's no re -sacrifice of Jesus here.

01:24:08

There's a spiritual presence of Jesus in the Supper, but there is not a presence we should venerate in image and form and in substance there.

01:24:19

And so Knox was a great legacy of smashing idols from John Knox.

01:24:25

So as someone who has studied John Knox with your writings, what kind of personality profile do you pull from him?

01:24:34

Because for me, he seems like quite an enigma. He was someone who was at times could be thunderous and brash and kind of defiant against tyrants, but also someone who was very humble and maybe soft and mercy motivated.

01:24:48

So what do you see in studying John Knox? If you were to pull, you're the psychologist here and you're pulling a little personality profile of John Knox.

01:24:57

How would you explain him overall? Well, I would say that John Knox was an introvert.

01:25:07

We don't think of it that way. He was an introvert infused with the gospel, the power of God and the spirit of God to the place where he broke out of that.

01:25:17

He was forced, compelled to break out of that preference.

01:25:25

Calvin was much the same, I think even more so than Knox. He loved quiet study with a candle and a pot of ink and a pile of parchment and his

01:25:34

Bible and his other books. But Knox didn't have the luxury of any of that.

01:25:42

That's why we only have five volumes. This short little bit, because he was surrounded by civil unrest and tyrants.

01:25:51

And it forced him into a role of not drawing clear distinctions.

01:25:57

This would get back to your earlier question. You know, what are some of the legacies of Knox? Knox didn't have the luxury of separating nicely out the ecclesiastical and the civil.

01:26:10

Frankly, it didn't occur to Knox that you could have this pluralistic society and that you could have a secular civil arm, that your laws could be just kind of this neutral, bland, be nice to people stuff, but that it didn't need to be informed by the truth of the word of God and the law of God.

01:26:31

It would never have occurred to Knox. And in the subsequent generations of the Covenanters, it didn't occur to them that it could be that kind of line in the sand that we think is sort of the virtuous path.

01:26:45

I mean, you hear some preachers today and it's a moment to my pastor will get in the pulpit and he'll do an imprecatory prayer against Governor Inslee of Washington State because he wants to install vending machines for the abortion pill.

01:27:07

You know, for my pastor, that's not politics. And that's not mingling politics with the pulpit.

01:27:15

He's going to preach. I mean, he's going to pray in his pastoral prayer. He's going to pray an imprecatory against that ungodly man who wants to mow children.

01:27:24

And he wants it to be super easy in university campuses to take the little pill, kill the baby, you know, and live the lifestyle you want with impunity, you think.

01:27:34

The tentacles will come after you eventually. So I don't draw those tidy little lines that the progressive preachers want us to draw and say, well, we just want them to hear

01:27:46

Jesus, you know. And so we're not going to say anything about, you know, controversial topics.

01:27:54

You know, they'll dismiss, you know. No, I just said,

01:28:01

I've heard one, you know, I've heard the saying, it's not that the world has become more political. It's the government has become more spiritual.

01:28:07

They're encroaching in the areas of, like you said, that are the bounds of Christ and the church.

01:28:14

But I want to ask you one more question, then I'm going to give you the final word. So we can close this out here,

01:28:21

Doug. In your opinion, you've mentioned a few times, John Knox, not nearly as a prolific writer as say

01:28:29

Kelvin. We only have five volumes, really. Why do you think his name has stood the test of time?

01:28:35

And he has mentioned in the same breath as a Kelvin, as a Luther, you know, as a

01:28:40

John Owen and John Knox. I mean, he's in that top four or five that people will throw out when we think of just great reformers.

01:28:48

Why do you think his name has stood the test of time? If we have such a small sample size and not nearly as prolific as some of the others?

01:28:56

I mean, that is a brilliant question, Greg, because, you know, if you go to Geneva and you look at the

01:29:02

Reformation wall, you know, that was founded at the 400th anniversary of the birth of John Kelvin in 1909.

01:29:13

What do you have? You know, you've got next to Kelvin over here, you've got

01:29:20

John Knox. You've got Beza and then you've got John Knox. And next to Kelvin on the other side, you've got

01:29:26

William Farrell. We know he's lesser known and deserves probably to be better known.

01:29:32

But you've got Kelvin and then you've got Beza, who is Kelvin's successor there in Geneva.

01:29:37

And then you have Knox. And back to your question, why that? You know, of course, by the way, all four of those guys would have been up there with sledgehammers, you know, busting those things apart.

01:29:47

And Knox would have been at the lead of that. You know, absolutely. Because they didn't want what so many preachers want today, which is celebrity.

01:29:56

They want the stone, you know, of themselves and looking great and all that. But whatever the equivalent of that is today, you know, in tens of hundreds of thousands of followers.

01:30:06

Social media followers is the statue. Yeah, that's the stone statue today.

01:30:12

You know, and I think the answer is, again, because Knox was a single minded man.

01:30:20

He didn't want celebrity for himself. And the effect of that isn't in this, you know, really relatively small canon.

01:30:29

I mean, you've got Luther was the most prolific writer of the 16th century, period. And next to Luther was

01:30:36

John Calvin, you know, in terms of the volume of output. And this is the Renaissance, you know, when you got people writing poetry and plays and all that kind of stuff.

01:30:44

You got Shakespeare doing all this stuff. They don't even get close. Knox doesn't have that.

01:30:49

So why? And again, the why is that he so replicated his passion for the gospel of Jesus Christ to everybody he preached to, to every young man that he trained to go out into their pulpits and preach the gospel and taught them to be those spirit filled, godly men that God raised up in great abundance to go replicate themselves with humility and authority.

01:31:19

That's the combination we so seldom see in the pulpit. You know, we see a lot of authority, you know, but we don't see a lot of humility.

01:31:28

And Knox had both. He had the terror of stepping into Christ's pulpit.

01:31:34

He didn't want to step into that pulpit and say anything that wasn't true, anything that were down to the glory of Jesus Christ.

01:31:42

And he did that so effectively and replicated himself so effectively that Scotland was transformed far more than Switzerland was transformed or far more than even

01:31:55

France with the Huguenots, although you could make some arguments. But then again, they were being slaughtered and had to flee for their lives to South Carolina and various other places.

01:32:06

So what you have in Scotland is God, by his great expansive mercy, giving fruit and lots of fruit to Knox's ministry that redounded for generations.

01:32:21

That's why Knox is there at that Reformation Wall. That's why Knox is as well known as Luther and Calvin, though he wrote just an infinitesimal amount compared to them.

01:32:30

But he replicated himself more better than Luther did in Germany. You know, frankly, again, you know, there's there's political reasons with all the 200 different dukedoms.

01:32:41

There was no unified Germany until 1871, you know, but there were there were those issues. Knox, there was a there was a much more unified

01:32:49

Scotland sense of identity, I think, in the 16th century. And though there were highlands and lowlands and so forth, there still was more of this identity of Scots, which, like the

01:33:00

Roman roads in the early church, gave a conduit, as it were, to the preaching and teaching of the gospel that Knox had proclaimed.

01:33:10

And and again, the schooling. The schooling was a huge part of that. A huge part of that.

01:33:16

Knox realized that you can't expect to have kids go to church for an hour on Sunday.

01:33:22

You know, we used to when I grew up, we had Sunday evening. We had Wednesday night prayer. We had, you know, Monday night evangelism outreach times and stuff like we were in church all the time.

01:33:32

You know, today people are in church in the morning, you know, Sunday morning for an hour. You know, if it goes over an hour, hey,

01:33:37

I got football. Come on, you know, get on with it. You know, you know, let's go. Scottish kids were saturated in the

01:33:47

Bible and in preaching and teaching and warmly. Warmly, so it wasn't dull.

01:33:53

It wasn't uninteresting. And it was intensely relevant to all of life, including Paul. Yeah, good stuff.

01:34:01

Well, Doug, thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate you giving us your time. Can you just and we'll make sure we link this all up to.

01:34:09

Can you just shout out where people can purchase your books, where they can find out more about you? Throw out a website or even if you're on any social media platforms where you'd like them to follow you?

01:34:18

Thanks, Greg. Yeah, my website is bondbooks .net. And you can find out about my tours and about my

01:34:26

Oxford Creative Writing Masterclass and about books. You can buy signed books right on board there and we ship them out straight from here.

01:34:33

And then there. And again, I would say, go to Grace and Truth Books, go to Reformation Heritage Books.

01:34:39

There's lots of other places that carry my books. And I appreciate those distributors hugely and want to support them hugely, especially better than the big

01:34:51

A. You know what I mean? So, yeah, it's so much better to buy from Christian family run businesses.

01:34:58

And, you know, people that are of like mind. I think we can all do that.

01:35:04

It's a great piece that Tim Challies did a couple of years ago on why we should all be intentionally doing that.

01:35:09

You know, that's absolutely better for authors, certainly, too, but also for the

01:35:15

Christian community as a whole. And these organizations, you know, these ministries that sell books.

01:35:23

There's an opening this coming week up in Calgary of a brick and mortar reformed, you know, the reformed book services.

01:35:33

I love those people. They sell all my books up there. And those people need to be supported because they're providing stuff for the

01:35:41

Christian family, the church, that Amazon can't do for us. And I think that, you know,

01:35:48

I don't know, when this gets posted, I'll probably get censured. My brethren in Nigeria are getting mowed by AK -47s when they come out of church.

01:35:59

Oh, Yemen, China. You're absolutely right. And we keep those brothers and sisters in prayer.

01:36:05

Douglas Bond, thank you so much for being on the podcast. I really appreciate you. It was a joy meeting you and listening to you speak and giving us some education on a wonderful historical figure such as John Knox.

01:36:17

My pleasure. Entirely great. Keep up your good work. Important. Appreciate it, brother. Guys, thanks so much for listening to another episode of Dead Men Walking Podcast.

01:36:26

As always, you can find out more about us at dmwpodcast .com. We also have a merch store there. I've got some

01:36:32

Starkey T -shirts that you can purchase, help support the show. We're going to be at the Fight Laugh Feast conference end of October and Reformation Weekend in Fort Worth, Texas.

01:36:42

We'll be bringing you live content there. So make sure you check that out. We're going to get some rowdy Presbyterians and rowdy

01:36:48

Baptists together, and we're going to fight, laugh, and feast all for the glory of God. And we'll be there to make sure we cover that for you.

01:36:55

Guys, remember the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. God bless. Be sure to check us out at dmwpodcast .com

01:37:02

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01:37:11

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