Well, welcome back to another episode of Five Minutes in Church History.

On this episode, let's start with a pop quiz.

Do you know the year in which Columbus sailed to the new world?

You might have learned that little rhyme in blank year, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

What year was it?

If you said 1492, you were right, and 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

Well, here's another question for you.

How old was Martin Luther when Columbus said sail?

Well, to help you with this, I've written my own rhyme.

Might not be as catchy as that one, but here goes, when Columbus sailed the ocean wide,

Martin Luther was only nine.

Now, songwriters call that an approximate rhyme, but we'll just move on.

The issue here is that we think of these two significant times in history, the age of

the reformation, and the age of exploration, as two separate movements or two separate

entities when the reality is, the two came along at the exact same time.

In one sense, they sort of grew up together, the reformation, and the age of exploration.

Here's another sort of two dates that come together to show how this works.

Of course, we know Luther stood behind the Deet of Verms in 1521.

There he was in front of Charles V, the young Holy Roman Emperor, and he was on trial for

his life, and he made his courageous, here I stand, speech.

Well, two years later, 1523, that same Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, declared that Spain

is exploring the New World with the singular purpose to convert the Native Americans or

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