Welcome back to another episode of five minutes in church history. On this episode, we are going to look at the adventurous life of John Knox.

I think that many times we think of our church history figures as living well likely rather boring lives.

These were academics or they were authors of big books and they sat in their libraries and in their

studies and they pondered ideas.

That's true for a lot of them, but a lot of them had really adventurous lives and that's

especially true of John Knox.

We don't know much about the early years of John Knox when we first bump into him.

His first profession, as it were, is as a bodyguard. He served as a bodyguard for one of the early leaders in the Scottish

Reformation. I don't know if Knox was the kind of guy who worked out at the gym

and just looked like he should be a bodyguard,

or maybe more than likely, it's that he was trustworthy, that he could be relied upon, that he possessed

that level of courage and also that level of loyalty

that was necessary.

But we first bump into him, he's a bodyguard.

Of course, things are tumultuous

at the beginning of the Scottish Reformation,

and the reformers took one of the leaders of Roman Catholicism

and executed him.

And in the wake of that the authorities cracked down on the reformers and among them

of course was John Knox and for his role as a reformer he was sentenced to a galley ship.

Could not think of anything that speaks of more drudgery

than simply being sentenced to a galley ship.

...