I genuinely missed worshipping back home yesterday. It's great to worship with people, but when you know them personally it makes such a difference.
This Scottish church of believers welcomed us in and gave us a fellowship meal after - a nice hospitality of believers to believers. Not unlike the stream of strangers that came to Geneva in the era of John Calvin's leadership in the mid 16th century.
Geneva is a beautiful city. Our last place on this journey is significant because it was in Geneva that John Calvin came to lead the full character of the Reformation - the Spiritual Worship and Spiritual living of the people of God. When the Reformation began to spread in Europe, there was backlash among Catholic countries to those who accepted the doctrines of Grace. Persecution broke out in Italy, Spain, France, Belgium and Holland, as well as England and parts of Germany. Refugees - whole families - fled the persecution and many of them streamed into Geneva. The church we worshipped in yesterday was a church for refugees, and a group of Scottish Presbyterians who would have first met there under the leadership of John Knox still worship there today.
Geneva became a melting pot of Reformation followers, and the affect of people coming to a place who sought to live through the Gospel - by Grace through Faith - had a profound affect upon everything. Geneva over time was reformed!
Gone was poverty (there were no beggars in the streets of Geneva while Calvin was here because the poor were brought in to places of shelter and fed).
Gone was unemployment.
Education was for all, and despite what I've heard from secularists and even some who believe -
Women were given a status unheard of in Europe at the time.
None of the good occurred because people were forced into submission. The modernists who hate Christianity and despise the fruit of the Gospel have written negatively about Calvin without ever analyzing the fruit of what occurred in his leadership time.
Even in Calvin's day, John Calvin was not liked by all in Geneva. Those who opposed him were not burnt at the stake or driven out of the city. Calvin cared about the Gospel, not his own personal reputation.
John Calvin spent his life in Geneva - he also died here. No one knows where he is buried because like Moses he did not want a shrine to his dead body, and so Calvin is buried in some unmarked grave in Geneva.
What a Journey these last few days has been. The journey of the Reformation was a story...
> The early attempts at Reform by men like Savanarola, Jan Hus, John Wyclif and the early martyrs who paid with their lives because of their unwillingness to give up the Gospel of Grace. (Remember Place Maubert)
> We saw the Reforms that began with Martin Luther - the German pastor and theologian who would not back down from Papal threats of excommunication and bullying, even desiring to kill him because he preached a Gospel of Grace.
> We visited the Swiss Reformer Ulrich Zwingli, who lead the Cantons to embrace the Gospel of Grace and lost his life fighting to maintain that.
> We started early in Calvin's life, at his birthplace, then his education in Paris, and then the early days of leading in Strasbourg; but we end in Geneva, where his leadership brought the Reformation solidly on Europe's ground.
Yesterday, as our journey came to an end, we visited the Reformation wall...a picture that speaks a thousand words:
There they stand - a Mount Rushmore of the Genevan Reformation. But more than that. The sign in Latin from one of the wall to the other that in English reads, "AFTER THE DARKNESS LIGHT".
Next to the Reformers of Geneva stands two further depictions. It's difficult to capture the etchings on camera, so let me tell you what they say. The first is an etching in the wall of a Mayflower person - maybe John Bradford. It has next to it the words of the Mayflower Compact. The Mayflower Compact was a group of Reformed believers who sought to establish a place for the heralding of the Gospel - America.
Right next to that is a etching of our Declaration of Independence. This is Switzerland, but even here those who wanted to commemorate the fruit of the Reformation recognize that America came into being because of those who sought to live out the Gospel of Grace in a land free of prejudice and persecution.
My journey in the Reformation - our journey - is not over with. The Church still needs the message of Grace through Faith...God sovereignly working His will in a creation that is Fallen through Sin, separated from the goodness of God, and separated from each other by that Sin. We will not bring about a world of goodness and Justice, that alone is God's to do. Our task is to simply live for the Grace and Mercy of God, trusting in His working in us to do all things for our good and his glory.
Glad you could read along with me in this trip - wished you were along also.
Peace
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