As I bring this series to an end, I want us to focus on a very important question. It has plagued

the Western world ever since the 1500s. And this is where I'm going to start by a conversation

that took place between Queen Mary of Scotland and a preacher by the name of John Knox.

Queen Mary of Scotland was Catholic and she was schooled in France.

John Knox was a reformed Presbyterian preacher.

Queen Mary believed that the sovereign, namely the king or the queen, that's what the word sovereign means.

The sovereign. In fact, Queen Elizabeth II today, she's sovereign.

When you become a citizen of England, you do not become a citizen of England.

You become a subject to the Queen of England.

That's where the term sovereign comes from.

And Mary believed that the sovereign, the king or the queen, had the absolute power over the consciences of the subjects.

Knox, on his part, being a very uncompromising preacher of the Word of God and the truth of the

Word of God, was sentenced as a galley slave for 19 months.

Knox had different idea than the queen when it comes to the Church

of Jesus Christ. After he was released from that slavery, Nax escaped to Geneva. There

in Geneva, Calvin was in Geneva teaching, and so many of those escaped persecutions came from all over the world and were taught by John Calvin.

And so John Knox was in Geneva between 1553 and 1559.

After he returned from Geneva to Scotland, that important conversation took place in the fall of

1561. In fact, in the summer of 1560, that is one year earlier than this conversation,

Knox was participating in the drafting of what is known as the Scottish Confession

of Faith, which actually went against even the English reformers. For the English reformers

on their part were very happy for the sovereign that's the queen or the king to be called the head of the church of

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