Welcome back to another episode of five minutes in church history. On this episode, let's go to a place in church history to the beautiful Isle of Iona.

Iona is on the west coast of Scotland.

It's roughly 60 miles north of Northern Ireland.

Columba, who is credited with bringing Christianity to Scotland, died there on the Isle of Iona

on June 9, 597.

We had talked about Columba on a previous episode when we had our good friend Dr. Sinclair Ferguson here talking about his book in the

year of our Lord and talking about the two missionaries that brought Christianity to Scotland.

So I thought we'd go back and spend a little bit of time at a specific place at Iona.

Columba was from the county Donegal in Ireland and in 563 he went to Scotland and there

on this Isle of Iona he established a monastery.

From there, groups of monks spread out over these islands.

These islands are known as the Hebrides.

It's an archipelago off the west coast of Scotland.

There are the outer Hebrides and the inner Hebrides. Of course, the

inner Hebrides are closer to the mainland of Scotland. These are postcard picture

perfect islands and one of the most beautiful of them is Iona.

The Abbey was established there in the five hundreds.

All that stands today is a bank of earth that is a testament to that Abbey that

Columba built.

There's also a ditch and along that ditch at one time a wall ran.

The current Abbey Building is a 13th to 16th century building

being added upon and developed over those centuries.

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