Reformation in Geneva

Here are some pictures from our visit to Geneva on holiday. The first is Calvin's auditorium where he and John Knox lectured and where reformed refugees from across the whole world gathered to hear them, including many of the guys who would go back to Britain in Elizabeth's reign to get the reformation going again.






The second is the cover of the initial copy of Calvin's Institutes. This work helped clarify the teachings regained at the time of reformation
and spread them across the world.
















This is the inscription from Calvin's grave.












There were many more delights, especially the city's newly-opened museum of the reformation. Claire and I bumped into Mark Dever there, which was slightly weird. Whilst he tried to buy a bust of Calvin for his office desk from the Museum gift-shop, I rather fancied the ale they were selling named after the great reformer.

Anyway, the point of it all? Just the kind of thing geeky Oak Hill students get up to on their hols? well, I was struck by one big thing:

The reformers achieved an awful lot and changed the world. Calvin was 55 when he died. Others died younger. Yet these guys left behind them an incredible body of work. In an age before the internet etc. they worked tirelessly to spread the gospel they'd re-discovered around Europe and lay foundations for the generations of Christians who followed them. Just in our one day in Geneva we saw and heard of schools, universities and churches set up, civil government reforms, church government reforms, missionaries trained and sent, books written and revised, and more. It kind of makes me wonder what I've been playing around at these last 28 years.