Henry VIII: How He Ignited A Reformation Part 2

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. Henry VIII saw his chance to take control of the Church of England when the tides of reformation hit the shores of the British Isles. Today, more of a message on Henry VIII, how a man with six wives ignited a reformation.

Stay with us. From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Pastor Lutzer, Henry certainly mastered the art of politics in his day.

He pulled all the strings he could to get what he wanted from church and state alike. Dave, one of the reasons that Henry is such an interesting figure in church history is that he died an ardent Catholic, but yet because he broke with the Pope and became the head of the Church of England, he in effect ushered in the Reformation. It's a fascinating story. It's one of the stories that I tell in my book entitled Rescuing the Gospel, the Story and the Significance of the Reformation.

And I need to emphasize that this is one of the last days that we are making this resource available to you. What you'll discover is that some of the disputes of the past have direct relevance to today. You'll be inspired. You'll be better able to defend the faith and to know what Christianity is all about. For a gift of any amount, it can be yours.

Simply go to rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. And now let us listen carefully. So if you remember the three children of Henry and the order in which they ruled, you basically understand the Protestant Reformation. First of all, you have Edward.

He's poisoned at the age of 15. Then you have Mary, who turns out to be Bloody Mary, and then you have Elizabeth. But let's not hurry over Mary. During the time of the Marian persecutions, there were many martyrs, I told you between 400 and 500, but there were three who were very, very famous.

And today you can go to Oxford, where I have stood, and you stand there and there's traffic along the street and there's a marker there in the street and the cars are going this way and the cars are going that way and people don't even think of what happened there. But three famous martyrs were burned at the stake there. One was a man by the name of Nicholas Ridley. He was the Bishop of London in 1540. He became a chaplain to the king. He saw the error of transubstantiation and convinced Latimer, who I'll refer to in a moment, and Nicholas Ridley helped Cranmer write the Book of Common Prayer and the 39 articles of what became known as the Anglican Church. And so he removed stone altars and for other things that he was considered to be wrong about, he was burned at the stake with Hugh Latimer. Latimer was a great preacher. Latimer said, if I see the blood of Christ with the eye of my soul, that is true faith that his blood was shed for me.

He emphasized the English Bible. Latimer was actually in the king's court able to preach under Edward but of course was banished under Bloody Mary. And now I want to tell you about how these two died. He's burned to death during the persecutions in 1555. He takes the candle from the executioner and lights his own fire and says, be of good comfort, Master Ridley.

He and Ridley are dying together. This day we shall light such a candle by God's grace in England as I trust shall never be put out. Wow. So he takes the candle and he lights his own fire. That's what happened there at Oxford where you can stand today where it happened. In fact, you can actually go somewhere and you can see what the flames did to some of the doors and some of the buildings in that area.

It was a huge bonfire. Watching these two guys burn to death is Thomas Cranmer who I told you about earlier. Cranmer wrote the 39 articles of Anglicanism. He was a great promoter of Protestantism. Remember, he was an advisor under Edward who was Protestant. First Archbishop of Canterbury, Mary wanted him to recant so badly because she thought if she could get him to recant, then all of England, all these Protestants would recant. And you know what?

She succeeded. Under pressure, Thomas Cranmer denied the Protestant faith. Now, he was forced to watch the burning of Latimer and Ridley, and he was forced to see that to get him to recant.

He is asked if he will recant and he does recant on several occasions. But ultimately, I know that all of you have been disappointed at this point. You say, oh, this Thomas Cranmer. Oh, don't tell us that about him.

It's all right. It ends well. Ultimately, he recants of his recantation and he is burned and he puts his hand in the fire that signed the document. And he says, this hand which hath sinned having signed the writing must be the first to suffer punishment.

He held his hand in the fire until it was charred. Then he was burned to death in the very same place where Latimer and Ridley were burned to death there in Oxford. Well, what about the reign of Elizabeth?

Forty-five years. She is the daughter now of Anne Boleyn and tradition says she was overcome when told of the death of her half-sister. She is to have knelt in the grass and to have quoted in Latin, this is the Lord's doing and it is marvelous in our eyes. Philip of Spain wanted to marry her thinking that he would force Catholicism on England and she absolutely refused to marry him or anyone else. And she is known as the Virgin Queen reigning for 45 years. She was a Protestant, though her doctrinal views are somewhat confusing.

Yes, there were times when she attended mass and yet when the abbot of Westminster came to her with sputtering candles, she waved them aside and said, away with these torches, we have light enough without them. Now we get to something that is so intriguing. Most of her life, Mary Queen of Scots is plotting against her.

Now that's a story I'm going to tell you. There's one more lecture left in this series, okay, and it'll be the last. We'll take Scotland and John Knox. Mary Queen of Scots is a cousin to Queen Elizabeth I.

How they are related I shall not tell you because it doesn't matter for our purposes. And Mary Queen of Scots is brought from France to reign in Scotland and all kinds of trouble breaks out there and you feel sorry for Mary Queen of Scots. And she has a child by the name of James that she can't even raise.

James is taken away from her and raised Protestant. But Mary Queen of Scots believes, as all of the Scots did, that Elizabeth I should not be ruling in England because she is strictly speaking an illegitimate child. Because after all, Henry's first two marriages were annulled. And so strictly speaking, she was conceived illegitimately. And so Mary Queen of Scots plots against Elizabeth and wants to kill her. And finally, when Elizabeth knows that the evidence is overwhelming, she could not bring herself to sign the death warrant. So what she did is she signed a whole bunch of papers, but the death warrant was among them. And she just kind of closed her eyes and signed one paper after another, after another, after another. And Mary Queen of Scots was beheaded for having plotted the downfall of Elizabeth I.

But here's the kicker. I tell you, I'm telling you the whole story. Mary Queen of Scots lost in life because her cousin Elizabeth had her beheaded. But Mary Queen of Scots won in death. You know this James that I was telling you about that she bore? He ended up becoming the King of England and the King of Scotland, uniting the two monarchies.

And it was his idea, because of what his advisors told him, that gave us the King James version of the Bible. And here's something. I go to Westminster Abbey and I say to the tour guide, now Mary Queen of Scots, her remains were brought to Westminster and buried there by her son, James. I said, I want to go to two tombs.

Now there Westminster Abbey is nothing but a cemetery. But I said, there are two tombs I especially want to see. I want to see this tomb of Elizabeth I and I want to see the tomb of Mary Queen of Scots. Because I read in tour books that the tomb of Mary Queen of Scots is more ornate and taller than the tomb of Elizabeth I. So I walked through Westminster Abbey and saw the tombs. You go to this room and you see the tomb of Elizabeth I and then you go and you see the tomb of Mary Queen of Scots. Absolutely. It's more ornate.

Why? Because how they were buried and the ornamentation of their tombs was determined by James, who is the son of Mary Queen of Scots. So obviously he's going to give his mother first dibs, even though she never ruled over the kingdom of England, most assuredly. And she ruled for a time in Scotland. And even though Queen Elizabeth ruled for 45 years, her tomb is not quite as fancy nor as big.

Blood runs thicker than other relationships, doesn't it? Now what do we say about the Anglicans? What is Anglicanism?

Anglicanism, and it is really under Elizabeth I that it was solidified with all kinds of rules that standardized it, the common book of prayer, the common book of liturgy, and so forth. Anglicanism is basically Protestantism with Catholicism still evident through such things as the vestments. The Anglican Church takes the theology of the Protestantism, the 39 articles, and retains many Catholic practices in terms of liturgy, worship, vestments, the garments, et cetera, that are worn by clergymen. Often these garments are indicative of the rank, et cetera.

These are especially worn while performing the Eucharist or on a ceremonial occasion. And in America we call Anglicans Episcopalians. High Church has more ritualism than low Church. So when you go to an Anglican Church today, if you have a Catholic background, you probably pick up on a lot of things that those of us who are a little bit more Protestant may not have.

And it's because Anglicanism is really a synthesis of Protestantism with some remnants of Roman Catholicism. All right, the Puritans, they have to leave under the bloody persecutions of Mary. They go to places like Geneva, where I told you about, where Calvin welcomed them, and where they built homes on top of homes in the city of Geneva.

And they are there for a number of years. And then Mary, bloody Mary, dies. And now they know it's safe to return to England. And they've heard that the Church is reformed. And so the Puritans begin to attend Church, but they say this Church is not reformed. And because of acts of uniformity, everybody has to follow the common rituals. It was standardized for the whole Anglican Church, and they didn't like that. So they said to themselves, you know what we're going to do?

We're going to come to America, and we're going to find freedom of religion for ourselves and worship God the way in which we want to worship God. And what do they bring with them but the Geneva Bible that was translated into English while there were refugees there in Geneva with Calvin? And who else is studying there for two full years in Geneva with Calvin but John Knox, whose story I'm going to tell you next time. Knox was a man with many faults. There are people, you know, who have feet of clay.

I would say that Knox had clay up to his armpits. I mean, you know, he was very human, many faults, a lot of pride, a lot of rigidness. I mean, he talked to Mary, Queen of Scots on six occasions.

I'll tell you that story. But yet that's the genesis of the Presbyterian Church. And today we have Knox seminaries all over the world, don't we?

What can we conclude tonight? First of all, history is really God's story. Think of the fact that Henry VIII was by any measure an evil man beheading whomever he wishes to behead. By the way, did I tell you about Anne of Cleves, whom he didn't find to be beautiful? And Thomas Cromwell is the one who worked through and set her up and brought her from Germany. You know what Cromwell got for that? He was beheaded. Teach you to tell me a woman is beautiful when she isn't.

Will that learn you or won't it? Of course he was evil. Yet he was the means by which the power of the papacy and the power of the church was broken in England.

Very interesting. History is God's story. And you think of the fact that the Reformation began in England because of personal issues, namely a marriage that wasn't a marriage.

How do I annul this marriage? I already told you that if the pope had annulled it, it would have been the end of the game. Henry could have married someone else and gone on. We also in history learn that children can be used of God even if they were conceived illegitimately. Remember I told you that before Henry even had an annulment from Catherine, Anne Boleyn was already pregnant with Elizabeth I. And Elizabeth I became this great queen under whom England mightily prospered in her 45-year reign. And interesting, the way in which God uses all kinds of circumstances and even all kinds of sins.

And then we learn such things about Anglicanism, its compromise between Calvinism and Catholicism. If we have no questions tonight, no problem. But this is the time to do it. Wasn't there a translation of the Bible affected by Henry's influence? Yes. Yes. Not sure if it's the Coverdale Bible.

It may be. When I lecture on the history of the Bible, I mention that. And Henry, oh yes, here's another stroke of providence. Henry allowed the Bible to be read in the churches. And he did that to solidify his opposition to Catholicism, which did not allow it to be read. So you see Protestant ideas began to flourish under Henry with, in a quasi kind of way, with his approval. And you're absolutely right.

Thank you for reminding me of that. I believe it is the Coverdale Bible. It was called, I think, the Big Bible because there was only one per church and every church was supposed to have a reader of it. And that was with Henry's blessing.

And so in spite of himself, Henry promoted the word of God. Just think of England, where you have beheadings, where you have people being killed and you have all this political intrigue. You know, one day everybody's supposed to be Protestant, mass abolished. The next day, everybody is supposed to be Catholic, masses back.

Bottom line, if there's some takeaway tonight, it is simply this. We ought to be very, very grateful to almighty God that we live in a country where you can go to mass if you want. You don't have to go if you don't want to go to mass.

You can attend a Protestant church, you can attend an Anglican church, and we have freedom of religion. My dear friend, that is something that is so precious. We had better not take it for granted. Would you join me, please, as we pray? Our Father, today we want to thank you for those who died. I want to thank you for Cranmer who denied the faith and then recanted his recantation and put his hand first in the fire and let this burn because it wrote the recantation of my faith.

I want to thank you for Ridley. Latimer, what a preacher. Thank you, Father, that they represent hundreds of others. We were in England and we saw the fields that were wet with the blood of the martyrs at one time during this period. And yet there you are doing your work, working in spite of people, working through people, accomplishing your end, getting the gospel out, and we thank you and thank you that we stand upon the shoulders of many people and that we have the privilege of worshiping with such liberty and freedom.

We are deeply, deeply indebted. In Jesus' name, amen. Well, my friend, this is Pastor Lutzer. Would you like to read a synopsis of the story of Cranmer who denied the faith and then he recanted his recantation?

Fascinating story. Let me ask you a different question, and that is this. Should pastors during the time of COVID, should they have ministered to their people or should they have taken precautions and stayed away? I mention that because in my book entitled Rescuing the Gospel, the Story and the Significance of the Reformation, I quote an essay by Martin Luther entitled Should a Christian Flee the Plague When it Came to Wittenberg? Very good question, very relevant question. Luther said that if you have responsibility, you should stay.

If you don't have any responsibility, you might flee. We might look back in history and not realize how important it is for us to understand the past and the issues that we face today, and I need to emphasize that this is one of the last days that we are making this book available to you. It's entitled Rescuing the Gospel. Hope that you have a pen or pencil handy.

Here's what you can do. Go to RTWOffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. I believe that this resource is going to be of tremendous blessing and help to you in your spiritual journey.

Right now, go to RTWOffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. Time now for another chance for you to ask Pastor Lutzer a question about the Bible or the Christian life. These days, danger is everywhere. A man named Pete listens to Running to Win on KTAA in Tyler, Texas, and asks, Should a Christian protect himself and his loved ones with a firearm, with the possibility of taking the life of a criminal perpetrator? Well, Pete, as you know, you have opened a very interesting discussion over which there is disagreement, the whole matter of guns, the whole matter of self-protection, et cetera. And of course, as we watch the news and listen to it, we know that these kinds of issues are oftentimes haughtily debated.

But I believe that the answer to your question is yes. I think it is okay, appropriate for a Christian to have a gun, and if necessary, to use it. All of us would agree that the police have that right, because we know that in a violent society – and I'd say that we are living in an increasingly more violent society – in a society like that, we do need protection. We need the protection of the police, and they have the right, biblically, to take life. As the Apostle Paul says, they do not bear the sword in vain. Now, can we as individual Christians also bear arms?

We certainly do that when Christians go to war. I think you have the right to be able to protect yourself. But having said that, I cannot over-exaggerate the importance of people to have training so that they know what they are doing. There are all kinds of stories of guns that have destroyed people simply because the gun was there. Children oftentimes have been involved.

So be careful, be thoughtful, be legal, but yes, I think that you can have a gun to protect your wife and family. A word of wise counsel from Dr. Erwin Lutzer. Thank you, Dr. Lutzer. If you'd like to hear your question answered, go to our website at rtwoffer.com and click on Ask Pastor Lutzer. Or call us at 1-888-218-9337. That's 1-888-218-9337.

You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635, North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois, 60614. North of England lies Scotland, where another chapter of the Reformation took place. Here, politics again mixed with the church, and John Knox arose as a major player there. Don't miss this final lecture in Pastor Lutzer's series on The Reformation, Then and Now. Thanks for listening. For Pastor Erwin Lutzer, this is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.