Kingdom Progress – Gregory Scott Blog

Irish-Scotch Travel Journal – Epilogue

Walls – “some of the best evidence we live in a fallen world.”

After another delayed flight and misplaced piece of luggage, we arrived home in the dark early morning hours. We were tired but, as always, glad to be home. That the trip home included airline logistical problems added a strange symmetry to our journey, but perhaps it was fitting.

We don’t always know what themes will develop on our journeys, even when they are planned around certain historical figures or events, and this one was no different. In retrospect it is clear this one was about evangelism and walls.

The historical figures we came across each day were like a dream team of disciple-makers: Patrick, Columba, Maughold, Aiden, and Cuthbert. King Jesus used Patrick to remake Ireland into Kingdom-territory, and then He did the same with Maghhold on the Isle of Man, Columba in Scotland, and Aiden and Cuthbert in Northeastern England.

Studying these Kingdom heroes seemed to inspire our group, as when Ann spoke to our taxi driver in Dublin about the Lord, and The Wife and I shared about the Lord with our taxi driver on the Isle of Man.

And then there were the walls. The first walls we saw were those in Londonderry, built in the early seventeenth century but becoming even more iconic during The Troubles of 1968-1972.

The most famous wall was Hadrian’s. As I mentioned in a post, walls are some of the best evidence we live in a fallen world. Walls are designed to keep people separated from one another. Emperor Hadrian built his wall in 122 A.D. after giving up on defeating the vicious pagan Picts in what is now Scotland.

Fittingly, Hadrian’s wall has been all but dismantled now, not just through the pillaging of people but through the presence of the gospel. The Romans could not tame the Picts so they built a wall. Columba introduced them to the gospel and there was no longer a need for a wall.

Irish-Scotch Travel Journal Day – 11

St Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall, Orkney Islands

I’ve long had trouble with the labels “saint” and “martyr,” the former because it’s been used historically by churches in an unbiblical manner and the latter because It’s been used so broadly as to lose all significance. This blog long ago abandoned those labels for the phrase “Kingdom hero.”

It was both these labels that caused me some consternation with Saint Magnuson. Why was he made a saint? Because he was martyred. How was he martyred? He was killed by his cousin and joint-ruler Hakon who wanted to be sole ruler of Orkney. Why does that make him a martyr? Because Magnus was a good man.

So, I decided to go to the source: Orkneyinga Saga: The History of the Earls of Orkney, written within approximately 100 years of Magnus’s death. I’ve come to the conclusion Magnus was indeed a Kingdom hero. Magnus was co-ruler of the Orkney Islands for seven years (1110 -1117 A.D.). He loved God, was pious, just, and treated the rich and poor alike. And then there is this:

He was gentle and agreeable when talking to men of wisdom and goodwill but severe and uncompromising towards thieves and vikings putting to death most of the men who plundered the farms and other parts of the earldom. He had murderers and robbers arrested, and punished the rich no less than the poor for their robberies, raids and other transgressions.
Orkneyinga Saga, 45.

At this point, the culture of Orkney was likely still dominated by the Norse, i.e. the Vikings. Olaf Tragvasson had sent missionaries to Orkney just the century before, so I’m guessing Viking culture still existed in Orkney. Perhaps they were seen like cowboys in America, idealized and romanticized notalgically. That Magnus was so harsh on the very lifestyle that had once been the dominate culture of the Vikings shows Magnus was a man intent on ruling according the law of God rather than man.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.
Proverbs 9:10

Magnus lived his life in the fear of God rather than man, and that is what made him a great leader. He was not swayed by public opinion; he swayed it in accordance with the culture of the Kingdom. He called the people of Orkney to a higher standard and they and the Orkney Islands were better for it.

Irish-Scotch Travel Journal Day – 9

Our day started with some trepidation as we were getting news from back in Houston that Hurricane Beryl was bearing down on the city.

We took comfort in knowing a friend was staying in our home, but by our Scotland afternoon friends back in Houston were waking to heavy rain and high winds as the hurricane unleashed its fury on the city.

As all this was happening back home, we were on the peaceful Isle of Iona. We anchored off the port at Tobermory, Isle of Mull, and took a scenic two-hour drive to the southern most tip of the island, where we caught a ferry for the 1 mile trip to Iona.

We were in Iona because of Columba. In 563 A.D., Columba left Ireland on his mission to take the gospel to Scotland. That plan included establishing a base of operations in Scotland where he could train up men of God and then lead and send them out with the gospel. Columba chose the Isle of Iona as his base. He established a monastery there that survived for the next thousand years.

Iona is only 4 miles long and 1 mile wide. It is far enough from Ireland that one cannot see Ireland on the clearest of days, one of the conditions Columba had for selecting his new base. Iona is also only 15 miles from the Scottish mainland, meaning Columba and his disciples could get there in a number of hours.

After establishing his posse on Iona, Columba and his disciples took missionary trips to the western and northern parts of Scotland where they brought the gospel to the Picts. The Picts were ferocious pagans, not unlike the Celts in Ireland. Some believe they were descendants of the same Celtic people group. The mighty Romans could never definitively defeat the picts in battle and so had built two walls across Britain’s northern frontier (Hadrian’s Wall in 122 A.D. and the Antonine Wall in 142 A.D.) to keep them out.

What the Romans, the greatest military empire in history to that time could not do, Columba and his disciples did with the gospel. There were others involved of course, St. Ninian, for example, but Columba gets the lion’s share of the credit.

Columba’s monastery on Iona produced a dream team of saints including Saint Aidan (a missionary to Northumbria who established the monastery at Lindisfarne), Saint Cuthbert (while not trained at Iona was heavily influenced by Columba), Adomnan (who wrote the Life of Columba in the 7th century and was the abbot at Iona), and Saint Machar (who established the church in Aberdeen, Scotland). The monastery also produced books, the most well known being the celebrated Book of Kells now on display at Trinity College in Dublin.

Irish-Scotch Travel Journal Day – 7

Maughold Village, Isle of Man, a hidden treasure

If you are looking for Christian history, the Isle of Man is probably not the first place that comes to mind. The Isle of Man is known as a tax haven for corporations, not a destination of spiritual pilgrimages.

When we were here in 2018, we toured Viking burials, the ruins of an early Christian church, and Castletown where John Wesley preached in 1777. Today we determined to do something different, and that led us to Maughold Village.

St. Maughold lived in the 5th Century A.D. in Ireland. He was a pirate, captaining a ship of pirates, that is, until he crossed paths with St. Patrick.

As we know, Patrick was bold, and Patrick preached the gospel to Maughold, who repented and gave his life to Jesus. As evidence of his repentance Maughold in approximately 450 A.D. and probably commissioned by Patrick, set out in a boat from Ireland for the Isle of Man. When he arrived, he began doing what he apparently had seen St. Patrick doing in Ireland – making disciples.

Maughold founded a church there, in what is now known as as the Village of Maughold, and he baptized new believers at a well a few hundred yards from the church down the slope toward the Irish Sea. He later became a bishop and is now considered the patron saint of the Isle of Man.

So, today, we were on a Maughold mission. We rented a taxi and told the driver we would need him for about two hours. He drove us the ten miles to the Village of Maughold, about a 30 minute drive through some of the most beautiful country with some of the most beautiful vistas you can imagine.

The church there, besides being founded by St. Maughold, is also home to a number of early Celtic crosses, some nearly 1500 years old. We looked around inside the church and then outside at the crosses before I asked for directions to Maughold’s Well. I was told it was a twenty minute walk.

If Christians Did These 4 Things They Would Rule the World

If you haven’t picked up on it from this blog yet, I have an optimistic view of the future because I am a Kingdom man. I believe Isaiah when he said the knowledge of God will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea, and that the people will stream to the mountain of God. See Isaiah 2:2, 11:9.

I believe Daniel when he said the kingdom of God will crush and put an end to all these other kingdoms but that the kingdom of God will endure forever. Daniel 2:44.

I believe Jesus when He said the kingdom of God will leaven the entire world and become like a tree so that the even non-Christians will seek to nest under the shade of its branches. Matthew 13:31-33.

I read with interest the efforts to theologify (I made that word up) these beliefs into a system of strategies and tactics whether it be Christian Reconstruction, the Seven Mountain Mandate, or any of the efforts to express the idea that the world should run best when it is run by those who are obedient to King Jesus.

But while tactics and strategies are important, they are really useless if the people who are given the responsibility of carrying them out have not been trained to do the fundamentals first. Christians don’t need to understand the Seven Mountains or Christian Reconstruction to advance the kingdom of God.

If Christians only consistently did the following four things they would see the greatest advance of the kingdom of God since the first century: