Reformation Remembrance is the second End Times study as we close out our church year. I know that we spend a fair amount of time on Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation of the Catholic church, but it’s worth setting aside one Sunday to talk about it in greater detail.
Luther has been a accused of many things over the years, but he was never a rebel, never a malcontent. Luther discovered the Gospel of Jesus in God’s word and it changed him! What he found he slowly talked about, shared, and published. For this he was called on the carpet. He stood before the Holy Roman Emperor and the dignitaries of the Catholic church at the Diet of Worms. Luther didn’t even mind this, but he wasn’t able to talk about the grace of God before the world authorities. No one wanted to hear what he knew. He was told to recant – to take back all of it. Just go away.
Luther walked out of the Diet with a promise of safe passage home, but the reality was that anyone could’ve rubbed him out and nothing would’ve happened. By the grace of God, Martin Luther never made it home to Wittenberg. He was “kidnapped” by the minions of his Elector Frederick the Wise. Luther didn’t like this time in captivity, but he was alive, and he had time to translate the Bible into German! Imagine, you didn’t need the church to reach God. Everyone could read God’s word on his or her own.
If you open an email devotion or click through a soft copy of one of thirty translations of the Bible online, all of that freedom started with Luther. To be clear, Luther wasn’t the first reformer to discover the nuggets of gold in the Bible. It is by grace you have been saved through faith, not works! Luther was the first reformer who lived. All who had come before were executed by the church – Hus and Savonarola are two examples.
Want to hear more? Watch this week’s Bible class – Reformation Remembrance.
Please click HERE for the Bible class slides.