1sYbFRnV9qk

1:10I don't know if this is up on YouTube already or not. It is. So you can review last week's lecture on YouTube. And let's just go to Emmanuel Baptist Church, Bryan, Texas Sunday School. It'll pop up there for you. But anyway, he is. Very opposed to the sale of indulgences, but as I told you, as Leo X has issued this indulgence to raise funding for the building of the new St. Peter's Cathedral, the indulgence that's being sold is being sold everywhere but the province where Luther is at. And that is because Frederick the Wise, who is the local prince, was also against the sale of indulgences. You know, it's rather rare when you have a politician whose morals are higher than the Pope's. But that was the case here.

2:12Apparently, he had allowed a sale indulgence prior to this, and the money for which it was supposed to be raising, you know, funding for, it was never actually applied to that original purpose. And Frederick the Wise had observed this, and it really angered him. And so he had basically said, until that cause, whatever it was, is funded from the last indulgence, I will never again allow indulgences to be sold in my province. And so, theoretically, Luther should have never had a problem because indulgences weren't sold in Wittenberg. However, Wittenberg is a border town. Next province over, you have a little town, Jutenburg. I told you to be like Navasota, but a whole lot closer.

3:03Actually, be closer to Brian and Steve Hollow. But anyway, and a lot of the students apparently heard about this guy, Johann Tetzel. And Tetzel, let's go there. There's a woodcut drawing of him. Notice his little, if you got his little offering box there, he's riding with. And Johann Tetzel was a famous preacher of indulgences. And when he would come to town, he would put on quite a show. And he would actually preach. And he would put the guilt trip on people. And you see, by now, it's getting to the point where he would have a list of indulgences for particular sins. Lying costs you this much. You know, cheating costs you this much. Adultery, oh, that's going to really cost you this much. You know, and he literally had a list of sins. They're, you know, pretty common sins. And then he would switch and not just go to you personally. He'd say, well, about your loved one that just died. Now, you know, if you have somebody, let's say your husband or your father or your mother, nobody knows your sins better than your own family members, right?

4:21And let's say you have this particular problem and you're worried of, you know, daddy, Daddy Ree had a problem with that, and he's probably stuck in purgatory. Because of that, and so and Tesla says, you selfish person, you won't buy indulgence to get your loved one out of purgatory, you know. And so he would just put this guilt trip on people, and people open up their pocketbooks. And of course, you know, he had this little, let's see.

4:54Yeah, I know, but I think this is not the right version. But anyway, don't worry about it. All right, as soon as gold in the basin rings, right then the soul to heaven springs. Now, are you sure you got the one that's from the thing I gave you? Because I thought I revised that and made a separate okay, good. All right, so anyway, and so, you know, put that coin in there, and that soul springs right up to heaven, you see? And, of course, the money would start coming in. That's what they're really after. Now, imagine a young, naive college student. And of course, I know most college students think they know everything, but, you know, we know they don't. And those of us that are older and wiser. And, of course, I remember those days myself. But anyway, they buy these things.

5:52And they're walking back to Wittenberg. You know, it was a nice piece of fancy paper documentary. Documentation. Look what I bought. And then they think, huh, it seems like Professor Luther was saying that, you know, works don't count that much for God in terms of salvation. I wonder what he think about, you know, these indulgences. And so they get back to Wittenberg and they ask Professor Luther what does he think about these nice fancy paper documents they bought. And what do you think Luther's going to think?

6:36You have really been, you know, Shanghai. I'm not Shanghai, but you've been taken advantage of here. And so Luther goes, and this is really angers. You know, some of these college students are probably pretty poor students. They're just barely making it. You know, that was actually Luther's case. His father was sort of middle class, but it took everything he could to get Luther through college. And Luther would literally make money on the side. You know, I told you to like last time, he was a famous singer and sort of like mariachi guy. You know, he would sing for pay and to help supplement his income. So this really angers him. And he sits down and he writes the famous 95 Theses. And then what does he do?

7:24Nails it to the church door, right? And a lot of folks. Make a big deal out of that. He nailed it to the door. Well, that really isn't such a big deal because that was the community bulletin board. I don't know, but I suspect there's probably another notice right besides, say, you know, free kittens, you know, something like that. But that in itself was not an act of defiance. And the fact of the matter is, he wasn't, he had no idea the impact of the 95 thesis. None whatsoever. By the way, they were written in Latin. So who does that tell you he's addressing it to? Judge clergy. Other clergy. And actually, since he's academic, fellow academic, of course, you know, clergy, if you're a college professor back then, you are clergy.

8:17Yeah. And he was wanting to have a little local debate. You'd just be like me here at this local junior college. If I, you know, want to have a little debate amongst the professors, you know, make a little proposal. And occasionally, you know, we do stuff like that. And back then they did quite often. In fact, a lot of people don't know. It's just a few weeks prior to this, he had nailed to the door the 97 Theses, which had nothing to do with this. It's a whole nother thing. It's just a little debate they're going to have. So this in itself was nothing unusual. Now, just who it was, I don't know. In fact, I don't know if anybody knows. But somebody comes along, sees those 95s. Theses, and he's associated with the press.

9:06Okay. Now, the press wasn't anything like it is today, but even back then, if you're going to sell, you can't even call newspapers. The press was in its infancy. And the big problem the press has was finding stuff to print. Can you imagine that being a problem today? You know, at the time of Luther, the printing press was so new, it was probably actually possible to read every book that had been printed. Could you do that today? Could you read every book that's printed this month? No, it wouldn't be possible. But it was very much in its infancy there. And so if you have a printing press, one of your problems is finding enough stuff to print in order to sell it, in order to make a, you know, go of it. And so this person saw the 95 Theses and he thought, hmm, you know, this is really some good stuff here. And he thinks, hmm, I wonder if I translate this into German, how it would sell.

10:13And so he takes that 95 Theses, prints it, and they sell like hot cakes. Prints another batch. They sell like hotcakes. He couldn't print them fast enough that people want to buy it. Of course, super cheap back then. And of course, you know, If one printer learns that one printer's got something that's really hot stuff, you got to remember copyrights aren't even out there yet. Wouldn't that be fantastic, okay? And so, guess what the other printer next town does?

10:45He gets a copy of it. Next printer, next town gets, all right, pretty soon it's being translated into French, it's being translated into English, it's being translated into Swedish, it's being translated into every country in Europe within a matter of three months. Now, back then, that would be like lightning viral. You know, I mean, it's, and a copy lands on the Pope's desk. Okay? All right, Martin Luther, it would be like me, this tiny little, you know, junior college that I'm at, if I were to, you know, make a comment to the press, and then, you know, news team in Houston picks it up, then Austin, then it goes national, then it goes international. Now, what's the likelihood of that? Well, lightning will probably strike first, but the fact of the matter is that's what happened. And you got to remember, Luther is a brilliant intellectual, and he doesn't know it.

11:54If you ever read C.S. Lewis's biography, Surprised by Joy, It's truly remarkable. You know, he did not know he was a smart person until he got to Oxford. And when you start seeing how much other people didn't know, you begin to start realizing, well, I do know a few things. He had incredible humility about his knowledge because he didn't really think he knew that. And really, a truly smart person understands the smarter you are, the more you realize how ignorant you are.

12:27And along with that comes a humility. Now, unfortunately, many in academia don't ever quite get that humility because they think they're smarter than they really are. But anyway, Luther has really touched a nerve here. Remember, it's a hundred years since Huss and Wycliffe had the Council of Constance, and everything's been kind of like frozen. The church is terrified of any cleaning up or reforming because they remember what happened back then. And so there was a great need for the church to reform, and nothing had happened, and all these corruptions have been building up, building up, building up. And it's just like that proverbial little hole in the dike or the dam, and you've got the little Dutch boy put his finger in there, the hole, it's like he pulled his finger out, and the whole dam burst, you know. And so that's sort of the situation is going. He is the right man at the right time writing just the perfect items here that's going to unleash a storm that he never ever dreamed was going to happen.

13:46So anyway, he writes a 95 theses, and this is a later printed version. And of course, he's going to make it very clear in the 95th. And by the way, in the 95 Theses, if you go and read them, he's still fully within the Catholic Church. He was just wanting to have a little local theological debate with his fellow theology professors there at Wittenberg. Had no idea, you know, what storm this was going to unleash. And in the 95 theses, he's still quite friendly towards the Pope. In fact, he kind of takes the assumption that the Pope doesn't really know how bad this is, when actually he's the one that started the whole thing. And he's still being kind of, you know, nice towards the Catholic hierarchy and all that. He's trying to reform it from within at this point. But the Pope's been caught with his hand in the cookie jar, right?

14:43And what's the reaction going to be? Well, do popes like to admit that they make mistakes? Definitely not. Now, had he done so, he'd say, you know, Dr. Luther, you zing me on that, and I should be ashamed of myself. You know, put the lid back on the cookie jar. Jar, and you know, I'm going to behave from now on. Maybe, you know, it would have been a whole different story, but the Pope doesn't. The Pope is by going after Luther, he's going to elevate Luther to international fame even more so. And he decides if Luther wants to have a debate, he can have a debate, but it isn't going to be a local debate amongst the professors at Wittenberg. He's going to get the top Catholic theologian in the world to debate with Luther at Leipzig. Okay, John Eck. John Eck is going to be the guy he's got to debate with.

15:41So, we've already been through this. You have, and this is, by the way, Luther's comment at the time I thought was pretty nice. I would not have thought that such a storm would rise from Rome over one simple scrap of paper. I mean, that shows Luther's own reaction to this. So, he's going to debate John Eck, and by the way, he's going to have a year to do this. He nails, actually, it's more than a year. He nails the thesis 1517. 1519 is when he's going to have this debate. And you see, the way they do the debates by then, they're still kind of scholastic. You study and you basically write sometimes volumes of books. For your defense, or for if you're going on the attack. And then they come together and you have this panel of judges, and they decide who's got the better argument, so to speak. Now, if Luther's going to have over a year to prepare for this debate, what have I told you about Luther?

16:56Yeah, he's got probably photographic memory. And what did I tell you about when he does anything? He overdoes it. He goes totally berserk studying. And you know, if you've got photographic memory and you're studying, boning up for something, oh my gosh. He decides, now the Bible, he's got that down. He's virtually memorized it. Okay? And so he decides he's going to go back to the beginnings of Christian history. He reads all the church councils. He reads the histories of all the popes. And in doing so, his eyes were opened. You see, up until this point, he was a good Catholic. He thought the popes should have ultimate authority. But then he started reading about the popes. And what does he find out?

17:51Some of these people were horrible, did terrible things, you know. And so he quickly rejects the idea that popes should have ultimate authority. Ultimate authority. Then he thinks, well, you know, it must be the church councils. But guess what he figures out when he stays what this church council did? And then you have another church council come along a few years later, and what does it do? It repeals what the first one did. They contradict each other, just like popes had contradicted each other and made obvious errors. And guess what he finally comes around to? Ultimate authority should reside in what? Sola scriptura. Scripture alone. All right? So that's what he's going to come to a conclusion before this debate even really takes place.

18:41So, and we've just covered this, so let's go on. Throughout 15, 18, 15, 19, you know, he starts studying. Then he studies the life of Jan Hus and, of course, Wycliffe as well. And he was shocked at how Hus was treated, particularly when he read what Hus taught and realized everything he taught came straight from Scripture, right? And to see how he was betrayed and basically murdered there at the Council of Constance, burned at the stake, he said, and cannot understand how a man who speaks in such Christian ways can be. So brutally treated, you know. And so he, you know, by the way, he knows intimately what happens to Hus, right? So remember that as we approach what's going to happen with Luther. So he has this famous confrontation with Jek at Leipzig, 1519. Now, just to give you a peg date here, what's happening here in America, 1519?

19:59Colonization. Cortez lands at Veracruz, right, to begin the conquest of Mexico. All right, so to give you a peg date here. So that's what's happening over here at this very moment. So he, of course, in this debate, he denies the authority of Pope. That alone is going to get him what? Yeah. He denies the fallibility of church councils. And he pointed out that both had often erred and contradicted themselves, which, by the way, was irrefutable, you know.

20:36And final authority, he says, must lie with the Bible, sola scriptura, as interpreted. Now, here's the real zinger here: by individual conscience. All right. Now, probably he developed this conception from his reading of the New Testament teachings on priesthood of the believer, which I don't want to get to at this point, but that's very, very near and dear. To Baptists, priesthood of the believer. Okay? And so, anyway, that's kind of the conclusion he's come to. So, now, meantime, while all this is going on, and by the way, you know, he's going to, Ek's going to pull all this out of him. And so, you know, the debates over, he's going to go back to Wittenberg, and Ek then starts writing up charges against Luther, basically.

21:35And it's going to take a while for the Pope to move. And one reason the Pope is going to move so slowly is because politics comes to the fore here. You see, really, Luther's, I guess you could say, his greatest defense was the church did not initially recognize what a threat he was. You know, he's just this little German monk up there in Germany, and we've got bigger fish to fry. We'll fry him later. That's sort of the attitude. And the big fish to fry is the Holy Rom Emperor at the time dies. Now, the Holy Roman Empire, as Voltaire, I don't agree with Voltaire on many things, but here I will. He said it is not really an empire, and it certainly wasn't Roman.

22:30And so. It's not holy. Yeah, it's not holy, nor a Roman, nor an empire. Okay. And it's more of a loose confederation. And on top of that, it is elected. You have these different princes who would elect the Holy Roman Emperor. Now, later on, the Habsburgs get a sort of a lock. You know, whoever's elected is always going to be a Hofsborg. But that hasn't happened yet, although it's already trending that way. The former Emperor Maximilian I had died, and his grandson, who's a teenager, who's already king of Spain, and that means if he's king of Spain, what's he king of?

23:20Oh, that's about Cortes. Well, he owns basically southern Italy, he owns Sicily, he owns other Mediterranean islands, he owns territories in northern Africa. He, at this point, claims all of North America, all of South America, Central America, and the Caribbean islands. All right. Oh, plus the Philippines. Okay. So he owns a little bit of real estate. And of course, Cortez, at this very moment, is cracking open those gold storehouses of the Aztecs, and Spain and Charles V thus becomes the richest man on planet Earth. And shortly thereafter, you're going to. To have Francisco Pizarro cracking even bigger storehouses in South America. I mean, Pizarro's brother discovers a mountain, the mountain Potici, where he had veins of silver so wide and so exposed that you could see the veins of silver in the cliffs of the mountain as you approach it.

24:22That should boggle your mind. So, I mean, this guy is fabulously wealthy, which is why he's able to basically bribe the electors of the Holy Roman Empire to elect him, even though he's a teenager. All right? Okay, so Charles I of Spain becomes Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, because there had already been four Charleses who had been Holy Roman Emperors. So he becomes Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. Now, Charles V was fanatically Roman Catholic. And ironically, he understood better than the Pope did, apparently, that Luther was a threat. One of the first orders of business he decides after he becomes a young Holy Emperor is to demand Luther come and appear before him personally. All right?

25:26But there's some complications here. And the big complication is Frederick the Wise. Because it was an elective situation. Frederick the Wise, and this probably explains why the Pope was being so cautious with going after Luther. Frederick the Wise is protecting Luther. You see, the Pope actually already made an attempt prior to this to get Luther. He had to go appear before this other archbishop, but the archbishop finds out that he's under the protection of Frederick the Wise, so you really couldn't do that much to him. And Frederick the Wise had been a leading candidate to be Holy Rom Emperor. In fact, probably had he agreed to it, he would have been the next Holy Roman Emperor, but for reasons that are not really quite clear, he didn't want the job.

26:25And so, and Frederick the Wise was a very prominent prince within the Holy Roman Empire, and so even Charles V has to sort of handle him with his gloves, so to speak. So, with that in mind, Charles basically tells Frederick the Wise, I want Luther to appear before me. Frederick the Wise says, okay, but only if you give him safe passage, safe content. In other words, he can go down there, and even if you don't like what he says, you still got to let him come back here. You can't arrest him there. You understand? All right, so with this, you know, they tell Luther, you got to go down there and you got to appear.

27:12Now, meantime, the Pope has come out with Scourge Domini. Arise, O Lord. We should read the whole document to you. But he's basically asking the Lord to arise and take care of this monk. And this hires a warning. This is not the excommunication. He's going to give him basically 60 days to recant. All the stuff you said, all this stuff you've written, you guys say, I was totally wrong. No, ignore all that. It was wrong. It was heretical. So that's excurge. Now, Luther's going to wait the 60 days. And then on the 60th day, which is February 3rd, 1521, they have a big bonfire going.

27:59Not as big as the Aggie bonfire, but it's pretty big. And then he goes and he takes this papal bull and he flings it into the fire. And by the way, everybody at Wittenberg cheers. That's how much they have come around to his view on things. And so he just flat out defies the Pope. Now, by the way, all over Europe, people are now turning against the church, especially Northern Europe. All right. Oh, my goodness. Are we okay? Wait a minute. All right. So, meantime, you got the, you know, so the Pope's doing that on one track. He goes to Worms.

28:51And when he gets in there, and of course on the way, Luther was, well, I ask you, if you stay at the life of Hus, and you're Luther, despite what Frederick the Wise has done for you, despite the promise of the Holy Roman Emperor, what are you expecting? Execution. Yeah. I'm probably going to be arrested. I'm going to be tortured. I'm going to be burned at the stake. And Luther tells us that himself. He flat out thought he would not survive. He's headed to his death. Okay. And so he gets there. How are we coming there? Okay. He gets there and he appears before the emperor himself. You got the leading prelates of all the Holy Roman Empire. I mean, we're talking power people.

29:48And Luther, you've got to remember, is still sort of like a little country boy from the backwoods of Germany. Here he is standing amongst all these people. Of international prestige and power, and they're all arrayed against him. The only friendly face was Frederick the Wise, who's there. That's the only one he knew when he walks in this room. And they have copies of all his works stacked up on this table, and they tell him, You know, you have got to recant.

30:26Right? All right, are we going? This is really hurting now. Are we there? Yeah. All right, so thank you. Of course, this is Wittenberg where he preached at. And we've already been through all this. Here he is. This is one artist depiction of him. You know, the emperor's seated up there on his throne. And this is April 1521. And Luther, this is what he says. Why don't you read that for me, Josiah? Unless I am convinced by the evidence of Scripture or by plain reason, for I do not accept the authority of the Pope or the council alone, since it is established that they have often erred and contradicted themselves. I am bound by the scriptures. I have cited, and my conscience is captive to the word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything, for it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. God help me. Amen.

31:27Yeah, there's actually been several songs written. Based on this, one was running through my head right now. All right, so after saying this, he walks out. He expects he's going to be arrested at any moment. The arrest never comes. He finally gets word back at basically his hotel room or wherever it is he's staying at, and it says they are, you know, the members of the emperor's council are deadlocked. They can't make up their mind. And so he also finds he has a permission of the emperor to go back. Now, why Charles V allowed Luther to go back, we're not sure why. One thing, what happened to the Holy Roman Emperor when he allowed Hus to be executed? Did things go well for him after that? I mean, he had a far bigger mess because he made a martyr out of Hus, and all of Bohemia rose up. And, you know, it took five crusades and they never did match to defeat the Hussites, right? So I suspect that had a little bit to do with it. You know, he was probably worried that if he, and plus, there's huge crowds at Worms, and they were all yelling for Luther. And, you know, politicians, they're not, sometimes they can be kind of deaf to the popular will, but, you know, what people are yelling. Outside the window, it's kind of hard to be deaf to that, you know. So that's another factor. Another factor is what we think he was thinking is that, you see, he would allow Luther to go back, but then he would issue an imperial command for Frederick the Wise to officially hand Luther back over to him. In other words, I think what Charles was thinking, you know, I could be patient. I'll go through proper procedure and then I'll fry him. That's probably what he was thinking. But he's not going to have a chance to do that because on Luther's way back, he is intercepted by horsemen.

33:47Some say hooded horsemen. I don't know if they're hooded or not. But anyway, and Luther doesn't know who the heck it is. And they take him away. Now, nobody else knows. In fact, for a while, nobody knows what's happened to Luther. He's just, he's disappeared. A lot of people thought, ha, that young Charles V is pretty smart. You know, he just had him knocked off privately. Well, no, that's not the case. It was a friendly kidnapping. And it was Frederick the Wise. Now, why would Frederick the Wise kidnap his own? Professor, college professor, worked for him.

34:35Well, there's no reason. Can Frederick the Wise, even as powerful as he is, defy the Holy Roman Emperor if he gives him an imperial decree? No, he's got to have deniability. I don't know what happened to him. Okay, and that's exactly why he does this. And of course, we all know they take him to Vartburg Castle. All right. So he's kidnapped. And by the way, Luther himself was not told who was behind his kidnapping. And you've got to remember, Frederick was taking a terrible risk to himself by protecting Luther. This could be the end of him, you know, if word gets out that he's the one behind it. So it was a while before Frederick the Wise would even allow Luther to know that he was the one that was behind the kidnapping. So they take him to Vartenburg Castle, and there he's hidden, literally. And for the almost entire year, nobody knows where he's at, but they do know he's alive because he would write letters from time to time. And he had a lot of fun with this. You say, Luther from Patmos, you know, or Luther from the air or something. You know, that he'd write these. Letters. Now he's not, he got very depressed during this time as well, but Luther, as usual, cannot just sit around doing nothing. He disguises himself as Squire George and he goes down into the little town there, hangs out at the L houses, and he's not just drinking beer. Of course, you know, Lutherans have no problem drinking beer. But, you know, the joke is told of an evangelical American pastor going to Germany, meeting up with a Lutheran pastor, and as they're leaving the airport, the Lutheran says, let's stop in here and get something to eat. And so they sit and orders food. Lutheran orders food and a big old stein of beer. And of course, the evangelical, he was, you know, like the old-fashioned Southern Baptist, you know, all alcohol is of the devil. And he's, you know, he's just shocked that he has this beer, you know. And so he asks him about it, and he says, you have a problem with this? And they have a discussion, and they finally agree to, you know, disagree. And so he asked the German if he would pray, bless the meal. And the German started praying, blessing the meal. And he says, and Lord, thank you so much that I'm a Lutheran Christian. Okay, so anyway, Luther, he's not there to drink beer. Though, he's there to listen. What's he listening for?

37:36No, more than that. He's listening to the language they're using. Because guess what he's doing? The greatest, grandest project of his life. He's translating the Bible into German. And he's thereby going to fix what the German language is today. You know, it's remarkable, anytime the Bible has been translated into a particular language, it has a dramatic impact upon that language. Just imagine English without the King James Bible. All right? It has just literally fixed much of our phraseology, even some cases, patterns in which we think.

38:23And so Luther is going to translate the Bible into German, and when that Bible is printed, the Protestant Reformation was unstoppable. Why? Yeah, you read the Bible, and then you look at what's going on in the medieval church of that day, and what do you immediately realize? This is not lining up at all. And people start flooding out of the category. Catholic Church, as a result of that. And of course, the Bible was banned. It was illegal to have a printed German version. But the immense profits you can make by printing the Bible was just, you know, it is unstoppable. And when I say it was dangerous, Luther's first publisher was hanged. You know, his first publisher. You know, how you'd like to be publisher Luther. All right, so it is a very scary thing to be. So anyway, so there he is, Vartburg Castle. You know, there's an incredible earlier story about a young lady that was there, who was princess.

39:36It was not a Cinderella story, but still an amazing story. That's another time. And so you have the translation of the Bible. This is the very room there where he spent a lot of time. You know, you can go see it even today. And, of course, you have this just all over Germany now, people began abandoning the Catholic Church. And the bad part about this, though, is some of the folks are going to use the teachings of Luther for their own nefarious purposes. And some become rabble-rousers. And you're going to have a major peasant rebellion breaking out. And of course, in Wittenberg, you have all kinds of crazy things, desecration of the churches there. You have, of course, the R. Works being destroyed, images are pulled down, they're destroyed, some of the beautiful stained glass windows are smashed. And when Luther learns of this, he becomes so concerned that he decides it's time to leave Wartburg. He gets a horse, rides all night, arrives in Wittenberg, is shocked at the situation there.

40:54You have some of these radicals who have, you know, sort of taken over the movement, and they are teaching and doing things that Luther totally does not agree with. And he finds out that they're having a meeting, and he goes to the meeting. At first, they don't even recognize him because, you know, he's grown a beard, he's now Squire George, and he's in his disguise. And finally, someone notices him and says, Who are you? And he says, I am Luther. And they're all stunned and shocked. And they say, Well, what do you want? He says, I want my pulpit back. All right. And then he re-establishes order there in Wittenberg. Now, of course, you know, me, the politicians, were real happy with the situation because imagine if over half your tax base you can't tax because the churches own the property, guess what they're going to want to do? Seize those church properties. And so their excuse is, oh, I'm Lutheran now, so I don't believe in the Catholic Church, so I'm going to see. Your property. In other words, they weren't exactly doing it for the right reasons, you know, in some cases. Some cases, they were doing it for the right reasons. But then you have these peasants rising up. All right, well, meantime, Luther had been writing pamphlet after pamphlet on different situations, but just hodgepodge, sending stuff out here, sending stuff, this subject, that subject. It had never ever been pulled together in a systematized, organized manner. And so, one of his very good friends, professors at Wittenberg, who had a genius for organization, something which Luther lacked somewhat, he is going to sit down and they are going to basically pull all Luther's ideas together. And the result is Confession of Augsburg. This is completed in 1530, and this pretty much outlines what it is to be a Lutheran.

43:03However, Lutheranism really is going to be known in many places as Protestantism. And the word Protestant literally comes from the word protest. We're protesters. And they were protesting the Catholic Church. And the first time they're called Protestants is at the Diet Aspire. And what was going on here, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V is trying to crack down on this spread of Lutheranism. And he is issuing some edicts that they basically had this big council. All the princes of the Holy Roman Empire gathered there together to inspire. And he gives out this order, and they basically stand up and they said, Nip, we're not going to do that. You can cut my head off. All right. And so many stood up and rejected what the Holy Roman Emperors want to do, that he had to back down. Now, here's the funny thing about it. Ironically, you know, one of the major things that saves Protestantism?

44:12You know, the Lord works in mysterious ways. The Muslims. They were at this moment advancing in southeastern Europe, threatening Charles V's territories. And so he considered, I think correctly, the Turks to be a much greater threat than the Protestants. And he needed even the Protestants to help fight the Turks, so he's going to have to back down, you know, and allow the Protestants to keep on going their own way. So, you got the Confession of Augsburg, which outlines, and there's Philip Langton, who organizes that for Luther. And so now we get to the basic teachings of Lutheranism. And let's just take a look at this, kind of to recap, see where we're at. How is a person saved? We've already discussed this. Faith alone. Protestants, classically, would further explain this using the New Testament passage, Ephesians chapter 2, verse 8, 9. Read that, Josiah. For it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not from yourselves, but it is the gift of God, not of works, so that no one may boast.

45:28So, just generally speaking, Protestants, like Luther, and of course the Calvinists are right with them on this, typically held that salvation cannot be attained by good works because outside of God, no one is truly good. On the other hand, they held that while good works do not save you, they're evidence that you have been saved. In other words, they're kind of saying, you know, the Roman Catholics have the cart before the horse. What pulls the cart is your faith. And the good works is the cart, but the good works result from having saving faith. Then you can go forth and do good works. Whereas the Catholics kind of have this idea, I've got to make myself good enough, worthy enough. You know, so works plus grace. All right.

46:11Sure. Because I'm trying to make it clear. Is the Bible that you translated into German the current Catholic version of the Bible? Maybe the Protestant Bible is the same. This is, you could call this the first Protestant Bible, I would say. But now he's using Erasmus's Greek. Translation. And he used several different things. You know, he was fluent in Greek, and I, and I, not, as I was saying, he wasn't quite as good in Hebrew, but he's fluent in both, you know.

46:46Yeah, he goes, I think he's basically using the, you know, I'm sure he uses the Vulgate as well, you know, because that was one of the oldest at the time manuscripts they had. Tommy, have any info on what Luther actually used? Yeah. But you could call this one the first translate Protestant Bibles. Now, what you call Wycliffe's, I'm not quite sure, because, you know, Wycliffe's first English translate. Wycliffe's before Luther. But Wycliffe didn't have the printing press, you see. All right, so does that clear it up, or did I confuse you more?

47:23I'm still a little unclear because the Catholic Old Testament is different from the Protestant Old Testament. I don't know if he included those. No, you're talking about the Apocrypha. Yeah, the Apocrypha. I don't recall. Do Lutherans have the Apocrypha in there? Luther rejected the Apocrypha. That's what you're wanting to know. He was okay reading it, but he did not see it as Scripture. And he basically is a throwback all the way back to Jerome, who you remember is the one who translated the Latin Vulgate. And Jerome himself had that famous argument with Augustine. Augustine wanted him to translate the Apocrypha. Jerome did not want to. He finally is persuaded by Augustine to translate the Apocrypha, but he does it under protest. And he famously said at the time: if I translate this Apocrypha, some idiot down the way is going to think that this is scripture. And that's Saint Jerome, who's a saint to the Catholic still.

48:22King James, he included the Apocrypha. Yeah, yeah, the Anglican Bible includes the Apocrypha. 1611. Yes, 1611. Okay. By the way, just as a little tidbit, in case I don't get to it later, the King James Bible, about 75% of it, the original wording in terms of the uses of English phraseology, is straight back to William Tyndall. Yeah, about 75% of it. King James? Yeah. Huh? It was? Okay, thanks. He just googled that, I suspect. But he did not accept it as scripture, though. It is quite often that the Apocrypha is put in Protestant Bibles, but they usually have some little statement saying we do not see this as Scripture. Okay. All right, does that finally clear everything up? Okay. All right, so let's keep on going. So, where does final religious authority reside? Pretty much all Protestants. You had to be careful there because you're going to have splintering. Than splintering and re-splintering of Protestants. That's their problem. But they will agree, sola scriptura, scripture alone is interpreted by individual conscience. What is the church? He re-emphasized the first-century teaching that the church is a community of all Christian believers. Now, remember, during the medieval period, the attitude was just the clergy. We don't count for anything, you know, ordinary lay people.

49:54But he would say, no, it's the entire body of Christian believers. And sometimes, you know, say, oh, well, most folks, you know, regular church attenders, you have no problem with that. You know what a lot of people think the church is? Well, it's that building over there. All right, you know, it's that building. That's the church. No, that church, that building is just a building. It's not the church. Okay, so anyway, he re-emphasizes that. Fourth, what is the highest form of Christian life?

50:26And the medieval period, church emphasized the superiority of monastic, religious life over the secular. Luther argued that all vocations have equal merit before God. All right. In other words, if you're going to be a ditch digger, dig that ditch to the glory of God. And by the way, this is something, of course, you know, Vax Vever, famous sociologist, wrote about the Protestant worth ethic. A lot of that's been debunked now. But definitely, Luther restored, or should say, at least. Since the medieval period, for the first time, made it respectable to get your hands dirty and working and saw it as all work as significant and should have a certain amount of dignity, you know, and self-worth in terms of honest days' labor. And actually, you know, you go back to scripture, he's a more biblical view. You know, you gotta understand the upper classes kind of had this attitude that manual labor was beneath them. And, you know, that's low class to do manual labor. With Luther, no, that's nothing wrong with manual labor at all. You know, and so each person should serve God in his or her individual calling. In other words, no matter what you're doing, you have opportunities to share your faith. And not just verbally, but in the manner in which you do your work. Think about your Christian witness.

52:02Is the way that you're working on the job you have, is that bringing honor to Christ? Are people thinking of you as an exemplar of what an employee should be? Might want to reconsider that, you know. All right, and Luther would heavily emphasize that. All right, so meantime, the old way of things being done is literally collapsing. All over Europe, especially in northern Germany. The benefit system, which I don't even have time to go into, but it's pretty much how the whole financial structure of the churches were set up. That is collapsing. Church properties are being expropriated by the state.

52:46Usually they allow the church itself and the house where the minister and his wife live to remain tax-free, but everything else is going to be taken over. And I would say, overall, this stripping the church of all this wealth was a beneficial thing in terms of spirituality. I've already jokingly pointed out that the very institutions founded by Jesus who said foxes have holes, birds have nests, but the Son of Man has not even a place to lay his head had become an institution that seemed to own all the places to lay your head. And so taking all this away, I think, was a big benefit. There's one major problem, though, with Lutheranism and Calvinism. It took those Baptists to figure this out. And that is, and part of this is they're, I would say, they're prisoners of the time in which they lived. They just couldn't conceive or think out of the box. Really, they didn't have to think out of the box. They just needed to go with pure scripture. They continue to allow the state to control the church. That's their big, big problem. Lutheranism is going to get to the point in Germany that the Lutheran pastors are paid by the state. That would be the same in many Calvinists, different branches of church, the Presbyterians in Scotland, for a brief time or Cromwell, the Puritans, this idea of churches having autonomous, independent congregations that raise their own funding for the pastors, which is actually kind of outlined there in the New Testament, they just couldn't conceive of that. And I would argue that Europe to this day doesn't have true religious freedom like we have in the United States. You want to just obvious example that, just think here a few years back under the Obama administration, you had this German homeschool family fled to the United States because homeschooling in Germany is illegal. If you try to homeschool your kids, they will send you to prison for that.

55:01And for example, in France, I understand there's some Protestant denominations that are mainstream in this country that would be considered heretical over there. So you've got Europe has a huge problem understanding true religious freedom. And even the Protestants turn around and make the same mistake the Catholics made in that one area, allowing the state. Control the church, you know, and by control, they're paying the pastors out of state tax revenue. Now, on the other hand, ironically, they're a lot more Christian-friendly in terms of Christian holidays. You know, you go to Germany, and I mean, Christmas, there's no problem with the state publishing Christian stuff.

55:51Whereas in this country, you know, this separation of church and state has been turned on its end, and you're now beginning to see secular hostility from the government towards, you know, we can't have any mention of God or anything, you know, and all that. So, but, you know, this is interesting. See, governments began endowing and hiring preachers locally, you see, and that's where the state starts to get into it. And I'm one minute over, so we're going to have to stop there.

56:24I have a huge section on, you know, the good, the bad, and the ugly about Luther. Most of it's good, but there is, unfortunately, toward the end of his life, he really says some really nasty things about the Jews, which is very unfortunate because for the vast majority of his ministry, he had a very enlightened attitude towards Jews. I would say it's very similar to what Baptists have, which is very pro, you know, Israel and all that sort of thing. But he unfortunately came to some. By some writings of a Jewish convert who turned on his fellow Jews, said some very horrible things about his fellow Jews, and Luther read that and becomes very misinformed, and he therefore is going to say some very unfortunate things that later the Nazis will use. But let me say this: that is greatly taken out of context 99% of the stuff Luther believed Hitler would never, ever agree to. Just that tiny, less than 1% is what the Nazis would use, but unfortunately, that's really going to bring great disrepute to Luther as a result of that. That is all my PowerPoints. We're out of time. I've got to move on to Ulrich Zwingli next time. If you want that PowerPoint, you can email me. I can send that to you. And I have the best quotes of the best things he said about the Jews and also the worst quotes later on. That is the last three years of his life when he did that. And there's a whole bunch of other factors going on at the same time.