The date: October 31, 1517.
The place: Germany.
The event: Martin Luther nails his famous Ninety-five Theses – a “Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences” – to the Wittenberg church door.
Luther felt compelled to expose the fraud that was being sold to people and issued a challenge to anyone willing to discuss the theses in a scholarly debate. Within two months, his Ninety-five Theses had been published all over Europe. Luther had unknowingly launched the Protestant Reformation – which also led to reform in the Roman Catholic Church.
The Protestant Reformation rallied enormous changes, both religious and social – including the decline of Feudalism, the rise of the Scientific Revolution, and the ascendancy of Western Civilization.
Pastoral responsibility for his parishioners is what actually sparked Martin Luther’s actions with the Ninety-five Theses. Some of them had traveled to another town to purchase indulgences, and came to confession and presented the certificates, claiming they no longer had to repent of their sins. Luther was furious that his flock had been sold a “lie” by the Church that obstructed the truth of God and the true path of salvation. Similarly, we should be equally outraged about other grand lies infecting and damaging the Church.
God is always at work, reviving and restoring His Church in all generations when it goes astray. And He has been at work in the modern creation science movement. Here is a battle in which the Church must be engaged, for it is a powerful point on which our materialistic, humanistic, “Woke”, godless modern culture turns. Because evolution is accepted as “intellectual justification for atheism”.
As Luther said, “If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest expression every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all the battlefield besides is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.”
Martin Luther saw the biblical revelation to be foundational. Luther stressed the biblical view that the Word was God’s instrument of creation, the Word which spoke things into existence, and the Word which became flesh to win our salvation. In raising the text of Scripture to the level of highest authority in all things, and using reason as a servant captive to Scripture, Luther’s view was part of that which gave birth to modern science – founded in the West by biblical creationists!
Martin Luther’s example still holds for us today. The “battle rages” on many fronts. As Christians we should not just want to be on the sidelines or at a point in the battle lines where our spiritual enemy is not particularly “attacking”. We are indeed “soldiers” defending and proclaiming the truth of God in a world populated by the lies of the devil. Instead of shying away from the points of attack, we are called to proclaim in love and faith the biblical truth of God and Christ at the points of attack. This actually brings with it true purpose and great joy as we cleave to the Holy Spirit (whom the Lord has given to us for guidance), who provides comfort and spiritual power!
– Mark Cadwallader, Board Chairman of Creation Moments
Image: Painting by Ferdinand Pauwels, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
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