All glory to God the Father
It has been a couple of weeks now since the end of October and I just now have had time to think. What I was thinking about is how things were, compare to how they are now. Back in the day, the end of October meant the start of fall and hunting season. I love the fall with cooler temperatures and trees quite often glorious with reds and golds. It also meant a pretty good haul of candy, when you were younger, on the last day of the month, Halloween. If you are interested in how Halloween started, there is quite a bit of history online about it.
Another thing that happened, way back in the day of 1517, was Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Castle.
Luther as you might know was a monk, living the austere life that monks tend to have, and studied theology at the Erfurt University in Wittenberg. He received his doctorate and became a professor of Biblical studies.
It was during this time that some theologians and scholars were beginning to question the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. One of the reasons that became an issue is the translations of the original texts of the Bible and writings of an early church philosopher Augustine became more widely available.
Augustine lived around mid 300 AD and had emphasized the primacy of the Bible rather than Church officials as the ultimate religious authority. He also believed that humans could not reach salvation by their own acts, but only God could bestow salvation by His divine works. The Catholic Church taught that salvation was possible through good works of righteousness.
Let’s check and see what the Bible says
Galatians 2:16
Yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.
Romans 3:28
For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.
Romans 5:1
Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
The New Testament is loaded with references to this topic.
The Old Testament also talks of this.
Habakkuk 2:4
“Behold, his soul is puffed up; it is not upright within him, but the righteous shall live by his faith.
Genesis 15:6
And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.
One has to wonder what the Catholic Church had read to make them believe that works of man would impute righteousness and please God.
A topic for another time, perhaps. Luther was bothered by the practices of the Catholic Church, such as selling indulgences to provide absolution for sinners. The practice had been banned in Germany but still continued, unabated. A friar named Johann Tetzel began selling indulgences in Germany to raise funds to renovate St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.
A medieval friar was a special kind of monk who was considerably different from the other monks. This special friar followed a kind of lifestyle which was based on the concept of penance as laid down in the Gospel and travelled to spread the word of God.
Basically he was a traveling salesman for the church in Rome. Did some preaching, aligned with the practices of the Mother Church of course, but my overall impression of them was not favorable. Men of flesh teaching that the church and only the church would save you. And since most people back then could not read, they were prone to fear them and believe them. The favorite form of disciple from the church was burning at the stake.
So Luther comes to the conclusion that something has to be done. He posts his theses on the door and it was not meant to be a provocative act. Lots of things were posted on these doors. It was a place where people posted things like “will take 2 chickens for splitting wood.” A local bulletin board for the middle ages. It is sometimes hard for us to remember that the Middle Ages did not have a very sophisticated communication method. Word of mouth or nailing a paper to the castle’s massive wooden door was about it. That is assuming, of course that you could read and write, which should not be taken for granted back then, or even now. I read a study recently that stated 80 percent of 8th graders have trouble reading. People are people, back then as now. When I was in 6th grade, I think I had read most of Mom’s Agatha Christie novels and had started to go to the library to find some English history novels, which earned my a scowl from the Librarian. And I was not unusual at all. I will let you draw your own conclusions as to why we are having this trouble now.
Getting back to Luther, what happened and why I am talking about this now is some boys that had a new fangled printing press grabbed the paper and printed more than a few copies and posted them everywhere. Keep in mind that only people with an education could even understand that chicken scratching, so in effect, this was preaching to the choir. I am not sure of their intentions, but it is very possible that the Holy Spirit was involved.
This theses, the name Luther gave to it was “Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences,” also known as “The 95 Theses.” Basically a list of questions and propositions for debate. That is what Luther wanted, a debate, but when the Church found his little paper posted all over Germany, they were not amused. One of the reasons was found in the 95 Theses:
“Why does not the pope, whose wealth today is greater than the wealth of the richest Crassus, build the basilica of St. Peter with his own money rather than with the money of poor believers?”
A side note as to what a Crassus is:
The famous Roman politician Marcus Crassus was thought to be among the republic’s wealthiest, with a net worth of 200 million sesterces. So to be VERY general, a Roman sesterce in about AD1 would be worth “about” 2 US dollars.
By now, Luther’s list of debate topics had found its way to Rome. Luther was summoned to Augsburg, which is located in Southern Germany, and made to defend his opinions before an imperial diet, which is an assembly. The debate lasted three days between Luther and Cardinal Thomas Cajetan, and notably produced no agreement. Cajetan defended the church’s use of indulgences, but Luther refused to recant and returned to Wittenberg.
On November 9, 1518 the pope condemned Luther’s writings as conflicting with the teachings of the Church. One year later a series of commissions were convened to examine Luther’s teachings. The first papal commission found them to be heretical, but the second merely stated that Luther’s writings were “scandalous and offensive to pious ears.” Finally, in July 1520 Pope Leo X issued a papal bull, which is a public decree, that concluded that Luther’s propositions were heretical and gave Luther 120 days to recant in Rome. Luther refused to recant, and on January 3, 1521 Pope Leo excommunicated Martin Luther from the Catholic Church.
On April 17, 1521 Luther appeared before the Diet of Worms in Germany. Refusing again to recant, Luther ended his testimony with the defiant statement: “Here I stand. God help me. I can do no other.” On May 25, the Holy Roman emperor Charles V signed an edict against Luther, ordering his writings to be burned. At this point, they were actively trying to kill Luther and he hid in the town of Eisenach for the next year, where he began work on one of his major life projects, the translation of the New Testament into German, which took him 10 years to complete.
Now, I am sure you are thinking “This is fascinating, but what’s your point?”
Let’s have a show of hands of how many of us are, or have been Lutheran at some point in their life. Even if you are not, this is kind of a big deal that we didn’t grow up Catholic and thinking we could buy our relatives out of purgatory with the right amount of cash. And that whole Mary worship.
My point is this, what became of Luther’s original complaint now becomes the 5 Solas which are:
- Sola Scriptura (“Scripture alone”): The Bible alone is our highest authority.
- Sola Fide (“faith alone”): We are saved through faith alone in Jesus Christ.
- Sola Gratia (“grace alone”): We are saved by the grace of God alone.
- Solus Christus (“Christ alone”): Jesus Christ alone is our Lord, Savior, and King.
- Soli Deo Gloria (“to the glory of God alone”): We live for the glory of God alone.
It also broke a significant portion of people that would been Catholics into Lutherans and Baptists and Methodists and so on.
After doing the research on this, build on research I had done in the past, I, my opinion, consider the Catholic Church to be apostate. They have not changed to any appreciable degree. Their Bible is not like our Bibles. I am not saying that there are not Christians in the Catholic Church, but it is like the general public, few and far between. They, for all intents and purposes, do not agree with the 5 Solas. That was the hardest thing to find out. Lots of humming and hawing around the bush. Some Luther hate, and a “Of course we can not condone the damage that Luther did to the Mother Church” Nobody wanted to come right out and say it, but impression is they do not agree with what was said.
Point 3 if we are still keeping track:
My immediate family, my extended family no longer recognize that day as Halloween. It is now Reformation Day.
Let us now turn to Isaiah 45
God Uses Cyrus
1 Thus says the Lord to Cyrus His anointed,
Whom I have taken by the right hand,
To subdue nations before him
And to loose the loins of kings;
To open doors before him so that gates will not be shut:
I find again to my chagrin that you can not trust anything written by the secular world when it comes to Bible history. I am sure I read something, somewhere that Cyrus was not a believer. Now, the statement above does not mean that he definitely was a believer, but being anointed by God is not a bad position to be in.
The open doors are a reference to the many gates that were in the walls of Babylon in which Cyrus entered with ease. They apparently were so sure of their power that a watchman did not see the danger. The most applicable scripture is this Psalm 127:1 Unless the LORD builds the house, They labor in vain who build it; Unless the LORD guards the city, The watchman keeps awake in vain.
Also in:
Micah 5:4
4 And He will arise and shepherd His flock
In the strength of the Lord,
In the majesty of the name of the Lord His God.
And they will remain,
Because at that time He will be great
To the ends of the earth.
2 “I will go before you and make the rough places smooth;
I will shatter the doors of bronze and cut through their iron bars.
3 “I will give you the treasures of darkness
And hidden wealth of secret places,
So that you may know that it is I,
The Lord, the God of Israel, who calls you by your name.
God intended Cyrus to be aware that the God of the Jews was giving him victorious conquests. The early church historian Josephus indicated Daniel influenced Cyrus with the prophecy in Isaiah. The King did know that the God of Israel was with him.
4 “For the sake of Jacob My servant,
And Israel My chosen one,
I have also called you by your name;
I have given you a title of honor
Though you have not known Me.
5 “I am the Lord, and there is no other;
Besides Me there is no God.
I will gird you, though you have not known Me;
Twice God, Elohim, has said that you do not know me. It’s not like they hadn’t been told again and again by God’s prophets and during Isaiah’s timeline, of the 4 kings, only Ahaz was bad king, a very bad king. They should have known, but they had eyes to see, but could not:
Jeremiah 5:21
‘Now hear this, O foolish and senseless people, Who have eyes but do not see; Who have ears but do not hear.
And it is the same today as it was back then. Eyes to see, but do not. Our Christian Churches cannot agree on what the Bible says. They refuse to either read or understand Romans 1:18-32. It is possible that these churches have had their eyes dimmed by God, like these people. Even the 5 Solas would be an argument. Fear the Lord, serve the Lord, reap the blessing of our Lord, or be judged.
6 That men may know from the rising to the setting of the sun
That there is no one besides Me.
I am the Lord, and there is no other,
7 The One forming light and creating darkness,
Causing well-being and creating calamity;
I am the Lord who does all these.
God’s Supreme Power
8 “Drip down, O heavens, from above,
And let the clouds pour down righteousness;
Let the earth open up and salvation bear fruit,
And righteousness spring up with it.
I, the Lord, have created it.
Eventually the Lord will cause righteous goodness to prevail throughout the world. Just like He promised Israel He would.
Hosea 10:12
Sow with a view to righteousness,
Reap in accordance with kindness;
Break up your fallow ground,
For it is time to seek the Lord
Until He comes to rain righteousness on you.
9 “Woe to the one who quarrels with his Maker—
An earthenware vessel among the vessels of earth!
Will the clay say to the potter, ‘What are you doing?’
Or the thing you are making say, ‘He has no hands’?
Today we have, as a culture, a very vocal group telling us that children are wiser than we, the adults and we should listen to them. Much like the clay (Us) telling the potter (God) it is by our own conniving works that we will be saved.
Job 15:25
Because he has stretched out his hand against God
And conducts himself arrogantly against the Almighty.
10 “Woe to him who says to a father, ‘What are you begetting?’
Or to a woman, ‘To what are you giving birth?’”
11 Thus says the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, and his Maker:
“Ask Me about the things to come concerning My sons,
And you shall commit to Me the work of My hands.
The Lord commands Israel to seek information about what He will do for the nation in the future, for he will reveal it.
12 “It is I who made the earth, and created man upon it.
I stretched out the heavens with My hands
And I ordained all their host.
As our Creator, God can save the nation through Cyrus, as he had promised.
13 “I have aroused him in righteousness
And I will make all his ways smooth;
He will build My city and will let My exiles go free,
Without any payment or reward,” says the Lord of hosts.
14 Thus says the Lord,
“The products of Egypt and the merchandise of Cush
And the Sabeans, men of stature,
Will come over to you and will be yours;
They will walk behind you, they will come over in chains
And will bow down to you;
They will make supplication to you:
‘Surely, God is with you, and there is none else,
No other God.’”
These countries are primarily pagan and idol makers. They will be made to be in submission to Israel during the Messianic age.
15 Truly, You are a God who hides Himself,
O God of Israel, Savior!
Psalm 44:24
Why do You hide Your face
And forget our affliction and our oppression?
At times, for Israel then and for us now, God seems to have hidden his face from us. Is that so, or is it that we are in sin and will not receive His blessing until we follow his will? A father will discipline his children and that’s never a pleasant place to be. There are many references in the Bible of God hiding his face.
Micah 3:4
Then they will cry out to the LORD, But He will not answer them Instead, He will hide His face from them at that time Because they have practiced evil deeds.
That pretty much sums up why it seems like God is not paying attention to us, don’t you think?
16 They will be put to shame and even humiliated, all of them;
The manufacturers of idols will go away together in humiliation.
Idols, idols, idols. We know how God feels about idols.
Exodus 20:3
“You shall have no other gods before Me.
Pretty much the first commandment and one that got ignored too many times to count.
17 Israel has been saved by the Lord
With an everlasting salvation;
You will not be put to shame or humiliated
To all eternity.
Romans 11:26
and so all Israel will be saved; just as it is written,
“The Deliverer will come from Zion,
He will remove ungodliness from Jacob.”
Here we have the New Testament going back to the Old Testament because it is God’s Living Word. What was true then, is true now, and we can use His Living Word to go back to then to prove it now. Just like they did. Neat how that works.
18 For thus says the Lord, who created the heavens (He is the God who formed the earth and made it, He established it and did not create it a waste place, but formed it to be inhabited),
“I am the Lord, and there is none else.
If by now, that is not obvious… but there are still people with eyes that cannot see. The non-elect will not hear nor understand the message. We are asked to examine ourselves, to make sure you are on the right path, aligning with God’s will.
2 Corinthians 13:5
Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves! Or do you not recognize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you– unless indeed you fail the test?
However, when you converted to Christ, believed and accepted Christ as your Lord and Savior…
John 6:4
No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day.
So take heart, you’re going to have bad days. Days when you worry that you are not worthy to be a child of God. Remember that the Father drew you, the Holy Spirit is within you and you will be convicted at times, but also sanctified and on that last day, our Savior will raise us up.
19 “I have not spoken in secret,
In some dark land;
I did not say to the offspring of Jacob,
‘Seek Me in a waste place’;
I, the Lord, speak righteousness,
Declaring things that are upright.
Our God is a God of light and order, not darkness and chaos.
20 “Gather yourselves and come;
Draw near together, you fugitives of the nations;
They have no knowledge,
Who carry about their wooden idol
And pray to a god who cannot save.
We are talking to idols again. Dead, inanimate things that the people turned to time and time again.
21 “Declare and set forth your case;
Indeed, let them consult together.
Who has announced this from of old?
Who has long since declared it?
Is it not I, the Lord?
And there is no other God besides Me,
A righteous God and a Savior;
There is none except Me.
22 “Turn to Me and be saved, all the ends of the earth;
For I am God, and there is no other.
23 “I have sworn by Myself,
The word has gone forth from My mouth in righteousness
And will not turn back,
That to Me every knee will bow, every tongue will swear allegiance.
Hebrews 6:13
For when God made the promise to Abraham, since He could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself.
Romans 14:11
For it is written,
“As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to Me,
And every tongue shall give praise to God.”
24 “They will say of Me, ‘Only in the Lord are righteousness and strength.’
Men will come to Him,
And all who were angry at Him will be put to shame.
25 “In the Lord all the offspring of Israel
Will be justified and will glory.”
Let us end with this Psalm:
Psalm 16:8 I keep my eyes always on the LORD. With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.