Martin Luther in Life and Death, Part 1: Did Luther Change the World?

William Finck
ChrSat20150117-LutherLifeDeath01.mp3

Martin Luther: In Life and Death, Part 1: Did Luther Change the World?

Martin Luther's famous “95 Theses” were written in 1517 and are generally considered to be the catalyst for the Protestant Reformation, however there were certainly many related historical events and many martyrs of reform before Luther came along. Popularly the theses are more fully titled The Ninety-Five Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences. My own translation of the original Latin title might be A Dispute Regarding the Proclamation of the Power of Indulgences (Disputatio pro declaratione virtutis indulgentiarum). However in spite of its title, besides the sale of indulgences the disputation also protests against many other clerical abuses. It especially mentions nepotism [favoring of family members by church superiors], simony [the purchase of offices within the church], usury [which had recently been allowed by Rome], and pluralism [agreement that other religions have legitimacy, which allows multiculturalism and leads to ecumenism – in Rome at the time, this primarily allowed for the legitimacy of Jews].

October 31st is called Reformation day, which is celebrated as a religious holiday in many places in Europe. Some sources state that on this day in 1521 Luther appeared before the Diet of Worms. That is not true. Other sources say that October 31st was the day in 1517 that Luther had nailed his 95 “theses” to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany. Whether the original publication of his disputation with the Roman Catholic Church ever happened in precisely that manner is also arguable, and here we will see that and several other myths about Luther called into question. Whether or not the story is true, it has for five centuries been used as a powerful symbol representing the beginnings of the Protestant Reformation.

Martin Luther's Warning Against the Jews - October 19th, 2014

William Finck
CHR-Euro-2014-10-19.mp3

This sermon will be read again with a fuller critique on an upcoming segment of our presentation of Martin Luther on the Jews now underway on Christogenea Saturdays. Of course, we cannot agree with Luther's assertions that the Jews are Israelites, and we have already offered in-depth refutations of that in our Luther series and elsewhere here at Christogenea.

A Warning Against the Jews

by Martin Luther,February, 1546

Translated by Wikisource and released into the Public Domain

Since I have been around awhile and have preached to you and, [since], I may die soon and not be able to preach to you [any longer], I will bless you with this. I have prayed that you remain diligently in the Word, which your preacher and pastor are teaching you truly by the grace of God and making you accustomed to the prayer that God would protect you from all the wise and clever that despise the doctrine of the Gospel; for they often did much harm and yet might do much more.

Worse than these, you have the Jews yet in the land, who do great harm. We want to deal with them in a Christian manner now. Offer them the Christian faith that they would accept the Messiah, who is even their cousin and has been born of their flesh and blood; and is rightly Abraham’s Seed, of which they boast. Even so, I am concerned [that] Jewish blood may no longer become diluted and impure.