What's Up With The Reformation ?

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

A blog-post I read this morning by Peter Corak, re-blogged at "Christianity 201," seems to me the best commemoration there could be of today's 500th anniversary of the Reformation.

Whatever Luther's intent, whatever the effects of the Reformation in subsequent history...what was God's purpose ?  Is there any other "reason" threaded through world events and human history ?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"I guess I don’t normally think of God as a seeker. Maybe that’s because I think of seekers as needing something and I don’t think of God as in need of anything. But while God has no need of anything, there are some things He desires. This morning I read of something the Father seeks. Of something that He’s actively pursuing–something, in a sense, He craves. Something, go figure, that I can provide.

'But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship Him.'   ~ Jesus   (John 4:23 ESV)

"God is a seeker. And He seeks true worshipers to worship Him."

(Peter's meditation can be read in full at https://mymorningmeal.com/2017/10/10/seeker-friendly-2/)

 

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

Luther quote

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

Someone sent me this quote today, attributing it to Martin Luther:

"If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the Word 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 Him. Where the battle rages there the loyalty of the soldier is proved; and to be steady on all the battle front besides, is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point."

I always try to verify quotes by famous people before I believe them.  On this one, I found that some scholars trying to verify that quote had been unable to find it in Luther's writings; and suggested it may have come about as a paraphrase of the idea he expressed in a letter this way:

“...it does not help that one of you would say: ‘I will gladly confess Christ and His Word on every detail, except that I may keep silent about one or two things which my tyrants may not tolerate, such as the form of the Sacraments and the like.’ For whoever denies Christ in one detail or word has denied the same Christ in that one detail who was denied in all the details, since there is only one Christ in all His words, taken together or individually.”

(https://blogs.thegospelcoalition.org/justintaylor/2014/02/20/5-quotes-that-luther-didnt-actually-say/)

The quotations are similar.  Both speak of denying Christ in some "little point" or "detail:"  and in both, the assertion is that we deny Him when we do not defend the smallest item of Christ's Being because it is controversial to the enemy's world-rulers, or under attack by "the world and the devil."

As important as it is to verify every word we hear that purports to be true, that's not my point here.  I've repeatedly and fiercely (maybe even stridently) insisted, as long as I've written this blog (and even longer), that all things, and all men, and all ideas, are measured by Truth.

And that's my point.  Rather than the true provenance of a single obscure quotation, I cry out here that Truth itself is "controversial," and "under attack," in this "post-Truth" day.

In this time, it's not some "little point" or "detail" the enemy is attacking: Jesus identified Himself as "The Truth."

Where then are 80% of white American "Evangelicals" when Christ' very Being is under attack by the kingdom of darkness, the devil, and his world-rulers ?  They've enlisted in the enemy's army, under the command of his political commissars and false prophets.