The Reformation: The Birth of the Protestants October 29, 2017
The period before the reformation is referred to as the “Dark Ages”. The Scriptures were read in the dead Latin language. The Church was mired in sexual, financial, legalistic, hypocritical, greedy, biblically illiterate muck. A Spaniard of that time wrote: ““I see that we can scarcely get anything from Christ's ministers but for money; at baptism money, at bishoping money, at marriage money, for confession money—no, not extreme unction without money! They will ring no bells without money, no burial in the church without money; so that it seemeth that Paradise is shut up from them that have no money.” (Thomas Lindsay) It was a dark time. And it was in this time that God raised up a man called John from Wyclif in England to strike the spark.
A Bible called the Latin Vulgate was composed around 200 A. D. for the increasingly latin speaking church in North Africa. Around 200 years later Jerome was commissioned by Pope Damascus I to translate the Greek New Testament into the Latin language of the time. It was to be one of the 1st fully commissioned Bibles of both the Old and New Testaments. We find the Muratorian Fragment from around A.D. 200 containing the New Testament almost exactly as it is today. I would be remiss (although it was not an official canon) if I didn’t mention that Constantine commissioned 50 copies of the Bible in 331 for the Church at Constantinople. Athanasius in 367 gave a list of the canonical books as they are today.
A Bohemian Psalm Book dating from 1572 and preserved in the Prague Library contains a hymn to a Martyr’s memory and three medallions depicting three key figures of the Reformation. In the first, a man is striking sparks from a stone. Below it in the second medallion is a man kindling a fire from the sparks. In the third medallion, a man is holding high a flaming torch. This old Psalter gives a visual survey of the Reformation. The one who struck the spark was John Wycliffe in England. The one who kindled the coals was Jan Hus in Bohemia in what is now the Czech Republic. And the one who picked up the blazing torch and lit up the world was Martin Luther in what is now Germany. (Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church)
I. JOHN WYCLIFFE
In 1324 a man named John Wycliffe was born. As he grew into a man of God his study of the Scriptures revealed that the Pope of his day, when compared to the Apostle Peter, was a false prophet. They were polar opposites. One of Wycliffe’s great quotes was that “to ignore Scriptures is to ignore Christ.” He said of the priests of his day, "They run fast, over land and sea, in great peril of body and soul, to secure rich benefices, but they will not go a mile to preach the Gospel, though men are running to hell for lack of the knowledge of God." During the late 1370’s and 80’s Wycliffe would take it upon himself to translate the Latin Bible into English. He would be slandered, hated, abused, accused of heresy, stripped of his Professorship at Oxford and branded, “An instrument of the Devil, enemy of the Church...an Author of Schism.” (Schaff) The very Bible that you hold in your hands today, whether in paper or on your phone is because one man decided that the masses needed the Word of God and he spent ALL to give it to them.
"A Mighty Fortress is Our God" by Dr. Martin Luther, 1483-1546
Composite Translation from the Pennsylvania Lutheran CHURCH BOOK of 1868
A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing;
Our helper He, amid the flood of mortal ills prevailing:
For still our ancient foe doth seek to work us woe;
His craft and pow’r are great, and, armed with cruel hate, On earth is not his equal.
Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing,
Were not the right Man on our side, the Man of God’s own choosing:
Dost ask who that may be? Christ Jesus, it is He; Lord Sabaoth, His Name, from age to age the same, And He must win the battle.
And though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us,
We will not fear, for God hath willed His truth to triumph through us;
The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him; His rage we can endure, for lo, his doom is sure, One little word shall fell him.
That word above all earthly pow’rs, no thanks to them, abideth;
The Spirit and the gifts are ours through Him Who with us sideth;
Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also;
The body they may kill: God’s truth abideth still, His kingdom is forever.
Tuesday will mark the 500th anniversary of the day when Martin Luther posted his 95 theses to the wood doors of the Wittenberg Chapel concerning what was wrong with the Catholic Church and the reforms that he felt were needed to make the Church what Christ intended it to be.
On the flyleaf, are written these immortal words: "The Bible is translated, and shall make possible a government of the people, by the people, and for the people."11 He didn't have the privilege of knowing that some 500 years later on a blood drenched battlefield in a land yet to be discovered, that an American president would use those very words in his Gettysburg Address. These were first the words, not of Abraham Lincoln, but of John Wycliffe. On May 4, 1415 30 years after his death, Wycliffe would be declared a heretic. By papal decree they would exume his body and burn his bones to ash. (Schaff)
II. John Hus (the goose)
When Pope John XXIII urged the sale of indulgences (paying to reduce punishment for sin in purgatory and for better “standing” with God), the papal legate went so far as to auction off diocese, deaconships, and parishes. "They were sold," Hus thundered from his Bethlehem pulpit, "to incompetent priests, debauchers and gamblers guilty of scandal, but marvelously skilled in taxing penitents from whom they extorted to enrich themselves quickly."
When he was confronted by representatives from the Pope sent to silence him, Hus said in their presence: "So far as the commands of the Pope agree with the commands and doctrines of the apostles, and are after the rule of the law of Christ, so far I am heartily prepared to render them obedience. But if I see anything in them at variance with this, I will not obey, even if you kindle the fire for the burning of my body before my eyes.” Hus was jailed for so severely affecting the selling of indulgences, they called it Wycliffism. He was convicted of preaching the Bible as the ultimate authority. He was condemned to die by fire. They burned him alive at the stake as he prayed for God to have mercy on them and forgive their sins. This is where we get the statement “his goose was cooked,” not so funny anymore.
III. Martin Luther
Martin Luther was a monk who did everything he could, performed every work there is to achieve salvation and he got absolutely nowhere. One night when Luther was crying “oh my sin, my sin, my sin, my sin” his mentor Staupitz told him to seek the Scriptures and to read the Apostle Paul. When Luther did this He came across Romans 1:16à For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. 17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “BUT THE RIGHTEOUS man SHALL LIVE BY FAITH.” This would be the truth that would forever set him free. He hated the indulgences sold by the priests. On October 31, 1517 Luther nailed his list of 95 Theses to the Castle at Wittenberg. His theses were copied and spread all over Europe in just a few weeks. He was ex-communicated from the Church and would go on to translate the Latin Bible into German for his people. He was a social revolutionary, ““We are to be subject to the governmental power to do what it bids, as long as it does not bind our conscience but legislates only concerning outward matters...But if it invades the spiritual domain and constrains the conscience, over which God only must preside and rule, we should not obey it at all…” Discipleship took Luther’s message to Zwingli in Switzerland and he to Hubmaier and he to Melancthon and he to John Calvin and he to John Knox of Scotland. Queen Mary said she feared the pulpit of John Knox more than all the armies of England. The reformation would reach America’s shores through the Pilgrims and Puritans and ultimately by Jonathan Edwards and Whitefield who would start the Great Awakening.
This is a SMALL snapshot of what certain men of God endured so that you can pick up your Holy Bible everyday and read it, a privilege that most of us treat with contempt. I pray for each of us that we pick up the torch of the reformers and wave our banner of Truth, the Truth that we claim as we scream from the mountain tops, “THUS SAITH THE LORD!”
The Five Solas of the Reformation
Sola scriptura ("by Scripture alone") Sola fide ("by faith alone") Sola gratia ("by grace alone")
Soli Deo gloria ("glory to God alone")
Solus Christus or Solo Christo ("Christ alone" or "through Christ alone")