Wednesday, October 31, 2007

In Honor of Reformation Day...


According to my calculations, today marks 490 years since Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the Castle Church door. Hallelujah! So I thought I'd include a few quote of Martin Luther to celebrate Luther was a crazy, sometimes foul-mouthed, beer drinking, forever blessed monk who turned the world upside down. If you find the writings of the reformers dull, it is only because you have not read Luther. You should read his three great treatises now, if not sooner. You can get them together for practically nothing if you are willing to buy it used. Try here. So without further ado, here are a few quotes I mined in honor of Reformation Day!

I am more afraid of my own heart than of the pope and all his cardinals. I have within me the great pope, Self.

I feel much freer now that I am certain the pope is the Antichrist.

Let the wife make the husband glad to come home, and let him make her sorry to see him leave.

Our Lord has written the promise of resurrection, not in books alone, but in every leaf in springtime.

When I am angry I can pray well and preach well.

You should not believe your conscience and your feelings more than the word which the Lord who receives sinners preaches to you.

I am afraid that the schools will prove the very gates of hell, unless they diligently labor in explaining the Holy Scriptures and engraving them in the heart of the youth.

And finally....
I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I can do no other, so help me God. Amen.

3 comments:

Lisa Spence said...

I do in fact have a copy of the Three Treatises, but have yet to find the courage to dive in! Interestingly enough, I grew up "in church" never knowing of Luther nor the Reformation...so reading his treatises would be quite educational to be sure!

Anonymous said...

Brad....Good Morning!!!!

I like the idea of turning the world upside down...I believe that it Can be done...I am praying for you and I love you...

Marsha A

Anonymous said...

Let us not forget that the real Antichrist will, when he comes on to the world scene will be very popular. He will be very charismatic. So the point is when we look for the “Antichrist” we shouldn’t be looking for a villain. We shouldn’t be looking for a bad guy, for that is not how he is going to appear, not to most people, at least not at first.

In fact he is going to appear as a savior. He is actually going to be responsible or seem to be responsible in solving some of humanity’s most intractable problems. Perhaps he is going to be responsible for curing some disease, or develop ways to make things grow on barren land.

This is why I am guessing that he will be an industrialist because only an industrialist could have the infrastructures to develop such technology. Obviously what pushes this guy into the world stage would be the continuing success of his company.

And from there his success and charisma is going to pull him into politics. I say pull but it was his plan all along, though like the best of politicians he will make it look like he only begrudgingly entered the political sphere.

I believe he will become the head of the European Union, an entity that right now isn’t that strong, but since I see see this as happening from 30-50 years from now I see that by then the organization will have grown in strength

I still believe we have a generation or two before he arises, but in the term of human history a generation or two isn’t that long from now.