Revelation: The Bride, the Beast & Babylon Page #9

On the other canvas

was an image of the pope

Dressed in rich

and luxurious clothing,

Carried on a litter

And followed

by a regal procession.

The paintings certainly

presented a contrast

Between Jesus,

Who said that foxes have holes

And the birds

of the air have nests

And the son of man

has nowhere to lay his head,

With the magnificent splendor

Of the papal palace

and the papal entourage.

Moved by this knowledge,

He began to publicly denounce

the pride, ambition,

And corruption of the clergy

And he fearlessly called

for the church to reform.

If you must interpret scripture

according to truth,

Truth is defined

by what the church believes.

How do you correct

an error in the church?

You don't have

a check on mistakes.

There is no correcting

the church.

And that, I think,

is the fundamental flaw

Of what allowed the church

to start going wrong

And keep going wrong.

John Huss was invited

to come to Constance, Germany

To defend his criticism

of the church of Rome.

Sigismund, king of Hungary,

and later, the holy roman empire

Guaranteed him a safe passage,

But immediately

upon Huss' arrival in the city,

He was arrested

and placed in the dungeon

At Gottlieben castle.

King Sigismund

was greatly angered

At the imprisonment of Huss

And he threatened

the church council

But the council

convinced Sigismund

That promises made

to a heretic were not binding.

On July 6, 1415,

the council gathered

Into the cathedral

after mass and liturgy

And John Huss

was then led in for his trial.

He was asked

to defend his positions.

In the act of defending them

He was found

to have voiced a heresy

And so he was seized

and tried for heresy.

Guards then led Huss

away to be executed.

At the place of his execution,

Huss stood firm.

As the flames rose about him,

He was actually

able to lift his voice in song.

Among his dying words,

Huss predicted,

"In a hundred years

god will raise up a man

Whose calls for reform

cannot be suppressed."

Raised in a humble home

in Mansfield, Germany,

Martin Luther, theologian,

author, composer,

And priest was arguably

The best known

religious reformer

Of the 16th century.

Luther was born

on November 10, 1483,

Nearly 70 years

after the martyrdom of John Huss.

Born into a hardworking

middle-Class family,

With several

brothers and sisters,

Luther developed a firm

character and personality.

The Luther family

seems to have been,

To some extent,

a family of over-Achievers.

They were very strict,

According

to Luther's later stories.

They were very strict

on the young martin

And they certainly saw

That the way forward for their son

was through education.

But when he was young,

He was intended

to become a lawyer.

However, a dramatic experience

Forever altered

the course of his life.

Luther is caught in a thunderstorm

and fears for his life.

He's outside and he fears

he'll be struck by lightning.

Lightning was striking

in front of him and behind him

And on both sides of him

and so in terror he cries out

And promises

that if a saint will save him,

He will become a monk.

He called out to saint Anne,

the saint of hopeless causes.

"Saint Anne, deliver me

and I'll become a monk!"

And he kept his word.

In spite

of his father's angry protests,

Luther dropped

his law studies, sold his books,

And entered a closed

Augustinian monastery at Erfurt

And fully dedicated his time

to the monastic life.

Following his desperate

longing for salvation,

He practiced frequent fastings,

long hours of prayer,

Austere living

and endless confession.

"If anyone could have gained

heaven as a monk

Then I would, indeed,

have been among them."

He found

an elder confessor there

Who realized that Luther

had a particularly sensitive soul

And this confessor realized

That Luther

needed to teach the bible.

So he becomes simultaneously

professor of theology,

Preacher in the town church,

And a member

of the religious community

In the Augustinian house.

He's basically doing three jobs.

At Wittenberg he learned

to study the bible

In its original tongues.

Soon, he began

to freely share the truths

That he was learning

in his lectures

And his listeners

were delighted.

In 1510,

Luther made a pilgrimage

To visit the headquarters

of the church

In the holy city of Rome.

He was sickened to witness

the terrible greed and wickedness

That he saw

among all classes of the clergy.

His great expectation

of the holy city

Was crushed as he beheld

The decadent lifestyles

of the monks and the priests.

This was in stark contrast

To his very

frugal life in Germany.

But Luther's

most unsettling revelation

Was yet to come.

He went to Rome and he was

climbing up the stairs there

And hears a voice-

Not necessarily a verbal one,

but one in his head-

"The just shall live by faith."

And so climbing up these,

Pilate's stairs, on his knees,

Which was supposed to earn you

some kind of assurance

Of not burning

in purgatory for too long.

And it just dawned on him

as he looked around,

"What are we doing?

The bible says

this comes by faith."

And he got up off his knees

And this seemed to be

a turning point.

Luther finally understood

The importance of trusting

in the merits of Christ

For forgiveness.

After returning from Rome in 1512,

Luther was awarded

the doctorate of divinity

At the university of Wittenberg

And he began

to boldly preach to the people

That Christians should not

accept any doctrine

Unless it came from the bible

And it was this principle

of "sola scriptura"

That would become the battle cry

of the reformation.

It's in a series

of three treatises in 1520

That he presents

the notion that now,

Since the tradition

of the church

Has become so corrupted

by human innovation,

That the church

should only follow

The testimony of the scriptures.

This is the common thread

In the story that describes

the decline of the church.

It's when people lost scripture

And the ability to read

scripture for themselves

And there was a barrier

Between them and scripture

and them and Christ.

And then it began to recover

When martin Luther

and his colleagues

Decided that scripture

really was the authority,

"Sola scriptura,

tota scriptura, prima scriptura"

And they began

to climb back out.

About this same time,

Rome was breaking ground

for the construction

Of the magnificent

new saint peter's basilica.

The church sent John Tetzel,

a Dominican friar,

To Germany to sell indulgences

In order to raise the funds

necessary for the cathedral.

The church believes,

Not only

that its services and offerings

Can help the dead,

But also that the head

of the church in the west, the pope,

Can, out of the super

abundance of saved up grace,

Which is in the possession

of the church,

The church can simply declare

That someone's penalties

owed after they died

Are just wiped out.

That's what's called

an indulgence.

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes