Returning to our Origins, Reformation Begins

The original New Testament Church, the Israel of God, believed and practiced the doctrines rooted in the fulfillment of what was foretold in the Old Testament. These doctrines were hijacked by assimilation and then completely replaced by the doctrine of apostasy. 

The Church being hijacked plunged, and I do mean plunged, into the dark ages and would not begin to recover from the corruption of Constantine’s Roman Catholic Church, or any other off-shoot ecumenical fraction, for another 1200 years. Those 1200 years are called the The Great Apostasy. But in time, God always had a remnant who changed the world! These few faithful would inaugurate what is called the Reformation, which means to (re) return to the original formation. They would be nick-named at the time as the Protestants, those who protested apostasy.

As early as 1380 AD, an impassioned fella named John Wycliffe, a cardholder of the Catholic Church, began to translate the Vulgate Latin Bible. Although it never really reached the common person, it was his initial intent to translate the Bible for the commoner whom he loved so very much. Wycliffe's translation revealed the confusion of the admixture of added goofy stuff that was not congruent or even in  Scripture. 

For the next hundred years, his translation began a divisionary process back towards clarity that would challenge both the religious and governmental control enjoyed throughout Europe for a millennia by the corrupt ecumenical Church. His work was the preview trailer of the reformation revival which would not come for another hundred years.

By the 1500s the Roman Catholic Church was destabilized! There were several personalities that came upon the scene and made their mark in history. Martin Luther was one such fella, he was a Friar in the Catholic Church who had enough emotional honesty to nail his 95 Theses to the door of his local church, proclaiming that indulgences were bogus and that salvation was by faith alone. 

Bold move on his part. He was severely pained and tormented by his own personal sense of guilt, he knew first hand that works, indulgences and the like didn’t offer peace with God. In short, he cut his apron strings with the apostate Harlot Mother Church and, by the force of grace, translated the Bible from Latin into what would become the German language, established principles in future Biblical translations, published his teachings far and wide, married and brought praise and worship back into the Church. He was focused and combusting with illuminations, that is until a darkness came over him.

Towards the latter part of Luther’s life, he understood the devastating peril that the Roman Church had brought upon theology and the Jews during the last millennia. He was convinced that if he reached out with an olive branch to the Jewish people and share the Gospel, and the powerful teaching of the real Cross, that the Jews would believe. Luther was greeted with rejection by the Jews. They wanted nothing to do with the people of the cross or their perverted exploitation of Judaism that the Gentiles called Roman Catholic Christianity. 

Yep, Jews knew all too well these folk had murdered their people and families en masse and kept them as social outcasts for the last millennia. Rather than Luther building a trusting relationship with the Jews to appeal to their deep and injurious offense created by the Gentiles, he took this rejection personally and became obsessed about it unto his death, literally! 

He began hissing language such as, “The Jews are worse than devils and poison.” In fact, Hitler would later brag that his final solution was the completion of what Luther began. Noticing Luther’s demise, his wife appealed to his growing bitter sentiment of the Jews, but to no avail. His last sermon was nothing but bitter nonsense against the Jews. Three days later, he was a dead man! One could probably surmise that the Jews were right not to trust him!

Martin Luther accomplished a great work, but his work didn’t save him from the destructions that came from his own heart of unforgiveness and resentfulness towards the Jews. Any prejudice or bitter ill-will against another, regardless of ethnicity, status or creed, has the potential to destroy any of us – we must guard our hearts! 

Furthermore, there is a predetermined period of time that Israel was to return from their second exile of which ironically, it was the Reformation's translation of the Word of God being put back into the common man's hand that shifted the tide in antisemitism. Common folk now reading from the pages of Scripture themselves saw that they, by God's gracious design, had been grafted into Israel and not the other way around! From that time forward, we have seen Christian support for the Jewish people as well as those nations who enjoy the Biblical principles as a part of their national fabric have stood with Israel.

But when any one of us become obsessed with an unnatural and unexplainable enmity against the Jews, look out -- that is not human, but a deep-rooted spirit at enmity with God’s covenant with Israel. If God doesn't keep His promise to Israel, what makes us think He will keep His promise to us – that logic just doesn’t play out. God keeps His promises, and He keeps His promises to Israel!

Most of us will remember Martin Luther for his passionate beginnings in the reformation and not for his unfortunate ending. We can long and dearly appreciated his proclamation of the Scriptures to his generation that salvation is by grace alone and not of works.