Here I stand, I can do no other

Today is Halloween, my Mom's birthday and Reformation Day. Tonight we will be celebrating with my Mom and eating lots of candy but I just wanted to take a moment now to reflect on Martin Luther, the reformation and the other movers and shakers in the christian world that had a profound impact on the way we worship.



It was October 31st, 1517 when Martin Luther posted the 95 theses on the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, in protest to the way the Catholic church had been selling indulgences and various other practices & beliefs. Luther's desire was for a pure and biblically based belief, not one that had fluff and extra-biblical (man-made) 'doctrines'. At the top of the 95 theses, Luther wrote that it was "out of love for the truth" that he was bringing those issues up. It should be a concern to us all to preserve and believe in the pure and unadulterated Word of God.

Then there is William Tyndale who just a few shorts years later was fighting to make bibles available to the common people in the their own language. Tyndale took advantage of the newly invented printing press and was able to mass produce the english bible as well as some of his own writing against the Catholic church's practices. Tyndale's translation was banned and Tyndale himself was killed and then burned at the stake in 1536.

There are some stern warnings in the bible about making sure that we are following the Word as it came from the people who were first inspired by God (2 Corinthians 11:1-4; Galatians 1:8. These men, along with other brave christians, fought the good fight for Christ and His Word. They risked their lives and some actually gave their lives in the pursuit of the true and pure Word of God. In these days when it seems there are so many different beliefs in the world, even within the christian church, it would serve us well to cling to the holy and precious Word that God gave us and not what men impose to be 'true'. What a happy reformation day it is to know we have brothers and sisters in the faith who fought the good fight of faith so that Christ's church would prevail!