Ninety-five Theses

And he, he read it and was very encouraging about it, wrote a little blurb for the cover, and that Started a l- a long period of time of him encouraging my writing, so I was very, very thankful for that.

Reminds me of, uh, some of the students there in Wittenberg seeing Luther's Ninety-Five Theses, tearing it down and going and making a bunch of copies and, like, it, it just catches on like wildfire.

Yeah.

It just spreads.

But here's the thing.

All his learned men wrote back was, quote, "We find that they," the 95 theses, "restrict the power of the Pope and the Apostolic See and contradict therefore the opinions of many blessed and venerable doctors." That was not what Albrecht had expected.

As far as Albrecht was concerned, indulgences were a major part of the church's arsenal of grace and of its money-generating machinery.

After all, they had been issued every few years and had collected vast quantities of dosh.

But seemingly his university professors did not want to go down this route.

All they pointed out was disobedience, and disobedience to the Pope, not the Archbishop, so nothing for us to do here.

And why that was gets us to the true genius of the 95 theses.

Luther never intended them to be a first shot in a battle to destroy the papacy, but if someone had sat down and war gamed the ideal opening salvo in such a war, he could not have done much better than that.

Don't let my mind or my heart be changed." Great men of God have always been mocked.

I think of Martin Luther, who in the 16th century started a rebellion, a good one, a revival, with the 95 Theses nailed to that Catholic church door, and they tried to kill him.

They branded him a heretic for it.

Charles Spurgeon, who every Christian knows his name, perhaps the greatest preacher outside of the Apostle Paul, he was insulted continually because of the way he communicated.

Hmm

... you've got the ever-famous Martin Luther nailing his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of Wittenberg Church on October 31st in 1517.

So there's some cool little crossover there that we've got All- All Saints' Day that was established on November 1st, so All Hallows' Eve, where it is believed that we get the phrase Halloween or the, the title Halloween, that blending from.

And then of course, we've got Martin Luther coming in there with his Ninety-Five Theses.

So, uh, sometimes you'll see, I don't, I don't know if you've ever noticed this on social media, sometimes you'll see, uh, you know, people who are celebrating All Hallows' Eve as basically just the, the dawning of the Protestant Reformation, even though the Protestant Reformation just had its pangs prior to that.

Those Ninety-Five Theses, that's what, you know, that sort of official kickoff.

Hmm.

Yes.

His theses were posted in Latin to enga- begin the church in engaging in debate, ostensibly to bring her back to the solid foundation, Christ, and salvation by grace through faith alone.

So during the period after the posting of the Ninety-five Theses, there was a lot of vitriolic exchanges back and forth.

Luther would be excommunicated by Pope Leo X.

By the way, when the current pope took the name Leo, I was a little disappointed.

On the eleventh of October, fifteen twenty-one, Pope Leo the tenth granted the title Defender of the Faith to King Henry the eighth of England.

The Pope granted the Latin title Fidei Defensor to Henry after he published a book in which he defended Catholic doctrine against the criticisms leveled at it by Martin Luther in his Ninety-Five Theses during the early stages of the Protestant Reformation.

Known in English as the Defense of the Seven Sacraments and dedicated to Pope Leo the tenth, Henry began the book as a direct criticism of Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses.

In response, Luther wrote his own book called Against Henry, King of the English.

Henry’s book was published throughout the sixteenth century and remains an important early example of anti-Protestant argument.

It is that the Catholics themselves saw the rot that was happening, and this would coalesce into the moment where Martin Luther himself, would see Johann Tetzel hawking the indulgences in the German market.

And this would just make him fed up and then he would craft the 95 Theses.

Do you know how it goes? But one of the primary issues of the Reformation was the matter of justification.

I think Pissam did a very good job with the, of course, by God's grace, with the sermon.

Yes, the world may be dark around us tomorrow, but we can be pleading on our knees for the righteousness of Christ to be seen in us so that we can shed light even on Halloween.

Yes, we may not need to nail the Ninety-Five Theses to the door, but we may wear the Ninety-Five Theses in our lives.

Our lives could be a protest to the world around us as we demonstrate what righteousness really looks like.

We desperately need the gift of God, in other words.