Maintaining the Cause of the Reformation — Alan Cairns

Remembering the Reformation and Its Historical Significance

Each October, here in the church, we recognize Reformation Month. That is because on the 31st of October 1517, Martin Luther kneeled his now famous 95 Theses to the church door in Wittenberg in protest against the seal of papal indulgences.

You may pay and sin without having to pay for your sin. That was the message and Luther objected. Some churches recognize Reformation Day. It's a pity that to most the 31st of October is Halloween. All Hallows Eve, something goes back to medieval Europe as an observance.

I remember as a little child we put on false faces and ducked for apples and all the rest of that. And got apple pie and if you got the right piece you get money wrapped up in it or something. I can understand kids always wanting to revel, whatever the occasion.

But it is a pity that in the protestant church there seems to be little appreciation for the real significance of the 31st of October. Certainly one of the most pivotal days in the history, not only of the Church of Christ, but of the entire western world.

The world as we know it today, whether liberal politicians like to acknowledge it or not, the world as we know it today is the mostly direct and if not direct, certainly the indirect product of the protestant reformation.

As I say some churches therefore, few in number, recognize Reformation Day. When I came to Greenville I decided and I felt it was necessary to do so. I decided that each month of October I would set aside the Sabbath evenings to deal with the great themes of the protestant reformation.

The story of God's mighty movings and over the years we have traced the reformation in England, in Scotland, in Germany, in Switzerland, even in Bohemia as it was once called, later years the area of Czechoslovakia.

We have dealt with the issues, the themes, the events, the people, the biographies, all in an attempt to do what the Bible tells us to do, that is to rehearse the mighty acts of the Lord. This year we will again recognize Reformation Month.

And I will state right at the very beginning, while I am not intending to deal with the reformation in place A or B or whatever, in these weeks, it is my intention to lay hold once again of some of the key thoughts, themes, issues, stands, and illustrate them as necessary from the history of the reformation so that we as a church may recapture, if we have lost it, or at least re-strengthen and refresh our vision of and commitment to the great work that God did for the Christian church and for the world in and through the Protestant Reformation.

The Need for Spiritually Courageous Men

And it is my prayer that God will touch many, and especially young men, touch hearts. We live in an age of inflated heads and empty hearts. An age when people get so much trivial knowledge about God, His Christ, His church, His work, but the head does not affect the heart.

There is a crisis today in the work of God for men, and that is not to demean the role of the women, for they have a role to fill and there is a need for young women giving themselves to serve Christ.

But no church movement is ever going to be greater than the men God raises to support it. There is a crisis of need for men, sold out to God, counting all but loss, to serve Christ. Men of the book, men of prayer, men of heart, men of vision, men of courage, men of commitment, who will face any foe, pay any price to do the will of God.

Anointed men, preaching men, spirit filled men, we have had our fill of church administrators filling pulpits. We have had our fill of PR men filling pulpits. What America needs, what the church of Christ needs, what the free Presbyterian church needs, is a return of the prophet to the pulpit.

One of the most fundamental descriptions of preaching in the New Testament is prophesying. Not necessarily foretelling the future. The role of the prophet is to speak with divine authority, with divine anointing, with divine courage, to make known the will and way of God to the people, whether they will hear or whether they will forbear.

That is the prayer and the burden that I bring to the pulpit in these Reformation services in 2003. I'm always glad to have help in Reformation Month. Once again, if my memory is right, the final Wednesday evening of the month, Dr. Pinozian will be our special guest.

And I ask you to keep that Wednesday free, make sure you are here. Some of you may never have heard Dr. Pinozian's now-renowned first-person presentations of some of the great Reformers. He started doing them in this pulpit, and nobody who was ever here the first time he ever came as Martin Luther will ever forget it.

It was one of those high-water marks. Every time he comes, we are blessed, and I'm looking forward to his return. There's a lot of work involved in that, so he's only doing one this year. But we're looking forward to that, and I trust you'll be with us.

As again, what we seek to do is rehearse the mighty acts of the Lord. I don't think I've started to preach yet. I haven't even got to the Bible reading. We have another saying in Northern Ireland. It speaks for itself.

The night's a pup. Just work that one out. The night's a pup. A long way to go before it becomes a dog. The people at home tonight not thinking anything of desecrating the Sabbath day by watching four hours of football.

Well, actually, about one hour of football, four hours of timeouts, and to let all those overweight linemen recapture their breath. But we're not getting into that. That's why I tell you rugby's the greatest game in the world, but I'm not even preaching in that tonight.

So we're not going to worry about the time. At least I'm not. People down in the nursery may. My wife tells me every preacher should have to work in the nursery. I tell you, one diaper change would be enough for me.

I may stop them crying, but that's about it. Galatians chapter 4. Galatians chapter 4, verse 19. Reading to chapter 5, verse 1. My little children, of whom I travail in birth again, until Christ be formed in you.

I desire to be present with you now, and to change my voice, for I stand in doubt of you. Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, do you not hear the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a free woman.

But he who was of the bondmaid was born after the flesh, but he of the free woman was by promise. Which things are an allegory, for these are the two covenants. If I may interject there, I am not going to be expounding the allegory tonight.

I freely admit on reading this, this is one of those passages in Paul of which Peter spoke when he said Paul wrote some things that were hard to be understood. This is one of those difficult passages.

However, I am not trying to shirk it, nor am I trying to sell tapes. But I have dealt with this passage in detail. And if you wish to have the exposition, you may just listen by tape. But for tonight, I cannot return to that exposition.

Simply, Paul says, Hagar and Sarah and their sons are an allegory, for these are the two covenants, the one from Mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Hagar. For this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem, which now is, and is in bondage with her children.

But Jerusalem, which is above, is free, which is the mother of us all. For it is written, Rejoice, thou barren, that bearest not. Break forth and cry, thou that travailest not. For the desolate hath many more children than she which hath a husband.

Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise. But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now. Nevertheless, what saith the Scripture?

Cast out the bondwoman and her son. For the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the free woman. So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free. Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.

That last verse that we have read will form our text this evening. Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again in the yoke of bondage. The epistle to the Galatians has always been a favorite epistle among Protestants.

The Gospel Themes of Galatians and Christian Liberty

The great themes of this epistle are the truths which launched the Protestant Reformation and inspired individual Christians, churches, and at times even nations to great and heroic deeds. In Galatians, Paul reels off, one after another, the major themes of the Gospel.

The sovereignty of the will of God in the redemption of sinners. The soul and all sufficient merits of Jesus Christ in procuring that redemption. The free justification of sinners through faith in Christ without any input of merit from any works of their own.

And then, one of the truly outstanding marks of this epistle, the theme of the liberty in Christ of the Christian man. Now, our text tonight obviously deals with this subject of liberty. Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free.

Time does not permit me to give any prolonged exposition of the text, but do remark that Christ makes His people free. Whom the Son sets free is free indeed. There is a liberty that belongs by right to the people of God.

He has not given us the spirit of bondage. He has not bound us in the prison house of fear, of uncertainty, of human speculation, or of the tyranny of human ideas. He has set us free, speaking as a committed, what the world calls Calvinist, what I believe is simply believing the Bible, allowing God to say whatever He wants to say, and believing it, whether I can explain it or not, so that when He speaks in the highest terms of a predestinating decree, I do not question why has God the right?

I rejoice that He does it. When, on the other hand, He speaks of a love that reaches to this vast world of ours and commands us to preach Christ to every man, commanding his repentance, I do not try to trim it according to my belief in predestination.

I accept what God says. By the way, it's no paradox. It's simple truth. But as what the world calls a Calvinist, I have to confess that it grieves me to the core that the cry of Christian liberty has degenerated into the so-called right of Christians to drink beer, smoke cigarettes, or whatever.

That's Christian liberty. Most of the people who promote it are liars. Now, that is going to go out over Sermon Audio, and I'll get a few emails. Are you daring to call these people liars? Yes, I am. Most of them, not because they don't believe what they're saying, but because they are so addicted to their booze and their weed, and yet they have the temerity to term it liberty.

Most of these people do what they're doing. Just ask them to stop it, and you'll find it would be for them very, very difficult. It's not liberty. If you tell me your bondage, your addiction is Christian liberty, I take the freedom, note the word, to tell you I believe it's a lie.

In my book, The Fruit of the Spirit, I deal a little with this, not a lot, in my usual very, very restrained and most uncontroversial manner, and I talk about these people who say there is no command not to take alcohol, and I simply quote the scripture which says that you're not even to look upon the wine when it's red, when it moves itself in the cup, which anybody takes to be a description of alcoholic wine.

And by the way, do not believe that wine is necessarily alcoholic. The Bible uses the word to describe the cluster while it's still in the vine, when it's just off the vine, when it's unfermented, and all the way through to fermented wine.

So the word wine, whether in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, or any of the classical languages, has a very wide meaning, not the restricted meaning we give it today. I simply said, if that's not a prohibition, I wouldn't know a prohibition if I saw one.

I was getting a very good review, actually, of the book in the leading evangelical newspaper in England. The reviewer was quite taken with the book, actually, until he came to that part, and he said, the writer tends to be dogmatic.

The publisher copied that out and showed it to me, and underlined, Stanley Barnes bought me a book, and he says, we all know that you tend to be dogmatic. He wrote that, and I said, you know, I take that as an insult.

I do not tend to be dogmatic. I am dogmatic. And when the Bible says don't look at it, look, I'm just a simple Irish man. If the Bible says don't look at it, it doesn't mean go and guzzle the stuff. And yet, yet, for the vast majority of those who are always talking about Christian liberty, the only liberty they're talking about is the liberty to drink alcohol or smoke tobacco.

When I asked some of them some years ago, what will you do when they legalize pot, they had no answer. The only reason for not smoking cannabis is it's against the law. Well, let me tell you, it's not going to be against the law for very long.

Already in Europe, in many places, it's perfectly legal. If they haven't already done it, they're just about to do it in England. So you can go out and smoke pot just as legally as you can go out and smoke tobacco.

And if the law of the land is the only reason for not doing it, we're now going to have a race of preachers getting up to establish Christian liberty to smoke pot. God helped the cause of Christ when the Reformed churches have got to this.

Because you know, Christian liberty, whatever you think of how you should exegete the scriptures that deal with alcohol, and I quite realize that there are other forms of exegesis that challenge what I say.

I think they're wrong. But whatever you think of that, when Christ makes His people free, the freedom that He gives them is twofold fundamentally. Number one, it is the freedom from having to establish a righteousness by their own works that would merit acceptance with God.

It is freedom from the covenant of works. And secondly, it is freedom from human impositions upon their conscience. It is freedom from the traditions of men. Luther, when he stood before the Diet of Worms, said, My conscience is captive to the Word of God.

A conscience captive to the Word of God. So that the decrees of popes and of councils, the statements of priests or of pastors, the conclusions of confessions of faith, are all brought down to the touchstone of the scriptures of truth.

And it is not what the confession of faith says that binds the heart, it is what the Word of God teaches that binds the conscience. Nothing else. I believe our confession of faith to be a true reflection and exposition of the teaching of the Word of God.

But I believe that not because of the authority of the confession, but because of the authority of the Bible to which I have subjected it in my new examination. Christ makes His people free. We sometimes sing the song, free from the law.

O happy condition, that is not free from obeying the law of God. It is free from the law as a covenant of works. Free from the law as the means of earning our way to heaven. Free from its curse. Free from its condemnation.

Free Justification and the Assault on Gospel Liberty

That's what it is. Christ makes His people free. Now this liberty, as the text makes clear, is under constant attack. Prior to the Protestant Reformation, the Church of Rome had done such a successful job in opposing the Christian liberty that Paul is speaking about here, that for about a thousand years, few people even dreamed that such a liberty existed.

During the Reformation, the Church of Rome made the most strenuous efforts and employed every weapon in her arsenal to crush the preaching of the gospel and the promulgation of this doctrine of the liberty of the Christian man.

That attack has never lessened. Free justification, by free, I mean what Paul meant in Romans chapter 3, verse 24, being justified freely. That is gratuitously. That's a big word. We will use that word again when I get finally to return to the series of messages in Romans.

We'll be at Romans 3 .22 next time, God willing. And that word gratuitous is a very important word in the doctrine of justification. Being justified freely, gratuitously, that is without any cause in us, by anything that we have done, by His grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

The Bible tells us a threefold cord is not easily broken. Here are the three parts of the cord. Justified freely. The Greek has been translated in John 15 .26 without a cause. Justified freely. Justified by grace.

Justified through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. This doctrine of free justification is the very heart of the gospel. Without this there is no gospel. There's no talk of pardon. There's no hope of grace.

There's no ground of acceptance. There's no doctrine of reconciliation. At least scriptural doctrine. There is nothing left of the gospel unless we hold to this doctrine of a free justification received by faith alone.

This doctrine today is an almost unknown truth. If you want to prove that, listen up. You tell me the number of churches in Greenville. And I'm not saying this because Greenville is the worst of places.

I believe in all America there's not a better place. This is still the buckle on the Bible belt. There are many churches in Greenville. Out of all the hundreds and hundreds that we have, teach their people the doctrine of a free justification.

How many? I guarantee the number in comparison to the total is minuscule. And then if you go to the preachers who actually mention justification or who quote a text on justification and listen very carefully and ask yourself does that preacher begin to understand the import of the phrase that Paul uses again and again the righteousness of God.

Does he understand it? You find most preachers who mention it haven't a clue in the world as to what it imports. They mix it up with the eternal attribute of God's being that He is a righteous God and in some way or other God transfers His eternal attribute of righteousness to us.

It's crazy. It's crazy. It's unscriptural. It's not the gospel. The righteousness of God in justification of which Paul speaks that righteousness which is imputed to us is the righteousness of Christ's obedience.

Study Romans 5 .17 -19 and you'll see that. It is the righteousness of Christ's obedience. It is the merit of Christ's fulfillment of the law as a covenant of works for Him in order that He should establish for us a covenant of grace.

This doctrine is almost unknown. And once more millions are being brought under bondage to human traditions or as happens in many evangelical churches to people who have sincerely and I might say successfully sought Christ for saving grace.

They're being manipulated by human authority apart from scripture. I don't want to get off on a rabbit trail. You know me if you come here I never like to do that because I make rabbit trails into super highways and stay on them for a long time.

I have had people come visit this church and go out thinking I'm in apostate because I don't have 15 minutes of singing just as I am and put your hand up for this and put your hand up for that and if you haven't got your hand up to be saved you end up if you've ever had a mother, a father, a grandmother, a grandfather if you've ever had a head or a toe, put your hand up.

You know these preachers that must get their hand up for something. So they go out saying He doesn't make an appeal. I never finish a service without an appeal because the Word of God demands a response and I ask for that response.

But here's the thing, here's the strange thing. These, and this is what I talk about being manipulated by the traditions of men. There are people who will go out picking holes because I don't have the kind of appeal that was never known in the Christian church throughout the first 90 of its existence.

Never known in it. But they can sit in churches where in 30 years they have never once heard the exposition of the doctrine of a free justification by the imputation of the merits of Jesus Christ received by faith alone.

They have never once heard it and it never bothers their conscience. That's only one example of manipulation. I could give you many. And you'll find our evangelical and fundamental and to be honest I've sat in Reformed churches where the same thing has been done where there's a manipulation of the people to do what the preacher wants them to do by heaping guilt upon them hiding from the people the freedom of the justified man.

What is it? It is again the attack upon the liberty of the gospel. And of course there is an even bigger attack because today various ecumenical If you're not aware of the word ecumenical comes from a Greek word that means the inhabited earth.

It speaks of something bringing the world together. Ecumenical activities that proceed on the basis of the denial or the dilution of Paul's gospel of justification. The ecumenical activities of the Protestant churches have since, well a long way before 1948 they were in train but since 1948 they have been headed up by the World Council of Churches and its National Councils of Churches.

The World Council has had to reassess its role. I'm not going to preach on that tonight. It's still a major enemy of the purity of the gospel. But there are others. Ecumenical activities. There's a charismatic aspect to ecumenism.

One of the fathers of the modern charismatic movement said that to be truly charismatic you must be ecumenical. To be truly ecumenical you should be charismatic. Many charismatics have used their common experience a spurious one by the way professed experience of the Holy Spirit especially their speaking in tongues which are not even remote cousins of the gift of tongues in the New Testament which were the gift of foreign languages.

They used this common experience to bring Roman Catholics and Protestants Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Baptists Pentecostalists all together on the basis of a shared delusive experience but on the basis of the rejection denial or delusion of the gospel that Paul preached.

Maintaining the Reformation Against Rome and Ecumenism

The battle is underway. The tragedy is very few people realize where the battle lines are truly drawn. When you look at Galatians 5 verse 1 you must say that the liberty that Christ gave us must be maintained without compromise.

He says stand fast in this liberty be not entangled again in the yoke of bondage. Now this text therefore has a message that we as Christians need to pay particular attention to. As I said Paul's themes in Galatians became some of the most compelling issues that drove the Protestant Reformation.

But if there was a Reformation, and there was there was also and has continued to be a Counter-Reformation. The Counter-Reformation is the name given to Rome's attempt to nullify to reverse and ultimately to remove all the gains and indeed all the signs of the Protestant Reformation.

And the Counter-Reformation has never really stopped. It is in full swing today. Today it's being prosecuted not only by the Vatican but by a number of compromising Protestants who are heavily engaged in ecumenical dialogue or collaboration with the Church of Rome.

Now somebody like Chuck Colson will put their argument very cogently. The argument is that in the face of rampant secularism we cannot afford to maintain our historic differences with Rome and our rejection of Rome as a Christian Church.

We can't afford to do that. If you want to know just how vitriolic the opposition to the historic Protestant stand can be cast your mind back a little to the last presidential election when the president of Bob Jones University had the temerity, and I thank God for this to say that the Church of Rome was not a Christian Church and have the university website accurately deal with it as an unbiblical cult.

And I admire him for taking that stand. Thank God for the courage in at least one recognizable leader in fundamentalism to have enough gumption to tell the truth on this matter. But man, once he did so the furies were let loose.

John McCain, that mighty senator of ill repute that demagogue of the worst order stepping to the business of lies and hypocrisy did all he could to turn the resources of the U .S. Congress, of the media of the Church of Rome against this one institution.

It had nothing to do with Bob Jones' dating policy. Liar McCain knew about that dating policy for years. It only became an issue when Dr. Bob had the temerity to say Rome is not a Christian. People like Colson will tell you we can't afford to take that stand.

Look at the number of Roman Catholics there are in the world. We need them to fill out our ranks in the battle against secularism. We can't afford to cut off Rome. I want to tell you the truth is we can't afford not to.

According to the Word of God Rome is the perpetual enemy of truth and liberty. I freely admit that there are instances throughout history of individual Roman Catholics of heroic vision and action for which we would have to thank God.

But Rome as a system has never been the friend of liberty. Whether you are talking about evangelical liberty social liberty, political liberty or national liberty. Rome has never, never been the seed bed of liberty.

And in the Bible's prophesied climax of the end of the age and the events surrounding it Rome appears as the harlot queen of the man of sin. The greatest destroyer of life and liberty in the history of the world.

The Reformers saw all that. The Reformers believed all that. The Reformers acted on the truth of these propositions. What I'm saying is that we need to recapture the spirit of the Reformers and maintain the work that they commenced.

I say commenced because they never thought for a moment that they had finished the work of the Reformation. They spoke of the church as reformed yet always reforming. In other words, not living in the past.

Some of the reformed have the tendency always to want to go back to the 16th century. But we're not to live in the past. We are always to be responding to the current situation in the light of the immutable truths of the Gospel so as to ensure our continuing conformity to the word and will of God.

That's the call of our text. Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free. I want you to think with me of maintaining the truth, the cause, and the benefits of the Protestant Reformation.

Now I have to be honest that there are people here who have not been at Reformation Month services. You've not heard me or Dr. Pinozzi or any of our other speakers deal with the history of the Reformation in England or in Scotland or in Germany or anywhere else.

You may have heard some strange things about the Reformation. I get things sent to me, and no doubt after this I'll get a few more things sent to me by self-appointed historians who have as much sense in reading history as I have in reading Double Dutch.

So you may have heard some strange things about the Reformation. What was it? As we'll see, it was a multifaceted movement or series of events. But fundamentally, the Reformation was a mighty work of God.

When you read history, and by the way, I hope you will, I know that there are some pinheaded people and forgive my being blunt, but I don't have time to talk around the bush. Some pinheaded people who believe that it's not the job of a church to deal with history.

You want to read your Bible again? It commands it. So, read a little history. Don't think you're an expert just because you've read a few chapters of one book. I've been reading history for many years, and I am far from being a historian.

In fact, when I look at these professional historians, I see three or four of them over here, when I look at these professional historians I'm sure they go home at times trembling like, well, I don't know, be like jelly or with anger or with, ya, you know.

I know when Dr. Barrett, being a linguist, hears somebody get up to say the Hebrew says and the Greek says, and they get it all mixed up, he just, ooh, he just feels turned up inside. And they may well feel the same when I deal with history.

I'm still right, mind you, and they're wrong, but... Well, I'll get into that. The 16th century was a time of seething motion and commotion. It was a rowdy century. It was a century in which Europe began to stir from a 1 ,000-year-long sleep of darkness and death.

In many ways, it marked the transition from the medieval world to the modern world as nations began to take shape and to struggle toward the liberties that we now take for granted. Now, there were many engines of change in those days.

You will read of the Renaissance. I want you to notice how I pronounce that for your benefit. We were taught to pronounce it properly. The Renaissance. But whatever it was, you've heard of that. Bringing with it a new interest in ancient culture and writing and civilization.

You've heard about the invention of printing, movable type printing. And all that was certainly a mighty, mighty engine of change. But the mightiest engine of change in the 16th century was the Protestant Reformation.

The Reformation as a Restoration of Biblical Christianity

And the men who led it were the most important men in the world whose work was the most enduring. It was as a movement it challenged the old order based on the false claims of the papacy that the Pope was the successor of Peter, the vicar of Christ, the God-appointed head of the church, that he was also king of all earthly kings with the right given by God and confirmed by the Emperor Constantine in the 4th century to exercise sovereign power over the nations.

The donation of Constantine actually turned out to be a forgery. Along with the Isidorean decretals. If you want more about those, you'll have to read my dictionary or something else. But on the forgery, the Pope was the king of earthly kings, the right to set up one, to pose another and indeed to rule as an earthly ruler.

The Reformation opposed the Roman church as the true expression of the New Testament church as the bride of Christ as Rome thought herself the guardian of divine truth outside of which there was no salvation.

That was the movement of the Reformation. It was a movement for God and for His truth. As I've indicated in the preamble, popular view with a lot of truth in it as it had started October 31, 1517 when Luther kneeled his theses to the church door in Wittenberg.

Luther hadn't a notion in the world of overthrowing the Pope when he did that. Luther really believed the Pope doesn't know what's going on here in his name. If only we can get some scholarly debate the Holy Father will see this and he's going to move and things will change.

Luther was a devoted Roman Catholic. But it did start a mighty change. The story, the stirring story of his stand against indulgences, his increasing study of Scripture, his increasing eminence as a theologian and expositor of the Word of God led up to his heroic stand in 1521 when he went as a lonely monk to the Diet of Worms on trial.

Although he had been given safe conduct, he knew it was not worth the paper on which it was written. It's often said, and I think Dr. Pinozian is right here, that when Luther stood up he did not boom out like a mighty thunder.

Here I stand, I can do no other. So help me God. I think it's probably true that with great simplicity, with deep humility, with a great deal of physical fear, Luther quietly said, Here I stand, I can do no other.

So help me God. But you know I never think of those words said in a whisper. And however Martin Luther said them, they were not a whisper. And I'll tell you why. I think of a man with pounding heart and trembling hand, putting a match to a mighty pile of dynamite.

However timid and trembling the hand, the resultant explosion, the world. That's what Luther did. And however he originally said it, this is one of the most momentous statements ever made by mortal man.

This is one of the most thunderous outbursts of truth and oratory ever to move the minds of men. And ever since men have been stirred with the sight of the lonely Augustinian monk facing the legates of the Pope, the princes of the realm, the powers of church and state arrayed for his destruction, and thunderously challenging them with the Word of God, saying, I'm bound to this book.

Here I take my stand. I can do nothing else. God help me. That was the thunder that marked the beginning and mighty progress of the Reformation. Luther's writings spread like fire across Europe. They invaded the great universities of Europe.

They led hold of the minds of some of the brightest and best young men in Europe. Soon the whole continent was ablaze with the controversy of Luther and the doctrine of Paul. But though that may be said to be the beginning, this is a work that ran deep in history.

Behind Luther stood an army of Protestants before their time. Savonarola was a reformer more of moral values and social action. There were others going deeper into history. Robert Grostest, Brad Wardeen, Gottschalk, people who took a stand on individual issues.

There were others of greater importance, men like John Huss and Jerome of Prague, behind whom stood the great English man of God and man of letters, John Wycliffe. These were proto-Protestants. You had groups like the Albigenses, the Catharoi as they're called.

History dismisses them as all sorts of half-lunatic heretics. Remember, almost everything we know about them is the description given by Roman Catholic cardinals who have never in history been known for telling the truth.

These were people who wanted purity of life. And I'm sure it's true that they missed the boat doctrinally in many issues. When I think of the darkness that they were struggling out of, I thank God for their desire for the gospel to have an effect in holy living.