Reformation Beginnings

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, �But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

Luther, the Printing Press, and the Reformation

Compromise Radio. My name is Mike Abendroth, and I�m with El Jefe today, Sr. Cooley. See El Gordo. Yeah. Was that directed toward me or toward you? I�m not going to say. See, I just got back from Germany.

Combine that with 1517, 500 years ago, or 499. We�ve got Reformation stuff coming up. And in addition, October 31st, Reformation Day, celebrated by some Protestant churches. I�m just thinking kind of everything Luther right now, Martin Luther.

Everything Luther. Yeah. Now, when he was shot in Memphis, what was the reaction? No, seriously, when I try to do a Martin Luther, like, quote lookup, I get all these Martin Luther King Jr. deals. Do you?

Yeah. Huh. Well, yeah. They were different kinds of theologians, weren�t they? I don�t get those. I don�t know why.

Maybe I don�t know. I guess I would just say it would be interesting to know what kind of exclusions you can do, you know, say, not this. How do you frame that in a Google search, though, that you don�t get what you don�t want?

Is that what I mean? I did recently find out about the privacy settings that you can have on your iPhone, which is kind of nice. And then if something bad pops up on, let�s say, iTunes, if it�s an explicit song, you have to then double-click to get it, or like an access to a website, you have to double-click to get it.

I didn�t know about that either. I was happy to know that. Okay. I�ll have to look at that. Yeah. Anyway, I was thinking about Luther and just read the book by Pedigree, Andrew Pedigree, Brand Luther.

But, you know, just to make it specific, it�s not like the English word pedigree. It�s two T�s there, right?

Yes. P-E-T-T-E-G-R-E-E-GER. Just kidding. Pedigree. G-R-E-E. Is that how it�s? Yeah. Yeah. And he wrote this book called Brand Luther, and there were just all kinds of interesting things about how, in the providence of God, you�ve got Luther, this Augustinian monk who lives in a little tiny town, Wittenberg.

Now you�ve got Gutenberg Press, and, you know, it�s almost, Steve, like the internet. How the internet changed the world, the perfect storm where God has the press, the printing press, which wasn�t around before, and Luther together with an intellectual contagion and virus where you just run these papers off, short little tracks.

Luther doesn�t have to deliver them. He has other people deliver them, and it just infects the world. It�s pretty interesting.

Well, it really did change the world because, you know, you could get information out a lot faster. Before, it was easier. Before the printing press, it was pretty easy to just sort of stop things because, you know, it just wasn�t possible to disseminate the information fast enough to have any noticeable effect.

You know, so the government or the Catholic Church or whomever could pretty much stomp out whatever was going on.

And if you don�t have the Bible in your own language, right, Luther has a German, you know, the vernacular language, New Testament developed that he wrote. You just control everybody,. �Hey, we�re the ones that have the inside knowledge.

You don�t have it. Indulgences are true. Mary�s true. The Pope�s true, blah, blah, blah. And that�s really a problem.

Pete Yeah, so keep the Bible, you know, chained in the church so that nobody can, you know, take it home and study it or anything else. And all they hear is what they, or all they can do is go to church on Sunday or whenever, you know, and hear what is taught as opposed to studying it for themselves and seeing if it�s true.

Pete. And now we lead into purgatory, indulgences, relics. Steve, in the book that I referred to earlier, Brand Luther, �By 1520, when the latest inventory would be taken this is of relics, �it had reached 18 ,970 individual objects and was one of the largest in Germany.

This is in a little tiny town of Wittenberg. This is Frederick the Wise�s little relic collection. �The most precious rare items, such as a vial of the breast milk of the Virgin Mary and a twig from the burning bush, would be preserved in beautiful gold or silver cases.

When laid out for the benefit of pilgrims, the collection crammed eight aisles of the castle church. There would have been little teaching on All Saints Day as pilgrims flocked to avail themselves of the 1 .9 million days of indulgence that the assiduous visitor would gain from seeing them all.

And, you know, Lucas Cranach was the artist who helped Brand Luther, but he did other things as well, any type of printing and pictures. He in 1509 had 124 woodcut illustrations that served as a guide to go through all those relics.

So you have a little booklet. You know, you go to a museum and here's the guide, first floor, second floor. Can you imagine 1 .9 million days of indulgence if you saw everyone?

Petey. And indulgence is just simply time that you get reduced from your sentence in purgatory, you know, where, you know, your unrepentant sins basically are paid for, where your sins are burned off, as it were.

But the whole idea of indulgences, I mean, if it were true, what does that say about the death of Jesus Christ?

What does it mean? Paul. Was Christ's death sufficient or not? And you know, the purgatory we do believe in is Hebrews 1 where he purged our sins. Everything's related to that. Steve makes a great point.

When you think of purgatory or anything else, how sufficient was the death of Christ? Luther called this a shrewd question of the laity. So if you've got 95 theses, half of them about or regarding the Pope.

Here's one of the shrewd questions, quote, why does not the Pope empty purgatory for the sake of holy love and the dire need of the souls that are there if he redeems an infinite number of souls for the sake of miserable money with which to build a church?

Pete I've put it differently, not being familiar with that quote, but I've put it differently and I've said the Pope must be the meanest man on the world, in the world. Pete. Yeah, hate filled, because he could let everybody out of purgatory and he doesn't, you know, unless they pay, which is exactly Luther's point here.

You know, if you contribute $10 ,000 or whatever, you know, to the church, then you get X number of years out of purgatory for you or for somebody else, you know. Unless you're a really good person, maybe you don't need it anymore.

You know, that's the idea. But it's all such folly and it has to, it ties into this whole system of the treasury of merit and, you know, all this idea that there are some people actually earn more than they need to get to heaven, you know, and it's just, it's just this whole thing that we would not see in scripture.

Pete. You can see and understand why Luther was so mad at the system once he understood everything and why he would go after Tetzel, that priest who would go around. Now, you've got the printing press that is good for Luther's tracts and Bible things, but you've also got the printing press that they can have all kinds of indulgences printed.

That's keeping some of these places in Wittenberg afloat because of the indulgences. So you've got a piece of paper, live like hell, do whatever you want, and you can get out of jail free or get your parents out of jail.

And this is a text of one sermon attributed to Tetzel, quote, you priest, you nobleman, you woman, you virgin, you married woman, you youth, you old man, remember that you are in a stormy peril on the raging sea of this world, that you do not know if you can reach the harbor of salvation.

You should know whoever has confessed and is contrite and puts alms in the box as his confessor counsels him will have all his sins forgiven. Okay, now that will make you mad. But the next line of Tetzel, do you not hear the voices of your dead parents and other people screaming and saying, have pity on me, have pity on me, for the hand of God has touched me.

We are suffering severe punishments and pain for which you could rescue us with a few alms if only you would.

Pete. Well, the first part is, you know, obviously an appeal to salvation by works or just basically saying it, it is a fact. But the second part is really grotesque, because the first part is grotesque, the second part because it basically is saying out of guilt and out of fear for the well-being of your dead relatives, you need to give money, you know, so they could build St. Peter's Basilica is what he was after at that point.

But you should give money to the church to get people out of purgatory, to end their suffering. What kind of person are you if you're not willing to give up a little bit of money so that your dead parents, your dead grandparents, whomever, can get out of purgatory and stop suffering?

Mark. Unbelievable. Mike Abenroth here with Steve Cooley, No Compromise Radio. Info at No Compromise Radio, you can write us. Steve, I did not know that earlier in 1517, Luther nails the 95 Thesis, October 31st, 1517.

But earlier in the year, in February, he was preaching and studying from the passage, come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Instead of coming to the priest, coming to Mary, Jesus is the one who's offering this rest.

And if you want forgiveness, if you want respite, if you want rest for your souls, Jesus is the one to go to.

Pete. Well, that's one translation. The other one is come to me and I will give you purgatory, right? I mean, come on! You know, it's so, I'm sorry, but the doctrine of purgatory is blasphemous. And it would be funny if it weren't so insidious and if it weren't so, you know, based on really nothing else other than the church's word and its desire for money.

Mark Luther called people, the priest that taught this, he said in light of that passage in Matthew, oh, snoring priests. Pete Oh, snoring priests.

Oh, man. Pete. Yeah, like they must have just slept through that verse, right?

Mark. The book, Brian Luther had a little comment that Luther had said, we don't have any attestation of this, that Luther said he wrote a letter to Tetzel in Tetzel's later years trying to give him spiritual comfort.

I bet you he preached the gospel to him.

Well, that's, you know, like I was saying on another show, that's ultimately what we want. No matter what the topic is, you know, and we see this modeled, I mean, it used to be modeled by Billy Graham, you know, who would, for all of his faults, whenever he was on Larry King Live, he would always give the gospel.

Whatever the question was, the answer was, well, that sin can be forgiven in the Lord Jesus Christ, you know, by his death. MacArthur, same thing. I saw Mueller do it the other night. I mean, ultimately, the objective of our ministry is one of reconciliation.

We want to take sinners and reconcile them to a holy God, and we do that through the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's his work, his finished work on the cross and his death, burial, and resurrection.

That's what we preach. That's what we want people to believe in. And that needs to be the focus, not, you know, I mean, getting people out of purgatory and all this nonsense that doesn't exist. And it really is.

It's worse than nonsense. Like I said before, I think it's evil. I think it, you know, it speaks against the finished work of Christ and really speaks to nothing more than the manipulation of a system to get money out of people who are desperate to help their loved ones.

Rome, Ephesians 2, and the Spiritual Slavery of Works Religion

Pete Steve, when I go to Rome, just was there last October, and you see the Basilica, you see St. Peter's Square. Then you hear this Pope, Pope Francis, talk about refugees and letting people into your country, and I thought there's probably quite a bit of room for some tents in St. Peter's Square.

There's a lot of open area there with plenty of access to water and restrooms and all that.

Pete I wonder if the Catholic Church could afford that, if they have the money to afford that.

David I just was counting how much money they make on getting into the Vatican Museum daily. You know, I almost didn't have enough money to buy the gelato across the street. Pete. You know what his sequel should be?

How about Brand Rome? David. It is such a brand. And to think, you know, as much as I hate all that ostentatious display of all these riches and know how they made the money, it's worse to think of the theological corruption that underlies the whole thing.

When Luther finally made it to Rome, I mean, this is what people should do. If you're a Roman Catholic and we believed in evidential apologetics, just go to Rome and see how gaudy it is and how awful it is.

That's like Luther. When he went there, he was thinking it was going to be so wonderful, and he said the Antichrist couldn't rule better if he took over a town. Pete. Yikes. David. But, you know, we're talking about spiritual slavery and Ephesians 2, and people are dead in their trespasses and sins, and they think they have free will, and they walk according to the course of the world, according to the prince of the power of the air.

It's a satanic deception.

Pete. Even going back to the Tetzel sermon or speech or whatever it was that you were quoting earlier, you know, you just think about what he said basically that you cannot know that you are saved. You know, how do you know that you're saved?

You know that you're saved by, you know, your obedience, you know, by your obedience to the church and by getting things done. That's how you know eventually you'll get to heaven. I'm like, really? I mean, when does the Bible ever say that?

It says, you know, you know that you're saved when you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. And Rome calls that, by the way, the sin of presumption, says that you are accursed if you believe that you can know that you're going to heaven.

You know, you just have to kind of do your best and then wait and see how much time you have to do in purgatory.

The Sufficiency of Christ Versus Purgatory and Indulgences

Paul. See, Luther would have been so dogged in our century where you have to be prim and proper and all this PC etiquette and everything else. I just love the way how he just spoke his mind, just sometimes coarsely, but, you know, he's sitting around table talk.

It's just different times that require different speech. Steve, here's one I like. He used a lot of printers because they made money. And if you look at the world of Europe and all these huge cities that would be wonderful places to have a printing press, or many printing presses, how could Wittenberg be one of the capitals of the world?

It's all because of Luther. Otherwise, there'd be no demand, right?

Steve. And he expected his work to be done well, right? So, you could read it. Paul. Logically, yeah. And so, here is what he said about Spallatin. I have received the second and third set of printed sheets of the book on confession from you.

I had previously received them from Philip too, along with the first set. I cannot say how unhappy and disgusted I am with the printing. I wish he had sent nothing in German. It is printed so poorly, so carelessly and confusedly to say nothing of the bad type faces and paper.

John the printer is always the same old John and does not improve.

I mean, how would you like to hear that? Steve the preacher is always the same old Steve and does not improve. Man, I hope that's not true. Oh, man.

Anything when it comes to 1517 and the thesis, you know, we read them now. And I mean, do we get much good out of them today? I remember the first one about, you know, the whole life is to be one of repentance.

My question is this, are they dated? Are they, you know, worthy to be read now? How do we look at the 95 thesis?

Well, I haven't reviewed those lately, but here's what I would say generally. I think if we just looked at it this way, that it was like the crowbar being applied against the locked door of Rome, you know, and really just prying it open so that the truth could come out.

I think that, you know, if nothing else, it's a great event, you know, even if all the 95 theses aren't perfectly aligned to the situation today. But, you know, so much of it is just focused on Rome and the problems there.

So, I'm sure if we were sitting down and talking with Luther and he was to elucidate on his thesis, we'd probably go, yeah, I can see that, you know.

Jared. So true. A product of the time, Luther did go on to say if he would have known how much traction the 95 theses were going to get, he would have been more careful in writing them, right? But here, in this public manner, this is just what people did.

They would have a dispute and you would write them in kind of a caustic style and then people would talk about them. And I don't know if he was walking across town from the Augustinian monk house, which would end up being the Luther house, walking down to Castle Church, you know, that 10-minute walk.

I'm wondering if he's thinking, could this get me killed? Is this going to change the world? I don't think either of those went through his mind.

No, and I'm pretty sure too that, you know, in retrospect, he might have changed some things or shortened them or combined them or whatever. But, you know, so much of what's amazing to me is even talking about the typesetting and all this other stuff is no computer, right?

No means of like re-editing and stuff like, and it wasn't like, you know, paper was cheap or abundant or anything else, or it was easy to just grab a pencil or an eraser, you know, all the things that we just so have come to take for granted.

None of that stuff existed. So, when he talks about how bad the German was or anything else, it's because somebody would have to read what he had written and transpose it into, you know, the typesetting and remember all the words and then spell them rightly and it's not like everybody had a, you know, PhD or whatever, and then print it.

So, all these steps had to be done before, you know, it could even be done. But getting back to the 95 Theses, I just think the key is, you know, the motto of the Reformation after darkness, light. And this really is the truth, right?

The light was all shut in. And so, the crowbar on the door is a really good metaphor for just kind of thinking what he really actually did by posting that up there. And you're right. I mean, as he walked across the way, he probably was thinking, this could really go badly for me, right?

One of the things I noticed, Steve, as I read the book, I was reminded that Luther's writings, especially his early writings, they were all short. You know, most of them were eight, six pages, pungent truth, kind of tract-like.

I don't know if blog-like is correct, but I'm wondering if there's something to be said for these just short, direct, to-the-point little tracts versus tomes.

Steve McLaughlin. Well, in these days, you know, what, he could have charged like five bucks for each one of those as opposed to writing a 500-page tome that nobody would read and charge $35 for. So, probably the, you know, you can go to the Christian bookstore and buy a $5 thing that is essentially, you know, 1 ,200 words.

Paul Matzko. Well, if you write a book like Evangelical White Lies, you know, it sells like 100 copies and then nobody buys another one.

Steve McLaughlin. It's up to 102 copies now.

Paul Matzko. Well, you know what? I think since I lowered the Kindle price, it just shot up.

Steve McLaughlin Yeah, I think I'm responsible for at least two sales, you know. Paul Matzko Oh, good.

I appreciate that. And I think those two sales probably have spilled into more than two sales with the foreword that you wrote.

Steve McLaughlin Well, that's probably true. And the sad thing is, though, about those two sales, they were your kids who bought those.

Yeah, but they needed the master's college reference for those very two things. We would encourage you to read some of the original Luther stuff. I have a new book in my house, Steve. I don't know the name of it, but it's a compendium of Luther's actual works.

Paul Matzko. Oh, good. Steve McLaughlin. Because not many of us, I mean, if you have to read one book on Luther, Here I Stand by Ronald Baten. I think it's maybe the best biography I've ever read.

I actually see it right over there in your bookshelf.

Paul Matzko There's a couple copies. That's a hard copy from CBD. There's a paperback one that I have. But that is an excellent book to read. And then just read some of the things that he wrote. Probably don't start with a 95 thesis just because it makes it more difficult.

I'm just in this, I'm devoting myself to read Luther in the next year. Steve McLaughlin In German? Paul Matzko Nein, danke. Steve McLaughlin There is Luther's Latin verse-by-verse Romans text with his handwritten German comments in between the lines in a linear fashion in a museum in Berlin, and I hope to go.

Paul Matzko That is interesting. Steve McLaughlin Yeah. I figured I could distract the people and then maybe make a Xerox copy of it or something.

Paul Matzko. I wonder how different that is from his commentaries.

Steve McLaughlin Oh, yeah. Reading Galatians. Probably some people have read Galatians. That's about it. I said in a show a while ago, I don't know if it was a Tuesday show or not, but that I don't debate.

We don't debate King James-only people because they don't really listen. Steve McLaughlin And so a guy wrote and said it. Paul Matzko I want to debate you. Steve McLaughlin Yeah. And then he said, was Erasmus wrong?

And you know, these King James fundamentalists, they normally would think that Roman Catholics are just about as pariah as me, an Alexandrian text type. Paul Matzko Sure. Steve McLaughlin But he was appealing to the correctness of Erasmus.

Paul Matzko Oh, yeah. Because there's nothing

Steve McLaughlin. That humanness. Paul Matzko. Yeah. There's nothing like a humanness to really get things right when it comes to the Word of God. Well, you know, like my Greek professor used to say about the King James, if it was good enough for the Apostle Paul, it's good enough for me.

Steve McLaughlin Well, and now we have, we almost had, until they made the decision to undo what they did, we almost had the ESV-onlys with a permanent text, right? This is settled.

Paul Matzko Yeah. Steve McLaughlin ESVO. Paul Matzko Settled for all time. Steve McLaughlin Uh-huh.

Paul Matzko 16 Steve McLaughlin You secretly study from the NES, though, don't you? Paul Matzko Secretly. Steve McLaughlin I know, secretly. Paul Matzko 1611, though. That's Steve McLaughlin 1611 NES?

Paul Matzko Yeah, 1611 NES. Steve McLaughlin It's hard to find a 1978 NES. The 1995, the updates, easier to find.

Paul Matzko The older one, not so easy, huh? Steve McLaughlin Yeah. Paul Matzko Well, we have it on our computer, so. Steve McLaughlin Okay.

Closing Appeals and Program Sign-Off

Well, my name's Mike Abendroth. Steve Cooley here is Tuesday Guy. You can follow him on Twitter at TheTuesdayGuy or email him, TuesdayGuy at NoCompromiseRadio .com. Thanks for listening. Tell your friends, we don't ask for money unless you're a millionaire.

We only ask that you tell your friends about the show. Paul Matzko. And buy the books. Steve McLaughlin. Yeah. Paul Matzko. On Amazon. Steve McLaughlin. That's right, Kindles.

Paul Matzko. Easy. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible-teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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