Reformation I: Historical Context | Behold Your God Podcast

Welcome to another episode of the Behold Your God podcast. I'm Matthew Robinson, director of Media Grantiae, and I'm here again this week with my co -host,

Dr. John Snyder, a pastor of Christ Church, New Albany, and author and host of the Behold Your God study series for Media Grantiae.

This week and the following weeks, we're going to be talking about the Protestant Reformation because October 31st, as you well know, is the 502nd anniversary marking

Luther nailing his 95 theses to the church door there at Castle Church in Wittenberg.

And all this month at Mediagrantiae .org or TheMeansOfGrace .org, we do have some package specials that we're bringing some of the other projects that we make, making those available at special prices.

So do take a look at Mediagrantiae .org to see some of those. Now in the series that we plan to do, there's far too much to cover even for a long series.

So we're going to limit ourselves. Today, we're going to be talking about the key events of the Reformation and giving you kind of a timeline.

The following episodes, what are we going to do, John? We're going to look at the five solas, which really, really, they describe the heart of the

Reformation. It's one thing to get a timeline. It's one, it's one thing to know, you know, who published what, when. But we would never understand the

Reformation if we stopped there. We need to know what great realities gripped these men.

And so they've been summarized historically into five Latin statements, sola, you know, alone or only this, only this.

So we'll be talking about that. So we do want to give you a timeline just to be able to put it in context. When are all of these things taking place?

We say the Reformation and you could be forgiven for not knowing when or where and what else was happening when these things are happening.

So some of these things are not religious things necessarily. They're just significant world events for the purpose of helping us put our minds in a certain place and a certain context.

So John, why don't you get us started? Yeah. Well, we want to jump all the way back to 1455.

Gutenberg's movable type printing press was invented and that swiftly transforms the way that knowledge can be transmitted.

In our day, we would think of the Internet, how vastly different it is being able to, you know, get information across the world in a minute.

Yeah. So because of this movable type press, books could be published instead of being hand -copied and the price being way too much for any individual normal person to own a book.

Now there the price begins to drop and the number of copies that are available, you know, grow. So knowledge is able to be transformed, transferred through these books.

And you know, if you haven't thought about that before, just let the weight of that hit you for a second, just how significant that is.

That was a world changer, the ability to disseminate information cheaply and effectively.

Also a world changer, so to speak. In 1473, Copernicus, the astronomer, was born and we'll talk about him more, but he was responsible for coming to say that a heliocentric solar system, that everything that is doesn't revolve around the planet

Earth, but that we all revolve around the sun. Right. I got him in some trouble. Yeah, and that's going to be significant just in the whole culture.

1483, ten years after Copernicus is born, Martin Luther was born.

1492, Columbus sails the ocean blue and reaches the Americas. Four years after that, 1496,

William Tyndale is born in England. 1498, a day that we should all be thankful for, or a year rather, the toothbrush is invented.

Yeah, that's pretty significant. It is. It's helpful. Especially here in Mississippi. I know of a guy who went to the dentist and the dentist held up a toothbrush and said, do you even know what one of these is?

And he said, yes, sir. I clean my pistol with one of them. All right. 1501, Luther enters the university at Erfurt.

Then in 1505, fearing for his life in a thunderstorm, Luther vows to join a monastery, and he does that, making good on his promise on July 17, 1505.

Yeah, right after that, a couple years, he becomes a priest. And we might, you know, if we might be thinking, well, you know, he becomes a monk, becomes a priest.

What's the big deal? Well, as a priest, he is now given the authority by the

Roman Catholic Church to offer mass. And in the Catholic system, that is a re -presenting to God of the death of his son, a re -crucifying, in a sense, and where sins are now forgiven at that event.

And Luther's first celebration of that, he takes that so seriously, the tremendous mystery of it that, you know, that he really kind of flubs it.

He makes a mess of it. And his father, who came to see this, was pretty put out that his son not only becomes a priest and a monk, but he's not even a very good priest.

Right. But I think it, you know, in seeing the, maybe the seeds of beginning to see that as error are there, you know, and that is very significant as he begins to study theology.

1509, John Calvin is born in France. Yeah, 1509 also,

Henry VIII becomes King of England. And that's going to be pretty significant for the movement of the

Protestants there. So 1511, Luther becomes a professor at Wittenberg University.

And in 1536, I'm sorry, and in 1513 to 1516,

Luther's spiritual agony over the question of how can a man be right with a righteous

God grows. He begins lecturing on the Psalms and Romans and Galatians.

And those, going back to the scripture, those lead him to see the work of Christ in its true light.

It's not that the body of Christ and the blood of Christ has to be recrucified, but rather Christ has died for sinners.

And he begins to expose the errors of the Roman church. Yeah. And in those lectures, discovering that the righteousness of God coming to us through the work of Christ is not coming to destroy us, but coming to make us right, you know.

1516 also was a tremendously important year because Erasmus published his

Greek New Testament. Now, Erasmus is really more of a renaissance man. He's a religious man, but you know, he's a renaissance man.

He's a humanist in a sense, but he believes in going back to those original sources. And that Greek New Testament makes things available to theologians in a way that they weren't before.

Then we're brought to 1517. And then on October 31st, the reason that we call this

Reformation month and October 31st, Reformation Day, is Martin Luther having thought through these issues of how a man's right with God and other things that he's concerned about with the

Roman Catholic church, posts 95 theses or 95 ideas that he's putting forward for debate on the door of the

Castle Church in Wittenberg. And he calls for theological debate over these. And these are eventually republished in German, which allows non -academic people who just live in the area to read them.

And that becomes the spark of the Reformation. A year later,

Roman Catholic officials really take notice of Luther, particularly because of the 95 theses, not just being in the

Latin, as you mentioned, for the academics, but common people are talking about this now in Germany. And so they call upon him to recant, to go back on what he said in the 95 theses, which really, you know, he was just presenting them for discussion.

We'll talk about this at another time. But many of them are still really it shows

Luther in the early days of thinking through things. He refuses to recant. And in 1520, the

Pope issues a papal bull. Now, that's a legal document from the highest part of the church authority.

And it gives Luther 60 days to admit that he's wrong or to be excommunicated from the church.

Now, Luther takes those 60 days and takes that opportunity. And instead of recanting, he publicly burns it in front of his students.

1521, the very next year, the Pope wastes no time in excommunicating Luther. Now, I don't want us to think about that in a kind of Mid -South

Christianity kind of way, like, well, you got kicked out of the church. So he walked down the road and he joined the other church.

No, this means that by the highest of the highest church authority, he was condemned to hell.

He was put outside of Christ, separated from Christ. And it was known that anyone who followed him in these things that he was putting forward would be following him away from Christ and into hell.

So this was a very serious proclamation made by the church. Yeah, I mean, if you read secular history, even there have been times where a pope will go to a king and will basically say, unless you fall in line with what we believe you should do, you will be excommunicated.

And an entire nation is turned because that king doesn't want to find himself outside of the only church that there is.

Every town I go to, everyone knows I'm going to hell. Yeah. And anybody that supports me is going to hell with me.

Now, also in that year, he goes to a theological conference that's also combined with political powers called the

Diet of Worms. Strange name for us, you know, but it's not it's it has to do with a theological conference.

Now, at this conference, he's given an opportunity to again, to recant, to say, actually, I didn't mean what

I said. And then you'll be off the hook, so to speak. But we know that account where he says his conscience is held captive to the word of God.

And unless they can show him in scripture and not in church documents or councils or the statements of church authorities in the past, which have contradicted each other, then he will not feel free to back away from anything he says.

And so he is declared a heretic there, not only by the church, but by Charles V, the

Holy Roman Emperor who attended. And we have to understand that not on top of excommunication now, there's a political retribution.

And Luther could be killed by any person in that region. And that person would be simply be considered to be doing a good thing.

You've put justice upon Luther. Luther, on his way home, is kidnapped by a group of friends in disguise because they fear that on the way home he would be ambushed and killed.

So he's kidnapped and taken to a castle, the castle Vortburg. And there for 11 months, he's basically forced to be isolated and to be in hiding.

And he doesn't waste any time there. He translates the New Testament from Greek into German. Now, if you could see us, if you're watching the podcast at Mediagratia .org

and not simply listening to it wherever you listen to your podcast, you might see us from time to time when we say the word church, doing some little air quotes around it.

Because when we say he was put outside the church and the church said this, we don't actually recognize the

Roman Catholic church as a church. But Luther certainly did at that time.

And so this was an incredibly costly thing for him. And he had to truly risk everything on what he saw to be true in the word of God to go against literally the entire world at that time.

But in 1525, having been through all of this, Luther, he marries an escaped nun,

Katerina von Bora. They have a very happy marriage and they have a large family there.

Yeah. And then the plague strikes two years later. Now, this is a bubonic plague.

It strikes Wittenberg and Luther and his wife turn their home into a hospital.

And during that terrible year of really just unimaginable, the ravages of this epidemic,

Luther writes the hymn, A Mighty Fortress Is Our God. In 1529, the label

Protestant, which if you break that word down into its component parts, Protestant, someone who protests against the official teaching of the air quotes church is used by the

Roman church to define anyone who agrees with Luther. With Luther. Oh, they're a

Protestant. In 1535, Henry VIII wants to divorce his wife.

She can't produce a male heir. And so he notices a young woman in her entourage and he decides that he wants to marry her instead.

So he being a good Catholic has to get the pope's permission. Problem is, the present wife has connections.

And so the pope says no. And Henry decides that the best thing to do is to just break away from the

Roman Catholic Church and declare himself the head of the church in Great Britain, in England.

1535, we have the Coverdale Bible that would be Miles Coverdale, and it's published in Antwerp. This is the first complete

English translation of the Bible. Next year, another really significant publication.

It's the first edition of John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion. Now, I think

I just have to stop and say this for so many years. I mean, I read Spurgeon as a young believer or a

George Whitefield. I never read Calvin. One reason was because I was scared of the name

Calvin. I thought Calvin, that he's a scary guy. I mean, even his picture is scary. You'd think he'd be cold and academic.

Like, man, look at that picture. He doesn't look very happy. And then you hear these rumors like, oh, he did this and that.

So I just decided, like, I'm not going to read Calvin until years later. I picked up the

Institutes thinking, well, here's going to be a pretty accurate but really dry treatment of Scripture.

And I think, you know, Matt, you feel that you would have had the same experience that when we read the

Institutes, it is astonishing how much more like a pastor bringing the

Word of God in a warm way to the people. How much it's much more like that than a modern theology book.

The modern theology books tend to be a bit hard going. And Calvin was like it was like a dad sitting beside you saying,

I want you to understand these things for your soul's good. But the reason it has that flavor is because he although he kept adding to it, it was just a pamphlet at first.

It was because he wrote to Christians who were being butchered through persecution for embracing the

Protestant faith. And so he writes in a way that is very pastoral. Yeah, absolutely. Now, another thing that happened that year is

William Tyndale was martyred in England for translating the New Testament. And just another word about Tyndale.

Back in 1524 -25, Tyndale goes to Wittenberg and meets

Luther because Tyndale was heavily influenced by Luther's writing. Back when Tyndale was at university. So you know that William Tyndale is one of the

English reformers, one of the Bible translators. He goes and talks to Luther. Luther is an encouragement to him in person like he was in print.

Later in that year, he goes to Worms where Luther was declared a heretic.

And in Worms, he finds in Germany a man who's willing to publish the English Bible. And so he publishes the

New Testament. Now, years later, he's martyred when he's back in England. He's betrayed by a friend and put to death by Henry VIII.

Yeah, Tyndale's life is absolutely amazing. You should pick up, if you're listening to us, you should pick up any kind of biography and you'll be amazed.

It reads like it's unbelievable, like an action movie. So in 1541,

Calvin begins his work in Geneva. And he's working there under the city authorities. The persecution that so many of these men are used to is not there.

And he's actually working with the city, working to produce a city that would be an example to all the world of what

Reformation truths could do if they were applied wholeheartedly. So in 1546,

Luther dies. His last sermon was actually preached February 18th of that year. Then January of the same, of the next year, 1547,

Henry VIII dies. Now, the reason that's significant is his son, Edward VI, is now king.

He's a young guy. So there's a council of men who guide him. And they've been appointed by Henry.

But the amazing thing is that by far, these men are Protestant.

And they're not Protestant just politically. They're men whose hearts have been affected by the Protestant Reformation.

And they believe these truths. And so does King Edward VI. And it looks like the dawn of a wonderful Reformation that's coming to England.

But, however, six years later, 1553, Edward VI dies at the young age of 15.

Now, that really is the death of the political hopes that the monarch will support the Reformation because Princess Mary, who later became known as Bloody Mary, takes the throne.

And she is violently pro -Catholic. And she begins, really,

England's darkest hour for the Protestants. Now, 1558, five years later,

Mary dies. And Elizabeth I, her half -sister, becomes queen. And she begins a very long and prosperous reign.

But at the heart of it, there's what we call the Elizabethan Compromise. That is, she is

Protestant in the sense that she doesn't want to go back to Rome. But she doesn't want any more civil war.

And, you know, you kind of wonder how convinced she is of the Protestant truth. So, she allows the

English church to keep its Protestant heart, its articles of faith and things. But she also allows it to keep a number of kind of Roman Catholic ceremonies and rituals.

And so the exterior looks very Roman Catholic, but the doctrine is Protestant. And that's the Elizabethan Compromise.

And that's what the Puritans were concerned about in the following, you know, hundred years.

So, 1558 to 1660, the Reformation in England and Wales continues, mostly through spiritual and pastoral channels as opposed to a political movement, as these men who came to be called

Puritans start to push for the completion of what Luther started. 1559,

John knocks after a number of efforts. You know, he's again another exciting life, you know, in Scotland, out of Scotland, back in Scotland, over in Geneva.

But he really begins the Reformation in Scotland in earnest in 1559. And then in 1564,

John Calvin dies. And so thus ends our brief timeline. If that's interesting to you, there are any number of good books that we could link to in our show notes that would allow you to dive into these things in much more detail.

There are also a couple of films that we've either done as Media Grantiae, or our co -director

Stephen McCaskill has done an excellent film on Luther that's now in the hands of Ligonier Ministries, that you can get out there to go into Luther's life and what he did in much more detail.

As you well know, we've just finished an entire series on the Puritans, which is now available. And so any number of resources that you could go into more.

But we hope that if you're casually listening and you're interested in these things, that that'll at least give us a place to start to understand, okay, it's

Reformation month, you're doing a series on the Reformation. What are we talking about? Now, we want to try to make some observations on these things that not only happened politically, not only happened by men working in churches, but really we see this as God's hand moving pieces around and doing a work in the church and for His name in this time period.

Yeah. So let's just take the first kind of observation. The breadth of the divine work, the providential rule of God over all matters in life, not just a monk in a monastery studying the

Bible and how that shows God's timing in bringing the

Reformation to be. And so we mentioned a number of things in our timeline that might, you know, might make you scratch your head, like who cares when

Copernicus was born, you know, and who cares about the political guys, who cares about Henry or whatever.

But there were reasons. So we want to kind of run through just some high points on those to show how God was ruling over more than just the religious guys.

So there were great academic changes and the primary one being the Renaissance and how that influenced the

Reformers and particularly through Erasmus. Now, the Renaissance men had a famous Latin phrase, ad fontes, back to the fountains.

In other words, go back to the origin, to the source, go back to the fountainhead. And so for them, they felt that in academics, we don't need to read the guys that wrote about the guys that wrote about the stuff, about the

Greeks or whatever. We want to go all the way back and read the Greek guys academically. And so the

Reformers took that and said, you're right. We don't want to read about the councils that made comments about councils, that made comments about this, that made comments on Scripture.

We need to go all the way back to Scripture, but not in the Latin. Let's go back to the original text or, you know, let's go to the original languages.

And so the Greek and the Hebrew, and we find this to be such a significant thing. When Erasmus publishes that Greek New Testament, you do understand that suddenly academics, believing or unbelieving, are able to go to the

Scripture and see what God actually had Paul write there or John or Isaiah and the errors that crept in through imperfect translation or a vague knowledge of Scripture, even among priests and teachers in the church.

Suddenly they have the original, you know, sources here in front of them, original language, and they're able to go back to that.

And these errors are now apparent and they're able to correct them biblically without arguing about councils so much.

And that becomes a significant help. Another significant evidence of providence was the scientific advances in the time.

And that may not seem to us to be, you know, of religious value, but it was the age of discovery. Science was exponentially exploding the little tiny world of the average man.

And that really makes a difference in the culture when suddenly you hear that a man is saying, we need to rethink everything that we've been told about God and church because of the

Scriptures. And now here are the Scriptures in your own language. And whereas maybe 50 years before, you know, your tiny little world, no,

I have my church and I have my job and my family and my little town, and that's all there is to the world. Well, now, you know, we find out that Columbus has landed on a new world and the

Portuguese have discovered Japan. And the scientific discoveries, as we mentioned before, of Copernicus, the world, we're not that little, our little place is not the center of everything and we orbit something else.

And so kind of everything is up for grabs intellectually. The technological is probably one of the most significant that we mentioned.

The Gutenberg Press. And now men are able to get books. And still they're extremely expensive, but they are able to get them.

If you could just think, if I only had books in my library that were handwritten, how many books would

I be able to own? Two? You know, I mean, three? So Gutenberg Press makes this truth able to be disseminated.

Social. The attitude of the common man was that eternal things were pretty important.

And one of the things that helped with that was that the issue of the bubonic plague.

Now, that swept through much of Europe, mid -14th century. And then through the next few centuries, we find the plague hitting the major cities throughout

Europe. To give us some idea of the level of destruction, the world population was estimated to be 400 million in the year 1500.

Now, if we go back to the mid -1300s when the plague started, throughout that next century or so, 75 million died of the plague.

75 million in a world that had 400 million. So an enormous portion of the population is gone.

Men and women are thinking about eternal life. What's after this? And then the final thing we wanted to mention was the political.

The inability of the Roman Catholic Church to enforce its will on all the regions of Europe.

As it once was able to do through excommunication or through its armies. It becomes incapable of doing that at this time.

One reason is the Turks to the east are pushing against the Holy Roman Empire.

And so the Pope really needs everybody to be on the same page. So he kind of needs to compromise with some local leaders.

But another thing was it was a day when national identities and national powers were on the rise.

And the idea that we're a part of the Holy Roman Empire or we're under the Roman Catholic Church's influence, that was declining.

And so local leaders, local princes or electors were able to kind of protect the

Protestant Reformation within their small regions. For instance, Luther. It was his elector, his local prince that kept him from being put to death.

Therefore, he was able to write and publish decade after decade. And the information was able to go out.

A hundred years earlier, no way would that have happened. He would have immediately been put to death by his local prince because the

Pope told him, if you want my favor, you'll do it. So, so many things like that working together.

We see this in the scripture. God raises up a pagan king, Cyrus. Israel is by Cyrus's hand released from Babylonian captivity.

For God's purpose of showing Israel his faithfulness to his promises. But Cyrus is a pagan.

We see this in world history. Alexander the Great, his armies cover that known, that part of the known world.

And prior to the coming of Christ. So the Greek language is planted as kind of the official language of the whole area.

So when the New Testament comes, it's not written in Hebrew or Aramaic. It's written in Greek. So now people from all different nations who never could read

Hebrew, but can read Greek, can have the word of God in the language they can comprehend. We think of the

Pax Romana, the Roman peace. Rome spreads its rule over all these people. But one of the benefits was travel and commerce became pretty safe, relatively speaking, under Rome's rule.

You know, you didn't want to be a highway robber if Rome said that that was their road. So Paul is able to travel roads.

Christians who, as merchants, are traveling all around the Roman Empire, are able to take the gospel all around the

Roman Empire. So just in so many ways as we've run through that timeline, we do see the rule of an all -sovereign king guiding every aspect of creation, even the lives of those that deny him or hate him, to bring about his good purposes.

Another benefit we have from looking at the original sources of the Reformation, and, you know, really going back and reading what these guys wrote during that time, is it does dispel a number of false ideas that have crept up.

And it's just human nature that we get that. But I do think that there are two great dangers.

One danger, and this is the prominent one, is that modern historians find it very hard to understand the motivation of a

Luther or a Calvin or a Zwingli or a Tyndale. And so they interpret all that they do through political lenses or financial lenses or just self -aggrandizement, you know.

But the idea that Luther would risk his life for love of Jesus of Nazareth and the good of his church, that John Calvin would do what he did in Geneva for the honor of Jesus Christ, it just, it's not on their radar, you know.

They don't have a category for that. So when they write about these men, there tends to be a very warped picture seen through a secular lens that has no category for their motivation.

Everything is bent. And we hear a lot of false, just really false reports on these guys.

When we look at the Reformation and we go back to the sources themselves, that dispels that. And we find out that these men really were doing what they were doing for the glory of God, for the good of His church.

Now, an opposite error, which I don't think is as dangerous for us, but it is certainly a danger, and that is kind of lifting these men up and putting them on the pedestal of super saints who were flawless and who must have just gotten out of bed and they just glowed the whole day and everything just was wonderful and it was just nothing but one victory after the next.

But that certainly wasn't the case. When we read the original sources, we find that these men had enormous talents and really brilliant, beautiful virtues in their life, but they also had flaws.

And some men, like Luther, sometimes their virtues here, their courage and their godliness, sometimes it's almost matched in another area by a mistaken idea and a bold approach to that.

And so, when we read these men, we want to guard ourselves against kind of hero worship.

Now, it doesn't mean that they weren't used by God. What it does mean is this, that these were real men who struggled with sin and misunderstanding at times and wrong reactions at times.

But God, using these very flawed men, accomplished an extraordinary work.

And that, to me, is much more encouraging than thinking that Luther and Calvin and Zwingli and Knox were super saints.

I mean, what hope is there for us? But that God can orchestrate, even through the flaws of these men,

He orchestrates something that brings such a life -giving movement throughout the entire world.

And the last thing, you know, we want to... The last observation, I think, could be this.

How do we use history? Well, we use history to stir us. History, biography, it helps us to see common people putting the truths of the

Bible that we have in our hands into practice in their particular situation.

And it's like seeing that truth stamped on a life. And in many ways, it really does clarify the truth to us.

It helps us to see, well, that's what it looks like when a man lives on that. For instance, Luther. Luther gets married to an ex -nun.

How do you do family, you know? I mean, you don't have any guide. You know, we weren't planning on doing this.

How do you raise kids? What if you're not in the Catholic Church? How do you raise kids? What is this, you know?

And when you read Luther's statements about his marriage, it's just such a beautiful thing to see how

Luther loves his wife, raises his kids. They have one of those rare happy marriages in the life of a man that God uses so widely, you know.

So it helps us to see the Word of God applied by these people. But the danger would be this.

It's like watching a documentary, you know, which you've just put together. We watch the Puritan film, and we're excited.

We're thrilled by their courage. We're challenged, you know, by their sacrificial lives and their obedience.

But if I'm not careful, I go home admiring a Puritan, and then I take a spiritual nap. But John, in your tiny little world, you have to do that.

And so I love biography, but I remember reading one time where A .W. Tozer said, there is a type of ungodly envy that creeps up.

Hey, I want to be great. And then there's also this danger of using their obedience as a substitute for you getting up tomorrow morning and really obeying.

So those are some basic observations that I think are helpful for looking at history.

One of the things we love most about going to conferences is interacting with people who have gone through our studies or seen the films and hearing the way that they've influenced their families, their small groups, or their churches.

Eventually, we started asking if they would let us record those stories so that we could share them with you. Scott and Paul took their church through Behold Your God, Rethinking God Biblically, last year, and they're currently taking the church through Behold Your God, The Weight of Majesty.

I thought the first one was wonderful from the perspective of all the church history.

It was a really neat element that added to that I had not been exposed to in other Bible studies.

Hearing about the great kind of fathers of the faith and learning about them and then applying that to the studies of God and how they emphasized who

God was. You just don't hear that. We hadn't heard that in the churches we've been attending. It just tells us about and helps us with understanding

God biblically and really got into understanding, have a high view of God and a low view of self, which is usually the reverse of what we have.

It talks about really the understanding, well, what does

God say about evangelism? What does God say about worship? How does God want to be worshipped?

Is it about us or is it about God? What's the most important? And so there's just so many great things that we learned and really want to share with others, and this is a great mechanism for doing so.

For more information about Behold Your God, The Weight of Majesty, visit themeansofgrace .org.

Well, in our next session, we're going to be talking about the five great truths that really stood at the heart of the

Protestant Reformation, and these are truths that weren't invented in the 1500s.

They were the doctrine and the theology of the New Testament, and they were rediscovered, really, in the

Reformation and reaffirmed and applied, and these are truths that every generation, including our own and the one to come, has to revisit and has to reaffirm, not only doctrinally in our heads, but practically in the way that we live, in the way that we worship, and the way that we seek to live all of our life to the glory of God.

And speaking of the Reformation, speaking of the Puritans and others,

I want to remind you that we do have some Reformation Month specials going at mediagratia .org,

where there's special pricing on the Puritan film, which you can pick up for your pastor or for friends and family, maybe even stick it under the

Christmas tree if you're into that kind of thing, at specialpricingmediagratia .org

or themeansofgrace .org. Thanks for listening to the Behold Your God podcast.

All the scripture passages and resources we mentioned in the podcast are available in this week's show notes at mediagratia .org

slash podcast. That's M -E -D -I -A -G -R -A -T -I -A -E dot

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The Behold Your God podcast is a production of Mediagratia. If you're unfamiliar with the

Bible study series, documentaries, and other multimedia projects that we produce, let me invite you to have a look around for materials that you can use in your church, small groups,

Sunday schools, or family worship at mediagratia .org. If you're one of our monthly supporters, jump over to mediagratia .org

where you'll find the link to this week's supporter appreciation episode. This is weekly bonus content that we produce as just one tangible way to say thank you to those of you who believe in what we do and come alongside of us monthly to help us continue doing it.

If you're interested in becoming one of our supporters, whether that's through a one -time gift or a monthly commitment of any amount, visit mediagratia .org

and click on the donate button. Once you've done that, we'll get in touch and we'll give you access to our whole library of supporter appreciation material just shortly after.

As with everything that we do, we never want finances to be a legitimate barrier between our content and those who would benefit from it.

If that's you, reach out to us at info at mediagratia .org. We'd love to hear your feedback there on this episode, questions, comments, or any other subject that might be on your mind.