(Christian History) 13. the Reformation in Germany — David Guzik

Martin Luther as Pastor and Bible Teacher

In our last lecture we took a look at the early life of Martin Luther and basically bringing him up to the point where he was a university lecturer and a parish priest in the city of Wittenberg, Germany.

Well as we said before then in the year 1514, Luther became a local church preacher and a pastor in Wittenberg. Don't forget that. He wasn't only a university teacher, but he was also a pastor. He combined both roles in his daily responsibilities.

But it was more his heart as a pastor and as a Bible teacher than it was as a university professor that started the controversy which started the Reformation and that was the whole controversy over the sale of indulgences.

Roman Catholic Theology of Sin and Purgatory

Now we sort of have to back up and give a little bit of background for this. In Roman Catholic thinking there are two penalties for every sin. There's the spiritual penalty and there's the temporal penalty.

The priest can absolve you or forgive you the spiritual penalty, but you have to deal with the temporal penalty yourself. I mean we sort of understand this, right? Let's say a man or a woman is an alcoholic, right?

And you can say, well, there's a spiritual penalty for that addiction, for that sin that they suffer under. Yes, it's true. There's a spiritual penalty for that. But there's also a earthly or a penalty that's held within time, right?

They ruin their health, they ruin their family. So this idea between being a spiritual penalty and a temporal penalty, it's not hard to figure out how they would make that distinction. The simple idea is that every sin has its inescapable consequences.

Well, we might limit those inescapable consequences to what happens on this earth, right? In Roman Catholic theology the inescapable consequences of sin go much beyond that. And basically what you have to do is...

Well, no, let me phrase that. What you have to do is not the right way to begin that sentence. Instead, let me say that part of the inescapable consequences of sin, part of the temporal consequences of sin have to do with purgatory.

Again, we need to sort of understand the Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory. You see, Roman Catholics had a very neat and clean system of salvation. Right? If you kept the sacraments, if you checked off the box of the sacramental system, then you knew that you were saved.

However, as I discussed in a previous lecture, there was the great difficulty of seeing people who had checked off all the boxes but lived terrible lives. And how do you reconcile the two? How can you say, this person has done everything that the church says they must do in order to be saved, but they sure don't live anything that looks like a godly life.

How do you reconcile that within your head? They reconciled it by basically creating the doctrine of purgatory, which says that person, and indeed most all people, can't go straight to heaven when they die.

Instead, they go to a sort of a middle place called purgatory, where they are purged from their earthly sins. That's the whole foundation behind the idea of purgatory. It's purging. You're cleansed. And basically, what happens in purgatory is you suffer under, in Roman Catholic theology, literally the fires of affliction.

Purgatory is a hot place where people suffer, and that suffering pays the temporal penalty of their sin, and then once that is paid off in purgatory, you go to heaven. Now, if a person is good on this earth and follows the sacraments, they have a little bit of purgatory, right?

If a person's bad, they have a lot of purgatory. But understand this. In Roman Catholic theology, purgatory is only for the saved, right? The damned go straight to hell. And purgatory has the idea of the place where you're cleaned up before you go to heaven, and you're cleaned up depending on how dirty you are, and therefore it's for everybody.

Now, there's a few people whom the Roman Catholic Church considers saints who don't go to purgatory at all, right? They're good enough to where they go straight to heaven, but that's very, very few people.

Indulgences, Penance, and the Treasury of Merit

Now, basically, what you did when you bought an indulgence was you were doing penance. If anybody was raised in a Roman Catholic environment, you know what doing penance is, right? You go into the confessional, you confess your sins to the priest, and the priest will say, okay, here's your penance.

I want you to say five Our Fathers and three Hail Marys. And that would be a typical example of a penance, at least when I was a young boy in the Roman Catholic Church. That's what they might tell you.

Who knows, today they might do other things. They might assign you to do good works. And so you'd go out after the confessional, and you'd go kneel near the altar. You'd go to the pew, and you'd say the required number of Our Fathers and the required number of Hail Marys, and that was the penalty that you paid for your sin.

Basically, indulgence was buying penance. It was a way to demonstrate your repentance through the giving of money instead of through doing some good work. Now, it wasn't until the 11th century that indulgences were given to relax the temporal penalty of sin on the condition that the money be given for the building of a church or a monastery.

Then the practice of indulgences became more and more widespread with the advent of the Crusades, beginning with the First Crusade in 1095. Pope Urban II then promised the remission of all penance to those who fought in the Crusade to liberate the Holy Land.

And later on, this was extended to those who simply supported the Crusades with money, right? I mean, if a soldier gets time off purgatory for fighting in the Crusade, why shouldn't somebody who supports the Crusades with their money?

In the year 1343, the sale of indulgences was endorsed by an official church decree, and that official church decree read this, Now this treasure is not hidden in a napkin or buried in a field, but he entrusted it to be healthfully dispensed through blessed Peter, bearer of heaven's keys, and his successors as vicars on earth, to the faithful for fitting and reasonable causes, now for total, now for partial remission of the temporal punishment of sins.

And to this heap of the treasure of the merits of the blessed mother of God and of all the elect from the first just man to the last are known to have supplied their increment. Now again, this sort of brings in another aspect of it.

The idea is, is that Mary and all the saints from the beginning of time have made their deposits in what I described in a previous lecture as the bank of grace, right? They've deposited all their merits in the bank of grace.

So there's all this treasury of good works and merit and grace upon which the church can draw. And the pope, because in Roman Catholic thinking he has the power to bind anything on earth and bind anything in heaven or loose on earth and loose in heaven, the idea is, is that the pope has the right to take from that treasury of merit and give it to whoever he wants to.

Therefore, if the pope wants to, he can erase all your time in purgatory, or some of your time in purgatory, or some of your aunt's time in purgatory. And the pope says, if you do a good work, I will take some of your time off in purgatory or some of your aunt's time off purgatory or whatever.

Now you get the idea here. The idea is that the pope is in charge of this treasury of merit and he can dispense it as he wills. Well, this developed in not very long a time to the place where people would come and make a financial contribution and there would be a guy who would write them out a letter of indulgence and say, you know, we've received your contribution.

You get this much merit from the pope and it takes time off for you in purgatory or for your relative, whoever you want to do it on behalf of. And this was quite a trade and you can imagine that this made the church a lot of money and when they especially needed money, they would push the sale of indulgences.

That they would sort of have the indulgence super sale or, you know, blow out or whatever it is. Where they would go out and try to sell a lot of indulgences. Now Pope Julius II in 1508 and 1513, they needed money to finance their wars in Italy.

So they did what popes had done before them. They turned to indulgences as a way of raising money. Now Albrecht of Brandenburg, a German prince, purchased various parishes and bishoprics in Germany in the early years of the 16th century.

In the year 1513, he made an agreement with Pope Leo X to sell indulgences in his land. But by a secret arrangement, half the money went to pay off the debt that he had occurred in buying all those clerical offices and the other half went to the pope for the rebuilding of Saint Peter's Cathedral in Rome.

So they were going to push the sale of indulgences in the German lands. Part of the money would go to the prince, part of the money would go to the pope for the rebuilding of Saint Peter's, so forth and so on.

Johann Tetzel and the Sale of Indulgences

And because they really wanted to make a lot of money and sell a lot of indulgences, Albert chose a man named John, sometimes called Johann, we might say in a modern way John, Johann Tetzel, a Dominican monk, to sell the indulgences.

And again, you have to just consider that they did this in a very salesman-like way. They would go from place to place and set up their displays and preach their sermons and make their slogans. Matter of fact, Tetzel had a slogan.

When the money in the basket rings, the soul from purgatory springs. That's the idea. And when the indulgent salesman would come to town, they would give it with all, with taking. Basically, they would come to town, they would come to the parish priest, the guy who's the basic pastor, the priest over an individual church, and they'd say, hi, pastor, we'd like to take over your service this Sunday.

Can we have your service? Because we want to offer your people something good. And so most of the time, or I guess a lot of times, the pastors would agree, the priests would agree, and they would do this.

And they would take over, they would preach fiery sermons. Tetzel used to say things like, listen to the voices of your dear dead relatives and friends, begging you and saying, pity us, pity us. We are in dire torment from which you can redeem us for a pittance.

Do you not wish so? Do you see how he would do this? Can't you hear your dear Aunt Elna, you know, screaming to you from purgatory? Oh, if you just weren't such a tightwad and you'd give the money for the indulgence, I could be freed from this place.

You see, when the indulgence salesman cupped it down, they'd set up inside the local church, and once they were there, regular preaching was suspended and forbidden. Actual drafts of indulgent sermons from this time exist, and that was the whole idea here.

They would say, do you not hear the voices of your dead parents and of 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 pains in purgatory from which you could rescue us, if only you would.

And then they would say, open your ears, because the father is calling to the son, and the mother is calling to the daughter. And you can imagine, in these medieval days, when a large part of the population was rather superstitious in their outlook, what an effect this would have.

Now, how much would an indulgence cost? Well, it would depend on how much money you had. Kings and queens would be charged a high price, high counts and prelates a lesser price, low counts and prelates still lower, merchants and townspeople a step below, artisans one more step, and then the indigent were told, well, you know, if you had no money whatsoever, they would just say, well, fast and pray, and we'll give you an indulgence.

But this is what you have to understand. Even though many people were attracted to the sale of indulgences through all this guilt, through all this superstition, at the same time, people didn't really like it.

And there are many cases of the sellers of indulgences being strung up, being beaten, being driven out of town, because even though they were popular among many people, there were other people who despised the sale of indulgences and who felt that it was a real crime to have such a, you know, a religious marketplace and spiritual things going around.

Luther and the Ninety-Five Theses

Well, anyway, this man Johann Tetzel worked the territory right next to where Luther was a professor and a parish priest. Luther objected to the work of Tetzel because he thought people were getting ripped off.

And so Luther absolutely forbade his territory to receive the sellers of indulgences. Tetzel would have loved to come into Luther's territory. I mean, they'd go everywhere he could. He'd love to take over Luther's Sunday morning service and say, you know, let's use it for selling of indulgences.

Luther said, no way, you're not coming into my territory. And he told all his people, don't you mess around with these guys who are selling indulgences. Well, but when you say that, what do people do, right?

A lot of his people just went over into the next county or the next parish area, and they started dealing with this. And when Luther heard about that, he got mad. And so he did the customary thing for a university professor to do.

He invited a scholarly debate on the subject of indulgences. And October 31st, 1517, Luther wrote 95 statements in Latin, calling into question the theology and practice of the selling of indulgences.

And he sent that list of 95 theses, or statements for debate, to the bishop, to the archbishop of Mainz, and to other religious and intellectual leaders. Now, it is also said that he posted these 95 theses to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg.

But I have to tell you, there's actually some historical question as to if Luther ever actually nailed the 95 theses to the church door there in Wittenberg. Luther himself never mentioned himself doing it.

You can look in all the writings of Luther, and he never mentions doing this. Now, there's only one source that mentions Luther doing this, and that's Philip Melanchthon, Luther's successor. And we regard Philip Melanchthon to be a reliable source, but you know, when you're doing history, you like to have two sources, or three sources to confirm something.

And so though the source is fairly reliable, the fact that it's only one source makes many people wonder whether or not this was historic, or whether it happened. But we do know this for sure. Luther did write the 95 theses, and he mailed them.

He put them in the mailbox, so to speak, to these different religious leaders on this day, and he may very well have posted them on the church door in Wittenberg. You just have to face it, though. It's a lot more dramatic to see Martin Luther at the church door nailing a piece of paper to the church door than it is to see him putting a letter into a mailbox.

And so no wonder we sort of prize this idea. If you go and take a tour of Wittenberg today, you can see some beautiful metal doors. I can't tell you exactly what the metal is. I don't know if it's copper, or bronze, or steel, or whatever, that have the 95 theses written into it, and it's just sort of a memorial thing, the very same doors upon which Luther nailed.

Well, not the very same ones, the very same place of the doors. Of course, Luther couldn't nail anything into metal doors, but there were wooden doors there on Luther's day, and that's where he nailed it there.

Yes? It is definitely true that church doors were used as sort of bulletin boards, and so it was not a strange idea or an unusual idea to think that Luther could have done this. Now, where was it? Oh, it made sense for Luther to do this on October 31, 1517.

Because you know what comes after October 31? November 1. And November 1 is All Saints Day. Now, what's interesting is as much as Luther protested many of the superstitions of the Roman Catholic Church, the man who was the prince or the leader, you know, the political leader over the region where Luther was, was a man named Frederick the Wise.

Frederick III the Wise, but I'll just say Frederick the Wise. Frederick the Wise had one of the most remarkable collections of relics in all of Germany. He had collected hundreds or thousands of relics.

And you know what kind of relics they were. You know, a piece of the burning bush. Soot from the fiery furnace where, you know, Daniel and his—or not Daniel, the three Jewish young men were. Milk from Mary, breast milk from Mary, actually.

A piece of Jesus' crib. You know, these kind of things were in Frederick the Wise's relic collection. And what they would do on All Saints Day is they would set up tables full of relics to be adored on November 1.

Frederick the Wise had in his castle 19 ,000 pieces of relics. Worth more, you know, because you got indulgences for collecting these relics as well. These relics were worth more than 1 ,000—excuse me, 1 ,900 ,000 days of indulgences.

Well, in any way, so it's interesting that Luther knew that a lot of people would be at the church on November 1. It would have made sense for him to post it there on, as we said before, what was sort of the community bulletin board on October 31.

The Spread of the Reformation and Luther's Theological Protest

Well, in any regard, whether or not Luther actually posted them on the church door or whether he just dropped them in the mail, those 95 theses took Germany and Europe by storm. Now look, it's very important to say Martin Luther was not the only one to question the practice of indulgences.

Many people throughout Europe had complained and were complaining about them. And this explains in part why the 95 theses spread so rapidly and found such an enthusiastic support. Luther was the first one to really think through a scriptural response to the sale of indulgences, or at least the first one to do it so thoroughly.

Now, we also must admit that Luther expected that the Pope would agree with him when he saw what was happening with the sale of indulgences. Luther's attitude was almost this. Listen, this is a disgrace, this is terrible, shouldn't the Pope know about this?

Because if he knew about this, he would not be happy at all. Luther greatly overestimated the spirituality of the Pope. Because the bottom line on indulgences was the power of the Pope to grant forgiveness.

And in these 95 theses, Luther insisted that all the Pope could do was declare that a person was forgiven by God. He could not grant forgiveness against sins that were, except for sins that had been committed against him personally.

Now if you take a look at some of Luther's 95 theses, you sort of get a feeling for what the document was like. Number 26, he says, The Pope does well in giving remission to souls, not by the power of the keys, he has no such power, but through intercession.

Do you realize what a radical statement that is? For Luther to take this picture that has been so dominant throughout all of medieval Christianity, of the Pope holding the keys of Peter, essentially the keys of the kingdom, and for Luther to say, the Pope doesn't have that power.

What he does have, he has the power of intercession. The Pope is a godly man who can pray, and so he can pray for souls in purgatory. Number 27, those who assert that a soul straight away flies out of purgatory as a coin tinkles in the collection box, are preaching an invention of man, right?

He's specifically speaking against the slogan of Johann Tetzel. Number 28, it is sure that when a coin tinkles, greed and avarice are increased, but the intercession of the church is in the will of God.

You see, Luther wanted to get away from the idea. Now Luther believed in purgatory, at least at this time. He believed it was good to help people who were suffering in purgatory. But he said, we do that through our prayers.

We don't do it through giving money. Number 36, every Christian who is truly contrite has plenary remission, both of the penance and of guilt as is due, even without a letter of pardon from the Pope. In other words, you don't need a letter of pardon for a financial contribution to forgive you fully of your sins, both in the temporal and in the spiritual aspect.

Number 45, Christians are taught that a man who sees a brother in need and passes him by to give money for the purchase of a pardon, wins for himself not the indulgences of a Pope, but the indignation of God.

In other words, Luther here is picturing a man, you know, he's on his way to buy his indulgence, and there is a brother who's poor and has need of bread. And he says, wouldn't it be better for the man to give the money to that poor brother who needs bread, than it would be for him to give it for the purchase of this bogus indulgence.

Number 50, Christians must be taught that if the Pope knew the exactions of the preachers of indulgences, he would rather have St. Peter's Basilica reduced to ashes than built with the skin, flesh, and bone of his sheep.

You see what I mean here? Luther's attitude was, man, if the Pope only knew what was going on here, he would be really mad. Number 54, a wrong is done to the Word of God when in the same sermon an equal or longer time is devoted to indulgences than to God's Word.

Number 79, it is blasphemy to say that the cross adorned with papal arms is as effectual as the cross of Christ. Of course, this was a claim, right? You know, here's a cross, and there's a cross, you know, encrusted with the insignia of the Pope.

And it was taught and believed that that cross could save you just as much as the cross of Jesus Christ. Number 82, they, that is the laity, ask, why does not the Pope empty purgatory on account of most holy charity and the great need of souls?

The most righteous of causes seeing that he redeems an infinite number of souls on account of sordid money given for the erection of a basilica, which is a most trivial cause. This one really gets to the point.

Luther's saying, listen, if the Pope actually has the power to empty out purgatory and relieve people of their suffering through his intercession or through his, you know, keys of the kingdom, whatever you want to call it, then why doesn't the Pope do it just out of the love in his heart?

Why does the Pope stand back and say, you know, I'll free that soul from purgatory if you give me money? Sordid money, as Luther calls it. Of course, you can't escape Luther's logic here, right? You're beginning to see why these 95 theses, why this whole issue of indulgences, which let's admit it, in the whole scheme of Roman Catholic theology and objectionable Roman Catholic theology and problems with the Roman Catholic Church, the problem of indulgences is fairly small, right?

But isn't it true that sometimes a small thing ignites into a much larger movement? Okay, last couple ones, number 86. The Pope's riches at this day far exceed the wealth of the richest millionaires. Therefore, can he not build one single basilica of St. Peter out of his own money rather than out of the money of the faithful poor?

You know, here Luther's getting testy, isn't he, right? And then finally, number 93. And so farewell to all those prophets who say to Christ's people, the cross, the cross, and there is no cross. By the way, Johann Tetzel died in 1519, just a couple years after this, and he died a disgraced and a broken man.

Roman Catholic Opposition and Luther's Debates

Well, what was the Roman Catholic response to the 95 theses of Luther? Well, first, the archbishop, right? You could say that this was sort of Luther's boss, ultimately. The archbishop of Mainz was alarmed and annoyed.

He forwarded the documents to Rome in December of 1517 with the request that they severely rebuke Luther. At the same time, he reprimanded indulgence sellers for their extravagance. You can just see it.

You know, so to speak, he gets on the phone, right? And first he gets on the phone to Rome and he says, you can't believe what this guy Luther's saying. We've got to do something about him. But then he gets on the phone to guys like Johann Tetzel.

And he says, Tetzel, you're ruining everything. You're too extravagant. You've got to tone it down some because people are catching on to your act, so to speak. You see, at the time, many people looked at this whole dispute of the 95 theses and they thought that it was just another squabble between monks.

Now, I told you that Luther was a monk of what order? The Augustinian order. I said it very quickly, so maybe you didn't catch it. I said Johann Tetzel was a monk of another order, the Dominican order.

Well, listen, just as much as there's sometimes unfortunate rivalries between denominations today, there were definite rivalries among monastic orders in that day. And a lot of people said, oh, look, look, it's just another example of the Augustinian monks fighting some battle, you know, poking at the Dominican monks in some way.

And so they just thought, well, that's what it was. But yet, it sure seemed that it would go deeper than that. And by the way, counter-theses were developed by a Roman Catholic guy named Conrad Wimpina that Tetzel had defended before a Dominican audience in Frankfurt.

And so they started mailing out these counter-theses. When the counter-theses came to Wittenberg in 1518, the students at Wittenberg University took them and publicly burned them. At Rome, the Pope merely instructed one of his clerics to deal with this monk through the usual channels, in this case, through his head in the monastic order.

That would be Staupitz. Luther himself prepared a very long Latin manuscript with explanations of the 95 theses. And it was eventually published in 1518. And then it shows that Luther really believed his protest of the 95 theses.

And you would say that when Luther in 1518 published this Latin document explaining and going into greater depth of his objections of the 95 theses, this was really a marking point. Because Luther at that time could have stepped back, right?

He could have said, whoa, whoa, hey, I didn't mean it the way it was taken. Well, I'm sorry about that. You know, let's take a step back here. But he didn't do that. No, instead what Luther did was he argued very strongly, no, I meant what I said in those 95 theses.

And in fact, I meant even more. And so Luther began then a series of debates with different people. He began a debate with Johann Tetzel and then the renowned scholar Johann Eck, who formally charged Luther with heresy.

Eck came to Wittenberg while Luther had just left to attend to business regarding his Augustinian order. He had to go to Heidelberg. In his absence, Eck debated with Andreas Karlstadt, who was a very energetic associate of Luther's.

Now I need to introduce you to this man, Andreas Karlstadt. Karlstadt was a very strong friend and defender of Luther's views. And so because Luther was out of town when Eck came to Wittenberg, Karlstadt debated him.

Karlstadt concerned or tried to defend the Wittenberg program, and he came forth not with 95 theses, he came forth with 379 theses, adding another 26 right before the thing could be published. In some of these, Eck was criticized.

So the Dominicans continued to press for Luther to be imprisoned or at least severely rebuked, and for the heresy proceedings to continue against him in Rome. And again, Luther didn't improve matters for himself.

He published a very bold sermon on the power of excommunication, who basically said, I don't accept this unquestioned right of the Pope to excommunicate people. Now, the cardinal over this part of Germany, right, you have a whole layer of bureaucratic infrastructure and organization in the Roman Catholic Church, right?

So now we're up to the cardinal. And the cardinal of this part of Germany was named Cardinal Cayetan. He was given a command from the office of the Pope to bring Luther to Rome for a heresy trial. But here's the issue.

Political Protection from Frederick the Wise

The political environment favored Martin Luther. You see, we ask ourselves the question, why was it different for Luther? Why was it different in his particular political environment? Well, let me see if I can explain it.

Frederick the Wise was one of the seven electors of the Holy Roman Empire. He had a critical role in the selection of the emperor, which was due soon. The Pope could not afford to antagonize Frederick the Wise.

Therefore, the Pope could not pursue Luther as aggressively as he wanted to, because he was protected by Frederick the Wise. You see, to understand this whole situation, you have to understand something about the whole political environment.

When Luther was called before Cardinal Cayetan and forced to defend his beliefs and in all this political struggle, he could speak boldly. One of the reasons why was not because he was just a brave man, and not just because he was a man with very clear theological thinking, but also because Luther knew that he had political backing behind him.

And anyway, Luther was bidden to a personal interview with Cayetan at Augsburg, and he arrived there on October 7th, 1518, with again the promise of safe conduct. The discussion moved from indulgences to the relation between faith and sacramental grace.

It became a much more involved debate about theology and different aspects of the Roman Catholic Church. The bottom line was they told Luther, you have to unconditionally repent of your views. Well, while Luther waited very uneasily, these people thought that he would be taken away in chains.

And eventually, he was fled from the city, he was sort of escaped out of the city, where he had this audience with Cardinal Cayetan, and he was able to get back to Wittenberg, where he would be safer.

This set up a later debate that Luke had with Johann Eck in the city of Leipzig. Now, Eck was a very skillful debater, and he forced Luther into a corner of associating himself with John Hus. You have to admit, that was a very dangerous thing with Luther.

If Eck could maneuver in the debate, Luther into a corner where Luther stood with Hus, Hus was a condemned heretic of the church. And then he could just say, well look, you're standing with a condemned heretic of the church, what does that make you?

Eck eventually went back to Rome to tell the Pope what had happened in the debate. And when he went to Rome, he went basically as somebody who had beaten Martin Luther in this debate. And so therefore, the Pope issued this papal bull that appeared on June 15th, 1520, and it was called Excurgio Domini.

Again, this is up on the PowerPoint here, this is sort of a promotional thing for this disputation with John Eck in 1519. But the Pope issued this decree, Bulla Contra Martin Luther, this was the front of it, you know, with the whole papal insignia, where he basically said, Lord, cast out.

And they made specific arguments against 41 articles of Luther's teaching, and this was followed by a formal burning of Luther's writings in Rome. This was it. Luther was declared to be an official heretic, he was now under the same category and under the same potential danger as John Hus was a hundred years earlier.

Luther's Defiance and the Printing War

Luther responded here with his own literature, you know, in this you take a look at Luther and he's depicted as being this very brave, bold, but very much dressed in his monk's habit, right? Luther considered himself, it wasn't until several years after this, that Luther stopped dressing like a monk.

He considered himself a loyal monk to the Augustinian order. And here, from the Babylonian captivity, you know, this is kind of his idea, I'm in my Babylonian captivity, I'm exiled from the true church.

But Luther insisted, even though there were very many attacks made against him, things were published with depictions of him as being a devil with horns, as being a man who had many different heads and so had many different opinions and was therefore unreliable and couldn't be trusted.

It was a great propaganda war going back and forth. I mean, both sides used the modern industry of print to as much advantage as they could. So, even though Luther was mocked with broadsheets and pamphlets, Eck and the other leaders of the Roman Catholic Church were shocked to see just how popular Luther had become among the German people.

Luther preached more and more in the common language, and he wrote more and more in the common language, and he genuinely touched the people. On Luther's part, he issued a series of very defiant tracks against the Pope.

Where he basically opposed the Pope and opposed all the power of the Babylonian Church. Well, I mean, we could go through the different doctrinal points that he made, but just basically, he just came out very strong with a series of tracks and pamphlets against the Roman Catholic Church.

And on December 10th, 1520, the students there in Wittenberg lit a bonfire before the Elster Gate there in the city of Wittenberg. And they fed the work of these papal writers against Luther, and they threw in the papal bull.

And this is what Luther said when they threw in the papal bull and burning these things in the city of Wittenberg. He said, listen, because you have corrupted God's truth, may God destroy you in this fire.

That's what he said to the Pope. Now listen, are you getting a little bit of the feel for Martin Luther and his personality? Luther was the right man at the right time. He was the kind of man that if you backed him into a corner, he became even more dangerous.

Because he was absolutely stubborn, sometimes sinfully stubborn, but he was just so filled with determination and courage that he said, I'm going to see this through to the end. And so when the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church kept pushing against Luther, they were pushing against the wrong guy in this sense, because he just pushed back even harder and harder.

And in this day, the way that he would denounce the Pope and sort of send the Pope to hell, it was sort of characteristic of the way that they would speak back then, but it also was characteristic of Luther and the very bold and the very plain way that he would speak.

Let me put it to you this way. Martin Luther could not get along in the church today. He just couldn't. People would think that he was too rude, too crude, and he would be too rude and crude for our own day, but in his own day, he was pushing the envelope but not going beyond it.

I mean, Luther used to say things like this. You know, if I fart in Wittenberg, the Pope smells it in Rome. I mean, that's the way he would talk. He was just sort of, you know, this. He wasn't that way in his sermons, right?