56 - Luther: Relics and Indulgences

I believe in our study of church history that we had gotten to the point where we were looking at Luther as a teacher.

We had made reference to his zeal as a monk, and we were talking a bit about the excessive amount of time that Luther would spend in the confessional, that obviously the sacramental system of Rome was not giving him peace.

And we introduced John Staupitz, his father confessor, an elderly man who directed him toward teaching.

If you have taken the time or had the opportunity to take the time to look at either of the

Luther movies I have referred you to, Staupitz was well represented in both of those films.

And you can see the important role that he had in Luther's life and in the

Martin Luther heretic scene when Luther cries out, what shall

I do? He says, get more sleep, eat more food, and learn about God, was his suggestion.

And as a part of learning about God, he sent Luther on the academic track.

And so he begins teaching at, well had we, actually let me back up a second,

I'm pretty certain that we talked about the deep disappointment on Luther's part in his going to Rome, correct?

How that had had an impact on him. I just want to make sure I don't want to skip over things in the process.

Remember that he saw the Pope riding through the streets in armor. I don't remember mentioning, though, the

Italian priests. One of the things, yeah, okay, this is,

I need to make sure this is in the record, shall we say. One of the things that Luther specifically narrates in his 1510 trip to Rome was the attitude of the

Italian priests toward visitors and the love of money, wine, and women that was prevalent amongst the priesthood in Rome.

And one of the stories he tells is that you would have these buildings in Rome that had multiple altars around the outside of the room.

And so a priest could, for a small amount of money, rent an altar to say mass.

And so what you would do is if someone wanted to have a mass said for a loved one who was sick or had perished, was in purgatory, whatever, you would pay the priest and they would go in and say mass for your loved one.

And you know, the idea is, though it wasn't really theology proper, the idea is that a mass said in Rome is, you know, a little bit better than a mass said someplace else.

You know, maybe God's attention's a little bit more focused on Rome than other places. And this is really common in all sorts of religions, obviously.

You can look at Islam and there are certain cities where things are, you know, prayers are heard a little bit better there and that kind of thing.

And even in Mormonism, you know, you could go out to the temple in Mesa and get married in that temple.

It's a pretty big temple. It's been around a long time. But you know, if you get married out in the new temple out on Happy Valley Road, no,

Pinnacle Peak Road, out in the North Valley, it's really tiny. It's one of the smallest

LDS temples in the world. And it's sort of like, yeah, you got married in the temple, but you know,

I mean, if you're really, really important, you get married in Salt Lake. You know,

I mean, the Salt Lake Temple, the only people who get to go in the Salt Lake Temple are the upper echelon.

In fact, if you're not aware of this, the only temple in the United States where they still use actors to act out all the scenes in the endowment ceremonies is in Salt Lake, Airplane Salt.

It's a film video. So it's special to get to go through the Salt Lake Temple.

Well, anyways, that's what's going on in Rome. And so Luther observed this and as a priest, he'd go into these places and he recognized that what the priests were doing there in Rome is they would take this money and they would go in.

And in some cases, they were just flying through the mass, skipping major portions of it.

And in some instances, we're not even doing it in Latin, knowing that the person for whom they're doing this couldn't understand

Latin anyways, was a barbarian, quote unquote. They would just mumble nonsense and just so they could do the most number of masses per day and get the most money.

And he's watching this, he's seeing this, he's observing this. And of course, you also have the famous set of stairs there in Rome, still there today.

Who was it? An acquaintance of mine a couple years ago went to this set of stairs.

It's supposed to be the stairs that Jesus climbed up to, if I recall, Pilate's place before the crucifixion or something like that.

Again, stuff like that can be transported by angels. So it's just somehow it ended up in Rome.

And what you would do is you would, even to this day, you climb this set of stairs on your knees, saying particular prayers at each step to earn indulgences.

And this friend of mine decided he was going to go up those stairs. I think it costs money to do it.

And he was sort of instead of just doing it knee by knee was sort of army crawling type thing.

And this little lay down at the bottom just ripped into him in Italian. And so he had to slow down a little bit.

But I forget who it was. It was someone associated with or might have even been Dan Wallace.

I'm not sure. But anyway, so it's still there and you can still do this.

And and Luther, I think, in one of the movies is shown doing this. And then when he stands up at the top, he's like, did

I just really accomplish something? I mean, honestly, could God's justice be satisfied by my climbing these stairs on my knees?

You know, this type of thing. So that 1510 trip was was very, very important.

So he receives his doctorate October 19, 1512.

And begins teaching at Wittenberg in 1513. And he began by lecturing through the

Psalter. Could have done that on Wednesday nights here. And in April of 1515, he began lecturing on Romans on Romans.

And he finished that series in September of 1516. So that's a fairly in -depth, lengthy series, to be certain.

I remember I got in trouble at a certain large

Southern Baptist church that some of you are familiar with as I am. I got in trouble years and years ago. I was teaching in a singles class, actually.

It wasn't the married class then. I forgot which one it was. Anyways, I was teaching. And you used what was called a quarterly.

And I was really excited when I got the quarterly for the next quarter because we were going through Romans.

I'm like, yes. And then I started looking at it and I'm going, it covered

Romans 9, 10 and 11 in a single lesson. A single lesson.

And if you're the master teacher, you had like 20 minutes. So you're supposed to cover chapters 9, 10, 11 in 20 minutes.

And if I recall, what I did is I sort of squished some others and I provided a little bit more time to try to do something meaningful in that section rather than just simply, you know, jumping over it.

Well, that's when I got called into the Minister of Education's office.

And I'm not making this up. I was, and I loved the guy. He was a wonderful guy.

But this was the mindset. He says, Jim, he says, you need to understand that our philosophy here is that when you teach

Sunday school, you teach it with the idea that everyone sitting in front of you, this is the first time they've ever been to a

Sunday school. So you can't, you can't build on what you did last week.

You can't, no, you just absolute bottom shelf all the time.

And I was just like, then why are we studying Romans? I mean, that's a year. So anyways,

Romans has had a way of having huge impact over the centuries.

And so April to September, April of 1515 to September of 1516, he is in Romans.

And on October 27th of 1516, he begins to lecture on Galatians.

And that tells you a little something. When you go straight from Romans to Galatians, maybe there's a common theme that has captured your attention.

And of course, the common theme there is justification. Now, this is a controversial topic, item here.

I was taught in seminary. And I have, I, the more

I obviously did a lot of study of Luther before the trip last year to various places in Luther's life in Deutschland.

And I didn't find anything that contradicted this, but one of the people that was also speaking on the trip had a very different perspective than me on this.

We sort of had a little give and take. But I was taught that somewhere in this time period, in the studying of Romans and Galatians, so between 1515 and 1517,

Luther was converted and found freedom from his prison in Romans 117, that text that Luther finally comes to understand that God's righteousness, which he had feared so deeply,

God's righteousness, which was so repulsive to him in the sense that he is a sinner. Could only see

God's righteousness as the grounds of his own condemnation. He comes to understand that God graciously in Jesus Christ provides his righteousness by faith, the great exchange, our sins imputed to Christ, his righteousness imputed to us.

And so somewhere between 1515 and 1517,

Luther comes to understand this and receives that freedom from the bondage to the constant cycle of sacraments.

And that doesn't mean that he's figured it all out at that point in time.

That's the starting place. When you're coming out of a system of tradition and error, it is very rare, extremely rare, that you just in one day, poof, oh,

I see it all. Because you start seeing the interconnectedness of truth and it's like a flower opening to you, but it takes time.

A lot of people, you know, sort of would rather wait until Luther's railing at the

Pope as the Antichrist in 1519 to say, ah, that's when he is converted.

Such is, I think, not a wise way to approach the subject.

One of the key issues that, one of the rays of light, we might call it, was again provided by Erasmus's new instrument, that first edition of the

Latin -Greek diglot that we mentioned when we talked about Erasmus, which first came out in 1516.

And it was in comparing the Latin and its command, punitentium agitate, due penance, which of course in medieval

Catholicism was a command to voraciously engage in the penitential system.

And so you were given penances by your confessor and the fervor and sincerity with which you pursued the doing of those penances was directly related to the general benefit that they would give.

And any imperfection in your performing of these penances leaves temporal punishments upon your soul, which you will have to suffer for in purgatory.

And so it was, here was a classic example of where a biblical command had morphed into something very different than its original, partly because of tradition and partly because of language.

And in looking at the Latin, punitentium agitate, he looks across the page and he looks at the

Greek and its metanoia. And he looks up that word, meta, and noia, noia, oh, it has to do with thinking, it has to do with thought, it has to do with the mind, with the attitude.

And you know, you've heard of metamorphosis and things like that. So it is a change of mind and attitude, a change of direction.

And so when John the Baptist says, repent, it involves a fundamental change of attitude toward the activities and attitude that you have towards sin.

It is a turning away from one and going the opposite direction, a change of mind.

But it's not doing penance. You may, there may be things that you feel you need to do.

If I'm going to repent of this properly, then there are things I need to do. But that's the result of the repentance, not the nature of the repentance.

And so it is that kind of ray of light that he begins to, gives him the ability to examine the traditions that had bound him so deeply in that still very medieval form of Catholicism that he had inherited.

Now, on the subject of indulgences, because this is the next big thing, until 1517,

Saxony itself had been spared the indulgence sellers. Frederick had kept them out, not so much because of a dislike on the part of indulgences on his part.

No, Frederick was a huge collector of relics. And the

Castle Church of Wittenberg, where I had the bucket list opportunity last year of preaching from the high pulpit right above Luther's grave there in Wittenberg, contained an entire, you know, hallways and hallways of relics.

And I know I had this saved somewhere on this beast somewhere else, but I've saved it again, and I'll probably lose it again in the future.

That was the one advantage of our old technology. There wasn't so much space on it, you could lose anything.

It could only contain so much. So it was pretty easy to find stuff. Now that you've got gigs and gigs and gigs, you can save documents.

And if you don't remember what in the world you called it, and can't find the proper keyword to search for it, it just disappears, gone.

And you get to find everything again. I would like to read for you.

And I may have actually read some of this to you before, but I think this is the appropriate place.

And since this is being recorded, some people may not listen to the entire church history series and therefore miss some of this before.

But there at the castle church, there was an extensive collection of relics.

And here is just an excerpt from the official catalog. This is the official catalog of the relics that were found in Wittenberg.

Three pieces of the city where the Virgin Mary was born. One piece of a yarn which she spun.

One piece of the house where she lived at the age of 14. Two pieces of the city of Mount Zion where Mary lived.

Two pieces of the room where Mary was greeted by the angel. Five particles of the milk of the

Virgin Mary. One piece of the tree where Mary nursed the

Lord near the garden of balsam. Look, you had to become rather creative eventually.

I mean, if all you had were pieces of the cross and nails, there's only so much you can do with that.

So I wouldn't have even thought of 80 % of these. I never would have. Four pieces of the hair of Mary.

Three pieces of the shirt of Mary. Three pieces of one robe of Mary. Eight pieces of other robes of Mary.

Four pieces of the belt of Mary. Seven pieces of the veil of Mary. Two pieces of the veil of Mary which was sprinkled with the blood of Christ under the cross.

One piece of the city where Mary died. One piece of the wax candle given to Our Lady when she died.

Six pieces of the grave of Mary. Two pieces of the earth of the grave of Mary. What's the difference? I don't know.

One piece of the wax... One piece of the place where Mary ascended into heaven.

A silver picture of the little baby Jesus. Now, you think that was a

Polaroid? Or was it 640 by 480 digital? Or exactly, you know, 110.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, 110. Four pieces of the city where the Lord Jesus was born.

One piece of the diaper in which he was wrapped. 13, 13 pieces of the manger of Jesus.

One piece of the cradle. Two pieces of the hay. That'd be doing real well after almost 2 ,000, 1 ,500 years.

One piece of the straw on which the Lord lay when he was born. One piece of the gold.

And of the myrrh which the three kings offered unto the Lord. One piece of the city where the

Lord Jesus was circumcised. Four pieces of the mountain on which the Lord Jesus fasted.

Two pieces of the city where Christ preached the Lord's prayer. One piece of the stone on which

Jesus stood while weeping over Jerusalem. One piece of the stone from which Christ got on the donkey. Who would have thought of that?

Would any of it... I would have, no. Two pieces of the ground where the Lord Christ was arrested.

Five pieces of the table on which the Lord Christ held the Last Supper with his disciples. One piece of the bread of which

Christ ate with his disciples during the Last Supper. Now that's interesting. You know what's interesting about that one to me?

In this wouldn't have necessarily... It's around this time. But according to modern

Roman Catholic theology, Jesus transubstantiated that bread. So that shouldn't be sitting out on a table.

That should be in a monstrance or a pix because it's the body of Jesus. So they hadn't quite gotten to that point yet.

One piece of the land which was bought for the 30 pieces of silver for which Christ was betrayed.

One piece of the Holy Land. Well, that one might be real. I mean, that's not all that difficult to do.

Three pieces of stone with the Lord's sweated blood. One piece of the ground with the Lord's sweated blood. One piece of the stone sprinkled with the blood of Christ.

Three pieces of the Mount of Olives and of the rod of Aaron. Two pieces of the rod of Moses.

One piece of the burning bush which Moses saw. They had to keep that separate lest it light everything else up in the room.

So that was a problem. One piece of an object sprinkled with the blood of Christ.

Eleven pieces of Mount Calvary. Two pieces of the Mount of Olives. One piece of the cloth with which the

Lord wiped his disciples feet. One piece of the robe of Christ. One piece of the seamless robe of Christ. One piece of the robe of Christ.

One piece of his purple robe. Two pieces of the cloth which Saint Veronica received from the Lord. Any of you see

Passion of the Christ? See the film Passion of the Christ? You can admit it in here. It's okay. I had to see it.

If you did, there is a point where Jesus is taking the cross to Calvary and he's given a cloth by a woman to wipe his face.

And when he does, somehow it ends up with this perfect image of his face. That's Saint Veronica. And that's one of the relics.

And so this is the two pieces of cloth which

Saint Veronica received from the Lord. Three pieces of the white robe in which the Lord was ridiculed by Herod.

Three pieces of the cloth with which our Lord's holy eyes were blindfolded. One piece of the beard of the

Lord Jesus. One piece of the wax of the candles which touched the sedorium of Christ.

One piece of the wedge with which the cross of Christ was held. Again, I wouldn't have thought of that.

Three pieces of the stone on which the cross stood. Three pieces of the place where the cross of Christ was found.

Twelve pieces of the column where the Lord Christ was scourged and flogged. Now these were in different aisles.

So like here's the eighth aisle. So in the eighth aisle, and you'd get a certain amount of indulgences for each aisle that you would go down.

Not just walk down, but say prayers in front of each of the relics. One piece of the rope with which Jesus was tied.

Three pieces of the rod with which the Lord Jesus was scourged. Three pieces of the whip with which the Lord Jesus was flogged.

One piece of the stone upon which the Lord Jesus sat when he was crowned. One piece of the stone which was crushed while the

Lord carried the cross. One piece of the sponge with which the Lord was given vinegar and gall.

Two pieces of the crown of the Lord Jesus. Eight complete thorns of the crown of the

Lord Jesus. One large piece of one nail which was driven through the hands or feet of the Lord Jesus. At least they left that as an option.

A thorn which wounded the holy head Lord Jesus. One piece of the holy cross. Three pieces of the holy cross.

Three pieces of the three kinds of wood of the cross of Christ. That was probably a Trinitarian thing,

I would imagine. A particularly large piece from the holy cross. 25 pieces of the holy cross.

One piece of the stone which lay on the grave of Christ. 22 pieces of the grave of Christ. One piece of the stone from which

Christ sent into heaven. A casket lined with silver in which are found 1 ,678 pieces.

76 pieces of holy remains. Bones from holy places which on account of faded writing can no longer be read and identified.

All in all, 5 ,005 pieces. An indulgence of 100 days for each piece.

Wow. There are eight halls and each hall has an indulgence of 101 days in addition.

So that's like the bonus thing. You know, if you order extra, you get, you know, the bonus thing. Blessed are those who participate therein.

Yes, sir. The cloth of Saint Veronica. How does that or does it even relate to the

Shroud of Turin? No, it's a different thing. Yeah, yeah. Yes, sir.

What priest? Then or now?

Then or now? Well, I thought you had watched

Martin Luther Heretic. Because that's the, that's, that's one of the exact scenes was.

Well, what he did, well, what, what, what was his name? Well, it was a peer.

I'm trying to remember. The guy's name is escaping me, unfortunately. It's, I'm sorry.

He ends up becoming an Anabaptist. Just a second, just a second.

It's, this is bothering me. Okay, Zwickau Prophets.

Karlstadt, Andreas Karlstadt. The guy who answers the question in a rather odd fashion there while looking at the relics is

Andreas Karlstadt. And he will eventually have a strong division with Luther and they'll never be healed.

Even though they meet later on in life, it just goes right back at it. And Karlstadt's eventually kicked out of Lutheran lands and it's a sad story.

But anyway, the way that Karlstadt answers, you know, he answers in the official church thing.

And Luther's, of course, getting the point of, does this really do anything? The official position of the church was that, yes, it does.

And it wasn't just a political control type thing. I mean, these people were very strong supernaturalists.

And so if you look at, that's why I liked, I think both films showed the traveling players and the passion plays and the punishment plays and the judgment plays that they would do.

And if you've got peasants giving up the money they need to eat to buy indulgences, yeah, they think it's true.

Yeah, they think it's true. The priests aren't in any much, the real priests that lived amongst the people weren't in any much better shape than the people themselves were.

So if they didn't think it was real, they would have found a way around taking that money from the peasants for it.

So no, they believed it was real. What was the first question?

I forgot what it was. Oh, well, no. Well, the

Latin still says, punitentia magata. So it's certainly interpreted that way.

But Roman Catholic biblical scholarship recognizes, at least on a scholastic level, what metanoia means.

So there are the indulgences. There are the relics in the castle church. But that's probably why there had been no indulgence preachers in Saxony, is

Frederick didn't want competition. I mean, he spent a lot of money to get that collection of relics.

And you had to pay to go through. So you don't want somebody else come along and selling outside of the church what you're offering inside of the church.

So up to 1517, that didn't happen. However, in 1517,

Johann Tetzel, T -E -T -Z -E -L, Tetzel, a

Dominican, began preaching indulgences in the area under the authority of Albrecht, the

Archbishop of Mainz. Now, I think I've already mentioned to you the reason why this took place was because of the fact that Albrecht had had to take out an equivalent of modern money, an over -million -dollar loan from a

German banking family to buy the archbishopric.

He had to do that because he already had too many positions of authority.

It was against the rules of the church. So the only way to get a waiver, in essence, was to spend big bucks.

Well, once he got it, then he had to find means of enhancing the income of the church in his area.

So he's got the money to repay his loans. And so he allows this

Dominican by the name of Johann Tetzel to begin to preach indulgences.

And how many of you have ever seen this? I bet just a couple of you have. Ah, Josh, very good.

My first book, 1990, was it? January 90, yeah.

So yeah, 1990. It's cracking. It's got out of the pastor's office.

It do be old, and the pages are starting to get... Anyway, here is the text of one of Tetzel's indulgences.

Okay. May our Lord Jesus Christ have pity on thee, blank name, and absolve thee by the merits of his most holy passion.

And I, in virtue of the apostolical power that has been confided in me, absolve thee from all ecclesiastical censures, judgments, and penalties which thou mayest have committed, however great and enormous they may be.

And for whatsoever cause were they even reserved for our most holy father, the Pope, and for the apostolic seat.

So I mean, this is a big claim. You know, even if the Pope had condemned you, this indulgence could free you from that condemnation.

I blot out all the stains of inability and all marks of infamy that thou mayest have drawn upon thyself on this occasion.

I remit the penalties that thou shouldst have endured in purgatory. I restore thee anew to participation in the sacraments of the church.

I incorporate thee afresh in the communion of saints and reestablish thee in the purity and innocence which thou hadst at thy baptism.

So that in the hour of death, the gate by which sinners enter the place of torments and punishment shall be closed against thee.

And on the contrary, the gate leading to the paradise of joy shall be open. And if thou shouldst not die for long years, this grace will remain unalterable until thy last hour shall arrive.

In the name of the Father, Son, Holy Ghost, Amen. Friar John Tetzel Commissary has signed this with his own hand.

It is reported, at least by Luther, that when

Tetzel would come into town, you know, there would be a whole procession of people.

And the text of an indulgence would be carried in front of him, nailed to a cross.

Nailed to a cross. Yes, ma 'am. Well, of course they knew the gospel.

Well, I think that's what. This is. This is what.

You are vastly underestimating the power of tradition and the reality that things develop slowly.

But unfortunately, for example, when we talked about John Wycliffe, we pointed out that Wycliffe came to the conclusion by study that the doctrine of transubstantiation was a relatively new thing.

He was able to, by study, realize that it had been dogmatized in 1215. Ninety -nine percent of the people in Europe in that day, in at the end of the 14th century, same contemporaneously with Wycliffe, because of anachronism, thinking that things had always been the way they were now.

And the church, of course, always presents its teachings as if this is what we've always believed. Ninety -nine percent of the people believe everyone's always believed that.

Everyone's always believed in transubstantiation. Everyone's always believed in indulgences. And so the very thought of going, is a part of your saying,

I'm wiser than every other Christians come before me. Don't underestimate that. It's real easy for us in our modern situation to look back and go, well, they should have seen this.

They should have seen that. It's so clear to us. It wasn't clear to them. It wasn't clear to them.

But we're reading the same text. Yeah, but that's why you've got to very, very carefully look for the lenses that you are applying to the reading of that text.

And we have them too. We have them too. That's why doing serious exegesis of the text is so important.

That's why I still very strongly encourage the learning of the original languages.

Because it's one of the greatest tools that you can have to identify the lenses that exist between the text and yourself.

So anyway, no, they certainly had the text in front of them.

But when you've had it reinterpreted in the light of tradition, generation after generation after generation, it's real easy for us to say,

I would have been with Luther. I don't know that I would have been with Luther. That's a pretty scary thing to do. And Luther himself, as we're going to see before he appears before Charles V, the big question had been asked him over and over again, what makes you right and everybody else wrong?

You're arrogant. Who do you think you are? Has weight. Has weight.

So anyway, there's the text of the indulgence.

It was rumored and indeed reported by Luther himself in a letter to Albrecht that Tetzel went so far as to claim that his indulgence letter could bring a man forgiveness for having slept with the

Virgin Mary. One story that seems to have solid historical ground speaks of a

German noble asking Tetzel if it was possible to buy an indulgence for a sin that was yet to be committed.

Now, remember, the indulgences were sold on the basis of your social status.

So a nobleman, this is a big sale. OK, the hoi polloi in the field, you know, the peasants didn't have to give much.

But a nobleman, that's going to increase his take.

So his answer may have been influenced by the hope for financial gain.

Tetzel answered that it was as long as payment was made immediately. Forthwith, the man purchased the indulgence.

When Tetzel left town, the man laid in wait with his own entourage of men and ambushed him, beating him severely and taking all his money.

Sending him on his way with the comment that this was the sin that he had been contemplating and for which he had purchased the indulgence.

When Tetzel complained to Duke George, he was furious until he heard the whole story. He refused to punish the nobleman in light of the fact he still had the indulgence letter.

Now, there are a lot of stories from this time period.

And we need to be careful. But given the anti -Italian, pro -nationalist

German, remember the feelings of nationalism were on the rise at this point in time, feelings that were going on, this is not out of the historical realm of possibility at all in light of what was going on.

So, obviously, Tetzel's teachings contradicted that which Luther was discovering from the pages of the

Bible itself. When he began to understand what Tetzel was preaching and saw how it was affecting the parishioners in his own parish, he became incensed.

There is a story told, again, questionable, but there's a story told that Luther had found one of his parishioners, one of the people from Wittenberg in a ditch, drunk on the

Lord's Day. And when he began to rebuke him for his drunkenness, the man produced an indulgence letter.

And this was part of Luther's anger at this whole thing.

Now, you need to understand, and I know I mentioned this last year, but let me mention it again.

There are all sorts of beautiful pictures that were spread all over Germany and even here in the

United States last year, prior to October, of Luther standing with a hammer in his hand and pointing at this nicely, looks like even printed document, up on the door.

And everyone's like... And there's so many people, I just lost count.

This was Luther protesting, and that's where Protestant comes from. No, it's not. Protestants could come along for nearly over a decade after this.

And it's a legal term in the Holy Roman Empire about the minority of electors protesting against the action of the majority electors.

We'll get to that later on. But it has nothing to do with Luther at the Castle Church door. Secondly, when

I was a kid and I heard about this event, I thought there was probably a church service going on inside, and the angry guy comes up outside and bang, bang, bang.

We would hear that. Despite the wonderful whoopee -whoopee doors, we would hear someone banging away on the front door of the church and nailing something up there.

And that this document were all the errors of the

Roman Catholic Church. Baloney. It's all baloney. It may look good, but that's not what happened.

I would recommend to you sometime, you don't have to read all of them, but it doesn't take forever, read the 95

Theses. The 95 Theses are 95 propositions for academic debate that Luther is challenging other universities to engage in.

This was a sporting match. They didn't have what we call soccer, what they call football back then.

And so the only way that universities competed with one another was academic debate.

And this was the guy at the AA school challenging the 5A schools, come take me on.

And this is what we'll debate. And so he wrote up 95 debate propositions.

As a faithful son of the church, he does not view himself as a quote -unquote

Protestant. That word would have had no meaning whatsoever to him. None whatsoever. He has started to see what the problem is, but the idea of a

Reformation, of a Lutheran church, any of that stuff, farthest from his mind it could possibly be.

Farthest from his mind it could possibly be. Just never even contemplated it. So we'll pick up with the 95

Theses. Maybe I'll pull some of them up next week and we can take a look at them, at some of them.

But just, I hate to ruin what you thought from those pictures.

But man, I'm going to tell you, even though it's been 500 years, there's still a lot of fiction about what was actually going on there.

But we'll pick up with the 95 Theses, what they contain, what they're about, Lord willing, next week.

Let's close. Father, once again, we thank you for the extension of your grace and mercy to us and that we have the freedom to gather together this day in peace and comfort.

We ask that we would be better students of your work in this world, better servants of yours, and Lord that you would be with us as we go in to worship you now, we pray in Christ's name.