Eisleben, Saxony, 1483: a baby boy is born to a poor coal miner. Who could have known
that thirty-four years later, on Halloween night, he would change world history? This boy
would choose a different vocation than that of his father, for somehow poverty didn’t
attract him. However, this vocation would force his life down a path where he would
endure beatings, a Diet of Worms, a fiery death, and an encounter with the devil himself.
Very long ago, a once respected profession - he decided to become a lawyer. In 1501 he
entered the University of Erfurt and excelled in nearly four years of classes. But his life
would be changed forever when he had nearly finished his schooling. An event started
him on a path that would lead to a passion he would pursue…until he died.
A violent storm caught him by surprise as he walked across campus. As thunder roared
and lightning struck all around him, he fell on his face in fear of death. He cried out
instinctively to Saint Anne, the patron saint of coal miners. "Saint Anne! If you save me
from the lightning I will become a monk." The storm passed, requiring this man of his
word to withdraw from law school and enter a monastery. So in 1505 he entered an
Augustinian monastery. Again he excelled in his classes, obtaining a Doctorate of
Theology within a few years and being appointed Professor of Theology in the fall of
1508. But all was not well. A dark cloud lingered over him. He had no peace within. His
unrest grew proportionally with his knowledge in theology.
He continued his search, eventually becoming a priest, hoping this path would lead to the
abiding peace he longed for. He ached within for the assurance of salvation. "How can a
man find favor with God?" he repeatedly wrote in his diary. Traditional medieval church
behavior led him to a life of severe penance but all the outward acts could not remove
his guilt. This man faced the facts. He was separated from God. Rather than hiding from
reality, he fought for justification. He said, "I tormented myself to death to make peace
with God, but I was in darkness and found peace not." To punish his flesh and free
himself from guilt he fasted for two weeks at a time, slept outside without blankets in
below freezing temperatures and beat his body until it was bruised and bleeding. He went
to confession so often the abbot finally told him, "Either go out and commit a sin worth
confessing or stop coming here so often!"
In 1509 he set out on foot to cross the Alps on a pilgrimage to Rome. There he felt he
would find the peace he had been longing for - or die trying. Descending the mountains,
the Grim Reaper seemed his only companion. Illness and high fever pushed him toward
the jaws of death. But he had other unseen companionship as he somehow found his
way to a monastery near the base of the mountains. The monks spared him from this
death not yet appointed, and the second event that would lead him to his lifelong passion
took place. The vicar-general of his order, Johann Von Staupitz, counseled him saying,
"You need to read the Book of Habakkuk." He did.
Habakkuk 2:4 - "The just shall live by His faith." He couldn't get it out of his mind. "The
just shall live by His faith." Recovering from his illness, he left the monastery and went in
1510 to the Church of St. John's Lateran, a cathedral in Rome. There a certain staircase
was, and is, said to be from Pilate's judgment hall. The stairs have four different
divisions. The inner two have a very mystical history to them…they are not walked upon.
The outer two are used…but not just for walking. The pope promised upon them an
indulgence. To receive the indulgence, a special pardon from sin based on human effort,
pilgrims ascend the steps on their knees saying prayers and performing special rituals. I
have seen the staircase. It must hurt them.
During these rituals Habakkuk 2:4 and now Romans 1:17 resonated in his mind: "The
just shall live by His faith”…by God given faith, not painful, man-made rituals. One day
during his painful ascent the verses resonated within him until he quit the rituals, leapt to
his feet and took-off for the University of Wittenberg. At the University he would explore
the meaning of the revolutionary concept of "justification by faith." Now he was fully
established on the path that had begun with thunder and lightning nearly a decade
before.
During this period in his life he would have at least two supernatural encounters. The first
occurred in the Augustinian Tower about 1516 and was much more pleasant than the
second. This encounter would answer his lifelong question. Though an impeccable
monk, he still wrestled with the fact that he stood as a sinner before God. Justice had to
be served. "Night and day I pondered the Scriptures until I saw the connection between
the justice of God and justification by faith. Then I grasped that the justice of God is His
own righteousness imputed to us. Yet through grace and mercy God justifies us by faith.
Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into
paradise.” He entered into abiding peace. Yet dark clouds of another kind soon formed
on the horizon.
Immersed in true peace, he wrote many books, commentaries and hymns that remain
classics today. His translation of the entire Bible into German stands as a literary
benchmark in the Germanic tongue. While translating manuscripts one day he felt an
awful and powerful and very unwelcome presence. Turning around he faced Satan
himself. He was so angered by the intrusion that he threw his inkbottle at the devil. The
bottle broke against the wall and left a stain you can still see today.
Not only Satan was after him. Pope Leo X had called for his fiery death and the Emperor
had put him under the Ban of the Empire. But Frederick the "Wise", Elector of Saxony,
took him into hiding in the Wartburg Castle. This is where he was translating the
Scriptures when Satan approached him. Why call for his fiery death? Why the Ban of the
Empire? And why was Satan attempting to do what the Pope and Emperor couldn’t? In
1521, church leadership excommunicated him as a heretic at the Diet of Worms (a papal
council held in the city of Worms, Germany). His excommunication forced him into
confinement where all he did was write. This is where the Pope, the Emperor, and Satan
stood in agreement. They violently opposed his writing about abiding peace and
justification by faith alone. Translating the Scriptures so the common man could read
them for himself was unthinkable.
The path he began in a lightning storm some 13 years earlier led to his excommunication
as a heretic because of its climax on October 31, 1517. It was this Halloween that Martin
Luther drove his stake into the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany.
Attached to it was his famous 95 Theses. His 95 Theses attacked the State
(Institutionalized) Church for its non-biblical and apocryphal traditions – especially the
selling of salvation. Thus began what we know today as the Reformation, and the
Protestant church – arguably the most important event of the second millennium.
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