Martin Luther's Spark and an Explosion that Changed the World

October 31st is the day that we remember as the beginning of the Reformation — the day 500 years ago that the corruptions of the Church of that day began to be exposed for all to see. 

Lucas Cranach's painting of Martin Luther

Traditionally, October 31 was the day that Martin Luther “nailed his 95 theses to the door” of the Castle Church in Wittenburg, Germany. 

It was the beginning of a powerful change that restored to Christendom Jesus’ message of faith as the pathway to God, rather than the stony and impossibly uncertain path of works. (Romans 1:17) 

Eric Metaxes puts it this way, “the reason the story of Luther is unlike any other, is that he felt that after tremendous and agonized searching he finally—by God’s grace—had found that thing for which every human since Eden had pined. He had found the hermeneutical lever with which the whole world could be raised to the height of heaven. This had been the principal problem of all humanity—how to bridge the infinite abyss between imperfect mankind and a perfect God, between earth and heaven, between death and life.” (Martin Luther: The Man Who Rediscovered God and Changed the World) 

The reformation was many things, not just a few changes in how we are the Church. Metaxes again: “the quintessentially modern idea of the individual—and of one’s personal responsibility before one’s self and God rather than before any institution, whether church or state—was as unthinkable before Luther as is color in a world of black and white; and the similarly modern idea of “the people,” along with the democratic impulse that proceeds from it, was created—or at least given a voice—by Luther too. And the more recent ideas of pluralism, religious liberty, and self-government all entered history through the door that Luther opened to the future in which we now live.” 

It is safe to say that the reformation made possible the democracies of the West, with their vast advances in civilization. Freedom of religion, and even the freedom from religion, that we experience in the West today springs from the changes sparked in those momentous days half a millennium ago. 

And it’s not over. The recent explosion of the Gospel across the earth, the rising again of apostles, miracles and prophecy, and a great growth in love in the Church are a few of the signs of world-changing seasonal shifts happening in our day. 

The best is yet to come!