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GYC Southeast

Great in God's Sight Season 3

Rhonda Grakov

Martin Luther: Captive Conscience

Hello and welcome to great in God's sight the podcast that explores underrated heroes This is season 3 and we're so glad you've joined us for this episode entitled Martin Luther captive conscience Please be sure to subscribe and check out the terrific artwork that goes along with today's story on our website TheGreatPodcast.org.

The amber glow of a roaring bonfire illuminated the crowd of young faces who had gathered around it on a chill December day.

The warmth from the fire enticed them to move closer, Yet it was not the primary attraction.

All eyes were on the animated figure of a local university professor who had led the procession of students outside town to build the bonfire.

Now he was hurling books into the flames.

Most were of nominal interest, but the burning of 1 document would have long-lasting effects.

Stamped with the Pope's official seal and signature, the imperious document consigned the professor and his brand of Christianity to hell and called for others to excoriate him as well.

When Martin Luther publicly burned the papal bull of excommunication in December of 1520, it was not his first controversial action.

In fact, his decision to nail 95 theses to the door of Wittenberg Castle Church 3 years before had led to the cascade of events that had prompted Pope Leo X to excommunicate him from the Roman Catholic Church.

In the bull, 41 of Luther's 95 theses were labeled heretical or scandalous or false or offensive to pious ears or seductive of simple minds or repugnant to Catholic truth.

The acrid language the document contained did not stop Luther from fearlessly casting it into the fire, atop works by medieval theologians and copies of canon law.

In defiance, Luther declared, They have burned my books, I burn theirs.

Perhaps he and his students didn't fully appreciate the magnitude of the event that transpired that chill December day, but his feisty decision to burn the papal bull would deepen his divide with the papacy and fan the flames of the Reformation.

Time would come to value Luther's boldness.

It remains difficult to take a fresh look at Martin Luther's life and contributions.

More books have been written about him than any other individual in the Church except for Jesus himself.

The intrepid monk has been approached from every angle imaginable, yet he remains an intriguing figure.

His father was a copper miner and severe disciplinarian who was ambitious for his son to become a lawyer.

With Martin's talent for academic excellence, his future seemed to be lining up nicely with his father's plans until a thunderstorm changed it all.

While traveling home from school, a lightning strike nearby left him desperate and deeply panicked.

In terror, he cried out to the patron saint of minors, Saint Anne, save me, and I will become a monk.

Though his promise was an impulsive 1, he would make good his vow, and so, in a moment, the trajectory of his life was forever altered, while priming him for the yet unknown future.

Martin Luther threw himself into monastic life with all severity and rigor.

I kept the rule so strictly, he recalled years later, that I may say that if ever a monk got to heaven by his sheer monkery, it was I.

If I had kept on any longer, I should have killed myself with vigils, prayers, reading, and other work." Above all, he was painfully aware of his condition as a miserable and doomed sinner.

Here he visited the Scala Sancta, or Holy Stairs.

These were purported to be the steps Jesus ascended to stand before Pontius Pilate.

On his knees, Luther kissed each step and recited the Lord's prayer, Kiss, recite, and climb, kiss, recite, and climb, for twenty-eight steps.

While in Rome, His dedication to the life of the ideal monk confronted him with a nasty surprise.

He was shocked and acutely troubled by the self-indulgent, opulent lives of the local clergymen.

Priests and monks alike lived in open scandal and were wholly devoid of the piety he had expected of them.

What Martin Luther saw in the so-called Eternal City would gnaw at his conscience for years.

Luther also continued to struggle with understanding how a sinful monk could be saved in spite of himself.

A breakthrough finally came in 1515 while he was carefully studying Paul's epistle to the Romans.

For in it, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, the just shall live by faith.

All his vigils, fasting, and self-torture now appeared meaningless, as he realized they would never satisfy the void in his heart.

Night and day I pondered, Luther later recalled, until I saw the connection between the justice of God and the statement that the just shall live by his faith.

Then I grasped that the justice of God is that righteousness by which God justifies us through faith.

Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise." Luther's liberating paradigm shift resulted in his replacing works with faith in Jesus in the process of salvation, but it also left him placing greater and greater value on the Scriptures.

His conscience became captive to the Word of God instead of his sins.

Luther's convictions were soon put to the test.

A Dominican friar named Johann Tetzel wove his way throughout much of Germany on a mission to raise funds for the construction of St.

With the Pope's blessing, Tetzel hawked indulgences, documents granting the alleged forgiveness of sins, general or specific, of persons dead or living.

The wily Tetzel even used a little jingle to market his product.

When the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs.

How dared Tetzel twist and abuse the religion of Christ to steal from God's sheep?

He responded with his now well-known 95 Theses, otherwise known as a disputation on the power and efficacy of indulgences.

At this point he became a public threat to papal authority and doctrine.

1 of his 95 theses stated that the Pope neither desires nor is able to remit any penalties except those imposed by his own authority.

During this time, Luther also notably stated that scriptures, not popes or councils, are the standard for Christian faith and behavior.

Clearly, his scriptural stance was placing him in direct opposition to the Pope and contemporary church practices.

Martin Luther's bold denouncement of indulgences and papal authority provoked church leaders to retaliation.

Whoever dared threaten their revenue and reputation must be silenced.

Like many reformers before him, Luther was branded a heretic and arraigned before an assembly of high-ranking officials representing both church and state.

Luther's trial at Worms, Germany, in 1521, set alone, unheralded monk in opposition to a powerful array of religious political authorities.

He must recant all his writings if he wished to be cleared of the charges of heresy.

He asked for time to consider, and was granted 1 day.

When he returned to court, he plainly stated, My conscience is captive to the word of God.

I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe.

Amen." Luther could not bring himself to swerve from what the Scriptures plainly taught.

When he left Worms, the assembly was divided and could not decide what to do with him.

Soon, however, Emperor Charles V passed an edict banning Luther's writings and declaring him a heretic.

By the hand of Providence, Luther found hiding at Wartburg castle under his prince's protection.

This time in solitary, under the alias of Knight George, provided Luther with a golden opportunity to translate the New Testament into German.

His opponents would have to contend with more than the Reformers' own writings as the scriptures became available to the German people.

Bold, controversial, and gritty, Martin Luther left the world different than he found it.

Fusing his conscience with the Word of God prepared him to stand firm amid great trials and work for the uplifting of the Gospel.

Perhaps a less conscientious Luther would have ignored his vow to become a monk or recanted before the Diet of Worms.

Today, God calls for people who will hold fast to their convictions.

As 1 author states, "...the greatest want of the world is the want of men and women who will not be bought or sold, those who in their inmost souls are true and honest, who do not fear to call sin by its right name, whose conscience is as true to duty as the needle to the pole, who will stand for the right though the heavens fall." Will you hold fast to conscience and the teachings of the Bible as Martin Luther did?

Thank you for listening to Great In God's Sight, a podcast by GYC Southeast.

We hope you have enjoyed this adventure through time and pray it serves to deepen your relationship with God.

While we strive to bring you a unique perspective on each believer, we encourage you to use your God-given curiosity to explore these topics for yourself.

Please remember to hit the subscribe button and share this episode with your friends via text or social media.

Until next time, we wish you God's blessing as you seek to be great in His sight too.

Ulrich Zwingli: Of Switzerland and Sola Scriptura

Hello and welcome to Grading God's Sight, the podcast that explores underrated heroes.

This is Season 3 and we're so glad you've joined us for this episode entitled Ulrich Zwingli of Switzerland and Sola Scriptura.

Please be sure to subscribe and check out the terrific artwork that goes along with today's story on our website, thegreatpodcast.org.

The towering granite peaks faintly glowed in the lingering rays of the golden sun, and shepherds could be seen leading their woolly flocks to their homes in the green alpine valley.

The evening was growing chilly, and fires were already lit in many hearths.

By 1 of these fires, in a small brown cottage on the hillside, sat an elderly woman with a little boy at her feet.

His name was Ulrich, and there was nothing he liked better than listening to his grandmother's Bible stories.

She didn't know very many, but he loved them all the same.

No 1 in Wildhaus village could have guessed at the time, but Ulrich was destined to become the most famous defender of scripture in the history of Switzerland.

Now he was just a little Swiss mountain boy.

Ulrich Zwingli was born on January 1, 1484, only a few weeks after Martin Luther and only a few years before Columbus embarked for the New World.

His family was 1 of the most honored in the village, and a large family it was, with father, mother, 8 sons, and 1 daughter.

Even as a child, Ulrich was passionately fond of his mountain home and its natural magnificence.

Along with the Bible stories, he also heard many tales of Swiss patriotism and bravery, and he loved his homeland with all his heart.

It didn't take very long for Ulrich's father to discern that his third son was gifted with much more potential than a shepherd would ever be able to use.

He arranged for Ulrich to attend school in the big city of Bern, where he did very well, until the monks discovered him.

Impressed by his talents, scheming Dominican friars tried to lure the boy into their monastery, where they were sure he would become a feather in their cap against the rival Franciscans.

When Herr Zwingli got wind of this, he promptly ordered his son to return home to the mountains.

Like Luther's father, he did not wish his son to become a monk, but unlike Luther, young Zwingli obeyed his father and escaped a host of troubles as a result.

Eventually Ulrich returned to school, this time to the University of Basel to study medieval scholastic divinity.

He found it very dull and confusing indeed, and much preferred the ancient classics.

In his leisure time, Ulrich refreshed his mind with music.

He had mastered at least 6 different instruments and found great pleasure in playing and singing with friends.

When he was 22 years old, Ulrich was called to his first post as a priest, in a parish not far from his native village.

He was very much a good son of the church, though not as fanatical as the young monk Luther had been.

He had always been an ardent lover of truth, and as a child had concluded that lying was a worse crime than stealing.

Now his passion for truth and knowledge inspired him to study Greek, in order to be able to draw from the fountainhead of truth the doctrines of Jesus Christ, as he said.

Quite on his own, Ulrich was embracing the principle of sola scriptura, the Bible and the Bible alone, and in the words of a friend, he would have no other interpreter than the Holy Ghost himself.

For Ulrich, this study of the Bible in its original languages and allowing Scripture to interpret itself was the basis of the Reformation.

Once, when accused of being Lutheran, Ulrich retorted, I am not a Lutheran, for I learned Greek before I ever heard the name of Luther." Although he and Luther both discovered much of the same truth independently through their personal studies of God's Word, their faith journeys were worlds apart.

Luther crashed upon the truth, so to speak, during a season of severe crisis.

Zwingli's knowledge of the truth grew gradually and much more imperceptibly over a longer stretch of time.

In 1516, 1 year before Luther penned the Ninety-Five Theses, Ulrich was invited to become the priest at a celebrated shrine of the Virgin Mary, whose statue there was reputed to possess all sorts of wonder-working powers.

Thousands upon Thousands of pilgrims clambered up the mountain each year at the festival of the Virgin to visit the shrine Where they believed they were at the very gates of heaven and would be forgiven all their sins With the fire of scripture burning in his bones Ulrich began preaching to the crowds this simple truth, Christ alone saves and he saves everywhere.

The people were electrified by this message.

Some accepted it and took it with them to their distant homes.

The Offerings to the Shrine of the Virgin plummeted noticeably, and so did Ulrich's salary, but he couldn't have been happier.

Interestingly, Rome responded to Zwingli's preaching in a very different style than they reacted to Luther's.

Zwingli somehow succeeded in presenting the truth less shockingly, yet without watering it down.

Switzerland was also a much more democratic country than Germany, which doubtless also played a part.

But the fact remains that the Church threatened Luther with violence, excommunication, and death, while trying to flatter Zwingli with promises of favors and promotions.

Thank God, neither reformer was shaken from his sure foundation.

Now Ulrich's friends arranged for him to take the prestigious duty of priest at the Grand Cathedral of Zürich.

Here he began a sermon series in which he went over the entire Gospel of Matthew passage by passage, drawing on his knowledge of the original Greek as he explained the life and ministry of Jesus.

They had never heard anything like it before.

The cathedral was bursting to the seams every week.

It seemed the entire city was moved by the Word of God.

There were adversaries, of course, but all Ulrich would say was, if we desire to gain over the wicked to Jesus Christ, we must shut our eyes against many things.

By all accounts, Ulrich was not only a captivating speaker, but a caring pastor and shepherd of his congregation as well.

He would mingle with all, rich and poor alike, and paid attention to the little children, sometimes even playing his lute for their enjoyment.

When the bubonic plague raged through the Swiss cities and came round to Zürich, Ulrich tirelessly attended to the stricken and comforted them with the hope of salvation.

He contracted the plague himself and was so ill that reports were spread about his death, but God mercifully spared him.

All this, plus his winsome personality and wonderful sermons straight from the Bible, made him universally beloved in Zürich, which quickly established itself as the center of the Reformation in Switzerland.

Although the Swiss and German Reformations were parallel to each other, Zwingli and Luther met only once.

Theologically, they were closely aligned, which is remarkable, as Zwingli said sometime before, never has a single line been addressed by me to Luther or by Luther to me, and why?

That it might be manifest to all how uniform is the testimony of the Spirit of God, since we, who have had no communication with each other, agree so closely in the doctrine of Jesus Christ.

Unfortunately, there was 1 point which would mar this harmony.

Luther still clung to the belief that during the Lord's Supper, Christians received Jesus's physical body and blood.

Zwingli contended that the bread and wine were strictly symbolic.

Sadly, the 2 mighty Reformers permitted this to create a breach between them that was never mended, reminding us that faults and frailties will unavoidably be present even in the most outstanding Christians.

Martin Luther would have been wise to consider Zwingli's stance on communion from a more scriptural and less emotional standpoint, but there was another area in which Ulrich could have learned much from Martin.

Although Luther had friends in high places, he refused to bear arms and use brute force to advance or protect the Reformation in Germany.

He practiced the scripture that states, the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty through God.

On the other hand, Zwingli was as much a fiery Swiss patriot as a fervent minister of the gospel, and embraced political responsibilities as readily as pastoral ones.

Switzerland was on the brink of civil war, and the Protestants of Zürich, with Zwingli, marched out to battle against several of the Catholic cantons.

By then, Zwingli acutely realized that his political participation and the warlike attitude of the Swiss Reformation were a grave mistake, but it was too late.

The battle was fierce and cruel, and by the end of the day, Ulrich Zwingli lay among the dead.

He had been a devoted soldier of the cross, but how much more he could have accomplished for his master if he had not forgotten Christ's words, My kingdom is not of this world.

Thank God, however, the Swiss Reformation did not die with Zwingli.

Many other reformers would rise from that tiny mountain nation, and today we think of it as the bastion of the Reformation.

In closing, here are some beautiful lines from 1 of Zwingli's hymns, written when he was near death and suffering from the plague.

The hand once nailed upon the tree, Jesus, uplift and shelter me.

Willest thou then death conquer me in my noon day?

Thank you for listening to Great in God Sight, a podcast by GYC Southeast.

Until next time, we wish you God's blessing as you

Marguerite of Navarre: Faith over France

This is Season 3 and we're so glad you've joined us for this episode entitled, Marguerite of Navarre, Faith over France.

Please be sure to subscribe and check out the amazing artwork that goes along with today's story on our website, TheGreatPodcast.org.

When the Bible speaks of Christ coming with a sword to set father against son and sister against brother, to divide families for and against the truth, Marguerite of Navarre never dreamed those words would apply to her own household.

Yet here she stood at the window, as though frozen, watching her brother, sister-in-law, and husband solemnly lead a procession through the streets of Paris.

They were denouncing the reformist movement on behalf of all France and pledging her undivided loyalty to Romanism.

As the cortege snaked its way over the cobblestones, they left the burning bodies of Protestants in their wake.

Though Marguerite herself, as sister of King Francis I and wife of King Henry II of Navarre, faced little danger of being burned at the stake for her beliefs, her heart burned with her friends.

It also throbbed with pain from the rift that had come between her and her dearly beloved brother when she refused to join him in the procession.

She could never renounce reformist thinking and had gently told Francis so, but the Price was devastating.

Important threads of the bond that had been so intricately woven between them all their lives were suddenly severed.

The word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing joint and marrow, dividing soul and spirit, and it had divided her and Francis.

Marguerite loved her brother more than anyone, except for Jesus.

She could not part with the truth, not for France, not even for Francis.

Watching the black smoke rising in the streets, Marguerite of Navarre determined that the reformist movement in France would not be snuffed out as long as she lived.

Marguerite was born in 1492 to noble parents with an impressive pedigree but no position to speak of.

Her ambitious mother had always prayed for a boy, a contender to the French throne, so when little Francis came along 2 years later, Marguerite's world became wrapped around him.

They were close from the beginning, and Marguerite knew real love was what she felt for her little brother.

For his part, Francis once said, My sister Marguerite is the only woman I ever knew who had every virtue and every grace without any admixture of vice.

She was educated alongside her brother and became fluent in multiple languages.

When their long cherished wish came true at last, and her brother acceded to the crown in 1515, Marguerite became the most influential woman in France, next to her formidable mother.

She played an important political role in France's court and performed her most daring exploits on his behalf when he was captured in battle by the Holy Roman Emperor.

She raced hundreds of miles through enemy territory to nurse Francis when he became dangerously ill, and when negotiations for his release fell through, crafted a bold plan for his escape.

That also fell through, and Francis was forced to settle with the emperor, but clearly it seemed there was nothing Marguerite would not do for her brother.

Her first husband was a duke who died in 1525, and 2 years later, she became Queen of Navarre by marrying Henry, King of Navarre, a tiny kingdom wedged between France and Spain.

As the quintessential Renaissance woman, Marguerite had an unquenchable thirst for learning and was receptive to new ideas, especially regarding religious reformation.

She protected many Protestants and welcomed them into her chateau.

Her friendship with Jacques Lefebvre, a leading French theologian and Bible translator, began as early as 1517.

He, along with many of Marguerite's other reformist friends, prepared the soil for the Protestant Huguenot movement in France.

In 1531, Lefebvre would be forced to leave France and flee to Marguerite for protection in Navarre until his death in 1536.

Although her brother and husband were loyal sons of the church, Marguerite would not be cowed.

She was the first woman to play an active role in the Circle of Mo, a group of leading French Reformers.

She also promoted the publication of the Bible in French as translated from the original Hebrew and Greek.

She believed in salvation through faith in Christ rather than works, as outlined in the Scriptures.

Marguerite regularly invited Reformers to give sermons and hold Bible studies in her chambers, not only for herself but for her ladies as well.

Some of her ladies-in-waiting went on to plant seeds of Reformation elsewhere.

Because her husband, Henry, was violently opposed to Reformist leanings, Marguerite would have to host her meetings privately.

Once, when she thought Henry was out hunting, she arranged to celebrate the Lord's Supper in an underground area of the chateau.

Partway through, Marguerite's irate husband exploded into the room, hoping to catch her off guard.

Fortunately, the preacher had just enough time to flee the scene, but Henry was still in a wicked temper.

The argument that her brother, the powerful King of France, allowed Marguerite to worship as she pleased did no good.

Henry struck her hard across the face, declaring, "'Madame, you know too much.'" Marguerite did not fail to relate this incident to her brother, and apparently, there was enough of a bruise left to show Francis when he arrived in a huff, threatening war on Henry and all of Navarre.

Spooked into submission, Henry promised not to interfere with Marguerite's worship anymore.

Although Marguerite was a prolific and talented writer, for years she refrained from publishing her own works.

At first, Francis had seemed to regard the Reformed religion with indifference, if not mild interest, but pressure to persecute the so-called enemies of the Church was mounting.

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Martin Luther: Captive Conscience

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