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It Is Written

John Bradshaw

Ancient Wisdom, Present Power, Part 1

Coming up next, please stay tuned for It Is Written, presented by Pastor John Bradshaw.

The Bible, the Word of God, the Good Book, Scripture, Holy Writ.

It's said that about a hundred million Bibles are sold or given away every year.

It would be easy to take the Bible for granted.

In most countries, the Bible is ubiquitous.

But not very long ago, really, the Bible wasn't accessible.

In fact, you could be, maybe would be, put to death for possessing even a fragment of Scripture.

We go back about half a millennium to the year 1517, a time when a young priest approaching his mid-30s felt that he had to do something to moderate the teachings of the established church.

The issue Martin Luther found especially galling was indulgences, where the church claimed that for a sum of money or by doing some noteworthy act, a person could obtain forgiveness of sin.

Of course, there's nothing correct about that.

And Luther was witnessing the great amount of damage that this false teaching and others connected to it were doing.

He's an archaeologist, a university professor, a Bible historian, and the curator of the Lynn H.

Wood Archaeological Museum just outside Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Together we looked at a collection of rare Bibles and other Christian books which combine to tell the story of the Reformation and help us understand how the Bible came to be widely available today.

In October 31, 1517, Martin Luther walked up to the doors of the Wittenberg Castle Church and nailed the 95 Theses on the doors of that church.

The 95 Theses were 95 statements that Luther made, arguments that he made, concerning purgatory, the sale of indulgences, something that the Catholic Church was promoting at that time in their history, particularly for the building of St.

Peter's Cathedral in Rome and for the advancement eventually also of the Crusades and the financing of the Crusades.

Now this 1 act of Martin Luther's widely credited with starting, initiating the Protestant Reformation.

What was it about those 2 subjects in particular you mentioned that generated so much heat, ultimately light.

Well, I think first of all, maybe Luther wasn't intending to start something that big.

He placed these on the doors because this was the place where discussions got started on university campuses.

But we also know that that same day, he sent a copy of that to the Archbishop of Mainz in Germany, who had sponsored a gentleman by the name of Johann Tetzel, sending him out to all the various countryside villages, selling these indulgences.

So Tetzel was commissioned by the Archbishop of Mainz who was raising money for the building of what's now St.

Tetzel came to town and was capitalizing on the naivety and the ignorance of the poor people who would give money, receive a piece of paper saying that they had absolution or something very similar to that, they'd go home with their piece of paper thinking we're good to go.

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

He talked about the fires of hell and the burning of hell and he used that kind of intimidation to really get people to think about buying an indulgence.

And Luther was incensed that the church was teaching that by the sale of an indulgence, you could buy your way into heaven somehow.

1 of the reasons they had to push back was the 95 theses that were nailed here were taken down by some of the students and they were taken to a printing press and they were printed.

What you see here is the first edition of that printing in Latin in 1517.

So this was sent like a pamphlet, it's a small little booklet, and they were sent all over Germany.

And this began the wave, if you will, of concern over the sale of indulgences that caused that response by the Catholic Church.

I don't mean verbatim necessarily, but what were some of the types of things Luther was saying in here?

1 of the things he was criticizing, I think, somewhat carefully but also very straightforward, was that the Pope's own reputation would be at stake here.

That the Pope needed to take maybe a different position than selling indulgences and taking advantage of the poor who were giving money for something that biblically wasn't really feasible, and that he could, out of his own coffers, pay for a big church himself rather than on the backs of the poor peasants that Luther was ministering to on a daily basis.

But at the core of this was also the issue of salvation.

Is it through a piece of paper that you buy?

And he spoke on going through tribulation, and that tribulation actually was a better way to get through grace to heaven than buying a piece of paper from the Pope.

Okay, in response, let's take a look here, because the church was livid.

Eventually what happened was that Luther received a document, probably a scroll, with a huge stamp impressed in red wax.

Leo X was the reigning pope at that time, and he issued this in Rome, excommunicating Luther from the church.

He took a position against some of the teachings and practices of the church.

This is obviously not the original thing, but this is a printed copy of what Leo wrote telling Luther he was gone.

We're told, at least Luther's account, is that he threw that manuscript in the fire.

But the Pope then printed these just as Luther's friends had printed the 95 Theses.

And a war started going back and forth in the printed press, in the printed documents, and in the artwork as well.

Today, Luther might have tweeted or posted something on Instagram, and then this back and forward war would have begun.

Speaking of the back and forth this is a fascinating document to me written by Johann von Eck.

Von Eck was a very learned church man who, I don't want to call him an attack dog for the church, but he kind of was.

It indicates this wasn't small, it was really big.

People on both sides were printing, publishing books and getting them out there.

Eck was 1 of the main antagonists and 1 of the major scholars that the Catholic Church used to debate with Luther.

There was a famous debate that took place between Eck and Luther at Leipzig, where they hashed out some of these issues.

And subsequently Eck published this book, the Enchiridion, and this went through 91 printings.

It was probably the most widely printed book in the 16th century during the time of Luther, attacking his positions on the Protestant Reformation and his hopeful reforms that the church would take.

We're not at the printing of the Bible yet.

The Bible as a book, as a document hasn't stepped onto center stage, but we're getting close, aren't we?

We're getting close and this would lead towards that event.

People would be able to access Scripture for the first time in hundreds of years.

♪ Call now for today's free offer, From Script to scripture.

Enjoy the rest of the conversation between John Bradshaw and Dr.

Michael Hassel, including faith-building stories we couldn't fit into today's program.

A rare opportunity to turn the pages of history, see books that change the world and learn insights that will grow your faith in God.

Call 800-253-3000 for the free DVD, 800-253-3000, or visit www.iiwoffer.com.

At a time when the Bible wasn't available in any meaningful way, when people couldn't read John 3.16, when the stories of David and Goliath and Daniel in the lion's den and the feeding of the 5000 simply couldn't be known and read, a German priest named Martin Luther, frustrated by the inaccurate teachings of the church of which he was a part, wrote out 95 points expressing where he felt the established church was wrong.

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Ancient Wisdom, Present Power, Part 1

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