Brother Tom wrote:
In my view, this quoted statement is seriously flawed because just about everyone else believes it to be true, with respect to their worldviews.
The Catholic Church believes this to be true, seeing themselves as the one true Christian Church that Jesus founded on Peter, and they will not budge an inch on their doctrines: purgatory, salvation by their sacraments, they are the true church , praying to dead saints, Mary is the Queen of heaven, Earth, the cosmos, and apparitions of OUR Lady of this and OUR Lady of that appearing all over the world, etc. And in their minds they believe all of their views are consistent with Scriptures, and they killed many protestants and others, based upon the same principle that Martin Luther gives above.
And the Jehovah's Witnesses and The Mormons, will equally defend their versions of Christianity as being the proven and correct interpretations of the Bible.
Other religions, and even communists and fascists, and other ideologies - can, and do, make the same statement Luther made in defense of their non-Christian ideologies. And they do it based on their belief books, education, including atheism whereby they replace the Bible with what science has to say. And they have acted on spreading their beliefs that we now live in a world where true Christianity is in a steep decline.
My view is that we should hold fast the gospel ourselves, and not give up patience or love, but be willing to be the lambs to the slaughter, while blessing our adversaries, and keeping the Faith we have in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
roadsign writes:
I do not believe what you wrote to be true. Here is why.
In 1527, 10 years after Luther posted his 95 theses, Martin Luther started suffering severely from Ménière's Disease, an inherited disease, Luthers Father and two of his brothers suffered from the disease. In addition to this, Luther suffered from other painful diseases, but his Ménière's Disease crippled Luther mentally.
See: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2529669
He became very violent at times, and it influenced his writings. Earlier He was quite kind toward the Jews. His later writings were extremely anti-Jewish. He was aware of His violent fits and he actually hired a servant to help him from hurting himself and others when his painful fits occurred.
In 1516 Luther wrote: "Many people are proud with marvelous stupidity when they call the Jews dogs, evildoers, or whatever they like, while they too, and equally, do not realize who or what they are in the sight of God"
In 1523, Luther advised kindness toward the Jews in That Jesus Christ was Born a Jew, but also with the aim of converting them to Christianity.
By the mid 1540's, when His Ménière's Disease was very advanced through 20 years of painful suffering - having never been treated because no one understood it at all, Luther was no longer the man He was twenty years earlier. About the Jews, Luther argued that the Jews were no longer the chosen people but "the devil's people": he referred to them with violent, vile language. Luther advocated setting synagogues on fire, destroying Jewish prayerbooks, forbidding rabbis from preaching, seizing Jews' property and money, and smashing up their homes, so that these "poisonous envenomed worms" would be forced into labour or expelled "for all time".
Does anyone know when Luther actually wrote the quote of this thread? No guessing, just the facts, please.
Well, for what it is worth, this is my two cents on this topic.
God Bless all here on sermonindex.
ArtB
