October 31, 2024 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, the origin of this conflict flowed from a deceptively simple question—a riddle of sorts that a Catholic monk named Martin Luther wrestled with for years. The question he asked himself was this: Am I a good person? Here to tell the story is Eric Metaxas, bestselling author of Martin Luther.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
And to search for the Our American Stories podcast, go
to the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts. Today's story is about one man who changed
the world five hundred years ago. The origin of this
(00:34):
conflict flowed from a deceptively simple question, a riddle of
sorts that a Catholic monk named Martin Luther wrestled with
for years. The question he asked himself was this Am
I a good person? Here to tell the story is
best selling author Eric Metexas. Eric wrote Martin Luther, the
man who rediscovered God and changed the world. Let's take
(00:58):
a listen.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
When Martin Luther King Junior was about five years old.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Okay, we're talking about the Black Leader in twenty century.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
His father was a famous Baptist preacher, and he visited
the Holy Land with a whole bunch of other Baptists.
This is like would have been I don't know, nineteen
twenty or something I don't gid write. And on the
way back he went to Germany and visited Wittenberg and stuff, and.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Was so blown away. This is the Black Father was
so blown away by the life.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Of Martin Luther that as an adult he changed his
name from Michael King to Martin Luther King. As an adult,
he changed his saying, that's how big of a deal
Luther has been in history. And his son, Michael Junior,
changed his name to Martin Luther King Junior. Until the
(01:59):
day Martin Luther King Junior died, his close friends called
him Mike. I would say Luther is the most influential
man in two thousand years, apart from Jesus. There's no
doubt that God used this very flawed man, and so
I was really convinced that this is a gigantically important story.
(02:21):
Luther was born on November tenth, but the year in
which he was born, we actually don't know. We're sure
that it's fourteen eighty two, fourteen eighty three, or fourteen
eighty four. I'm pretty sure it's fourteen eighty three, but
no one really knows, including his own mother, who was
nearby when.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
It took place.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
We actually don't that's kind of weird, but it's true.
But he's born on November tenth. On November eleventh, they
take him to church and baptize him, because the whole
point was if you're not baptized, you'll go to Hell forever, right,
so you might want to speed up with the baptismal process.
Kind of important. So they baptized him on November eleventh,
which was Saint Martin's Day, and they named him Martin,
(03:01):
after the saint for whom the day was named. So
Luther was raised in a fairly well to do family.
Now there's all these myths you hear that he grew
up and he always said, I am the son of
a poor miner, and I come from peasants stock. He
was kind of like blowing smoke the way politicians do.
They kind of like want to try to, you know,
(03:22):
tell you they come from these humble roots. But the
reality is his roots were not that humble. He was
exaggerating a little bit. His father was not a poor miner.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
His father was.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
An ambitious, successful businessman in the mining business. His father
wanted his brilliant son to go to the best schools
and to go to the university, study law, and then
come home to Mansfeld and work in the family business.
They needed a brilliant lawyer to work with them, and
they put him on this path. They could never go
to college, you know, so they said it's on you.
(03:53):
So the problem is that Luther grew up at a
time went salvation and the fear of hell was so
real that while he is away from home at these schools,
he's thinking about eternal matters. Now, his parents were Christians,
but I think that wherever he was that he had
the freedom, as being very sensitive, brilliant young man, to
(04:16):
be thinking about this stuff, and I think it was
eating at him. And by the time he goes to
law school, he's twenty two years old. His father sacrificed everything.
Things come to a head, and he has heard of
some people dying and on their deathbeds saying, you know,
I wish I hadn't done this, or that I wish
I'd got into a monastery. I wish I'd given everything
(04:37):
to God, because now I'm facing eternity and I'm scared.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
People often tell the.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Story as though one day Luther's blithely minding his own business, walking,
you know, on the heath in the village of Stutturnheim.
A thunderstorm comes scares him to death. He thinks he's
going to be struck by lightning and enter eternity, and
he says, Saint and save me. If you save me,
I'll become a monk. Saint Anne was the patron saint
of minors. And he doesn't die, and then he thinks, well,
(05:06):
I've just made a vow. I guess I've got to
become a monk. And he becomes a monk. And that's,
of course ridiculous because he had been thinking about his
own salvation very much in the years preceding this. So
the implication that this was just something that he blurts
out in a moment of fear and then it changes
the course of his whole life.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
Is just silly.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
He was thinking incessantly about eternity. So when the thunderstorm
came and he says this vow, which did happen? It
was only all of these things coming to a head.
It wasn't some dramatic thing. The bottom line is this
was against his father's wishes. But he said, I cannot
(05:47):
take a chance. He was scared of obeying his father
and going to Hell forever, and so he does this
against his father's wishes, and he gets into the monastery,
and what happens in the monastery, well, he realizes that
if I have to earn heaven, which was the basic
way of thinking, that means I've got to pray constantly,
(06:10):
I've got a fast constantly. I've got to deny myself
every pleasure. I have to confess every sinful thought. Otherwise,
any sinful thought can drag me to hell unless I
confess it to a priest, not to God, to a
priest who will officially absolve me.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
And if he doesn't officially absolve me, I go to hell.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
And you're listening to Eric, But Texas tell the story
of Martin Luther. And we tell this story because of
course America was founded by people who were a part
of this split in the Church that happened in the
sixteenth century. And what a fascinating story about his youth.
The myth busted my metaxis that he came from a
(06:56):
poor family and that the father was a minor, a
slight exactation, as Eric would put it, but one that
was not true. He came from a well to do family,
well enough to send him off to law school for
the study of law. That there was a crisis slurking,
and an existential one, a philosophical one, a spiritual one
because Luther was worried about his eternal soul and worried
(07:17):
about Hell. So he leaves Law heads to the monastery.
And when we come back, more of this remarkable story
of Martin Luther here on our American Stories. Lee Habib
here the host of our American Stories. Every day on
this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from across this great country,
(07:40):
stories from our big cities and small towns. But we
truly can't do the show without you. Our stories are
free to listen to, but they're not free to make.
If you love what you hear, go to Ouramerican Stories
dot com and click the donate button. Give a little,
give a lot. Go to Ouramerican Stories dot com and give.
(08:09):
And we continue with our American Stories and with Eric Metexas.
He's the author of Martin Luther, the Man who we
discovered God and change the world. Let's pick up where
we last left off.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
Luther believed.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Now think about this, I mean, later on he taught
that when you make a confession to God and you
repent to God, you're good. Faith is all you need
and God will forgive you. But the Church taught and
Luther eventually fought viciously with this concept. The Church said,
it doesn't matter what is in your heart and with God,
(08:46):
you have to go to a priest. Only the priest
has the right and the authority granted to him by Christ,
to absolve you of your sin. So if you do
not confess your sin officially with a priest, it is
still on you. It's still on the books will drag
you to hell forever. Now, if you take that as
seriously as Luther took it, you would never leave the
(09:06):
confession booth. And so he was miserable, trying to please God,
trying to earn his way into the favor of God.
So Luther spends his life praying and fasting and confessing
like a maniac, driving his father confessor insane, trying to
(09:29):
seeing what Luther's going through, how he's tortured and brilliant
and passionate and intense, and he sees that he's not
finding peace, and he says to him, do you hate God?
Or you think God hates you?
Speaker 3 (09:42):
God loves you? But Luther could not get this.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
So he would come in and he thought, I've got
to confess every sin, and he would confess things like
you on Tuesday, I prayed for five hours, and at
the end of it, I had a flicker of pride
for having prayed for five hours, and that flicker of
pride will pull me into hell. So I confess it,
and you can imagine bunched out. It's like rolling his eyes.
He actually says to Luther, only half joking, bring me
(10:09):
a serious sin, bring me adultery or murder, or otherwise,
get out.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
I'm a busy man.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Luther was just driving him insane with every random of thought, confessing, confessing,
and he understood that Luther is never going to find
peace this way. He's trying to earn the peace of God,
and Luther was failing. So Luther had another idea. He said,
since this is not working, I wonder if someplace in
(10:37):
the Bible there is the key, the golden key that
I'm looking for the cure for what ails me now.
People had not read the Bible up to this point
for many, many centuries. Obviously, the printing press was not
invented till the fourteen fifties, and Luther is at the
monastery in fifteen oh five, so having Bibles was not
(10:58):
a normal thing, and the Catholic Church of that day
did not have Bibles, and they didn't read the Bible.
They would use the Bible as a text to create
commentaries on the Bible. So you'd study the commentaries, and
you'd study commentaries on the commentaries, but actually studying the
Bible was not done. The Bible had been translated by
(11:19):
Saint Jerome twelve hundred years earlier into Latin, and they
had the Latin Vulgate, and that was the official Church
translation in Latin. Well, Luther was living at a time Humanism,
this intellectual trend was coming out where because of the
fall of Constantinople in fourteen fifty three, all these Greek
scholars had come out and suddenly they were revivifying the
(11:39):
ancient languages, and people began to read ancient texts, including
the Bible, in the original language. So Luther jumps on
this and starts studying the actual Bible, digging into it
like a man looking for the cure to a fatal disease, saying,
if I don't find it, I will die. And Luther felt,
(12:00):
if I don't find it, I will die the second death,
I will never be in the presence of God. I
need to find it, and so he obsessively reads through
the scriptures. Now, he was a super brilliant Bible reader,
and he dug and dug, and he taught Bible at
the university. And at some point around fifteen seventeen, he
reads Romans one seventeen. He reads this verse that he'd
(12:26):
never really understood before. It says, for in the Gospel,
the righteousness of God is revealed, as it is written,
the just shall live by faith. And it finally strikes him,
I've been doing it all wrong. It is only by
(12:47):
faith that I can apprehend God, and by faith I
get the free gift of the righteousness of God. I
can't become righteous on my own. It's useless us. But God,
who is holy and righteous, gives me the free gift
(13:08):
the Gospel. The good news is that he gives it
to me as a gift. I mean, imagine somebody gives
you a gift and you go, let me just give
you five bucks for that. That's insulting. He understands, this
is a gift from God. The love of God and
the righteousness of God are given to me. And all
(13:28):
I need to do is believe that. And the Word
says it, and it's imputed to me as righteousness. I
am free, I am saved.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
Game over. I don't need to climb and claw and
work and pray. I'm saved. It's over.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
And then when you appreciate that gift and you apprehend
it by faith, you accept the gift. Now you can
do all kinds of good works. But it's the motivation
is gratitude to the God who gave you this free gift.
I want to bless him. I want to love people
with the love with which He has loved me. I
(14:05):
want to help the poor, I want to feed the hungry.
I want to do every good thing out of the
joy and the gratitude of this free gift of grace
which I have apprehended only by faith. Wow, this changes
Luther's life, obviously, it changes everything. Imagine living in a
world where nobody gets this. They have because of tradition
(14:30):
over centuries, kind of built this up where it's sort
of about do this.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
And don't do this, and do this and don't do this.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
But once Luther experiences this the famous moment today he
nails the ninety five theses to the door of the
Wittenberg Cathedral. That's the moment, and it's related, but not
that directly related. Basically, Luther notices that in the Catholic
Church at this time, they're doing this thing where they
preach indulgences, where people are throwing money into the coffers
(14:57):
of the church and buying these certificates kind of get
out of jail free cards, and it was creating this
kind of corrupt, cynical world. And Luther said, as a priest,
this is not good for the flock, this is not
good for the sheep. As a theologian, I need to
tell my superiors what is going on now. This is
related to the work's righteousness stuff that I was just
(15:18):
talking about, but it starts out with a specific thing
of indulgences. And Luther does not shake his fist at
the church. And you know, we get this image of him.
He was a humble monk, a humble man of God,
wanting to say in the humblest way to his superiors,
we have a problem. We need to examine this problem.
So why don't we have a theological debate. That's what
(15:39):
we theologians do in the university. So in Latin, I'll
write up these ninety five feces. I'll post it on
the church door, which by the way was only the
local bulletin board. He wasn't trying to be like a
big shop by saying I'm gonna put it on the
church door. The church door was the bulletin board. Once
you realize that, it doesn't seem so heroic, right, But
in retrospect we read that when he did that, it
(16:03):
blew everything up. It led to trouble.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
And you've been listening to Eric Metaxas tell the story
of Martin Luther, and imagine this young man trying to
save his immortal soul and confessing his sin, trying to
well work his way into heaven.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
And to save his soul from hell.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
And he's confessing, and he's praying, and he's fasting, and
he's essentially driving his confessor, his priest crazy. But he
believes and knows at the time that the only way
to get through, or at least that was the Catholic
Church's position, was through a priest. And then he discovers
that he can take his case directly to God. That
and some other criticisms of the church are posted on
(16:46):
the door of the church. But back then this was
not some high revolt. The mere act of posting something
on a church door. It was akin to posting something
on a bulletin board. But it was what was on
that paper that revolutionized.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
The church is critiques.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
And by the way, these critiques out of love for
the church, not out of hate for the Catholic Church.
When we come back more of the story of Martin
Luther as told by Eric Metaxas, author of Martin Luther,
The Man Who Discovered God and Changed the World. Here
on our American stories, and we continue with our American
(18:10):
stories and the story of Martin Luther as told by
Eric Mattexas, author of Martin Luther, The Man Who Discovered
God and Changed the World. Let's pick up where we
last left off.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
People said, who does he think he is criticizing indulgences,
and they, you know, threw mudd at him, and he
threw some mud back. He defended himself and it turned
into a conflagration that consumed all of Europe. This humble
monk never intended that. He never intended to break away
from the church. This was the only church he knew.
(18:45):
He never intended to start another church.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
Never.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
There were other reformers who said almost exactly what Luther said.
One hundred years earlier, Jan Huss, the famous Hungarian wicklift Hitendale.
And then there are some reformers like Saint Francis who
never were incendiary or trouble making, but that's just because
they had a good pope or they had a good
who knows. But Wickliffe and Jan Huss they had said
(19:14):
almost exactly what Luther said. But the church and the
power was able to contain the trouble and crush it
and burn them at the stake, and that was the
end of that. The difference was when Luther brought his
information forward the printing press existed, which of course it
did not in fourteen fifteen, when when Hohos was condemned
(19:37):
and people, without even asking Luther took the ninety five
pieces and said, oh, this looks interesting. They translated into
German and they printed it and it sold like hotcakes.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
And next thing, you know, everybody in.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Europe, not just Germany, is reading these ninety five pieces
and thinking, hey, this is a hot potato.
Speaker 3 (19:56):
This is the Pope's not going to like this.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
It started to get kind of, you know, beyond the
horse got out of the barn and there was no
bringing it back in. So everything he wrote then he
would preach a sermon to clarify, like, oh, listen, I
don't read the theses. Let me let me give my
more considered thinking.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
On the subject of indulgences. I'll preach a sermon.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
I better preach a sermon and clarify, because people are
all hot headed about the ninety five theses, which I
only meant for other theologians to read in Latin, but
now everybody's talking about it. So he preaches a sermon
and prints it up and translate into German, and then
that gets distributed, and then the archbishop says to him, well,
you know that's causing trouble too, can you can you
can you stop distributing that?
Speaker 3 (20:36):
Can? He say?
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Well, of course he was very humble in but eventually
Luther learned to use the medium of printing and he
could get his message out to the people. There really
had never been a people before. They were just there
was rulers and the people whom they ruled, and they
(20:57):
had nothing to say about anything. But suddenly lou his
writings are getting out there and the people are reading
it and they're getting excited, and they're thinking, this man
speaks for us.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
He's saying exactly what's true.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
He's talking about the corruption, he's talking about this, he's
talking about that, and this is.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
Exactly what we feel.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
And so, as I say, the horse got out of
the barn. And so even if they had killed Luther,
the movement, these intellectual ideas were out and there was
no bringing him back. Eventually, in fifteen twenty one, at
the grotesquely named Diet of Worms. Vorms was a city
(21:34):
in Germany, and Luther was called to go to the
City of Worms to face the music. The Pope had
sent a representative. The Holy Roman Empire was represented by
the Emperor Charles and all of the nobles, and they're
there to hear this man defend himself. Four years into
this insanity where the whole world is talking about these ideas,
(21:57):
and suddenly he's there and they say to him, because
they're trying to crush this descent. Things have gotten out
of hand, and they're trying to say to him, excuse me,
shut up, right, not excuse me, What did you mean
by that?
Speaker 3 (22:11):
How can we help you?
Speaker 2 (22:12):
It's excuse me, you shut up. Racan't what you said,
and we'll let you walk out of here. But if
you don't, you will be taken to Rome and burnt
at the stake. So Luther has an opportunity to walk away.
And it reminds me of my friend Chuck Colson. He
was given a plea bargain at Watergate, and they basically
(22:33):
said to him, look, look, look, you want to avoid
jail time. You got teenage kids, you don't want to
do jail time. Just sign on this line, just say
you did these things that you didn't do.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
But you do that and you walk out of here.
Take the deal. Chuck your nuts not to take the deal.
Sign it. And he said, why, I have a problem.
I'm a Christian. I can't do that. And Luther was
in the same position.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
He said, I understand that all I have to do
is say I recan't Everything I've said sorry won't happen again,
and I walk out of here. But he felt compelled
by God not to do that.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
He felt compelled.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
By God to demand of them that they show him
where he had made a mistake.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
He said, if I'm.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Wrong, I don't want to paper this over. Show me
where I screwed up. Show me, and of course I
will recant and repent, but you have to show me
from the scriptures. What did I get wrong? They didn't
do that.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
They said, are these your books? Yes or no? Yes?
Do you recant what you've written in these books? Yes
or no? He said, how can I recant what I've written?
I've written many.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Good things in these books. Show me what it is
that I've gotten wrong. Show me They weren't going to
do that. They wanted just to say, shut up, bow
before the authority of the church, and everything will be fine.
And he says, I can't do that. And the famous
line is here, I stand, I can do no other.
(24:00):
You want me to recant unless you show me from
the scriptures?
Speaker 3 (24:06):
Here I stand, I can do no other. God help me. Amen.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
He casts himself on the mercy of the Lord. Luther
did not fear what they could do to him. He said,
I fear God. I fear the truth. I want to
represent what is true. What about all those people depending
on me? God's gonna hold me responsible all those people.
(24:30):
I have to speak the truth. So he spoke the truth.
And this is one of the watersheds in the history
of the world. When you appreciate what happened in that room,
it is mind blowing. It's an epical moment in history.
Others had done it before, but somehow, when he did it,
(24:52):
it opened the door to what we call the future.
I say that he was the man that created the future,
of the man that discovered the future. By holding the
Gospel up in this way, he did something that changed
the world forever and ever, and all of the freedoms
that we take for granted, the very idea of democracy,
(25:12):
the idea that the individual can speak against power, and
that all of these things.
Speaker 3 (25:19):
The whole modern world started that day.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
And it's not an overstatement to say that that is
exactly what happened on that day.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Informs and you're listening to Eric Mattaxis tell one heck
of a story of Martin Luther. And again, Eric is
the author of Martin Luther, The Man who Discovered God
and Changed the world. He's also the author of one
of my favorite books, Bonheffer. Pick both up. You won't
regret it, two of the greatest reads you'll ever experience
(25:49):
in your lifetime. You're hearing a good bulk of the
story here, and it was just simple. He was saying
to the Church and the superiors, let's have a discussion.
I have a problem. I have some text to back
it up. You see, the Bible was now within reach
of some people. They were printing presses, and this was
a problem for the superiors. And of course, well, what
(26:10):
people do with power is what they do with power.
And they wanted Martin Luther, that is, simply recant, and
not recant on principle, not recant after a debate or
a discussion, but simply to recant and repent because they
said so. And of course he didn't. Here I stand,
I can do no other was his reply. And of
(26:31):
course he didn't fear man, he feared God. And this
would begin a revolution in the world. His example would
begin a revolution in the world. More of the story
of Martin Luther, the Man who discovered God and changed
the world. Here on our American stories. And we continue
(27:37):
with our American stories and with Eric attaxas the author
of Martin Luther, the Man who Rediscovered God and changed
the world. Here is Eric with the final part of
this remarkable story.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
He's declared not just the heretic, but now an outlaw,
meaning that the Pope says he's a heretic. But then
the Holy Roman Emperor declares him an outlaw because if
the Pope says, you're a heretic. You are now also illegal,
you're an outlaw, renegade. And so they let him go
back home, but it's pretty clear that as soon as
(28:12):
he gets home, there's going to be, you know, somebody's
going to come to arrest him, and then he's going
to be taken to Rome and he's going to be
burned at the steak.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
So his protector, in a way.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
Frederick the Third, Frederick the Wise, who he sensed that Rome,
those Italians are not treating him right. They didn't give
him a fair hearing, and I don't want him to
go down there and be killed and whatever.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
So here's what we're going to do. We're going to
kidnap him.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
And it's out of a movie, right that he is
on the way home from Vorms, going home, and he
knows this is going to happen. They've told him, but
they told him they didn't tell him who's going to
kidnap you, nor where they're going to take you, you know, nothing,
Just go along with it, and they kidnap him with
crossbows drawn.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
It's actually kind of a scary scene.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
The people in the wagon didn't know that this fake
and So Luther is kidnapped by these strangers and dragged
through the night to.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
A castle called the Vartborg.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
It's way up in the Thuringian forest and it's this
castle and nobody knows he's there. And then if that's
not you know, exciting enough, he has to be disguised.
So he grows out his tonsure, you know, the tonsure
they would shave their heads. He grows out his hair,
and he grows a beard, a cavalier's beard, to look
like a knight because he has to blend in with
(29:31):
the other knights at the castle. They're not told that
this is Martin Luther, so they call him Knight George
or yunker Georg. And he's now incognito as a knight
in the castle for a year. And of course while
he's there, he's dressed as a knight, and he's kind
of bored because he's a very busy guy. When he's
(29:52):
back home now he has nothing to do. So what
does he do. He translates the New Testament into German
in eleven weeks. People say, well, was this the first
time it had been translating to German. No, but it
was the first time it was translated from the original Greek,
not from the Latin Vulgate, so it was accurate. He
(30:14):
was obsessed with what exactly does the Word of God say?
Speaker 3 (30:17):
What does it say?
Speaker 2 (30:19):
And there were some mistakes in the Latin Vulgate translated
by Jerome, which the Church had accepted, and so he
wanted to get it exactly right. And he wanted to
write it in such a way that the common men
and women of Germany could understand what it said. He
knew that this book has never been read by these people,
and so his writing was so good.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
This is the thing.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
This man's nothing but a genius of history. His writing
was so good that to this day Germans read the
Luther translation. I mean, it's not like it was some
primitive thing that they've improved upon. He was a poet
with the vernacular.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
As a result of.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
That, the Gospel was allowed out of its cage into
the world in a way that it had never been before.
Now this is not to say that the Gospel didn't
exist before Luther, God forbid, but it had been sort
of hidden and forgotten. Luther rediscovers it in a way
that he brings it into the world, not just so
(31:21):
that we can get saved, but so that we who
get saved can then take that gospel and do every
good thing imaginable in the world in gratitude to the
God of Mercy. The Gospel frees us to bring justice
and truth and life. Slavery would never have been abolished
(31:43):
in the United States of America if not for born
again Jesus freaks who believed were all created in the
image of God. What do you think the idea came
from secular people? Church people, born again Jesus freaks who
believed in the Word of God said abomination, and we
don't care what has been going on for thousands of years.
Speaker 3 (32:03):
It needs to end.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
That is the Gospel of Jesus Christ freed into history.
Speaker 3 (32:09):
Luther is a huge piece of that.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
And I have to tell you, if he had not
had the courage in the faith to stand when he stood,
I have no idea how it would have gone down.
This is one of the most beautiful things that fairly
late in life for him. He was forty one and
(32:33):
he decides to get married. And it wasn't because he
was lusting and he said, I've got to get married.
It wasn't because he was madly in love, and he
had to marry this woman. He found himself in a
place in life where this nun had escaped from the nunnery.
Actually Luther sprang her from the jug He was, you know,
the main orchestrator of this escape of the Nimpshen twelve
(32:56):
nuns from Nimpshen. We call him the Nimshen twelve. And
they had to figure out what they're going to do.
You can't just these nuns had been there against their will,
and he thought it's not right and they need to
be able to make their own decisions. If they don't
want to be nuns, they shouldn't have to be nuns.
And so this was highly illegal, and he springs them
out of there, and suddenly where do they come. They
all come to Wittenberg and sort of say, well, okay,
(33:18):
now what do we do?
Speaker 3 (33:19):
So he had to get them married off.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
I mean, he had to find them, you know, a
position in a house or something. They had to do
something because they were poor, and one of them didn't
want to marry the man that they had.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
Kind of picked for her.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
And she was kind of brassy and outspoken, you know,
instead of saying, okay, thank you very much, I'll marry
this guy. She didn't like him, and she told Luther's
friend Nicholas von Armsdorf, I really don't want to marry
that guy, and she said, rather cheekily, I would marry you,
meaning Nicholas von Armsdorf or doctor Luther. So in a way,
(33:54):
she's the one that proposed. It's very funny. Armsdorf was
not at all interested in marrying and Luther somehow his
head got turned slightly around. At first he thought she
was arrogant or something, but at some point he decided
he esteemed her. That's the phrase that I use, and
I think that he uses that. He really respected her.
(34:16):
She was only she was fifteen years younger, far less educated,
but he really really respected her. And that grew into
a beautiful and deep love that is so beautiful that
it should be.
Speaker 3 (34:31):
A model for all of us.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
We're all looking for these feelings and stuff. He had
this really beautiful relationship. The two of them esteemed each
other and loved each other, and they had six kids,
and he loved his kids. And it shows you a
dramatically different side, the playful side of the human side
of Martin Luther. Luther said many things in his life
(34:56):
that were extremely.
Speaker 3 (34:58):
Positive about the Jews.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
He was way ahead of his time in understanding their plight,
the way Christians treated them and stuff. But the Nazis cynical,
satanically influenced that they were. They found what Luther wrote
just a few years before he died. He was, for him,
very ill and cranky, and he had by that time
in his life gotten to where he was saying extraordinarily
(35:23):
nasty things about everyone. He was vicious. His friends told him,
you know, you got to stop tweeting. It's not presidential,
and oh, you know what, I'm sorry. I didn't get
a lot of sleep last night. I apologize. But at
his very funeral, his dearest friend Melanthon is saying in
(35:46):
his eulogy that Luther was not a perfect guy. So
everybody kind of knew it. But the point is that
Luther was vicious to the Catholics and to the Pope.
And I quote some of it because it's very funny
and very vicious and very crazy. He was vicious to
his fellow Protestants with whom he disagreed, vicious, vicious to
(36:07):
the Muslims. But of course nobody ever hears about that.
You only hear about what he said about the Jews.
Why because the Nazis grabbed what he said about the
Jews and they said, look, our national hero, the Sainted Luther,
said this. They didn't quote what he said about Jesus
and about loving your neighbor and about he said. Ninety
(36:29):
nine point nine percent of what he said.
Speaker 3 (36:32):
The Nazis didn't.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
Want to quote and didn't believe and despise, but they
found just what he said. And so everybody today says
he was an anti Semite. He said this, and he
said that, Well, what he said is horrible. Let's not,
you know, sugarcoat it, but when you put it in context,
it's at least different than simply horrible.
Speaker 3 (36:52):
It's far more complicated.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Greg Hengler, and a special thanks to
Eric Metexas, and he wrote Martin Luther, the Man who
Rediscovered God and changed the world. He's also the author
of bon Offer, Paster, Martyr, Prophet and Spy and we've
done that story with him as well. And they did
(37:18):
very different things at very different times, but in the
end they did hard things and they challenged well the
world order and the order in front of them, and
they did it in obedience to their God. And the
story of him being kidnapped or the fake kidnapping to
get him out of this outlaw mode. I mean, imagine
the Pope declaring you are heretic, and the Emperor Rome
(37:42):
calling you an outlaw. Well, your life expectancy, well it
just went down a notch. And while living in this
beautiful prison, he decides to translate the Bible and does
so in eleven weeks from Greek, not from Latin, but
from Greek into German. As a result, Eric said the
Gospel was out.
Speaker 3 (38:02):
Of its cage.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
The story of Martin Luther, the man who discovered God
and changed the world. Here on our American stories
This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
And to search for the Our American Stories podcast, go
to the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts. Today's story is about one man who changed
the world five hundred years ago. The origin of this
(00:34):
conflict flowed from a deceptively simple question, a riddle of
sorts that a Catholic monk named Martin Luther wrestled with
for years. The question he asked himself was this Am
I a good person? Here to tell the story is
best selling author Eric Metexas. Eric wrote Martin Luther, the
man who rediscovered God and changed the world. Let's take
(00:58):
a listen.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
When Martin Luther King Junior was about five years old.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Okay, we're talking about the Black Leader in twenty century.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
His father was a famous Baptist preacher, and he visited
the Holy Land with a whole bunch of other Baptists.
This is like would have been I don't know, nineteen
twenty or something I don't gid write. And on the
way back he went to Germany and visited Wittenberg and stuff, and.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Was so blown away. This is the Black Father was
so blown away by the life.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Of Martin Luther that as an adult he changed his
name from Michael King to Martin Luther King. As an adult,
he changed his saying, that's how big of a deal
Luther has been in history. And his son, Michael Junior,
changed his name to Martin Luther King Junior. Until the
(01:59):
day Martin Luther King Junior died, his close friends called
him Mike. I would say Luther is the most influential
man in two thousand years, apart from Jesus. There's no
doubt that God used this very flawed man, and so
I was really convinced that this is a gigantically important story.
(02:21):
Luther was born on November tenth, but the year in
which he was born, we actually don't know. We're sure
that it's fourteen eighty two, fourteen eighty three, or fourteen
eighty four. I'm pretty sure it's fourteen eighty three, but
no one really knows, including his own mother, who was
nearby when.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
It took place.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
We actually don't that's kind of weird, but it's true.
But he's born on November tenth. On November eleventh, they
take him to church and baptize him, because the whole
point was if you're not baptized, you'll go to Hell forever, right,
so you might want to speed up with the baptismal process.
Kind of important. So they baptized him on November eleventh,
which was Saint Martin's Day, and they named him Martin,
(03:01):
after the saint for whom the day was named. So
Luther was raised in a fairly well to do family.
Now there's all these myths you hear that he grew
up and he always said, I am the son of
a poor miner, and I come from peasants stock. He
was kind of like blowing smoke the way politicians do.
They kind of like want to try to, you know,
(03:22):
tell you they come from these humble roots. But the
reality is his roots were not that humble. He was
exaggerating a little bit. His father was not a poor miner.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
His father was.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
An ambitious, successful businessman in the mining business. His father
wanted his brilliant son to go to the best schools
and to go to the university, study law, and then
come home to Mansfeld and work in the family business.
They needed a brilliant lawyer to work with them, and
they put him on this path. They could never go
to college, you know, so they said it's on you.
(03:53):
So the problem is that Luther grew up at a
time went salvation and the fear of hell was so
real that while he is away from home at these schools,
he's thinking about eternal matters. Now, his parents were Christians,
but I think that wherever he was that he had
the freedom, as being very sensitive, brilliant young man, to
(04:16):
be thinking about this stuff, and I think it was
eating at him. And by the time he goes to
law school, he's twenty two years old. His father sacrificed everything.
Things come to a head, and he has heard of
some people dying and on their deathbeds saying, you know,
I wish I hadn't done this, or that I wish
I'd got into a monastery. I wish I'd given everything
(04:37):
to God, because now I'm facing eternity and I'm scared.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
People often tell the.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Story as though one day Luther's blithely minding his own business, walking,
you know, on the heath in the village of Stutturnheim.
A thunderstorm comes scares him to death. He thinks he's
going to be struck by lightning and enter eternity, and
he says, Saint and save me. If you save me,
I'll become a monk. Saint Anne was the patron saint
of minors. And he doesn't die, and then he thinks, well,
(05:06):
I've just made a vow. I guess I've got to
become a monk. And he becomes a monk. And that's,
of course ridiculous because he had been thinking about his
own salvation very much in the years preceding this. So
the implication that this was just something that he blurts
out in a moment of fear and then it changes
the course of his whole life.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
Is just silly.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
He was thinking incessantly about eternity. So when the thunderstorm
came and he says this vow, which did happen? It
was only all of these things coming to a head.
It wasn't some dramatic thing. The bottom line is this
was against his father's wishes. But he said, I cannot
(05:47):
take a chance. He was scared of obeying his father
and going to Hell forever, and so he does this
against his father's wishes, and he gets into the monastery,
and what happens in the monastery, well, he realizes that
if I have to earn heaven, which was the basic
way of thinking, that means I've got to pray constantly,
(06:10):
I've got a fast constantly. I've got to deny myself
every pleasure. I have to confess every sinful thought. Otherwise,
any sinful thought can drag me to hell unless I
confess it to a priest, not to God, to a
priest who will officially absolve me.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
And if he doesn't officially absolve me, I go to hell.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
And you're listening to Eric, But Texas tell the story
of Martin Luther. And we tell this story because of
course America was founded by people who were a part
of this split in the Church that happened in the
sixteenth century. And what a fascinating story about his youth.
The myth busted my metaxis that he came from a
(06:56):
poor family and that the father was a minor, a
slight exactation, as Eric would put it, but one that
was not true. He came from a well to do family,
well enough to send him off to law school for
the study of law. That there was a crisis slurking,
and an existential one, a philosophical one, a spiritual one
because Luther was worried about his eternal soul and worried
(07:17):
about Hell. So he leaves Law heads to the monastery.
And when we come back, more of this remarkable story
of Martin Luther here on our American Stories. Lee Habib
here the host of our American Stories. Every day on
this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from across this great country,
(07:40):
stories from our big cities and small towns. But we
truly can't do the show without you. Our stories are
free to listen to, but they're not free to make.
If you love what you hear, go to Ouramerican Stories
dot com and click the donate button. Give a little,
give a lot. Go to Ouramerican Stories dot com and give.
(08:09):
And we continue with our American Stories and with Eric Metexas.
He's the author of Martin Luther, the Man who we
discovered God and change the world. Let's pick up where
we last left off.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
Luther believed.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Now think about this, I mean, later on he taught
that when you make a confession to God and you
repent to God, you're good. Faith is all you need
and God will forgive you. But the Church taught and
Luther eventually fought viciously with this concept. The Church said,
it doesn't matter what is in your heart and with God,
(08:46):
you have to go to a priest. Only the priest
has the right and the authority granted to him by Christ,
to absolve you of your sin. So if you do
not confess your sin officially with a priest, it is
still on you. It's still on the books will drag
you to hell forever. Now, if you take that as
seriously as Luther took it, you would never leave the
(09:06):
confession booth. And so he was miserable, trying to please God,
trying to earn his way into the favor of God.
So Luther spends his life praying and fasting and confessing
like a maniac, driving his father confessor insane, trying to
(09:29):
seeing what Luther's going through, how he's tortured and brilliant
and passionate and intense, and he sees that he's not
finding peace, and he says to him, do you hate God?
Or you think God hates you?
Speaker 3 (09:42):
God loves you? But Luther could not get this.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
So he would come in and he thought, I've got
to confess every sin, and he would confess things like
you on Tuesday, I prayed for five hours, and at
the end of it, I had a flicker of pride
for having prayed for five hours, and that flicker of
pride will pull me into hell. So I confess it,
and you can imagine bunched out. It's like rolling his eyes.
He actually says to Luther, only half joking, bring me
(10:09):
a serious sin, bring me adultery or murder, or otherwise,
get out.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
I'm a busy man.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Luther was just driving him insane with every random of thought, confessing, confessing,
and he understood that Luther is never going to find
peace this way. He's trying to earn the peace of God,
and Luther was failing. So Luther had another idea. He said,
since this is not working, I wonder if someplace in
(10:37):
the Bible there is the key, the golden key that
I'm looking for the cure for what ails me now.
People had not read the Bible up to this point
for many, many centuries. Obviously, the printing press was not
invented till the fourteen fifties, and Luther is at the
monastery in fifteen oh five, so having Bibles was not
(10:58):
a normal thing, and the Catholic Church of that day
did not have Bibles, and they didn't read the Bible.
They would use the Bible as a text to create
commentaries on the Bible. So you'd study the commentaries, and
you'd study commentaries on the commentaries, but actually studying the
Bible was not done. The Bible had been translated by
(11:19):
Saint Jerome twelve hundred years earlier into Latin, and they
had the Latin Vulgate, and that was the official Church
translation in Latin. Well, Luther was living at a time Humanism,
this intellectual trend was coming out where because of the
fall of Constantinople in fourteen fifty three, all these Greek
scholars had come out and suddenly they were revivifying the
(11:39):
ancient languages, and people began to read ancient texts, including
the Bible, in the original language. So Luther jumps on
this and starts studying the actual Bible, digging into it
like a man looking for the cure to a fatal disease, saying,
if I don't find it, I will die. And Luther felt,
(12:00):
if I don't find it, I will die the second death,
I will never be in the presence of God. I
need to find it, and so he obsessively reads through
the scriptures. Now, he was a super brilliant Bible reader,
and he dug and dug, and he taught Bible at
the university. And at some point around fifteen seventeen, he
reads Romans one seventeen. He reads this verse that he'd
(12:26):
never really understood before. It says, for in the Gospel,
the righteousness of God is revealed, as it is written,
the just shall live by faith. And it finally strikes him,
I've been doing it all wrong. It is only by
(12:47):
faith that I can apprehend God, and by faith I
get the free gift of the righteousness of God. I
can't become righteous on my own. It's useless us. But God,
who is holy and righteous, gives me the free gift
(13:08):
the Gospel. The good news is that he gives it
to me as a gift. I mean, imagine somebody gives
you a gift and you go, let me just give
you five bucks for that. That's insulting. He understands, this
is a gift from God. The love of God and
the righteousness of God are given to me. And all
(13:28):
I need to do is believe that. And the Word
says it, and it's imputed to me as righteousness. I
am free, I am saved.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
Game over. I don't need to climb and claw and
work and pray. I'm saved. It's over.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
And then when you appreciate that gift and you apprehend
it by faith, you accept the gift. Now you can
do all kinds of good works. But it's the motivation
is gratitude to the God who gave you this free gift.
I want to bless him. I want to love people
with the love with which He has loved me. I
(14:05):
want to help the poor, I want to feed the hungry.
I want to do every good thing out of the
joy and the gratitude of this free gift of grace
which I have apprehended only by faith. Wow, this changes
Luther's life, obviously, it changes everything. Imagine living in a
world where nobody gets this. They have because of tradition
(14:30):
over centuries, kind of built this up where it's sort
of about do this.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
And don't do this, and do this and don't do this.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
But once Luther experiences this the famous moment today he
nails the ninety five theses to the door of the
Wittenberg Cathedral. That's the moment, and it's related, but not
that directly related. Basically, Luther notices that in the Catholic
Church at this time, they're doing this thing where they
preach indulgences, where people are throwing money into the coffers
(14:57):
of the church and buying these certificates kind of get
out of jail free cards, and it was creating this
kind of corrupt, cynical world. And Luther said, as a priest,
this is not good for the flock, this is not
good for the sheep. As a theologian, I need to
tell my superiors what is going on now. This is
related to the work's righteousness stuff that I was just
(15:18):
talking about, but it starts out with a specific thing
of indulgences. And Luther does not shake his fist at
the church. And you know, we get this image of him.
He was a humble monk, a humble man of God,
wanting to say in the humblest way to his superiors,
we have a problem. We need to examine this problem.
So why don't we have a theological debate. That's what
(15:39):
we theologians do in the university. So in Latin, I'll
write up these ninety five feces. I'll post it on
the church door, which by the way was only the
local bulletin board. He wasn't trying to be like a
big shop by saying I'm gonna put it on the
church door. The church door was the bulletin board. Once
you realize that, it doesn't seem so heroic, right, But
in retrospect we read that when he did that, it
(16:03):
blew everything up. It led to trouble.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
And you've been listening to Eric Metaxas tell the story
of Martin Luther, and imagine this young man trying to
save his immortal soul and confessing his sin, trying to
well work his way into heaven.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
And to save his soul from hell.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
And he's confessing, and he's praying, and he's fasting, and
he's essentially driving his confessor, his priest crazy. But he
believes and knows at the time that the only way
to get through, or at least that was the Catholic
Church's position, was through a priest. And then he discovers
that he can take his case directly to God. That
and some other criticisms of the church are posted on
(16:46):
the door of the church. But back then this was
not some high revolt. The mere act of posting something
on a church door. It was akin to posting something
on a bulletin board. But it was what was on
that paper that revolutionized.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
The church is critiques.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
And by the way, these critiques out of love for
the church, not out of hate for the Catholic Church.
When we come back more of the story of Martin
Luther as told by Eric Metaxas, author of Martin Luther,
The Man Who Discovered God and Changed the World. Here
on our American stories, and we continue with our American
(18:10):
stories and the story of Martin Luther as told by
Eric Mattexas, author of Martin Luther, The Man Who Discovered
God and Changed the World. Let's pick up where we
last left off.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
People said, who does he think he is criticizing indulgences,
and they, you know, threw mudd at him, and he
threw some mud back. He defended himself and it turned
into a conflagration that consumed all of Europe. This humble
monk never intended that. He never intended to break away
from the church. This was the only church he knew.
(18:45):
He never intended to start another church.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
Never.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
There were other reformers who said almost exactly what Luther said.
One hundred years earlier, Jan Huss, the famous Hungarian wicklift Hitendale.
And then there are some reformers like Saint Francis who
never were incendiary or trouble making, but that's just because
they had a good pope or they had a good
who knows. But Wickliffe and Jan Huss they had said
(19:14):
almost exactly what Luther said. But the church and the
power was able to contain the trouble and crush it
and burn them at the stake, and that was the
end of that. The difference was when Luther brought his
information forward the printing press existed, which of course it
did not in fourteen fifteen, when when Hohos was condemned
(19:37):
and people, without even asking Luther took the ninety five
pieces and said, oh, this looks interesting. They translated into
German and they printed it and it sold like hotcakes.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
And next thing, you know, everybody in.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Europe, not just Germany, is reading these ninety five pieces
and thinking, hey, this is a hot potato.
Speaker 3 (19:56):
This is the Pope's not going to like this.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
It started to get kind of, you know, beyond the
horse got out of the barn and there was no
bringing it back in. So everything he wrote then he
would preach a sermon to clarify, like, oh, listen, I
don't read the theses. Let me let me give my
more considered thinking.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
On the subject of indulgences. I'll preach a sermon.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
I better preach a sermon and clarify, because people are
all hot headed about the ninety five theses, which I
only meant for other theologians to read in Latin, but
now everybody's talking about it. So he preaches a sermon
and prints it up and translate into German, and then
that gets distributed, and then the archbishop says to him, well,
you know that's causing trouble too, can you can you
can you stop distributing that?
Speaker 3 (20:36):
Can? He say?
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Well, of course he was very humble in but eventually
Luther learned to use the medium of printing and he
could get his message out to the people. There really
had never been a people before. They were just there
was rulers and the people whom they ruled, and they
(20:57):
had nothing to say about anything. But suddenly lou his
writings are getting out there and the people are reading
it and they're getting excited, and they're thinking, this man
speaks for us.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
He's saying exactly what's true.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
He's talking about the corruption, he's talking about this, he's
talking about that, and this is.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
Exactly what we feel.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
And so, as I say, the horse got out of
the barn. And so even if they had killed Luther,
the movement, these intellectual ideas were out and there was
no bringing him back. Eventually, in fifteen twenty one, at
the grotesquely named Diet of Worms. Vorms was a city
(21:34):
in Germany, and Luther was called to go to the
City of Worms to face the music. The Pope had
sent a representative. The Holy Roman Empire was represented by
the Emperor Charles and all of the nobles, and they're
there to hear this man defend himself. Four years into
this insanity where the whole world is talking about these ideas,
(21:57):
and suddenly he's there and they say to him, because
they're trying to crush this descent. Things have gotten out
of hand, and they're trying to say to him, excuse me,
shut up, right, not excuse me, What did you mean
by that?
Speaker 3 (22:11):
How can we help you?
Speaker 2 (22:12):
It's excuse me, you shut up. Racan't what you said,
and we'll let you walk out of here. But if
you don't, you will be taken to Rome and burnt
at the stake. So Luther has an opportunity to walk away.
And it reminds me of my friend Chuck Colson. He
was given a plea bargain at Watergate, and they basically
(22:33):
said to him, look, look, look, you want to avoid
jail time. You got teenage kids, you don't want to
do jail time. Just sign on this line, just say
you did these things that you didn't do.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
But you do that and you walk out of here.
Take the deal. Chuck your nuts not to take the deal.
Sign it. And he said, why, I have a problem.
I'm a Christian. I can't do that. And Luther was
in the same position.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
He said, I understand that all I have to do
is say I recan't Everything I've said sorry won't happen again,
and I walk out of here. But he felt compelled
by God not to do that.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
He felt compelled.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
By God to demand of them that they show him
where he had made a mistake.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
He said, if I'm.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Wrong, I don't want to paper this over. Show me
where I screwed up. Show me, and of course I
will recant and repent, but you have to show me
from the scriptures. What did I get wrong? They didn't
do that.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
They said, are these your books? Yes or no? Yes?
Do you recant what you've written in these books? Yes
or no? He said, how can I recant what I've written?
I've written many.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Good things in these books. Show me what it is
that I've gotten wrong. Show me They weren't going to
do that. They wanted just to say, shut up, bow
before the authority of the church, and everything will be fine.
And he says, I can't do that. And the famous
line is here, I stand, I can do no other.
(24:00):
You want me to recant unless you show me from
the scriptures?
Speaker 3 (24:06):
Here I stand, I can do no other. God help me. Amen.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
He casts himself on the mercy of the Lord. Luther
did not fear what they could do to him. He said,
I fear God. I fear the truth. I want to
represent what is true. What about all those people depending
on me? God's gonna hold me responsible all those people.
(24:30):
I have to speak the truth. So he spoke the truth.
And this is one of the watersheds in the history
of the world. When you appreciate what happened in that room,
it is mind blowing. It's an epical moment in history.
Others had done it before, but somehow, when he did it,
(24:52):
it opened the door to what we call the future.
I say that he was the man that created the future,
of the man that discovered the future. By holding the
Gospel up in this way, he did something that changed
the world forever and ever, and all of the freedoms
that we take for granted, the very idea of democracy,
(25:12):
the idea that the individual can speak against power, and
that all of these things.
Speaker 3 (25:19):
The whole modern world started that day.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
And it's not an overstatement to say that that is
exactly what happened on that day.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Informs and you're listening to Eric Mattaxis tell one heck
of a story of Martin Luther. And again, Eric is
the author of Martin Luther, The Man who Discovered God
and Changed the world. He's also the author of one
of my favorite books, Bonheffer. Pick both up. You won't
regret it, two of the greatest reads you'll ever experience
(25:49):
in your lifetime. You're hearing a good bulk of the
story here, and it was just simple. He was saying
to the Church and the superiors, let's have a discussion.
I have a problem. I have some text to back
it up. You see, the Bible was now within reach
of some people. They were printing presses, and this was
a problem for the superiors. And of course, well, what
(26:10):
people do with power is what they do with power.
And they wanted Martin Luther, that is, simply recant, and
not recant on principle, not recant after a debate or
a discussion, but simply to recant and repent because they
said so. And of course he didn't. Here I stand,
I can do no other was his reply. And of
(26:31):
course he didn't fear man, he feared God. And this
would begin a revolution in the world. His example would
begin a revolution in the world. More of the story
of Martin Luther, the Man who discovered God and changed
the world. Here on our American stories. And we continue
(27:37):
with our American stories and with Eric attaxas the author
of Martin Luther, the Man who Rediscovered God and changed
the world. Here is Eric with the final part of
this remarkable story.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
He's declared not just the heretic, but now an outlaw,
meaning that the Pope says he's a heretic. But then
the Holy Roman Emperor declares him an outlaw because if
the Pope says, you're a heretic. You are now also illegal,
you're an outlaw, renegade. And so they let him go
back home, but it's pretty clear that as soon as
(28:12):
he gets home, there's going to be, you know, somebody's
going to come to arrest him, and then he's going
to be taken to Rome and he's going to be
burned at the steak.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
So his protector, in a way.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
Frederick the Third, Frederick the Wise, who he sensed that Rome,
those Italians are not treating him right. They didn't give
him a fair hearing, and I don't want him to
go down there and be killed and whatever.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
So here's what we're going to do. We're going to
kidnap him.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
And it's out of a movie, right that he is
on the way home from Vorms, going home, and he
knows this is going to happen. They've told him, but
they told him they didn't tell him who's going to
kidnap you, nor where they're going to take you, you know, nothing,
Just go along with it, and they kidnap him with
crossbows drawn.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
It's actually kind of a scary scene.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
The people in the wagon didn't know that this fake
and So Luther is kidnapped by these strangers and dragged
through the night to.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
A castle called the Vartborg.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
It's way up in the Thuringian forest and it's this
castle and nobody knows he's there. And then if that's
not you know, exciting enough, he has to be disguised.
So he grows out his tonsure, you know, the tonsure
they would shave their heads. He grows out his hair,
and he grows a beard, a cavalier's beard, to look
like a knight because he has to blend in with
(29:31):
the other knights at the castle. They're not told that
this is Martin Luther, so they call him Knight George
or yunker Georg. And he's now incognito as a knight
in the castle for a year. And of course while
he's there, he's dressed as a knight, and he's kind
of bored because he's a very busy guy. When he's
(29:52):
back home now he has nothing to do. So what
does he do. He translates the New Testament into German
in eleven weeks. People say, well, was this the first
time it had been translating to German. No, but it
was the first time it was translated from the original Greek,
not from the Latin Vulgate, so it was accurate. He
(30:14):
was obsessed with what exactly does the Word of God say?
Speaker 3 (30:17):
What does it say?
Speaker 2 (30:19):
And there were some mistakes in the Latin Vulgate translated
by Jerome, which the Church had accepted, and so he
wanted to get it exactly right. And he wanted to
write it in such a way that the common men
and women of Germany could understand what it said. He
knew that this book has never been read by these people,
and so his writing was so good.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
This is the thing.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
This man's nothing but a genius of history. His writing
was so good that to this day Germans read the
Luther translation. I mean, it's not like it was some
primitive thing that they've improved upon. He was a poet
with the vernacular.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
As a result of.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
That, the Gospel was allowed out of its cage into
the world in a way that it had never been before.
Now this is not to say that the Gospel didn't
exist before Luther, God forbid, but it had been sort
of hidden and forgotten. Luther rediscovers it in a way
that he brings it into the world, not just so
(31:21):
that we can get saved, but so that we who
get saved can then take that gospel and do every
good thing imaginable in the world in gratitude to the
God of Mercy. The Gospel frees us to bring justice
and truth and life. Slavery would never have been abolished
(31:43):
in the United States of America if not for born
again Jesus freaks who believed were all created in the
image of God. What do you think the idea came
from secular people? Church people, born again Jesus freaks who
believed in the Word of God said abomination, and we
don't care what has been going on for thousands of years.
Speaker 3 (32:03):
It needs to end.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
That is the Gospel of Jesus Christ freed into history.
Speaker 3 (32:09):
Luther is a huge piece of that.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
And I have to tell you, if he had not
had the courage in the faith to stand when he stood,
I have no idea how it would have gone down.
This is one of the most beautiful things that fairly
late in life for him. He was forty one and
(32:33):
he decides to get married. And it wasn't because he
was lusting and he said, I've got to get married.
It wasn't because he was madly in love, and he
had to marry this woman. He found himself in a
place in life where this nun had escaped from the nunnery.
Actually Luther sprang her from the jug He was, you know,
the main orchestrator of this escape of the Nimpshen twelve
(32:56):
nuns from Nimpshen. We call him the Nimshen twelve. And
they had to figure out what they're going to do.
You can't just these nuns had been there against their will,
and he thought it's not right and they need to
be able to make their own decisions. If they don't
want to be nuns, they shouldn't have to be nuns.
And so this was highly illegal, and he springs them
out of there, and suddenly where do they come. They
all come to Wittenberg and sort of say, well, okay,
(33:18):
now what do we do?
Speaker 3 (33:19):
So he had to get them married off.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
I mean, he had to find them, you know, a
position in a house or something. They had to do
something because they were poor, and one of them didn't
want to marry the man that they had.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
Kind of picked for her.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
And she was kind of brassy and outspoken, you know,
instead of saying, okay, thank you very much, I'll marry
this guy. She didn't like him, and she told Luther's
friend Nicholas von Armsdorf, I really don't want to marry
that guy, and she said, rather cheekily, I would marry you,
meaning Nicholas von Armsdorf or doctor Luther. So in a way,
(33:54):
she's the one that proposed. It's very funny. Armsdorf was
not at all interested in marrying and Luther somehow his
head got turned slightly around. At first he thought she
was arrogant or something, but at some point he decided
he esteemed her. That's the phrase that I use, and
I think that he uses that. He really respected her.
(34:16):
She was only she was fifteen years younger, far less educated,
but he really really respected her. And that grew into
a beautiful and deep love that is so beautiful that
it should be.
Speaker 3 (34:31):
A model for all of us.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
We're all looking for these feelings and stuff. He had
this really beautiful relationship. The two of them esteemed each
other and loved each other, and they had six kids,
and he loved his kids. And it shows you a
dramatically different side, the playful side of the human side
of Martin Luther. Luther said many things in his life
(34:56):
that were extremely.
Speaker 3 (34:58):
Positive about the Jews.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
He was way ahead of his time in understanding their plight,
the way Christians treated them and stuff. But the Nazis cynical,
satanically influenced that they were. They found what Luther wrote
just a few years before he died. He was, for him,
very ill and cranky, and he had by that time
in his life gotten to where he was saying extraordinarily
(35:23):
nasty things about everyone. He was vicious. His friends told him,
you know, you got to stop tweeting. It's not presidential,
and oh, you know what, I'm sorry. I didn't get
a lot of sleep last night. I apologize. But at
his very funeral, his dearest friend Melanthon is saying in
(35:46):
his eulogy that Luther was not a perfect guy. So
everybody kind of knew it. But the point is that
Luther was vicious to the Catholics and to the Pope.
And I quote some of it because it's very funny
and very vicious and very crazy. He was vicious to
his fellow Protestants with whom he disagreed, vicious, vicious to
(36:07):
the Muslims. But of course nobody ever hears about that.
You only hear about what he said about the Jews.
Why because the Nazis grabbed what he said about the
Jews and they said, look, our national hero, the Sainted Luther,
said this. They didn't quote what he said about Jesus
and about loving your neighbor and about he said. Ninety
(36:29):
nine point nine percent of what he said.
Speaker 3 (36:32):
The Nazis didn't.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
Want to quote and didn't believe and despise, but they
found just what he said. And so everybody today says
he was an anti Semite. He said this, and he
said that, Well, what he said is horrible. Let's not,
you know, sugarcoat it, but when you put it in context,
it's at least different than simply horrible.
Speaker 3 (36:52):
It's far more complicated.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Greg Hengler, and a special thanks to
Eric Metexas, and he wrote Martin Luther, the Man who
Rediscovered God and changed the world. He's also the author
of bon Offer, Paster, Martyr, Prophet and Spy and we've
done that story with him as well. And they did
(37:18):
very different things at very different times, but in the
end they did hard things and they challenged well the
world order and the order in front of them, and
they did it in obedience to their God. And the
story of him being kidnapped or the fake kidnapping to
get him out of this outlaw mode. I mean, imagine
the Pope declaring you are heretic, and the Emperor Rome
(37:42):
calling you an outlaw. Well, your life expectancy, well it
just went down a notch. And while living in this
beautiful prison, he decides to translate the Bible and does
so in eleven weeks from Greek, not from Latin, but
from Greek into German. As a result, Eric said the
Gospel was out.
Speaker 3 (38:02):
Of its cage.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
The story of Martin Luther, the man who discovered God
and changed the world. Here on our American stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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