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Both
the 6th and 7th
seal advocates within Church of God reformation movement include Martin Luther in their
Revelation timeline as a critical and crucial part of the New
Testament church age. Most notably, they look to him as having
restored the true doctrine of Justification, which experience they
often refer to as the “first work of grace.” Luther spent much of
his adult life battling against the evil Roman Catholic Church, who
was at the time selling personal indulgences to support the
construction of the St Peter's Basilica in Rome. Luther will forever
be remembered for advocating that “the just shall live by faith”. The 6th seal
advocates include his labors in their
3rd epic of time, just before the ushering of the Evening
Light. The 7th seal advocates include him in the 4th
seal, which they teach opened in 1530 A.D.
and closed in 1730 A.D. Both groups believe that Luther was the
central person that God used during this time in history.
Martin Luther was born on November 10, 1483 and died on February 18,
1546. He was a monk in his early years and became an ordained Roman
Catholic Priest in 1508. In 1517, he nailed his
Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the All Saints' Church at the
University of Wittenberg, a religious school in which he taught.
This act, and his subsequent efforts, led to the Great Reformation and
gave birth to the Protestant era.
Roman Catholic theology is that faith alone cannot justify man and
that good works must be done if heaven is to be obtained. Of course, the biggest beneficiary of
these “good works” is the Roman Catholic Church through donations.
At the core of the reformation uprising was the practice of the
Roman Catholic Church’s selling of indulgences. Simply stated, one could
contribute to the Roman Catholic Church and essentially pay for sins in
advance of committing them. Much evil sprung from this practice.
Martin Luther taught that salvation is not a result of faith and
good works, but is rather a free gift of God, received only by grace
through faith in Jesus as the redeemer from sin. His theology challenged
the authority of the pope and the entire Roman Catholic Church
hierarchal system by teaching that the Bible is the only source of
divinely revealed knowledge and that forgiveness of sin only comes
through Christ. He argued that good works have absolutely
nothing to do with salvation and that the Roman Catholic Church had lost
sight of this central truth of Christianity.
Luther’s theology was certainly a step in the right direction and may seem right to the casual observer and the
scripturally uninformed. However, a closer examination reveals very serious
problems.
As previously stated, Luther understood justification as entirely a
work of God by grace, though faith. Using the doctrine of
predestination as his basis, he believed that Christians receive
righteousness entirely from outside themselves; and that their
individual actions cannot influence their present standing of
salvation. Luther’s teaching was clearly expressed in his writings
which are readily available online. Among other online resources,
there is much information about his life and teachings at
Wikipedia.
Below is a brief sampling of his writings with regard to his view of
Justification:
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"Sin cannot tear you away from him [Christ], even though you
commit adultery a hundred times a day and commit as many
murders."
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"God does not work salvation for fictitious sinners. Be a sinner
and sin vigorously.... Do not for a moment imagine that this
life is the abiding place of justice; sin must be committed."
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“We should throw the Epistle of James out of this school [the
University of Wittenberg]....”
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"To be a Christian, you must pluck out the eye of reason."
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"Be
a sinner, and let your sins be strong, but let your trust in
Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over
sin, death, and the world. We will commit sins while we are
here, for this life is not a place where justice resides."
Luther had a strong disdain for the Jews and spent the latter years
of his life dishing out harsh, sometimes violent and vile language
against them. He believed that the Jews were "the devil's people."
Luther advocated setting their synagogues on fire, destroying
Jewish prayer books, forbidding rabbis from teaching in their
synagogues, seizing Jews' property and money, and smashing up their
homes, so that these "poisonous envenomed worms" would be forced
into labor or expelled "for all time".
If for no other reason, the above quotes should be a cause for
question in the minds of every holiness advocate, particularly those
who would look back to Martin Luther as being the key instrument in
the restoration of the teaching of Justification. Luther was
certainly at the heart of the Great Reformation, but it would seem
that he was used of God to break the back and expose the
errors of Roman Catholicism rather than than restoring the true bible
teaching of Justification. His exclusion of salvation having anything to do with man's personal actions
have led to some very unholy
teachings and practices, even in his own life. Luther should be given
some leeway in that he lived during the tail end of a very religious
Dark Age, but none of the present 6th or 7th seal advocates would
sanction his unbalanced teaching of Justification through "faith
alone".
This raises question on the significance of the Luther's role
with regard to the restoration of the teaching of
Justification, which in turn raises question to the overall validity
of the Revelation timeline as taught by both 6th and 7th
seals advocates within the Church of God movement.
In our next article, we plan on taking a look at the teachings of
John Wesley and his role in church history.
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