Centuries past, a brown robed monk, travel worn and a bit shabby, slowly makes his way into a small, medieval German village. Seeing the monk over a fence of sticks, a villager rushes out while scrabbling in a small bag of coins. With a whisper, the villager pleads, “It’s my mother… I can’t stand the thought of her suffering in Purgatory…”
The monk makes reassuring noises while holding out a box into which the villager drops all the coins she can spare, assured that these coins will speed her mother’s eventual entry into Heaven.
Walking farther into the village, seeing the monk a shopkeeper darts out and furtively whispers, “I have made love to my neighbor’s wife,” and the monk, hearing coins clink into his money box, whispers back, “God forgives you.”
Hardly past that man’s shop, a street vendor sets his wagon down on its legs and coming close to the monk’s ear, whispers, “Tomorrow night, when the butcher leaves for his son’s house for a visit, I’m going to break in and steal his money,” and with the jingle of some pennies into the money-box, his sins (not yet even committed) are already absolved and there’s no guilt.
The monk passes on down the village street, quite a popular man. What other man could relieve a person of guilt so easily? In a world where everyone feels guilt, a penny or three became very affordable in exchange for getting rid of those awful feelings.
Almost 500 years ago, in Germany, a revolution in religion burst forth - a revolution today called the Reformation. There were many men and women who were precursors to this movement, but the movement gained new direction and speed with an ex-monk named Martin Luther. Luther wrote a list of 95 “truths” which he considered incontestable and nailed them to the church door in Wittenberg.
All 95 of these “truths” center on an astonishing practice back then called “selling indulgences”. If a man, for example, planned on committing a crime, he could give the monk some money and the monk would “forgive” the man his sin.
Even those he hadn’t yet committed.
The monk also taught that if one of your loved ones had died, he or she had been sent by God to Purgatory, to suffer for ages until enough suffering eventually released the person into Heaven. Unless you slipped him some coin. The more coin you slipped him, the shorter a time the loved one had to suffer.
Selling of indulgences formed the center of Martin Luther’s break with the traditional church of his day and age. Later, he found far more to disagree with, but the selling of indulgences kicked him into action which, of course, got him kicked out of the traditional church.
Number 24 of the 95 Theses reads this way: “The greater part of the people are deceived by that indiscriminate and high-sounding promise of release from penalty.”
Seeing the traditional church’s deception of the people disturbed Luther greatly. The deception of a “high-sounding promise of release from penalty” meant that the traditional church offered to absolve a person from guilt (of sins committed in the past or planned for the future) with simply paying a monk some coin.
In the years which followed Luther’s striking out against the selling of indulgences, he determined the traditional church had deceived the common people in many other ways. From Scripture, Luther showed that everyone who is a follower of Jesus Christ is a “priest”, and that not by doing good works or paying money but by personal faith in Jesus Christ. He showed that common people could and should read the Bible for themselves, and translated the Bible from a dead language (Latin) into German, the language of the common people.
Luther even showed from Scripture that singing songs in praise to God was not sin! Unbelievably, in that century only the monks were supposed to sing — in Latin — but Luther restored singing and worship to the common people. He even wrote songs and hymns with the same kinds of tunes that people already sang in their houses and pubs.
Luther ignited a fire with the release of worship and personal faith along with the ability to read the Scriptures in the language of the common people. Today, this period is called the “Reformation”. The heart of the Reformation turned on a single point with many ramifications: the traditional church of that day had perpetuated — wittingly or not — a ritual and religion that seriously limited the common people’s ability to personally know God and worship Him.
Maybe it’s time for another Reformation today.
Not that anyone in traditional churches today is trying to “deceive” the “common people”… but when “salvation” is simply the result of attending a particular church, when wickedness is called “good” and good is called “evil” and both are accepted into the church, when the most loudly “righteous” people in a community are often the most judgmental and condemning — people are being deceived. They’re being deceived by culturally acceptable, mainstream “Christian” churches — and all in the Name of “Jesus”.
Let me say something revolutionary: There is a Move by the Spirit of God throughout the earth today. This Move of God seeks to raise up a Church that is not about culture, denomination, region or race. It’s the Church as described by Paul, the apostle, in the New Testament book
It’s the Church which has no geographical location and no systematic structure; it’s the Church which may exist in any area and grow within any denomination, because this Church is not an organization but an organism; — a living Being — called the “Body of Christ”. It is truly the Presence of Jesus Christ, dwelling within and through His people.
Jesus is building His “Church”, not man’s! The Bible also calls this Church a “House” in this earth, made up of Living Stones who are all those who believe in Him. He is building a “Body”, each and every part of which is any and every person who has trusted in Jesus, utterly committing his or her life to Him.
The Bible says that this Church (House, Body) will grow in this earth until it becomes the means and the vehicle whereby the powerful Love of God will be manifested over all the earth, bringing glory to God and peace to mankind!
So — are you ready to join a new Reformation?
© 2008 by Emil B. Swift
“KingdomScribes” is a ministry led by Emil and Michele Swift. Their website can be found at KingdomScribes.net/
The Swifts have been called by God to minister together uniquely to the Body of Christ and share a revelatory teaching ministry - gifted in the Spirit to teach mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven in a simple, direct fashion. Emil and Michele are “Kingdom Scribes” whose hearts are to raise every Believer into living and ministering in the power of the Spirit and the Word as “scribes of the Kingdom”. A passion to engage the hearts, souls and spirits of their listeners has led the Swifts into a teaching style characterized by its lack of religion, rituals and church jargon. They minister in words easily understood by those to whom they speak.
Tags: Apostolic, Bible, Bride, Christian, Equipping, Kingdom of God, logos, Prophetic, Renewal, rhema, teaching
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