Happy Reformation Day

As a pastor and now interim pastor, I have always observed Reformation Sunday. It really does not have to get into theories about Baptist origins ... it simply commemorates a critical time in church history when a man took a stand ("Hie stehe ich, ich kann nicht anders") against the establishment and against encrusted privilege, as well as against works-based religion. I generally have referred to the Reformation as a social and economic, even populist, movement as well as a spiritual one.

This past Sunday I dressed in my academic colors to play "Professor Luther" and presented the message as a dramatic monologue, presenting Luther as he was about to finish his time at the Wartburg. Entitled "Amid the Flood", it referred to, of course, Psalm 46, and to the line in "A Mighty Fortress" which reads, "amid the flood of mortal ills prevailing". It led our people to trust God for all things amid the flood of issues now current, political and economic as well as spiritual and personal.

Can't pass October by without singing, "A mighty fortress is our God." That is on the docket for my funeral (hopefully AFTER we have the 500th anniversary of the 95 theses in 2017).

 

No, you're not missing anything: the first Anabaptist congregations sprung up in the 1520s among the Swiss and Germans. Famous Anabaptist figures from that time and location include Melchior Hoffman, Felix Manz, Balthasar Hubmaier, Conrad Grebel and Thomas Muntzer

[ETA - most of them came to unpleasant ends!]

 

Lets have a song!

 

Whoever "determined" that must have missed this:

Stanislaus Hosius, The Begynnyng of Heresyes in Oure Tyme, translated out of Latin into English by Richard Shacklock, 1565:
pp. 44-48

"For if so be, that as every is moste redy to suffer deathe for the faythe of his sect, so his faythe sholde be judged moste perfect and most sure, there shall be no faythe more certayne and true, then is the Anabaptistes, seying there be none now, or have bene before time for the space of these thousand and to hundred yeares, who have bene more cruelly punyshed, or that have more stoutely, stedfastly, cherefully taken theire punishment, yea or have offered them selves of their owne accorde to death, were it never so terrible and grevouse. Yea in Saint Augustyn his time, as he hym selffe sayeth, there was a certaine monstrouse desire of deathe in them. ... Nether was there such folyshe hardy heretkes in Sainst Augustine his tyme only. For foure hundred years agone, at what time S. Bernard lyved, there were Anabaptistes, which were no lesse prodigal to spend their lyfe, then were the Donatists, some (saythe he) did mervayle that they were led to theire deathe not only paciently but as it semed very frolyke and merye.
...If you beholde their cherefullnes in suffring persecutions, the Anabaptists run farr before all other heretykes. If you will have regarde to the number, it is like that in multitude they would swarm above al other, if they were not grevously plaged and cut off with the knyfe of persecution. If you have an eye to the outewarde appearaunce of godlynes, bothe the Lutherans and the Zuinglians muste nedes graunte, that they farr passe them.
...And surely howe many so euer haue wrytten agaynst this heresie, whether they were Catholykes or Heretykes, they were able to overthrowe it not so muche by the testimony of the scriptures, as by the authoritie of the Churche."

 

Halloween is also my birthday and my son's birthday!! :wavey:

And since it's now 24 minutes into Oct. 31st (I'm on Eastern time), it is my birthday!

I spoke to 400 teens last night at a Halloween outreach at a church in this area.

 

Nice find. :laugh:

 

The following is a test, a spiritual test. Those filled with the Spirit of God will have a sense of humor. If you can't see the humor in this KJV boo-boo (a matter of understanding, not of translation), your self-made halo is on WAY TOO TIGHT!
-------------------------------------------------
Here is the funniest KJV boo-boo of all:

2 Kings 19:35 (KJV1769):
And it came to pass that night, that the angel of the LORD went out,
and smote in the camp of the Assyrians
an hundred fourscore and five thousand:
and when they1 arose early in the morning,
behold, they2 were all dead corpses.

Of course, it is only funny if you
resolve the first "they1" as "the Assyrians"
and the second "they2" as "the Assyrians"
so it reads:

2 Kings 19:35 (KJV1769):
And it came to pass that night, that the angel of the LORD went out,
and smote in the camp of the Assyrians
an hundred fourscore and five thousand:
and when the Assyrians arose early in the morning,
behold, the Assyrians were all dead corpses.

Compare to the clarity of the HCSB = The Holman Christian Standard Bible
2 Kings 19:35 (HCSB):

That night the angel of the Lord went out
and struck down 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians.
When the people got up the [next] morning-there
were all the dead bodies!


But I love to praise Jesus in 17th Century talk:
:wavey: Praise Iesus, the Christ :wavey:

 

Marcia and son!!!

:1_grouphug:

 

That is funny Ed!

I can see how we could easily misread that one. Of course it's our boo boo and not the KJV's.

(My halo is not on too tight. In fact I think it fell off! :laugh: )

 

Thank you, Amy! I was wondering if someone was going to wish me a Happy Birthday. You are the first one today, besides my sister who left a message (I missed her call and she is overseas as a missionary).

 

Ditto!:wavey:

 

Thanks and thanks to you, Matt!

BaptistBoard also send birthday greetings by email. That was nice!

We did have a good birthday - we divided up the celebrations between the 31st and Nov. 1st so we could have 2 celebrations!

Thanks again for the birthday wishes!

 

Where I go to church we just did the Feast of All Saints , followed by the Feast Of All Souls on November 1 and November 2

Today is November 4 and in Australia it is the Day of the Melbourne Cup a quasi religious event for a great number of people

In New Zealand it is Guy Fawkes Night....an oportunity for the yahoos to attempt to take out their eyes with fireworks......now there is a little bit of history...Guy Fawkes....is it celebrated in the UK anymore?

 

Oh, yes it is, although it's becoming more conflated with Halloween (well, any excuse for young larrikins to blow off steam!). A word of warning to you though: I wouldn't advertise the fact you're Catholic round certain parts of England at this time of year - a lot of Prots were burned during the reign of Queen Mary (1553-58) in the Sussex area in particular and the memories are still sore from that time; in the Lewes area effigies of the Pope are still burned on 5th November, such as in this place Not quite the UK equivalent of the KKK but on that continuum...

Some pics of the Firle Bonfire of 2004 and article here

 

erm..... this silly Ozzie doesnt even know the right date, Guy Fawkes night is November 5 not the 4th as I had thought.

and Matt, Queen Mary may certainly had it in for the Protestants, but Queen Elizabeth 1 certainly responded in kind to the Catholics during her reign....very tit for tat...an ugly side of humanity when shall we ever learn?

 

It became a bit more complex and political in Elizabeth's reign. Mary revived the old heresy laws at the end of 1554 and Anglicans such as Cranmer, Hooper, Latimer and Ridley were burned under those, but with Elizabeth it was much more political: problems really only started after she was excommunicated by the Pope in 1570; the excommunication unwisely called upon English Catholics to depose and resist her, and therefore being Catholic became conflated with the capital offence of treason, and thus the Catholics judicially killed in her reign such as +Edmund Campion were done away with for treason, not for heresy as under Mary.