Martin Luther

Prayer Tips: A Good Book from Luther

Jeffrey Stivason
Sep 17, 2021
You are a pastor in a small city. You’ve known your barber for almost twenty years. One day while he trims he asks for help in prayer. He, like many others, struggles in that area. So, you decide to go home and write a brief thirty-four page guide for him. You even incorporate your friend in the...

Comfort on the Wall

Jeffrey Stivason
Jun 12, 2021
It is said that when Martin Luther heard of his father’s death he took his Psalter and retreated to his room and was not seen the rest of the day. This news came to the great German while he was at the Castle Coburg during the Diet of Augsburg. We may wonder what such a great man did in the...

Justification and Martin Luther

Ray Heiple
Apr 17, 2020
It was a hot, humid afternoon in July, 1505. A brilliant young law student was traveling near the German village of Stotternheim in what was then Electoral Saxony. Having recently earned his Masters degree, he had by all accounts, a promising and lucrative law career ahead of him. But as often...

Luther, Law and Love

Nick Batzig
Nov 9, 2018
Life is too short not to reap the spiritual benefit of reading Martin Luther's Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians . Archibald Alexander, the first professor at Princeton Theological Seminary, once said that this particular work was the most influential book he read during his formative...

October 31, 1518: A Point of No Return

David Owen Filson
Oct 31, 2018
Your church is having a Reformation Day celebration. Your pastor is tossing out candy to those who get the answers right in the Reformation trivia contest. "What did Luther do on October 31, 1517?" Everyone's hands go up, as they shout in unison, "He nailed the 95 Theses to the Castle Church door...

Luther and German Nationalism

William Castro
Nov 29, 2017
Recently, the Bible-believing world has celebrated the 500 year of Martin Luther's life and the Reformation. We remembered great qualities and the positive legacy of such a remarkable man of the sixteenth- century. Now that this celebration is over, it is wise to consider that Luther was not...

Accommodating Rome?

Richard D. Phillips
Nov 2, 2017
Probably the most interesting Reformation celebration that I had the privilege of participating in last month took place in a Roman Catholic Church. The Center for Evangelical Catholicism here in Greenville, SC graciously invited me to join with two other Protestants and three Roman Catholic...

Luther's Royal Marriage

Howard Griffith
Oct 31, 2017
Martin Luther was an outsized personality, with great faith and some great flaws. Living with this great person has a good effect on you. Let me commend his little book, The Freedom of a Christian . When he challenged the practice of indulgences in 1517, and when he debated Johann Eck a year later...

The Troublesome Doctrine of Biblical Authority

Scott Redd
Oct 25, 2017
In the years 1518--1519, the Leipzig Debates were called and conducted between Johann Eck and Martin Luther, among others, in Pleissenburg Castle in Leipzig Germany. At the time, Luther would have presented the latest instance of the annoying humanists and reformers who seemed to be popping up...

The Great-Grandfather of the Reformation

Caleb Cangelosi
Oct 19, 2017
As we celebrate the 500 th anniversary of the Reformation, let us not forget that there were reforming efforts in the church of the Lord Jesus Christ long before Martin Luther played the carpenter and nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the church door in Wittenberg in 1517. These forerunners of the...