Are you radical?
Radical is a word that gets a bad press these days yet taken back to its origin it is a good word – roots (Latin – radix). Do you know your roots?
500 years on
On October 31st we will be celebrating 500 years since Martin Luther posted 95 theses for debate on the church door in Wittenberg. This was the root of the Reformation. Following his striving to please a righteous God, whom he saw with increasing dislike and as a god of anger and hatred, he discovered in the Bible that God does not wait for us to be attractive in order to love us but loves us first!
Others were discovering the same truth. One, William Tyndale, was burdened that people could not easily access the Bible in their own language; he wanted ordinary people to be able to read the scriptures and so translated the Bible. This was hated by the authorities and he was martyred in 1535. Following Christ was not for the faint hearted. Yet, shortly after that Henry VIII commanded that a translated Bible should be placed in every church.
Paid with their lives
Others who paid with their lives for pursuing the truth were the Bishops Latymer and Ridley, the great reformers; they were burnt at the stake in Oxford in 1554 to be followed shortly by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer.
Social impact
But a fire had been lit which could not be put out. Amongst many other benefits the Reformation released a tidal wave of social improvement: the abolition of the slave trade, the ending of the sale of young girls into prostitution, the outlawing of small boys being sent up chimneys as sweeps, the provision of education, food and housing for the poor, to name a few examples.
Informative and Evangelistic
Freedom Movement is an attractively illustrated book of less than forty pages. It not only records the key events and people involved in the Reformation but also presents the gospel clearly in an accessible form. As such it is a book for both Christians and those seeking after truth.
Priced at £4.99 per copy, but only £1 per copy for orders of 25 or more, it is amazing value for money! I strongly recommend it. Buy it, read it and give it away.
Thank God for the world changing reformation recovering the truth of the all-sufficient cross of Christ! As Michael Reeves points out in his inspiring text, prior to the Reformation religion was disguising the problem rather than solving it. Five hundred years later people from around the world with open Bibles celebrate the rediscovery of light that dispelled their overwhelming darkness.
Terry Virgo, Founder and Teacher, Newfrontiers
Running through this little book on the Reformation is the surprising legacy of joy. The fact that we have no portraits of any Reformers smiling is a fluke of history. Nobody smiled for portraits until fifty years ago! If you want to know what made this movement explosively joyful, don’t look at the pictures, read the book.
John Piper, Founder and Teacher, DesiringGod.org
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