Towards the end of the 4th century AD, an event occurred which served as an ominous portent of what the world could expect from Christianity. Indeed, the very things Jesus cautioned his young flock against was to become the hallmark of Christianity. The "marriage" of Church and government envisioned by former Emperor Constantine was now consummated as the formerly persecuted sect had replaced polytheism to become the state religion of the crumbling Roman Empire.

During the reign of Emperor Theodorus, a Christine mob led by monks went on a rampage burning both a Jewish synagogue and a chapel used by a tiny heretical sect of Valentinian Christians. Theodorus answered the outrage as one would expect a responsible ruler to behave, ordering the local bishop to make restitution and to punish the ringleaders of the mob. But, before the order could be carried out, Ambrose of Milan, the self appointed guardian of Western orthodoxy, made a strong objection.

"Why should Christians be penalized for attacking Jews and heretics? Had the pagan emperor, Julian, punished his people when the (jack boot) was on the other foot? The fact that imperial officials in Mesopotamia were calling for protection for Jews and heretics was irrelevant. Unless the emperor repented Ambrose warned, he could hardly offer him Holy Communion in good conscience...The threat of excommunion struck home. Theodorus revoked his command, and waves of violence led by the very monks purporting to represent Christ ensued against those holding alternative beliefs.

In His last moments with his flock, Jesus rose from the table and laying aside his garments, began to wash his disciples’ feet. When He had finished, he asked them, "Know ye what I have done? You have seen how the chiefs of the Gentiles lord it over them, but I say that shall not be thus with you. For, whosoever desires to be master shall be as the servant." Once before, after having His message rejected by a certain village, his disciples asked if He was going to bring down fire from Heaven to consume them. "Ye know not in what spirit ye are called," was His response. Finally, as He hung dying on the cross, his thoughts were for the welfare of his abusers. "Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do," was his state of being even in torment.

Today it is evident that most of Christianity has forgotten these lessons. The Church has become the be all of worship, calling down judgment on all "that know not what they do" asserting that to be of no excuse. Indeed, those who have most represented the spirit of Jesus Christ and tired to express such have become targets of the very organization purporting to carry His name to the world. One of those who visited both sides of the aisle, Martin Luther, has come to represent both the good and the bad as well as a warning of the trap into which we must avoid falling.

It’s a common misconception that Martin Luther set out to establish the Lutheran Church or that John Wesley intended to found the Methodist Denomination or that any of the other reformers sought to create such as the Baptist or any other denomination. These men were seeking to clean up the mother faith from within and were tossed out for their pains. The only reason some of them escaped being burned at the stake was because of the strength of their supporters. It was these supporters who went on to forge the Protestant representations of revolt. However, Martin Luther, who must be considered the Father of the Reformation, began as a Catholic monk.

It was not out of love of God that Luther took on his vows but from fear of hell fire and damnation. For years he struggled with the weight of all God seemed to require of the human soul. As he himself described it, in such moments when he saw not the slightest gleam of light, he was willed with hatred for a God who would place such demands as no man could hope to fulfill.

Then, one day while meditating in the tower room of his monastery, true illumination came upon him as the dawn breaking over the mountain ridge. While studying the first chapter of Paul's epistle to the Romans, Luther saw that Paul was referring to a merciful rather than punitive justice. After this revelation, the trembling guilt-stricken monk found true liberation. Only once we understand that Luther acted under the compulsion of a higher power can justice be done to the Protestant protest he hurled into the world and for whose sake he became the heretic who would rediscover the true basis of Christianity.

As with most heretics, Luther's diatribes against the Church were at first motivated by his outrage at the excesses committed by the religious leaders. The immediate cause of his break with tradition was terzel’s sale of "indulgences" which compelled him to post his infamous 95 thesis in 1517 on the church door in Wittenberg. His anger was directed initially against this degenerate form of Christianity in which escape from punishment became the highest goal. The priests were asleep -- it was up to him to take action. "God will not tolerate this flea market!" he declared (Eberle 1857, Evangelien - Auslegung, pg. 196).

However, although the common heretical rallying cry had been against secularization of the "Church, Luther began to direct his polemics against few Protestants understood. Indeed, even today his basic premise has been lost. It was the so called pious, rather than the licentious clergy, with whom Luther found himself at odds. "The obedient souls, he declared, who have a good opinion of themselves, and the virtuous folk who engage in honorable works are curiously enough those to whom God has always found most repugnant." They have already rejected Christ, whom God had made his cornerstone. "But, mark you, who are those who reject the stone? They are not wicked people but the best of all, namely the holiest, the most prudent the most learned, the greatest, the noblest, they are the ones who are offended by the stone!" As Luther saw it, the devout who think themselves righteous are constantly committing the sin of pride and rejecting the sacrifice of Jesus. Those who boast of possessing divine grace are those who most obdurately fend it off (Luther, Psalmen - Auslegung, II, 217-218).

This argument became the primary perspective of Luther's protest against the Church Triumphant. Luther, himself was far from the only true Christian since Paul. Nevertheless, in his struggle against moral self-righteousness as an obstacle to the way to God, he came very close to the Spirit of the gospel. Is it, therefore, any surprise that he was cast out before he had any chance to affect the needed reforms in the Church. The only real surprise was that he survived long enough to establish a defensive perimeter from those who wanted "to see that heretic thrown in the fire within two weeks."

From such a beginning came the movement that would bathe the religious world in a war that has continued on in various forms through the present day.

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