Revive Me

Something is missing from the weekly church services we have been attending week in and week out. The spirit of God does not seem to exist anymore as we sit in the rows hoping to hear something to wake us from the dead. Wake me from the dead…..Revive me……Revival!

What is revival? It seems that most people expect the spirit of the Lord to descend from the ceilings of the church to light a fire under us and ignite life back into our walk toward God. But revival historically only comes from new revelation from the Word of God. It roars in when it is revealed that what you once believed is now seen to be utterly false. The Reformation, the greatest post resurrection revival ever, began when truth from the scripture was revealed to Martin Luther exposing false doctrine leading to the theses he nailed to the door of the Catholic church.

Don’t expect a revival unless you are ready for your beliefs to be turned upside down. What does your church teach that will be revealed as false? Is the true gospel being preached yet? Stay tuned for the hidden to be revealed through scripture. And it is glorious! - michael144/admin

Luther
In 1517, a dispute about who was entitled to a cut of the revenues generated by itinerant papal indulgence sellers provoked the controversy that led the Augustinian monk, Martin Luther, to nail his 95 theses to the church door at Wittenburg. The upshot of Luther’s theses was that Christians are saved by faith, and faith alone, and that no amount of works (including the purchase of indulgences) made any difference at all. A drastic enough view, but not one that was immediately perceived as having the ultimate consequences that it eventually did. The Pope, Leo X, was a fairly easy going fellow, not inclined to vigorously prosecute this first appearance of heresy. There were plenty of heterodox views in the air at the time, and he thought it could be worked out diplomatically.

As it turns out, it could not. Luther was not immediately burnt for a heretic; he was allowed to present his case in court and had a powerful effect on the populace. He also had a powerful patron and protector in the Elector of Saxony, who shielded him from the ecclesiastical authorities. In addition, the media explosion brought on by the printing press spread his message much further than it otherwise might have gone, and made him the focus for all sorts of religious, spiritual, political, and economic discontent. The right to read and interpret scripture lead to the throwing off of the chains of papal and ecclesiastical authority; and taking this to mean political and economic freedom as well, there were widespread revolts among the German peasantry. This horrified Luther and many of the civil powers.

The deep belief that religious uniformity was essential for political and and social stability made heterodox opinions a potential act of treason. It was not the desire of the intellectual reformers to challenge civil authority, but it was a consequence. The German states were small political units: principalities, duchies, electorates, and so on, all theoretically owing loyalty to the Holy Roman Emperor as overlord, but most exercising a fairly independent course a lot of the time. As the leaders of these states made their choices for or against the new opinion, their populations went with them (like it or not). For many, the attractions of “nationalizing” church property was a powerful incentive to become a reformer. Political alliances were made and remade in the name of religion throughout the rest of the century.