Expert: Brenda Martin - 3/28/2008

Question
can you tell me the points that differentiate Luther from the catholic church?

Answer
1. What led to Luther’s break with the Catholic church was the practice of selling letters of indulgence. It was the claim of the church that indulgences issued by the pope could shorten the stay of a person, or of a relative, in purgatory. Some even granted forgiveness of sins. Selling such indulgences was one of the avenues used by the church in Luther’s day to obtain money.

2. The more carefully Luther studied the Scriptures the more he found things in them that were in conflict with the Catholic church. The Scriptural statement, for example, that a man is declared righteous or justified by faith made a deep impression on him. (Rom. 3:28) He could not reconcile it with the teaching of the church that a person can gain religious merit by venerating certain relics.

3. When he discovered that no mention of purgatory occurs in the Scriptures, he ceased to maintain that doctrine.

4. JEHOVAH: In an exposition of Jeremiah 23:1-8 Luther says: “ . . . but this name Jehovah belongs exclusively to the true God.”—From Ein Epistel aus dem Propheten Jeremia, von Christus reich und Christlichen freyheit, gepredigt durch Mar. Luther, Wittenberg, 1527.

5. SOUL MORTAL: “I permit the Pope to make articles of faith for himself and his faithful—such as ‘the soul is the substantial form of the human body,’ ‘that the soul is immortal,’ with all those monstrous opinions found in the Roman filth-pile of resolutions.”—From Assertio Omnium Articulorum M. Lutheri, per Bullam Leonis, X (Luther’s Works, Vol. 2, folio 107, Wittenberg, 1562), first published in 1520. Also Zion’s Watch Tower, 1905, p. 228.

6. DEATH DEFINED: “Therefore the Scripture calls death a sleep. For as one falls asleep, he, when he awakes in the morning, knows nothing about how the falling asleep happened, nor about the sleep itself, nor the awakening, so shall also we on the last day arise with haste and not know either how we came into death or through death.”—Kyrkopost, 1 band., no. 29, par. 9, sid. 259.6 See also Watch Tower Reprint, Vol. 1, p. 408.

7.RESURRECTION: “Hereof it must follow that they who lie in the graveyard and sleep under the ground do not sleep as profound as we do on our beds. For it may happen that your sleep is so profound that you must be called ten times before you hear once. But the dead will hear at the first calling of Christ, and awake, as we here see of this young man and of Lazarus.”—Evang. Luk. 7. 11-17, par. 8.6

8. STATE BETWEEN DEATH AND RESURRECTION: “Let this be unto you an excellent alchemy and a masterpiece that does not turn copper or lead into gold for you, but changes death into a sleep and your grave into a sweet room of rest, and all the time elapsing between Abel’s death and the last day into a short little while. The Scripture gives this consolation everywhere.”—Kyrkopost, 1: a band., no. 109, par. 39-47, sid. 434-436.

However neither Luther nor his present-day admirers have held fast to these and many more original Scriptural teachings advocated by Luther. Regrettably, those admirers of his have followed a course of watering down and compromise.

all the best
Brenda