Infamous Indulgence Led to Reformation

Indulgences are among the greatest embarrassments in the history of the Roman Church.  A shameful money grab directed at relatives who were fearful of the destination of the spirits of their loved ones, it so angered Martin Luther that we ended up with the Reformation.  Of course, once a church has been corrupted from within, it can never be "reformed". 


Warlike Pope Julius II died in 1513, and his successor, Giovanni de' Medici, took the name Pope Leo X. If Julius loved to fight, Leo preferred amusement. His self-indulgence destroyed the unity of the western church when he bartered sin for money in the most infamous indulgence of church history.
From birth Leo had been earmarked for the church. At the age of seven he was made a monk. By thirteen he was a cardinal. In between, the boy had been abbot. He became pope before turning forty.
His tastes were costly. He was only too happy to spend lavishly on himself and voluptuous entertainment. Humanists with few morals swarmed at a papal court where wit mattered more than witness. Plays and shows, ballets and games abounded. No chance for a hunt was turned down. The papal treasury funded preeminent artists such as Raphael. Julius left a full treasury. Leo drained it in eight short years.

St. Peter's basilica was being rebuilt, but there was no money. Leo decided to solve the problem in time-honored fashion. On this day March 15, 1517 he declared that anyone who contributed to the cathedral would be granted an indulgence. Although in theory an indulgence was only a remission of penalties meted out in this world by the church, in practice it was hawked as if it covered the actual guilt of sins and could release souls from Purgatory. The gist of the indulgence was as follows:

"...[I] absolve you ...from all thy sins, transgressions, and excesses, how enormous soever they be...and remit to you all punishment which you deserve in purgatory on their account and I restore you...to the innocence and purity which you possessed at baptism; so that when you die the gates of punishment shall be shut... and if you shall not die at present, this grace shall remain in full force when you are at the point of death."

Sent to preach the indulgence in Germany was a Dominican named Tetzel. Tetzel got above himself in his promises, implying that the indulgence even covered the future sins which the buyer was now harboring in his heart. Frederick the Wise refused to allow the indulgence to be preached in his territory of Saxony, mostly because he was reluctant to allow Saxon coin to leave his financially-depleted realm. Tetzel came as near the border of Saxony as he could. Folk from Wittenberg crossed over and bought the prized papers.

Afterwards a few doubted the efficacy of the writs. They solicited the opinion to a middle aged monk named Martin Luther. Luther refused to confirm their value. Instead, in an accepted tradition, he posted theses for debate on the door of Wittenberg castle church where a large crowd was expected. The sequel is well known. From those ninety-five theses the Reformation was born when Leo refused to see a problem with the disgraceful sales.

Bibliography:

1. Bainton, Roland H. Here I Stand. New York: Mentor, 1950.
2. Begni, Ernesto. Vatican; Its history--its treasures. New York: Letters and Arts, 1914.
3. Brusher, J. Popes Through the Ages. Princeton, New Jersey: Van Nostrand, 1964.
4. Durant, Will. The Reformation. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1957.
5. Eerdman's Handbook to the History of Christianity. Editor Tim Dowley. Berkhamsted, Herts, England: Lion Publishing, 1977.
6. "Indulgences" and "Leo X." New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1954.
7. "Indulgences" and "Leo X." The Oxford encyclopedia of the Reformation. Editor in chief Hans J. Hillerbrand. New York : Oxford University Press, 1996.
8. Kent, W. H. "Indugences." The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton, 1914.
9. "Leo X." The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. Edited by F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone. Oxford, 1997.
10. Loffler, Klemens. "Leo X." The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton, 1914.
11. Mee, Charles L., jr. White Robe, Black Robe. New York, Putnam, 1972.
12. Montor, Artaud de. The Lives and Times of the Popes. New York: The Catholic publication society of America, 1910 - 11.
13. Various encyclopedia articles.

Read this article at - http://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/1501-1600/infamous-indulgence-led-to-reformation-11629920.html

Theodora Restored Icons

Leo III was right about icons, but people love their images and idols...and will summon up any justification they might imagine to find a reason to have one.

Imagine a bloody struggle, fought over the course of a hundred years, about the use of images in worship. It actually happened. Emperors of Byzantium, having set their minds to control the church and its forms of worship, used armies to oppose the veneration of icons, smashing many of the art works in the process. This destruction of icons is called iconoclasm.

An icon is a stylized representation of God, Christ, or a saint. By the early middle ages, icons (and other images) were widely used as aids to devotion--or as objects of worship. Often, the devotees bowed to these aids and kissed them. To some believers this was shocking. They argued that the Ten Commandments forbade worshipping images. To them, icons were no more than idols. The only allowable representation of Christ was the bread and wine, they said. Scripture and early church practice were against icons, they insisted. Furthermore, it violated the church's definition of Christ as both God and man to try to capture the essence of Christ in any representation. Many iconoclasts also opposed prayer to saints and veneration of relics.

Byzantine Emperor Leo III saw icons as the chief reason Jews and Moslems could not be won to Christ and also as a cause of national disunity. At first he merely tried to persuade his people of this. But when a violent undersea eruption shook Constantinople, Leo took it as a warning from God. He ordered his soldiers to tear down a famed picture of Christ. When some old women pushed the ladder from under the soldiers, riots commenced. After that, Leo violently persecuted bishops and monks who favored icons. In 754, he convoked a council to rule against the images.

Those who defended icons said they weren't images. An image represents what a thing really is. An icon attempts to convey spiritual truth. Defenders claimed that the early church did, indeed, use icons. For instance, tradition said that Luke painted a picture of Mary that is now in Rome. The famous bishop John Chrysostom found inspiration in a portrait of Paul. Icons are a true response to the creeds, they argued. Christ had a real body that could be portrayed.

Emperor Constantine V was even more opposed to icons than Leo. He renewed the persecution. More blood flowed. But after his death, Empress Irene worked with the Patriarch of Constantinople to call another council, the Second Council of Nicaea (787). This one favored icons. However, the emperors and army remained opposed. Not until this day, February 19, 842, which was the first Sunday of Lent, were icons restored to the churches in solemn processions. The Empress Theodora had a strong part in the restoration. The first Sunday of Lent is still observed as the "Feast of Orthodoxy" in Eastern churches.

The Protestant reformers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries sympathized with the iconoclasts. God must be worshipped in "spirit and in truth," they taught. Protestant gangs sometimes smashed images in churches. The reformers firmly rejected prayer to saints and repudiated veneration of relics.

Bibliography:

1. Bellitto, Christopher M. The General Councils : a history of the twenty-one general councils from Nicaea to Vatican II. New York: Paulist Press, 2002.
2. Fortescue, Adrian."Iconoclasm." The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton, 1914.
3. Guitton, Jean. Great Heresies and Church Councils. [English translation by F.D. Wieck] New York, Harper & Row, 1965.
4. "Iconoclastic Controversy." The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. Edited by F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone. Oxford, 1997.
5. John of Damascus. "In Defense of Sacred Images." http://tabernacleoftheheart.com/Tabernacle%20Project/ english/iconoclasm.html.
6. Rahal, Joseph. "St. Theodora the Empress." Saint George Antiochian Orthodox Christian Church http://saintgeorge.org/ news_and_events/church_calendar/ saint_of_the_day/02feb/feb_11_saint_theodora_the_empress.php.
7. Various other internet articles.

Read this article at - http://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/601-900/theodora-restored-icons-11629761.html

The Self Destruction Of Lecrae & Reach Records | The Truth Will Set You Free

We forget that we don't come to the Lord on our terms....we come to Him on His terms, which includes unconditional surrender of all our worldly desires....or we don't come to Him at all...

Visit us @ http://www.taliforgod.com Add us Vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/nephtali1981 Add us FB at http://www.facebook.com/nephtali1981c... & http://www.facebook.com/brothernephtali

The Kundalini Spirit has Invaded The Church Masquerading as the Holy Spirit

While there's a deep and abiding truth here, Christians must be vigilant not to allow the deceptions of Satan to deter them from believing in the true gifts God has for His people.  The "cessationist" movement, preaching that the gifts are no longer available, (based on a faulty reading of 1 Corinthians 13:8-9) leave millions who have entered the church looking for spiritual help leaving the same churches who are teaching the very doctrine Paul warned us about that would arrive in the last days. He warned that believers should avoid those who "have(ing) a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof." (2 Timothy 3:5)  If you have any questions about those gifts, read 1 Corinthians 12-14.

"And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light." 2 Corinthians 11:14.

 

The Great Deception in the American Church

Bert M. Farias 

What's at the root of the deception in the American church?

Consider these statistics of Christianity in America: Eighty-four percent of the inhabitants of this nation say they believe in the deity of Jesus Christ, according to Barna Group, and 45 percent claim to be born-again Christians. Other studies show it is closer to 33 percent.

Either way, these numbers are high. Seventy-seven percent believe their chances of going to heaven are excellent. Thirty-three percent believe one day everyone will go to heaven. Yet America has the highest percentage of single-parent families in the industrialized world, the highest abortion rate, the highest rate of sexually transmitted diseases, the highest rate of teenage birth by far, the highest rate of teenage drug use and the largest prison population per capita than any country in the world.
Consider also the great moral decline of the last generation (50 to 60 years) and these telling statistics in America. The divorce rate has doubled, teen suicide has tripled, reported violent crime has quadrupled, the prison population has quintupled, the percentage of babies born out of wedlock has risen sixfold, couples living together out of wedlock have increased sevenfold, and gay marriage is now a legalized reality in a number of states, with many believing the end is not in sight.

In this past generation, we have experienced an overwhelming increase in lawlessness, permissiveness and selfishness, even among Christians. Moral actions that were unthinkable a few decades ago are now commonplace—Christian leaders indulging in sexual sin and grossly immoral scandals, addicted to pornography and accompanied by an exploding divorce rate have greatly factored in the rapid decrease of morals in the American church. And as the church goes, so goes the world. In fact, the results of a survey among young American adults showed that the percentage who follow biblically based values for living has now dropped from 65 percent to a mere 4 percent since World War II.

There has never been a society in the history of mankind whose moral values have deteriorated so dramatically, in such a short period of time, as those of Americans in the last 50 years. And so far it shows no sign of stopping. These statistics are eye-opening, and they serve to warn us that something is terribly wrong with our brand of Christianity. They reveal how poorly the church has communicated the true gospel to mainstream America, and thus the reason for so much deception in our culture.

When the rich man died and went to Hades (Luke 16:19-31), he was surprised to find himself there. In the Jewish culture, they equated wealth with godliness, so this man thought God favored him. The common thought, especially among the Jews, was if you were blessed financially, then you were a good person and therefore favored by God and on your way to heaven. This also explains the disciples' astonishment when Jesus told them how hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 19:23-25).

Similarly, there was a church in Laodicea (Rev 3:14-22) who, due to their wealth, thought they too had attained God's favor. Jesus expressed great disapproval over their spiritual condition as well, which they were totally unaware of. They were deceived.

Are you in touch with your true spiritual condition? Or are you allowing the pop culture around you to dictate your standards? Are you conforming to the world's standards or to the Bible? Are you deceived? How can a nation of people among whom a large percentage claims to be born-again Christians experience the kind of degradation the above statistics reveal? Such deception is the state of America today, and the above statistics reveal the fruit of it.

The problem has been that the real gospel has not been preached nor lived. Both the profession and the practice of many so-called Christians in this nation have not matched up. Our substandard message has produced substandard believers. Our departure from the preaching of the cross, repentance, holiness, and the real empowering grace of God has increased the level of deception in the church. How else can we explain the disparity of the above statistics in the church and the nation?
But what is really at the root of this deception? This is what we need to carefully discern. In one word, it is humanism—the glorification of self. Humanism has crept into much of the modern-day church and is diluting the power of the real gospel.

Bert M. Farias, founder of Holy Fire Ministries, is the author of The Real Gospel and co-host of the New England Holy Ghost Forum. He is a missionary evangelist carrying a spirit of revival to the church and the nations. Follow him at Bert Farias on Facebook or @Bertfarias1 on Twitter.

Giants And Demons Within the Excluded Middle

This is part of a series of article being published by Cris Putnam. This is a very revealing article and points out how Western Christianity (North America and Europe) has lost sight of the spiritual entities that are part of daily life. You can follow the links to read the previous articles in this series.

---

Devout Christians with a strong faith in God have a blind spot due to Western education and living in technopoly. Anthropologist and missiologist Paul Hiebert wrote concerning the error of this "excluded middle":

I had excluded the middle level of supernatural... beings and forces from my own world view. As a scientist, I had been trained to deal with the empirical world in naturalistic terms. As a theologian, I was taught to answer ultimate questions in theistic terms. For me the middle zone did not really exist.[i]

By “excluded middle,” he does not mean the one used in logic that argues a statement must be true or false, allowing no middle position, but rather the middle realm between God and man. In other words, many in the West have a two-tiered view of reality with religion (God, miracles) over science (natural laws, matter), but the realm between has been excluded (demons, angels, spirits). 

                                                                                                                                                    

Whereas fewer than 18 percent of Christians in 1900 lived outside Europe and North America, today more than 60 percent do, and an estimated 70 percent will by 2025.[ii] These Christians, largely charismatic, have no problem seeing and dealing with the activity of the middle realm. This means the Western, “excluded middle,” cessationist worldview is, in fact, on the fringe minority of the majority church. In his treatment of African religion, Dr. John S. Mbiti notes that Western scholars “expose their own ignorance, false ideas, exaggerated prejudices and a derogatory attitude”[iii] when they fail to take seriously genuine supernatural experiences pervasive in Africa. Whereas evangelical leaders are fairly open to hearing this sort of criticism in a missionary context, I am strongly suggesting it applies even more to our North American outreach to people coming from an occult background facing spiritual warfare. Some Christian counselors will likely suggest that these people see a psychiatrist for medication rather than offer deliverance. It is no wonder many have a hard time taking Western churches seriously when the excluded middle is on display. 

                                                                                                                                                    

In 2013, Rev. Dr. Robert Bennett’s book, I Am Not Afraid: Demon Possession and Spiritual Warfare, set a new standard in conservative Lutheran scholarship dealing with spiritual warfare. It provides his firsthand account of the dynamic spiritual warfare within the Lutheran Church of Madagascar. Part one provides an introduction into the Malagasy Lutheran Church and the traditional Malagasy worldview and discusses how the Western worldview varies radically from how Christianity is understood in most other parts of the world. Part two handles the biblical material as well as various aspects of Lutheran thought. Bennett suggests that the Enlightenment ethos has promoted an overconfident dismissal of spiritual warfare. Recognizing the paranormal paradigm shift underway in our own culture, he suggests we learn from these third-world contexts:

As the western worldview continues to shift toward animism and the philosophy surrounding post-modernity, western views of rationalism appear to be on the decline and a new acceptance of the spiritualism seems to be the way of the future. If this is true, the Malagasy Lutheran Church’s methods of contextualized catechesis and exorcism may lead the way to reach the lost within the western world.[iv]

For those ministering within confessional Lutheranism, this work is sure to be helpful for what is around the corner. Most denominations have missionaries sounding a similar alarm.

Of course, things were not always this way. The middle realm has captured the hearts and minds of many great thinkers throughout history. Even modern science grew out of alchemy and occultism. For example, Isaac Newton, widely heralded as the father of modern science, was deeply involved in the quest for the philosopher’s stone. After purchasing and studying Newton’s alchemical works in 1942, economist John Maynard Keynes, for example, opined that “Newton was not the first of the age of reason, he was the last of the magicians.”[v]

Paul Hiebert explained, “Belief in the middle level began to die in the 17th and 18th centuries with the growing acceptance…of a science based on materialistic naturalism. The result was the secularization of science and the mystification of religion.”[vi] What an interesting paradox we now face in that today we find an exact reversal with the secularization of religion through demythologization and the mystification of science via quantum theory. 

                                                                                                                                                    

The excluded middle seems applicable to Western Christianity as a whole. A new nationwide survey conducted by the Barna Group suggests that Americans who consider themselves to be Christian have been strongly influenced by technopoly:

Four out of ten Christians (40%) strongly agreed that Satan “is not a living being but is a symbol of evil.” An additional two out of ten Christians (19%) said they “agree somewhat” with that perspective. A minority of Christians indicated that they believe Satan is real by disagreeing with the statement: one-quarter (26%) disagreed strongly and about one-tenth (9%) disagreed somewhat. The remaining 8% were not sure what they believe about the existence of Satan.[vii]

Adding the two skeptical categories “strongly agree” and “agree somewhat” together yields a shocking 59 percent of professing American Christians who do not believe Satan is real. The “greatest trick the devil ever pulled” turns out to be much more than a clever line. Views on the Holy Spirit are just as dismal, with the survey indicating that “38% strongly agreed and 20% agreed somewhat that the Holy Spirit is ‘a symbol of God’s power or presence but is not a living entity.’”[viii] Taken together, these statistics suggest that spiritual warfare has largely been abdicated in favor of worldly activism and politics.

While some Western evangelicals give verbal assent to the existence of the powers and principalities in Paul’s letters, few reflect such belief in their methodology. It seems fair to argue that the major evangelical ministries are more prone to political activism than spiritual warfare. Rather than working in such a way that assents to Paul’s teaching, “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood” (Ephesians 6:12a), American evangelicals have frequently overemphasized politics that do just that. 

                                                                                                                                                    

Reflective of the excluded middle, the public witness of the church has been political and largely negative. Jeff Sharlet’s book, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, details how an elite group of neoconservative insiders organized the well-attended weekly prayer meetings for members of Congress and annual National Prayer Breakfasts attended by most presidents as a means to promote ostensibly Christian values.[ix] However, the book exposes that their methods are more manipulative and worldly than Christ-like. Hunter argues that this political strategy has not only failed, it has diminished Christian influence. Accordingly, he advises “for the church and for Christian believers to decouple the ‘public’ from the ‘political.’”[x] The single-minded quest for political power overlooks the spiritual warfare aspect of biblical theology. Refreshingly, Hunter acknowledges that the narrative of the Gospels reflects spiritual warfare between Jesus and the powers. By “the powers,” he really means supernatural agents who influence the power structures of this world and cites passages acknowledging the devil as holding sway for now (John 12:31, 16:11; 2 Corinthians 4:4; 1 John 5:19). Breaking stride with naturalistic social science, Hunter interprets the culture war through a Supernatural Worldview:

Much of the gospel story, of course, can be read as a commentary on Christ’s relationship to power and “the powers” generally. Consider the period of Christ’s temptations in the wilderness at the start of his ministry. Here Satan offered to Jesus “all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor” (Matt. 4:8). Satan’s implicit claim was that he possessed a ruling authority in and over the world. The biblical narrative makes clear that the scope and time of Satan’s power were limited by God’s sovereignty, and yet within those parameters he declared that power in the world was his to wield. Importantly, Jesus did not take issue with this claim. Indeed, Christ himself called the evil one “the prince of this world” (John 12:31; 16:11). This is a description that Paul, in his letter to the Corinthians, asserts as well, describing Satan as “the god of this world” (2 Cor. 4:4). It is also an account affirmed by John’s first letter where he declares, “that the whole world is under the control of the evil one” (1 John 5:19). If this reading is right then the spirit that animates worldly power—whether held by individuals, social groups, communities, institutions, or social structures—naturally tends toward manipulation, domination, and control. Rooted in the deceptions of misdirected desire, it is a power that in its most coarse expressions would exploit, subjugate, and even enslave. Within a fallen humanity, then, all power is tainted, infected by the same tendencies toward self-aggrandizing domination. The natural disposition of all human power is to its abuse.[xi]

This supernatural-saturated critique coming from an elite social scientist like James Hunter is to be commended. His argument suggests that the evangelical church, in its quest for political power, has played right into a cosmic bait and switch. Adding to the problem of demythologization is that many otherwise conservative pastors are taught that Satan was so completely defeated at the cross (Colossians 2:15) that they do not have to concern themselves with him. While his defeat was secured for the future, it is not yet fully realized, and, for now, we are still at war. Consider than when God gave Israel the Promised Land they still had to fight the occupying Nephilim and Canaanite hordes. Our situation is similar. Years after the cross, Peter wrote that our adversary, the devil, “prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8), and Paul called him “the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience” (Ephesians 2:2, underline added). Also, as Hunter mentioned above, John was perhaps strongest of all in offering “the whole world lies in the power of the evil one” (1 John 5:19b). Making a modern analogy, Kraft has aptly pointed out that during World War II, D-Day had assured the Nazis’ defeat, but the war didn’t end for eleven more months—during which time more Allied troops were killed than in all the previous months combined.[xii] In like fashion, please do not doubt that Christians today still face a very serious challenge. Satan is alive and well and more active than ever because he knows his time is short (Revelation 12:12). 

                                                                          

Furthermore, readers should be shocked to learn that Paul N. Temple, an alleged Christian leader of “the family,” the supposedly Christian political lobby group, is also the chairman emeritus and cofounder of the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS), a group promoting occultism, to be investigated and unveiled in chapter 7 of the upcoming book, The Supernatural Worldview.[xiii] The overemphasis of politics also explains the shocking ease with which a Christian school like Liberty University allowed a bishop from within the cult of Mormonism to deliver its 2012 commencement address.[xiv] The corrosive ethos promoted pragmatism over spiritual faithfulness, and Liberty students will not easily transcend their leadership’s failure. Worse yet, the Billy Graham organization purged all references to Mormonism as a cult from its websites.[xv] The powers and principalities have subverted the church’s mission by diverting it into partisan politics while convincing the rest of the West they do not exist.

Read the full article at - http://www.raidersnewsupdate.com/Supernatural6.htm