(please read these Reformation articles in numbered order)
Over the years, and over the centuries, people in the church have been accustomed to accepting and depending on leaders and theologians adding to the Bible with wording and labels and high-sounding doctrines that are more man-made than Biblical.
Not long after Christianity started, it became common practice for church doctrine to combine the Bible and church edicts—making the average church member unable to distinguish between God’s Word and man’s teaching.
And this continues today—blatantly in the Catholic church, and more subtly in others (although often not so subtle any more).
Satan’s original lie is alive and well and effective, today,
“Did God really say?”
Many doctrinal defenses are more about separating churches to maintain distinctiveness (and power/control), than about the simple Word of God.
The Reformation shook the world with the re-discovery of two words that were in the Bible all along—“faith alone.”
The church had hidden them from the people with all their high-sounding mumbo-jumbo about heaven and hell tied with purgatory and indulgences and praying to saints.
How did the church get away with that?
Surely we learned our lesson—it’s so obvious.
Apparently not.
—Human nature always looks for new opportunities for control in the church.
—The influence of the world always looks for new compatibility with Christianity.
And both are working in the American church today.
Reformation again, today ?
If we remember and accept that we are not much different than Israel in the Old Testament, then perhaps we will not be so resistant to reformation again.
Israel went round and round, and round and round again—blessed, wayward, punished, repentant, returned, revived, forgiven, and blessed again.
The Bible tells the stories over and over, in the history books, in the psalms, in the prophets, in the New Testament.
Somehow we think we arrive at doing better, and don’t have to go through reformation again.
We don’t really believe we have to “turn from our wicked ways” again, because we’re already Christians.
And God help the person who gets specific about the “wicked ways” of His people in the church today—you might not fare better than the guys five hundred years ago.
After years of agonizing inside the church, Luther finally and suddenly sees the errors of the Catholic church.
He corrects some of them—thank God.
So Protestant churches grow.
Then people get tired of all the new name-brand churches that develop, and start independent churches.
Some of them stay small and intimately dependent on the Bible.
Some grow and still stay intimately dependent on the Bible.
And some grow big and popular and outgrow that intimate dependence on the Bible.
There is often something innately dangerous about big and popular churches—not exactly what Jesus promised repeatedly.
Specifics next—no risk of popularity here.
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