Many years after the death of Huss and Jerome, in the year of 1483, a small baby boy was born in Germany. His parents were poor but they loved God and wanted their little boy to grow up to serve God. That baby boy would grow up to become the leader of the Reformation.

The little boy’s name was Martin Luther. He did not have an easy time growing up. He grew up very poor. At school he was not treated nicely. When he grew older and went to a another school in a different town he had to get his food by singing songs from door to door.

The religious teachings Luther had learned also made his life very hard. He would lay awake at night very sad thinking about what would happen to him. He was afraid of God. He thought God was a strict judge who had no mercy. Martin Luther didn’t know that God was a loving Father who cared about him.

When Luther was 18 he went to the University of Erfurt to study. He was a good student and had a desire to follow God. He would pray every day for God to help him.

One day, while at the University Luther found a Latin Bible. He had never seen a Bible before. Luther was amazed as he read the Bible. He wished he could have a Bible that was all his own.

Luther had a very strong feeling that he was a great sinner, but he did not know the truth yet. Remember, the people during this time were in spiritual darkness. So Luther was also in this darkness. He thought that the only way he could be saved was if he punished himself for his sins. He did not know that Jesus came to save him and that he only had to have faith in Jesus to save him.

Luther wanted to be saved from his sins and to live for God. Since he did not know the right way to be saved, he decided to become a monk. Now he had to beg from house to house for money. The other monks made him do many little jobs for them all day long so he would not have time to study. But Luther wanted to read and study. He would spend the night time reading. He did not sleep very much. And he would go for long times without eating any food. When he did eat some food he would eat very little. In many different ways he punished himself for his sins, but still he felt no peace. His sins seemed even greater than before. Oh, how much he wanted to be free from his sins. But everything he did to be free from his sins did not help. If he had kept living this way for longer, he would have killed himself by punishing himself. But God loved him and sent a man to teach Luther the truth of how he could be saved.

John Staupitz was a man in charge of some of the monks in Germany. He was a good Christian man who lived a pure life. But he was not brave enough to be a reformer and preach against the evils that were being done by the Catholic Church. However, he did know how to be saved and God used him to show Luther how to be saved.

Staupitz told Luther to quit looking at himself and his own works to save him. “Look at the blood Christ shed for you,” Staupitz told Luther (Ephesians 1:7). Luther thought he could not come to Christ until he was a better man but Staupitz told him, “Christ came to save not good men, but sinners.” (Matthew 9:13) Staupitz told Luther that he must trust only in Jesus who had died so he could be saved. He told Luther that he could not make God love him by punishing himself. God already loved him and sent Jesus to die for his sins (John 3:16).

Staupitz words planted seeds of truth in Luther’s mind. And when Staupitz left, he gave Luther a gift. A Bible for his very own. Luther was very happy to have his own Bible. He didn’t understand everything about being saved right away. But God kept working on his heart. After some time, Luther found the peace of God that the Bible talks about, and he knew his sins were forgiven.

Luther was made a priest and later asked to be a professor at the University of Wittenburg. He began to teach the Bible in the university. Staupitz was happy to see Luther teaching the Bible. Staupitz thought Luther should teach the truth to more of the people who were in darkness, not just the students at the university.

So Staupitz told Luther he should begin preaching to all the people. Luther at first didn’t want to do it. He thought he was not worthy to do it. But at last he listened to the Staupitz and his other friends and began to preach in an old church in the middle of Wittenburg.

Luther was still a faithful member of the Roman Catholic Church. He did not think he would ever leave the church. God was going to use Luther to bring the people out of the spiritual darkness the Catholic Church was in. But first Luther must see more of the evils going on in the Catholic Church.

Luther was sent to the city of Rome. He was excited. He believed Rome was a holy city. In Rome was where the pope lived.

After a long trip he came to Rome. He expected to find it a very holy city filled with lots of very godly people. Instead he found that it was a very wicked city full of murder and stealing. Even the priests and monks were very wicked. It was this visit that opened Luther’s eyes. He saw that the Roman Catholic Church was not a pure church following the Bible.

But Luther still had many things to learn. While he had some knowledge of the truth, he still had too much trust in the Catholic church and its practices.

One day while he was at Rome, he was climbing some stairs on his knees. The stairs were supposedly the same stairs that Jesus walked down on when he left Pilate’s judgement hall. The pope had promised that all your sins for one year would be forgiven for every step you climbed. While Luther was climbing the stairs he seemed to hear a voice like thunder say the words “The just shall live by faith.” (Romans 1:17) Luther jumped to his feet and left the place. He then knew that he should never place any trust in his works. He should place his faith only in Christ, trusting that Christ had paid the price for his sins.

When Luther returned to Wittenburg, he preached again to the people. He taught them they should not believe any doctrine unless the Bible taught it. He tried to turn the minds of the people to think less of the words of men and to think more about what God’s Word said.

One day a man named Tetzel came to Wittenburg. He was sent by the pope to sell papers called “indulgences.” Tetzel said these papers would forgive all the sins someone might decide to do, if the person would buy the paper. Tetzel said that the person did not even have to repent of his sins to be forgiven as long as he bought the indulgence. He also said that people could buy papers for dead people. Tetzel said that the dead person would go to heaven as soon as money was paid for the paper.

This, of course, was not true, but the people didn’t know that. They didn’t have Bibles, so they believed everything Tetzel said. They did not know that God says we only have to confess our sins and He will forgive and clean us from our sins (1 John 1:9).

But Luther did not believe what Tetzel was telling the people. He knew that the Bible did not teach that forgiveness could be bought with money. So he preached to the people what the Bible said. He showed them how bad sin is to God. And then Luther showed them that the only way to be forgiven and saved is by repentance and faith in Christ. God’s grace cannot be bought, He gives it as a free gift (Ephesians 2:8, 9).

But Tetzel continued to sell the indulgences. So Luther chose to show more openly the reasons why indulgences were wrong. On October 31, the day before an important church holiday, Luther went to the door of the church in Wittenburg. On the door, he nailed a paper which is now called the “95 Theses.” This paper had 95 points which showed why selling indulgences was wrong. In this paper, Luther showed that God had never given the power to forgive sins to any man and that selling indulgences was just a way to make money.

Luther said those who didn’t agree with him should come and show him he was wrong from the Bible, but no one came. Copies of his paper were made and quickly spread all over Germany and even in other countries. No one could argue with the truth he taught in the paper.

But there were many people who didn’t like what Luther had written, even though it was true. They said Luther was proud and that he was just starting fights. To Luther it sometimes felt as if he was alone and the most powerful men in the church were against him. But when it felt he had no human friends, he turned to God for support.

When people would argue with him, showing that what he said didn’t agree with what the church’s tradition taught, Luther would just show them what the Bible said. This made Luther’s enemies so angry they wanted to kill him. But God still had a great work for Luther to do and so God protected him.

Luther’s teachings were spreading all over, and the people were turning away from the traditions of the church and looking at what the Bible taught. Instead of looking to their works to save them, they were believing in Jesus to save them from their sins. This made the Roman Catholic Church angry, and they told Luther to come to Rome for a trial.

Some of the people who believed Luther and his teachings were true did not want Luther to go to Rome. They knew if he went to Rome he would be killed. So they asked that the trial be held in Germany. The trial was to be held at the city of Augsburg.

About this time, God sent a man who would become a good friend to Luther. Phillip Melanchthon came to Wittenberg. He was young and gentle, wise and pure in character. He joined with Luther in the Reformation. He helped to encourage Luther. And with his wise, gentle character to help Luther’s strong and bold character the Reformation could grow stronger.

When Luther arrived at Augsburg his enemies were happy. They thought that they had caught Luther, and he would not escape. Luther arrived at Augsburg without a safe-conduct which was a promise from the emperor that Luther would be kept safe. But Luther’s friends told him not to appear before the pope’s representative without one. Luther’s enemies wanted to force him to give up the truth. If he wouldn’t give it up, then they wanted to take him to Rome and kill him. But Luther listened to his friends and refused to meet with the representative without a safe-conduct.

The pope’s representative pretended to be very friendly. He wanted to win Luther over to his side. However, even though he was very friendly and gentle, he told Luther to give up the truth and obey the Catholic church in everything. But Luther was not willing to give up the truth. Luther said the church must first show him where he was wrong according to the Bible.

But all the pope’s representative said was Luther must “recant” which meant, he must give up the truth he had taught. Luther showed that what he taught was in the Bible, but the representative didn’t care. The representative couldn’t prove that Luther was wrong from the Bible, so instead he did a lot of talking and quoting from the church fathers so that Luther had no time to talk. Luther saw there was no point to continue the meeting since he wasn’t given any time to say anything. So Luther asked if he could write his answers, and he was told he could.

At the next meeting Luther read the answer he had written out loud, and then handed it to the representative. The representative threw the paper to the side saying it was full of useless words. Luther was not happy when he saw how the representative treated his answer which showed from the Bible what was right. Then Luther gave even more reasons why the teachings of the representative and the pope were wrong.

When the representative saw that he had no answers for what Luther was saying, he became very, very angry. He threatened to send Luther to Rome to be punished. He said Luther and all his followers would be cut off from the church. He ended his threat by telling Luther that if he did not take back what he had said and give up the truth, he should not come back to talk to the representative.

Luther quickly left the room with his friends. This was to show the pope’s representative that Luther would not give up the truth. The representative was surprised. He had thought Luther would be afraid of his threats and give up the truth.

But the other people who were in the room had seen the difference between Luther and the pope’s representative. Luther had the truth of the Bible on his side. The representative had no Bible verses on his side. Luther was calm and humble, but the representative was full of pride, angry, and unreasonable.

Even though Luther had been given a safe-conduct, his enemies decided to catch him and throw him in jail. Luther’s friends told him to leave Augsburg quickly and go back to Wittenberg. No one should know he was leaving. Early in the morning before the sun came up, he left Augsburg with only one man as a guide. Quietly, they went through the streets of the city until they were safely outside the walls. Then they hurried very quickly to get away where Luther’s enemies could not catch him. By the time Luther’s enemies heard he had left the city, he was too far away for them to catch him.

The representative was angry that Luther had left without being caught. He wrote to Frederick who was the ruler of Saxony, the state where the city of Wittenberg was. The representative told Frederick that he should send Luther to Rome.

But Frederick didn’t see anything wrong with what Luther taught. And so Frederick told the representative that until they could prove Luther was wrong, he would not send Luther to Rome.

But Rome was determined to get rid of Luther. They told the people that it would not be a sin to kill Luther. One day a stranger came to Luther with a gun hidden in his clothes. He asked Luther why he was alone.  “I am in the hands of God,” Luther told the man. “He is my help and my shield. What can man do unto me?” The face of the man with the gun turned white, and he ran away like he had seen angels of God.

Then the pope gave a command that if Luther and those who followed his teachings did not give up their faith within 60 days, they would be cut off from the church. This made many of the people afraid. To be cut off from the church would mean they would be treated badly and maybe even killed.

But Luther was not afraid. He put his trust in God. He knew that God’s truth would win over the errors of men. He was not afraid to die for God if that was what needed to happen for the truth to spread even more.

When Luther got a copy of the pope’s command, he burned it along with many other laws and writings that supported the Roman Catholic Church. A crowd of people watched him burn the writings. Rome had already burned Luther’s writings. So now to show he didn’t care what the pope said, Luther burned the pope’s writings.

Later the pope sent out a new command that said now Luther and all who followed his teachings were cut off from the church. There was no turning back. Luther was now fully a soldier in the battle for reform. It was a battle between the light of truth and the darkness of error.

Truth will never be loved by those who love their sins. Until Jesus comes there will always be a battle between truth and error. But like Martin Luther, we should stand bravely for the truth of God’s word.

In the next book, we will learn more about the story of Martin Luther and how he stood bravely for God’s truth.

(c) Light in Darkness