What with all the recent work to recast the Roman Catholic Crusades in a positive light by our politically vigorous postmillennial brothers, I share this article that summarizes Luther’s views. I’m with Luther.
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Here’s a perfect summary of the bankruptcy of our posmillennials today, and even more so our Christian MAGA men. If Luther caught even a glimpse of the wickedness of our nation today, and heard pastors and elders calling for “Christian nationalism?” Oh my. All the online commentary takes little to no thought of our nation’s wickedness except in carefully selected areas where there is some current consensus on that issue. I say “current” because that consensus is always moving. But greed? Pride? Warmongering? Neutering God’s words? Cultural profanities and obscenities exported around the world which constitute a large proportion of our balance of trade?
We all love Luther’s words here, but saying them today is something else, isn’t it? Love,
Luther’s position concerning the Turks was determined by study of the Bible. It was Luther’s intention to instruct the consciences of Christians on the basis of a study of Scripture.
He wanted them to learn “what we must know about the Turk and who he is according to Scripture.”’ According to Scrip-ture, the Turks were dangerous. Luther’s attitude was not based upon political speculation in regard to a balance of powers.
It was not based upon his desire to preserve a so-called Christian civilization. He thought very little of the Christian civilization of his time. Luther’s position in regard to the Turks was the result of a thorough study of Scripture and especially of those passages that seemed to point to the Turkish danger. Before Luther spoke about the Turks, he had first obediently listened to the Word of God.
What was the message of Scripture in regard to the Turks?
First of all, they were the rod of punishment that God was send-ing. In his explanation and defense of the ninety-five theses, Luther had called the Turk the rod of punishment of the wrath of God. He had said that by means of the Turks God punishes Christendom for its contempt of the Gospel. Pope Leo and his courtiers had tried to use this statement to imply that Luther lacked patriotism and claimed divine sanction for the Turkish sword. In spite of this misrepresentation, Luther repeated in 1529 what he had said before: "Because Germany is so full of evil and blasphemy, nothing else can be expected. We must suffer punishment if we do not repent and stop the persecution of the Gospel. And he reiterated later that as long as the Christian world refuses to repent, it will not be successful inits wars, for the Lord fights against it. Here Luther stood courageously in the prophetic tradition. With the proph-ets, he realized that God can and does use heathen nations in order to punish the so-called Christian nations for their unfaithfulness.
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It shouldn’t surprise us that Luther would begin with repentance.
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