In two days, we will mark the 506th anniversary of Martin Luther’s nailing his 95 Theses to the Wittenberg church door.
Luther wasn’t the first to push back on the theological and political abuses of the Roman Church-State. John Wycliffe in England had done so 150 or so years earlier. Jan Hus, another reformer, was murdered by the Church-State in 1415, just 102 years before Luther’s famous act.
Predating these men were the Waldenses, Italian Christians who left the Roman Church-State and built their own civilization in the valleys of the Alps. According to Wylie in his History of the Waldenses, “When their [the Waldenses] co-religionists on the plains entered within the pale of the Roman jurisdiction, they retired within the mountains, and spurning alike the tyrannical yoke and the corrupt tenets of the Church of the Seven Hills, they preserved in its purity and simplicity the faith their fathers had handed down to them.”[1]
As our nation, as the whole of the formerly Christian West, turns more and more away from its historic Protestant roots and more and more toward tyranny of various stripes, I cannot help but wonder if we twenty-first century Protestants will not have to follow in the footsteps of the Waldenses to escape what appears to be a coming wave of persecution in our own time.
Lux Lucet 
Luther showed no mercy to the Anabaptist German Peasants and saved his venom “Against the Jews and Their Lies”.
In other words, Luther was an imperfect man and a sinner. That doesn’t detract from his teaching that Scripture alone is the Christian’s only authority for faith and practice and that God justifies – pronounces righteous – sinners based on faith (belief) in the gospel of Christ alone.
Luther’s teaching of Scripture alone was another error of Luther. The Scripture teaches against Scripture alone in 2 Thessalonians 2:15.
Wrong, Scott.
Right Steve Matthews. Luther was wrong. He taught heresy. Just like the Pope. Filioque, against Proverbs 30:6 and John 15:26. You can not prove otherwise, Steve Matthews.
Steve Matthews: If you really go by Scripture alone, why would you ever have to read anything wrote or said? That is illogical? If it is really Scripture alone, not Scripture AND Martin Luther.
Wrong, Scott.
Steve Matthews: You saying it is wrong proves nothing. If you presuppose Martin Luther, you must show from Scripture that Luther believed what has been believed “always, everywhere, and by everyone” who is Christian in the Church (Saint Vincent of Lerins, “Commonitories”). Luther is a sectarian, and he promoted a private interpretation of the Scriptures, but the Scripture says that no teaching of Scripture is of any private interpretation. Luther was also a hypocrite, for while claiming to go by Scripture alone, he rejected Scriptures he did not like such as James 2:24, which contradicted his pet doctrine of “faith alone”. He also misread Saint Paul in Romans 3:28, adding the word “Alone” to it, in violation of Scripture in Deuteronomy 4:1-2 and Proverbs 30:5-6, as we learn from Saint Peter 3:15-17; Therefore 2 Thessalonians 3:6 applies to Martin Luther, as does Titus 3:10; “Let no man deceive you by any means” (2 Thess. 2:3); Luther deceived Lutherans by means of his mis-use of the Scriptures, which he twisted to his own destruction, preaching “another gospel” other than the True Gospel preached by the True Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church (Chalcedonian); cf. Galatians 1:6.
You’re ranting again, Scott.
That means nothing. Saying I am ranting is just that you have nothing special to say. God bless you.
If Scripture alone is true because Martin Luther “said so”, where does Scripture tell us to trust Martin Luther as a “guide to the New Testament”? This is an unproven presupposition, not based on Scripture alone.
Okay, Scott.