On Tuesday when many people we celebrating Halloween, God’s People were remembering the 500th anniversary of the recognised beginning of the Reformation. Martin Luther a German monk was reading his Bible and some things that the church of his day was saying didn’t make sense.
For instance, when he read the Greek text of Mark 1:15, he believed that the text meant, “Repent and believe the good news” when the standard translation of the day was “Do penance and believe the good news.” Since ‘do penance’ had become a major fund-raiser of the church, this was not popular and he was ex-communicated from the church. His desire was to ‘reform’ the church; the outcome was he was outcast but God used him to begin the Reformation.
About 100 years later some English Christians thought the Reformation didn’t go far enough when it came to the issue of baptism and our denomination was formed. We’ll have a look at Jesus’ baptism (and temptation) today.
Blessings
Mark Wilkinson
Interim Pastor
