Adapted from HORAE APOCALYPTICA by E.B. ELLIOTT

(This is one of the articles in a booklet entitled Journal of History and Prophecy compiled and edited by Ron Bullock in 1987.)

I have adapted and edited this segment from E.B. Elliott’s treatment of Revelation chapter 10 verses 3 and 4. This is one aspect of Luther’s development through the course of the Reformation which is generally ignored, down played, or explained away.

It is our contention that this part of Luther’s thought was absolutely vital to the Reformation. And what is happening today to the Protestant churches as they turn away embarrassed from this stance? Certainly much of evangelicalism and fundamentalism can no longer consider itself Protestant in the original shape of its identity.

I beg you to study this excerpt closely. The fear and trepidation with which Luther approached this realization still attaches itself to the thoughtful student of prophecy today. When the whole world is dreaming of unity and religious co-ordination and harmony, one hesitates to take such an unpopular position.

I am certain that this is one of the reasons the school of Continuous Historicism is so much neglected today. One fears to even touch the subject in the privacy of our hearts let alone in the pulpit. We have been so conditioned to believe that our doctrinal and prophetic assertions are only so much prejudice and bias.

-the editor

LUTHER AND THE RECOGNITION OF ANTICHRIST

The truth was that Luther formed acquaintance with the character of Christ some years before he formed it with that of Antichrist. The cry of the Pope being Antichrist, raised long previously by the followers of Waldo, Wicliff, and Huss, had almost died away in Christendom; and, if heard of by Luther at Erfurt or at Wittenberg, had been heard of only as a blasphemous heresy.¹

With a conscience very tender, and tremblingly afraid of offending God, the supposed sacredness and authority of the Pope, as head of the Church and Christ’s Vicar, (for such in accordance with the long-received superstition he as yet regarded him,) induced in his mind a predisposition to bow with implicit deference to the Papal decision, both in other things, and in the controversy about indulgences that he had engaged in. In his Theses nothing appeared against the authority of the Pope, but the contrary.

Listen to his own account of his feelings at this time, as given many years afterwards.

And again,

It was in this frame of mind that in the summer of 1518, a few months after the affair with Tetzel, he wrote that memorable letter to the Pope, of which the tenor may be judged of from the clause following; and what can more admirably illustrate the passage we are considering?

Thus when the seven thunders uttered their own voices he was about to write: i.e. as the word means;² to receive, publish, submit to them; even as if they had been what they pretended to be, an oracle from heaven. (Rev.10.4)

But so it was that just at this critical point of temptation and danger a real voice from heaven, the voice of God’s Spirit, saying, “Seal up what the seven thunders have uttered, and write them not,” was his preservation. Already in October of that year, on being summoned and appearing, as we have intimated, before the Papal Legate Cardinal Cajetan, when the Pope’s judgment was affirmed by the Legate to be in favor of indulgences, and also of the efficacy of the sacraments ex opere operato, and independent of faith in the recipient,—seeing its contradictoriness both to the Word and spirit of the Gospel, he would not receive it. The Spirit’s whisper began, “Write not!” Still however for a while he remained partially in suspense. He doubted, indeed discredited, the fact of the Papal sanction.

But soon after, when the publication of the Pope’s Bull in direct sanction of indulgences had forced him to identify the Pope himself with those antichristian abuses,—and yet more when in the year next following, on the occasion of the approaching disputation with Eck, he was brought to the necessity of examining the origin, foundation, and character of the Papal supremacy, then the real antichristian character of the Papacy began more and more to open to his view.

About the end of 1518 we find him writing to his friend Link, on sending him a copy of the acts just published of the conference at Augsburg. “My pen is ready to give birth to things much greater. I know not myself whence these thoughts come to me. I will send you what I write, that you may see if I have well conjectured in believing that the Antichrist, of whom St. Paul speaks, now reigns in the court of Rome.”

For a while, however, he combated the thought, to him so fearful. Some three or four months after,—for it was not a very long time before the dispute with Eck,—in answer to a request from the Elector of Saxony to be in all things reverential to the Pope, he wrote to Spalatinus, “To separate myself from the Apostolic See of Rome, has not entered my mind.” But now the views that he had hinted to Link pressed upon him with greater and greater force. The Elector was startled with hearing,

Further study of Scripture, and further teaching of the Holy Spirit, concurred with the Pope’s reckless support of all the antichristian errors and abominations against which he had protested, (and well did the reminiscences too of his visit to Rome help on the conviction,) to make what was for a while a suspicion only, an awful and certain reality to him.

And when at length, in the summer of 1520, the Pope’s Bull of anathema and excommunication came out against him, when the seven thunders pealed against the voice that the Covenant-Angel had uttered by him, with all their fury,—accordantly with that admonitory voice from heaven which bade his Apocalyptic representative St. John long before to “seal them up,”³ (the very phrase of the times, I may observe, for rejecting Papal Bulls, and consigning them to oblivion,) he did an action by which all Europe was electrified.

He summoned a vast concourse of all ranks outside the walls of Wittenberg; himself kindled a fire in a vast pile of wood previously prepared for the purpose; and by the hands of the common hangman, committed the Bull, together with the Papal Decretals, Canons, &c accompanying, to the flames. Moreover in his published answer to the Bull, he rejected and poured contempt on its thunders, as the infernal voices of Antichrist.⁴

Such was the memorable act that marked the completion of the first epoch of the Reformation. Once convinced by the heavenly teaching of this awful and long unsuspected truth, no earthly terrors or power could induce from Luther its recantation. When summoned before the Emperor, Legate, and Germanic Princes and Nobles at the Diet of Worms, the momentous cause entrusted to him was only strengthened by his intrepid confession.

Moreover he was now no longer alone, as once, in the undertaking. A goodly company,—Melancthon, Carolstadt, Bugenhagen, Justus Jonas, and many others, since known as the Fathers of the Reformation,—had already joined themselves to him. In many too, perhaps in most, of the German universities and towns, by students and by people, and by not a few even of priests and monks also, the new doctrine had been embraced with enthusiasm: besides that in Switzerland was progressing.

It is the remark of his biographer, when arrived at this epoch of the Reformation, that at various times the world has seen the power of an idea, even of common and earthly origin, to penetrate society and rouse nations; how much more, he adds, when, as now, it was an idea originating from heaven.⁵ In this observation he is speaking of the new view spread abroad of Christ and Antichrist.

And have we not a comment in it on the Apocalyptic statement, “I heard a voice from heaven saying to me, Write not!” The effect was seen and confessed by the astonished Legate, when, in traveling through Germany to Worms, instead of the wonted honors and reverence to his high office, he found himself disregarded and shunned as an agent of ANTICHRIST.⁶ A mighty revolution, it was evident, had begun;—and who could foresee its issue?

NOTES

1. This is evident from what he tells us of his original feelings of horror at Huss and Hussite doctrines, and his astonishment in at length finding them to be agreeable to the Gospel.

2. Compare Hab.2:2; “write the vision, and make it plain on tables, that he may run that readeth it. Similar to this was the custom in the promulgation of laws, &c., among the ancients. And afterwards in regard to the Papal Bulls. It was by writing them that they were published, on reception in any country. So in a letter from Pope Paul II, in the year 1469, to the Archbishop of Lyons, in accompaniment of a Bull of Excommunication against George de Pogiebrat and the Hussites, he thus directs its promulgation: that it should be affixed in some public place, that all who wished might read or transcribe; also that it should be read in the vulgar tongue before the people in all the churches three times a year, at certain high festivals; and that, in order to all this, he, the Archbishop, was to send an attested copy of the Pope’s original Bull, transcribed literally by a notary public, to all his suffragans (bishops). Harduin, 9.1490

3. “By the Spaniards, when they receive the Pope’s Bulls, if they like them , they are registered and published, i.e. executed accordingly. But if they do not like them, they are set by, being first lapped up, and no more is said about them. This they call plegar la Bulla, to fold or seal up, the Bull; i.e. to stop or hinder the execution of it, as being contrary to their customs or rights.” Simon Lettres Choisies; ap. Daubuz,473: Who however only quotes it in illustration of his own singular and totally different explanation of the clause; see my note p. 104 supr.

4. Luther’s reply (which is given complete in Foxe,v.5.660) bore date June 15, 1520; and was entitled, An Answer to the Execrable Bull of Antichrist. “I hold,” he says in it, “the author of this Bull to be Antichrist, and Rome the kingdom of Antichrist.” “Is not thy whorish face ashamed,” he adds,”to set the vanities of thy naked words against the thunderbolts of God’s eternal Word?” Again, “Dost | thou not show thyself to be the adversary, extolled above all that is called God? Art thou not that man of sin that denieth God the Redeemer?” And then to Christian princes; “Ye have given your names to Christ in baptism: and can ye now abide these infernal voices of such an Antichrist?”

5. Merle D’Aubigne, His. of the Ref. v.2.172; He observes that the world has not often seen this: instancing in but two examples; the first that of the opening era of Christianity, the second this of the Reformation.

6. Ibid. v.2.178

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