Luther's Tragic Mistake: Part Seven
NOTE: This installment is part of Dr. Luther's treatise which has been used for acts of hatred against the Jewish people. I am running this series that we may learn from Dr. Luther's tragic mistake and, hopefully, prevent a repeat in the future what has happened in the past.
I have covered the topic of "Who Killed Jesus of Nazareth" in a previous article. Please feel free to read that piece for my thoughts on the topic.
Please feel free to share your thoughts in the Discussion Forum. While Luther was a man of great importance and influence, not every thing Luther said, thought, or wrote is inspired by God. This treatise is definitely not from God, nor is it consistent with what God's Word says. Error needs to be pointed out where it exists--even if the error is made by an influential person.
The following is a verbatim reproduction of part of Dr. Martin Luther's treatise entitled On the Jews and Their Lies. It's source on the Internet is The Internet Medieval Sourcebook. Please note that the text is part of the public domain.
If God is to give ear to their prayers and praises and accept them, they must surely first purge their synagogues, mouths and hearts of such blasphemous, shameful, false, and deceitful boasting and arrogance. Otherwise they will only go from bad to worse and arouse God's anger ever more against themselves. For he who would pray before God dare not confront him with haughtiness and lying, he dare not praise only himself, condemn all others, claim to be God's only people, and execrate all the others, as they do. As David says in Psalm 5:4: "For thou are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil may not sojourn with thee. The boastful may not stand before thy eyes; thou hatest all evildoers. Thou destroyest those who speak lies; the Lord abhors bloodthirsty and deceitful men." But rather, as verse 7 tells us: "I through the abundance of thy steadfast love will enter thy house, I will worship toward thy holy temple in the fear of thee." This psalm applies to all men, whether circumcised or not, but particularly and especially to the Jews, for whom it was especially given and composed - as was all the rest of Scripture also. And they are more masterfully portrayed in it than all other heathen. For they are the ones who constantly have pursued godless ways, idolatry, false doctrine, and who have had uncircumcised hearts, as Moses himself and all the prophets cry out and lament. But in all this they always claimed to be pleasing to God and they slew all the prophets on this account. They are the malicious, stiff-necked people that would not be converted from evil to good works by the preaching, reproof, and teaching of the prophets. The Scriptures bear witness to this everywhere. And still they claim to be God's servants and to stand before him. They are the boastful, arrogant rascals who to the present day can do no more than boast of their race and lineage, praise only themselves, and disdain and curse all the world in their synagogues, prayers, and doctrines. Despite this, they imagine that in God's eyes they rank as his dearest children.
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