The Ninety-Five Theses And Other Writings Order Printed Copy

Author: Martin Luther
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About the Book

"The Ninety-Five Theses And Other Writings" by Martin Luther contains Luther's famous 95 theses, which criticized corruption within the Catholic Church and sparked the Protestant Reformation. The book also includes other writings by Luther that address theological and social issues of his time, making it a key text in the history of Christianity.

Hudson Taylor

"China is not to be won for Christ by quiet, ease-loving men and women … The stamp of men and women we need is such as will put Jesus, China, [and] souls first and foremost in everything and at every time—even life itself must be secondary." In September 1853, a little three-masted clipper slipped quietly out of Liverpool harbor with Hudson Taylor, a gaunt and wild-eyed 21-year-old missionary, aboard. He was headed for a country that was just coming into the Christian West's consciousness; only a few dozen missionaries were stationed there. By the time Taylor died a half-century later, however, China was viewed as the most fertile and challenging of mission fields as thousands volunteered annually to serve there. Radical missionary Taylor was born to James and Amelia Taylor, a Methodist couple fascinated with the Far East who had prayed for their newborn, "Grant that he may work for you in China." Years later, a teenage Hudson experienced a spiritual birth during an intense time of prayer as he lay stretched, as he later put, "before Him with unspeakable awe and unspeakable joy." He spent the next years in frantic preparation, learning the rudiments of medicine, studying Mandarin, and immersing himself ever deeper into the Bible and prayer. His ship arrived in Shanghai, one of five "treaty ports" China had opened to foreigners following its first Opium War with England. Almost immediately Taylor made a radical decision (as least for Protestant missionaries of the day): he decided to dress in Chinese clothes and grow a pigtail (as Chinese men did). His fellow Protestants were either incredulous or critical. Taylor, for his part, was not happy with most missionaries he saw: he believed they were "worldly" and spent too much time with English businessmen and diplomats who needed their services as translators. Instead, Taylor wanted the Christian faith taken to the interior of China. So within months of arriving, and the native language still a challenge, Taylor, along with Joseph Edkins, set off for the interior, setting sail down the Huangpu River distributing Chinese Bibles and tracts. When the Chinese Evangelization Society, which had sponsored Taylor, proved incapable of paying its missionaries in 1857, Taylor resigned and became an independent missionary; trusting God to meet his needs. The same year, he married Maria Dyer, daughter of missionaries stationed in China. He continued to pour himself into his work, and his small church in Ningpo grew to 21 members. But by 1861, he became seriously ill (probably with hepatitis) and was forced to return to England to recover. In England, the restless Taylor continued translating the Bible into Chinese (a work he'd begun in China), studied to become a midwife, and recruited more missionaries. Troubled that people in England seemed to have little interest in China, he wrote China: Its Spiritual Need and Claims. In one passage, he scolded, "Can all the Christians in England sit still with folded arms while these multitudes [in China] are perishing—perishing for lack of knowledge—for lack of that knowledge which England possesses so richly?" Taylor became convinced that a special organization was needed to evangelize the interior of China. He made plans to recruit 24 missionaries: two for each of the 11 unreached inland provinces and two for Mongolia. It was a visionary plan that would have left veteran recruiters breathless: it would increase the number of China missionaries by 25 percent. Taylor himself was wracked with doubt: he worried about sending men and women unprotected into the interior; at the same time, he despaired for the millions of Chinese who were dying without the hope of the gospel. In 1865 he wrote in his diary, "For two or three months, intense conflict … Thought I should lose my mind." A friend invited him to the south coast of England, to Brighton, for a break. And it was there, while walking along the beach, that Taylor's gloom lifted: "There the Lord conquered my unbelief, and I surrendered myself to God for this service. I told him that all responsibility as to the issues and consequences must rest with him; that as his servant it was mine to obey and to follow him." His new mission, which he called the China Inland Mission (CIM), had a number of distinctive features, including this: its missionaries would have no guaranteed salaries nor could they appeal for funds; they would simply trust God to supply their needs; furthermore, its missionaries would adopt Chinese dress and then press the gospel into the China interior. Within a year of his breakthrough, Taylor, his wife and four children, and 16 young missionaries sailed from London to join five others already in China working under Taylor's direction. Strains in the organization Taylor continued to make enormous demands upon himself (he saw more than 200 patients daily when he first returned) and on CIM missionaries, some of whom balked. Lewis Nicol, who accused Taylor of tyranny, had to be dismissed. Some CIM missionaries, in the wake of this and other controversies, left to join other missions, but in 1876, with 52 missionaries, CIM constituted one-fifth of the missionary force in China. Because there continued to be so many Chinese to reach, Taylor instituted another radical policy: he sent unmarried women into the interior, a move criticized by many veterans. But Taylor's boldness knew no bounds. In 1881, he asked God for another 70 missionaries by the close of 1884: he got 76. In late 1886, Taylor prayed for another 100 within a year: by November 1887, he announced 102 candidates had been accepted for service. His leadership style and high ideals created enormous strains between the London and China councils of the CIM. London thought Taylor autocratic; Taylor said he was only doing what he thought was best for the work, and then demanded more commitment from others: "China is not to be won for Christ by quiet, ease-loving men and women," he wrote. "The stamp of men and women we need is such as will put Jesus, China, [and] souls first and foremost in everything and at every time—even life itself must be secondary." Taylor's grueling work pace, both in China and abroad (to England, the United States, and Canada on speaking engagements and to recruit), was carried on despite Taylor's poor health and bouts with depression. In 1900 it became too much, and he had complete physical and mental breakdown. The personal cost of Taylor's vision was high on his family as well: his wife Maria died at age 33, and four of eight of their children died before they reached the age of 10. (Taylor eventually married Jennie Faulding, a CIM missionary.) Between his work ethic and his absolute trust in God (despite never soliciting funds, his CIM grew and prospered), he inspired thousands to forsake the comforts of the West to bring the Christian message to the vast and unknown interior of China. Though mission work in China was interrupted by the communist takeover in 1949, the CIM continues to this day under the name Overseas Missionary Fellowship (International).

my times are in your hand - learning to trust the speed of god

Did you know your head ages faster than your feet? Scientists have confirmed this, proving again that Albert Einstein was spot-on in his theories of relativity: the speed of time is relative to a particular frame of reference. For us terrestrials, that frame of reference is earth’s gravitational force. The higher up from the earth something is, the weaker the gravitational pull and the faster time moves. An implication of this is that we frequently put our trust in a frame of reference on time different from the one we experience. For instance, the Global Positioning System (GPS) we rely on to accurately and safely guide us as we pilot our cars, ships, planes, and spaceships only works because it’s programmed, based on Einstein’s theories of relativity, to compensate for the distance between earth and space. Without those formulas, our computers and smartphones would soon get disastrously out of sync with the GPS satellites, which orbit in a different time. Stick with me; I am going somewhere with this. How we experience time depends on our frame of reference. And our particular frame of reference is not always the one we should trust. In fact, sometimes it’s critically important that we trust another framing more than our own. One Day with the Lord For Christians, this concept is nothing new. Over three millennia ago, Moses wrote, A thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night. (Psalm 90:4) And some two millennia ago, Peter wrote, Do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. (2 Peter 3:8) In other words, time in God’s eyes moves at different speeds from time in our ours. And in the life of faith, it’s critically important that we learn to rely on God’s timing more than our own — to learn to trust the speed of God. How Long, O Lord? Learning to trust God’s timing is not easy, to say the least. This is partly due to our sin and unbelief. But it’s also because trusting a frame of reference different from ours is, by definition, counterintuitive. Since we can’t calculate God’s time, his timing often doesn’t make sense to us. That’s why after Peter described one God-day as being like a thousand years for us, he went on to say, “The Lord is not slow . . . as some count slowness” (2 Peter 3:9). The “some” he referred to were “scoffers” who mocked Christians’ hope in the return of Christ (2 Peter 3:3–4). But the truth is that all of us fit into the “some” category at times. I don’t mean as scoffers, but as children of God painfully perplexed by our heavenly Father’s apparent slowness. We cry out, “How long, O Lord?” (Psalm 13:1), wondering when he will finally fulfill some promise to which we’re clinging. So, Peter exhorts us, the “beloved” of God, not to “overlook” the fact that God-time is not man-time; therefore, God “is not slow” as man counts slowness (2 Peter 3:8–9) — as I sometimes count slowness. Indeed, he is not. God Is Not Slow Someone who has created such a thing as light speed, and who knows what’s happening in every part of a universe spanning some 93 billion light-years across, is clearly not slow. “It’s critically important that we learn to rely on God’s timing more than our own.” It’s also clear, however, that such a being as God operates on a very different timeline than we do — if timeline is even the right word. For God is not constrained by time. He is the Father of time (Genesis 1:1; Colossians 1:16). He is “the Ancient of Days” (Daniel 7:9), existing “from everlasting to everlasting” (Psalm 90:2). God is not in time ; time is in God (Acts 17:28; Colossians 1:17). The “thousand years” of Psalm 90:4 and 2 Peter 3:8 is just a metaphor, using a timeframe we can somewhat comprehend to communicate a reality we can’t. So, when the speed of God seems slow to us, or when his timing doesn’t make sense, we must “not overlook this one fact”: God-time is different from man-time. God-time is relative to his purposes, which is his frame of reference. And God, according to his wise purposes, makes everything beautiful in its time — the time he purposefully chooses for it. Time for Everything Everything beautiful in its time . I get that from Ecclesiastes 3:11: [God] has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. This verse captures like no other both the mysterious nature of our experience of time, and the pointers God has placed within our frame of reference to help us trust the wisdom of his timing. In designing us with eternity in our hearts, the “eternal God” made us to know him (Deuteronomy 33:27). But in limiting the scope of our perspective and comprehension, he also made us to fundamentally trust him and not ourselves (Proverbs 3:5–6). This is how he means for us to know him: I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, “My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose.” (Isaiah 46:9–10) He is “the everlasting God” (Isaiah 40:28), “who works all things,” including all time everywhere, “according to the counsel of his will” (Ephesians 1:11). One clear way he reveals the wisdom of his purposes is how he has created, in our frame of reference, “a time for every matter under heaven” (Ecclesiastes 3:1): a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance. (Ecclesiastes 3:2–4) God “made everything beautiful in its time.” The Hebrew word translated “beautiful” means appropriate , fitting , right . God’s “invisible attributes” can be “clearly perceived” in the created order we observe and experience (Romans 1:20). They reveal the wisdom of his purposes — a wisdom far beyond ours. And God intends them to teach us that his “beautiful” timing can be trusted, even when we don’t understand it. In the Fullness of Time God did not merely leave us to deduce his character and wisdom from nature. For “when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son” (Galatians 4:4). In Jesus, the Creator of all stepped into terrestrial time, into our frame of reference (John 1:2). In fully human form, he “dwelt among us,” directly revealing the divine attributes with a “glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). “Time in God’s eyes moves at different speeds than time in our ours.” While here, he performed many signs and wonders and proclaimed, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:14–15). As he did so, he displayed the marvelous wisdom of the timing of God, often in ways that surprised and confused his followers (John 4:1–42; 11:1–44). Then, when his time had come (John 12:23), Jesus obeyed his Father to the point of death on a cross, “offer[ing] for all time a single sacrifice for sins.” And then he was raised from the dead and “sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet” (Hebrews 10:12–14). As his followers, we also wait. We wait for the Father to “send the Christ appointed for [us], Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago” (Acts 3:20–21). Trust the Speed of God As we wait, two thousand years later (or two God-days), we help each other remember, The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward [us], not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. (2 Peter 3:9) Yes, we must frequently help each other remember: God-time moves at different speeds than ours. God works all things, at all times, in all places, in all dimensions, after the counsel of his will to accomplish all his purpose. God has a purposeful time for everything, and he makes everything beautiful in its time. However God chooses to use our times, it’s critically important that we learn to trust his timing over the relative and unreliable earthbound perspective that shapes our expectations. Our times, like all times, are in God’s hand (Psalm 31:15). This is what it means to live by faith in relation to time. In choosing to trust the speed of God, we humble ourselves under his mighty, time-holding hand. According to 1 Peter 5:6–7, the amazing reward of choosing to embrace such joyful, peaceful, childlike trust in God is that he will exalt us at the proper time.