Praying For a 2nd Reformation

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Speak your mind. And now, here's today's Truth Talk Live host. Are you praying for a second reformation? What would that look like? What would it look like if an entire culture, an entire nation, an entire generation turned back to the gospel? What happened at the first reformation?

Why was this event so significant? And I'll never forget my college years. I was probably about a junior, and we were talking about revival. We need revival on our campus. We need revival in America. Let's pray for revival. And by the way, if anyone doesn't get excited about revival, I mean, you go all the way back to Nehemiah and the revival that took place. But something was central to all of that.

And this friend of mine said this. This is one of the doctrinally astute friends of mine. He said, Stu, before we need revival, we need reformation.

Because we've got to know what it is that the revival is based on, what truth, what benchmark truth. So with me to talk about this today is one of the leading reformation scholars in the world. We have a brilliant man of God with us.

He led Wednesday in the Word this morning. He's been our guest. We've had some great meetings, and he's agreed to come on the show.

Dr. Noll, put that mic right on your chin. And thank you for being on Truth Talk Live today as our special guest. It's an honor to have you. It's an honor to be here.

Thank you for the opportunity to talk with you and let other people know the things that have got us excited about what God is doing in the world today. Well, we see campuses across the country on fire. Last time on this show, we talked about all the racism, the radical, evil racism on the campuses of Columbia University and UCLA and University of North Carolina, which, by the way, was encouraged to see students getting excited and singing the national anthem on that campus after they raised the Palestinian flag and after all these people were yelling, you know, death to Israel and all the racism and anti-Semitism that happened yesterday on that campus. The students rallied, and they put the American flag back up, and they were singing the national anthem at UNC Chapel Hill.

So I was excited about that yesterday. You know, I kind of picked on the heels a little bit after all that, but there are campuses that aren't like that. Princeton, death to Israel, Columbia, all these campuses burning the American flag, burning the Israeli flag, rioting, saying death to Israel, anti-Semitism, racism. If the KKK did this and said death to black people, it would be an uproar, and this radio program would be louder than I am right now, and this man of God would be hot.

He'd be on fire for that and upset, but the KKK, it has shown up on college campuses across America, but they're not saying death to black people, they're saying death to Jews. This is racism, friends, and I'm praying and hoping your pastor and your leaders and the other Christian radio hosts will decry this and condemn it, and the answer might be sitting in front of me today because people on campuses say these kind of crazy things because they had teachers that taught them these Marxist, these anti-Semitic, these racist views, and the man in front of me today is trying to equip and educate the next generation of students, teachers, seminarians in Reformation thought. So what does all this have to do with the Reformation?

Dr. Noll, tell us why, first of all, that event six centuries ago is so important even today, and why you're praying for a second Reformation. We are telling young people to look into themselves, to find meaning, purpose, direction, and satisfaction. But throughout the history of culture, it has been the responsibility of the previous generation to pass on to the younger generation the wisdom they have learned, the mistakes they have made, and to help guide them into making good choices. And apart from that, young people are lost. If we look into our own hearts, we see both selfishness and desires to do good, and how do we know what will lead to life and what will lead to death?

Wow, good point. You know, we can look at the evil and the racism that's being fomented by these students on these campuses all over America, pure racism, and we can say, oh, how bad, you know, bad, bad, bad, you know, get rid of them, put them in jail. I mean, I've been looking on Twitter, all the people saying, hey, get a big fire hose and hose them down, whatever, but by the, you know, were it not for the grace of God, there go I. I mean, we all are capable, we all need the Gospel, everyone, but something happened with the Gospel that set Europe on fire and trickled all the way over to America, to the Puritans, to the Huguenots. Something happened in a thing called the Great Reformation. What was going on then, maybe a little bit like what's going on today, but what happened, what precipitated this First Reformation? Why is it so important? Before I answer that, may I say that young people are looking for meaning and purpose, for a cause that they can believe in, that can give them a sense that their lives matter and what they do makes a difference.

The Reformation began with the younger clergy being inspired by Luther and that others, young people take up the cause that the answer that they had been told for meaning and purpose in their lives was not the real answer and that when Luther pointed them back to scripture and back to the writings of Paul, they began to understand that what the medieval church thought was God was actually, despite their best efforts, their idea of what God should be like. Doesn't it make sense that we only... Take sports. You get what you earn, right? Doesn't that make sense?

We should reward those who work hard and those who don't work hard should suffer the consequences. We're going to take a break. We're going to talk about, is your identity found in your performance? What does that have to do with 600 years ago? What does it have to do with today? Are you praying for a second Reformation? Why is that even more important than revival, but they're both connected? When we come back, Dr. Noel will speak to that and we'll take your calls on Truth Talk Live. Hang on. You're listening to the Truth Network and truthnetwork.com.

So picture this. College kids on campuses all over the country burning things, rioting, but not in America, not this week, in Europe 600 years ago, led by a fiery young monk who wrote 95 reasons against the establishment and nailed them to the wall in defiance of the established church. His name was Martin Luther.

Yeah, you thought I was talking about the riots at Berkeley and everywhere else. And Dr. Noel made a great point off the air. Dr. Ashley Noel is one of the leading Reformation scholars in the world. Why is this important, friends? History is extremely important. There's some history we do not want to repeat. There's some history we do want to know our roots. We are here today because of the Reformation calling upon the name of the Lord, because men like Hus, men like Wycliffe, men like Tyndale, men were burned at the stake because they said, on this I stand the word of God, sola Scriptura, sola Fida, sola Gracia. And so we have one of the leading scholars. We're all kind of sitting at his feet today on Truth Talk Live.

I'm Stu Epperson, Dr. Ashley Noel. It was riotous. It was chaotic. There were a lot of things going up in flames when Martin Luther stood up. But you said something about how he was different.

He had maybe the same zest and zeal as the rioters at Berkeley and at Columbia, but a little different content going on there, right? Tell me how you said it. The question is, have you found the right thing to believe in, the thing that gives life? And that's hard. And the truth is the only thing that gives life here and eternally is God. But how in the world do we understand who God is?

That's one of the big questions for young people today. Stu, can you go out and hug a tree and meet God? Wow. Yeah.

Can you? Well, you can see God's creation there in that, but no. God made it, but the tree ain't God. Right. Unless you're a pantheist and there you have God. But then you don't have the real God, do you? That's right.

That's exactly right. He ceases to be God when you define him, when you touch him, when you make an idol. So the people that, and it's interesting because, and another question that probes even deeper is to that issue of how is God, the reality of Christ and the Gospel, so real in my life? My life. This is personal.

Listeners, this is personal. And in your life, that the young people have a clear living presentation of that so that when they protest things or they get excited about things, because young people are looking for things to latch onto. And so they're either going to burn your house down or burn that campus down over something that's a lie, like this racism and anti-Semitism, or maybe they're going to, like at Auburn University and at these other schools, or Liberty University, had a massive worship fest, like in the middle of all of this chaos at the other college campuses. Kids are on their face worshiping God. Revival's breaking out.

Kids are giving their life to Christ. So which one are you going to embrace, and what am I imparting, and what do we learn going all the way back to the Reformation that puts that groundwork in the truth of the foundation of the true God and the true Gospel? I am not qualified to comment on politics, but I am qualified to comment on human nature. And human nature through the centuries stays the same, because guess what? We're all human beings, and we desire, eternity is put in our hearts. We want to grasp something beyond us, but if we try to figure that on our own, we always create a God in our own image. And it always disappoints. Now, that God in our own image can be Jupiter or Zeus from the ancient world, or it can be money, or it could be sexual expression. It could be the old-fashioned American idol of making money. Or it could be sporting accomplishment.

But any of those in themselves don't satisfy. And if a young people is trying to figure out God, and they think, if I hug a tree, I'll encounter God, it doesn't work well. What is the one way that human beings can understand who God is? God has to reveal Himself in the world. And the unique claim of Christianity isn't that Christians are so wise or so smart than other people. It's that God has revealed Himself first to Abraham, and then the descendants of Abraham, and through the nation of Abraham's descendants comes Jesus, the promised Savior for the Jewish people, and through the Jewish people comes Jesus, the promised Savior for the Jewish people, and through the Jewish people to the entire world. Why do we look to Scripture?

Because in Scripture, God reveals Himself fully in Jesus Christ. When I was a young boy, I used to live out in Kansas, and you can see a storm coming for miles. And I was out at the swimming pool, and there was this large anthill.

It must have been at least a foot high, and I'm not exaggerating. And they have big ants, and they're working hard, and I can see the thunder clouds coming. And I'm like, gosh, how do we warn these ants? Because if they don't go down when the rain comes, they're going to drown.

And I had a tender heart, and I'm wrestling with this. What can I do to help these ants understand? And as one of my Scottish students said, well, sir, we could spit on them, which I think is a great answer, but not really practical.

What's the best way to communicate to those ants that the storm is coming? To become an ant, and then to use ant itenae to talk to other ants. And that's exactly what God did. He became human, so we could hear and see and touch God Almighty. And through that, learn both who God is and what is true humanity. And the purpose of the New Testament is to record accurately God's self-revelation in Christ, and how then God directed the Church to proclaim that message. And what's at the very heart of the Gospel of the New Testament? Not what we are pleased to do for God, but what God is pleased to do for us.

Wow. And at the heart of the Reformation, this is what was at stake 600 years ago. People, we, I have a good friend who talks about spiritual entropy, how, you know, entropy, everything tends to maximum randomness. Every high school textbook has a picture of a teenager's room that's in complete disarray, because if energy isn't expended, things will not stay organized. They'll go to chaos. Spiritual entropy is a Gospel help in one generation becomes a Gospel hindrance in the next.

We are so determined, so wired, so insecure that we always try to base our relationship on our own efforts so that we can control and feel good about ourselves. You're listening to the Truth Network and TruthNetwork.com. Okay, you know, true to my word, yesterday I kind of came down on some college campuses and maybe rightly so, but true to my word, I'm posting right now on my IG, which stands for those of you that are older like me, that stands for Instagram. I tagged a bunch of people in here, too, about this. The college students at Chapel Hill have now stood up against racism.

There's still a bunch saying death to Israel, death to the Jews, but I'm going to give some shout-outs, because I can't just criticize without giving some shout-outs. But the question is, with all this going on, you know, what about this thing that happened 600 years ago called the Reformation, and all that's involved in that, and what about this special guest we have here today, and, you know, what about the UCLA campus? Listen to this. Listen to this. Unbelievable. I'll pull it up here in a second. I've got to find it now.

I lost it in my feed. This is just unbelievable. They're beating up Jewish kids. You know, imagine someone saying, imagine the KKK on the campus 40 years ago saying, hey, to a black student, you can't come in here. You can't come over here. You've got to go around that way. You can't go to your classroom. We're going to beat you up.

What would happen? What kind of outcry would NBC cover on that? Well, let me tell you what's happened. They're beating up these Jewish kids on these campuses, and there's no outcry. Where are the pastors?

Where's everyone else crying at this racism? And we're the believers, and I believe there are some good people speaking up, but right now, we're talking about another outcry that happened that wasn't misguided, that wasn't a racist-driven reformation on the campuses, but it was driven by a monk by the name of Martin Luther, and it was the reformation, and one of the leading reformation scholars in the whole world is on the air with me right now, Dr. Ashley Noll. And Dr. Noll, you do a lot. You have been a five-time occupant of the Olympic villages. You've been in five Olympic villages working as a chaplain.

You've met with some elite athletes and teams. You've coached, you've ministered, you've preached, you've lectured. You're an erudite scholar, one of the leading reformation scholars in the world, and you see some of the same things that happened in the reformation that were so critical in desperate need of a second reformation today, and that's kind of how we've called the show today. How can we pray for a second reformation?

Thank you, Stu. One of the great challenges of Christianity is it goes against every instinct of human nature. It seems fair to get what you earn. It seems to reward and punish based on your decisions.

It seems fair that you build your future and are rewarded for it. But the Gospel is totally different. Martin Luther recovered the Scriptures from the authority of the Church, and when he read Paul afresh, not through the teachings of the Middle Ages, but through the New Testament itself, he realized that we can never earn God's love. One of my favorite sayings with athletes is, medals have to be earned, that's right and good. Love can't be earned.

If it's earned, it's not love. And one of the principle teachings of the medieval church was that you had to become good enough for God to accept you. Now, God would help you become good enough, but you had to make the right choices with his help, and only when you had proven yourself good enough did you have a possibility of spending eternity with him. But if you made bad choices, well, hey, then if you died at that point, you would go straight to hell, and therefore there was no assurance, no security, and you understood the love of God was conditional on your performance. Now, doesn't that just sound like human nature? That so often when we treat others, we expect them to do what we want, and then we agree to work with them to be their friends. But anyone knows in a family that if a parent conditions their love on their child's behavior, we just call that manipulation, don't we?

Because what you want to do is you want to inspire in your children love so that they do what you say because they love you, and out of love for you, they want to please you. And that's the whole hope of the Reformation, that we get it right, that as God shows us that he loves us enough to freely save us, that touches our hard hearts, and all of a sudden when the message of the gospel moves from the head to the heart, we are turned and changed from the inside. Now, Stu, do you want to know the secret to stop sinning? Absolutely. How much will you pay me for that?

I got a pocketful, anything in my pocket, and then we'll add some more, and St. Nick will throw some in from the producer's side there. Well, you know, it's very simple. Just love God more than sin. Doesn't that take care of it?

Wow. But the question is, what enables you to love God more than sin? Now, there's something called attachment disorder.

Human beings are weird. We are wired to need relationships, but we are not able to love others unless we have experienced love ourselves. If a child does not grow up being loved, a child will not know how to love somebody else. And therefore, if we want to love God more than sin, what we need to do is have, as Paul says in Philippians 1, have our mind and hearts blown by the height and depth and breadth of God's love for us. How have we gotten away from the Gospel? These Reformers fought hard to bring the Gospel, to make it about God's work in us, not our work for him, not our achievements, not our buying indulgences, not our buying our way into heaven, not this work's earned salvation. Luther fought hard. All these guys, Calvin, these great Reformers, Wingley, fought hard against that. How have we lost that today?

Why would you say we need a second Reformation today? Let's get real here. American culture has spread throughout the world, and American culture is based on medicating our disappointments and pain through achievement. We reward people that are successful, right? And therefore, we teach young people that if you want to have meaning and purpose, make something of yourself, right?

Most people live with the lie that if I just get a bit more, whatever that more is, then I will be happy. One of the interesting things of working with gold medalists is they discover that when they get that gold medal that first day, what's the first thing you think they do, Stu? Well, they've got to be happy about it. Oh, they're happy, but the first—looking at the summer in Paris—the first thing they do is they look into the stands to make eye contact with someone they love. Because if there is no one there to share the joy of that gold medal, it's empty. Instinctively, they know that it's relationships, even more than accomplishments, that bring satisfaction. And the day they win, and that they have people to share it with, that's a great day.

But the next day is often the most depressing day of their lives, because they realize that they have now achieved their dream, and it doesn't fulfill. So, fundamentally, the heart of that is recovering a biblical understanding of the Gospel, of what makes us right in our relationship with God, and what gives us meaning and identity in life. Well, I won't disagree with that, but I wouldn't say it like that.

Okay, say it like you'd say it. The Gospel tells us who God is, and in seeing who God is, we see how He has created us. God doesn't demand that we earn His love. God freely gives it to us. Because—and what is the purpose of love? The purpose of love is to draw out in the Beloved a loving response. The purpose of love is union. And so God showers on us His love, because that will inspire in us a love to return. And when we see God for who He is in Jesus Christ, self-giving Himself on our behalf, so dying for us so we don't have to, when we begin to see that that's the nature of God, and we're made in the image of God, we begin to understand that we only thrive when we both receive love and give love.

It's more blessed to give than to receive, right? Nothing is more powerful than having this desire to love other people, to pour your love out, and watch it change and touch and transform others. More coming up on Truth Talk Live.

I'm Stu Epperson. We'll be right back talking about more about the Gospel and a second Reformation. You're listening to the Truth Network and truthnetwork.com.

Okay, I can't even take any more of that. That's the UCLA campus — death to Israel, death to the Jews. It's as though the KKK is back in action, except they're not saying death to black people, which was atrocious and horrible and evil 40 years ago. They're saying death to the Jews.

This is horrible racism all over our country. Our country needs revival, and our guest today says he contends that our country needs Reformation. And he's Dr. Ashley Noll, one of the leading Reformation Studies scholars in the whole world, and he's a Fulbright scholar.

He's got more degrees than the thermostat over there in the studio has, and he's been Gracious's guest with us all hour long. And we're thankful for our friends, speaking of Gracious, who support this program from Mighty Muscadine and Le Bleu Ultra Pure Bottle of Water and their new drink — I'm just reading the label — no sugar, no carbs, no calories, infused with the muscadine grape, seeds and skins, liquid extract, and this is the blueberry cherry pomegranate. And I gladly hand one of my guests, who is tired of those diet drinks full of asperitine and things that they make rat poison with, and what it does to your body.

You'll love this vine-tastic. We're grateful to them for being underwriting partners with us, and it's just good for you. And that may not be — you may not care about health, and that's fine, but we're grateful that the folks at Mighty Muscadine do, and they've offered a whole bunch of things in capsule form, in lotion form, in oil form. State Fruit of North Carolina is the muscadine grape, first fruit discovered, the first grape discovered in North America. Sir Walter Raleigh, the muscadine grape. Take my word for it, they don't sell the sizzle or the fizzle, they sell the science.

Their website information is found at mightymuscadine.com. And just remember promo code TRUTH, so they'll know you heard about it here, and for some special savings for our friends that listen to the show that are so kind to support this ministry of Truth Talk Live. I'm Stu Epperson, and the world is on fire, there's all kinds of evil in the world, and right from the church was the selling of indulgences, praying on widows. And there was a — campuses were being stormed, but it was a different kind of riot back then, 600 years ago in the Reformation, led by a little German monk named Martin Luther, who nailed a 95 Thesis to the church door, and one of the leaders of the — praying for a second Reformation, who has a Reformation Center in Wittenberg.

Is this true, Dr. Knoll? You actually have a Reformation Center. Tell us what that is real quick, we got to hear about this, and we'll get into what is the Gospel, which is such an important question. We run programs in Wittenberg that reach the academic world, the church world, and the secular world. And because I like you, I will not go into detail, but if you are interested, please go to our website, that's www.wittenbergcenter.de.

D-E means Deutschland. The whole philosophy, the whole premise you explained to me earlier at lunch is, as go the seminaries, so go the pastors being trained in those seminaries, and as goes those pastors, so goes the church. And you wonder, why is my church so dead, and why is the Gospel not being proclaimed? Well, that's probably what they learned at the liberal seminary they went to. So you're taking the creme de la creme seminarians and these teachers and scholars, you're bringing them in, and you're teaching them on a highest academic level, at the heart of the Reformation, the Gospel. And these great tenets, it's academic, but it's the word at work. You can't teach the Reformation authentically and accurately without teaching its message. And therefore, what we do, we get conservatives and progressives to gather around what was the message of the Reformation.

If you're going to teach this, you have to understand what it is. And that message was the grace and gratitude theology of the New Testament. There was a young man who told his youth group leader, I'm so sorry, I have to stop going to church.

And he said, why? He's a 14-year-old band geek, but he tells his youth pastor, I'm addicted to pornography, so I'm not, I can't go to church. When we have in this current generation that they have to be good enough, what's council culture but saying, if you don't have the right ideas, you're not good enough for me to be in relationship. If that's what they understand, when they go into church and they hear what the Bible teaches, they instantly think, well, clearly I'm not good enough and I don't have the power to change, so I'm not going to be a hypocrite, I'm going to stay away. We need a new reformation so that we don't lead with what the people can't do, we lead with what God does. The Anglican Reformation, you know, there's the four spiritual laws. In the Anglican prayer book, there are four gospel promises and they go like this, come unto me all ye that are travail and are heavy laden and I will refresh you. Does he mention sin, hell, damnation? What does he mention?

What's he start off with? People are weary and hurting and longing for rescue. Second comfortable word, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that all that believe in him should not perish but have everlasting life. He hasn't mentioned sin, he hasn't mentioned hell, but what he has mentioned is not only do people long to be rescued, God longs to rescue them.

What's the third comfortable word? It's 1 Timothy 1.15 and I always have a mental block. This is a true saying where they've all been to be received, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

Oh, we're now spinning back and now he has mentioned the S word. Why are you weary? Because sin has wearied you. Why are you hurting? Because sin has cut you off from God. Why are you lonely? Because sin has cut you off from other people.

Why are you confused? Because sin has cut you off from your true understanding of yourself. But if that's what salvation looks like from our perspective that God does for us, what we cannot do, rescuing us from sin, what does salvation look like from God's point of view?

The fourth comfortable word. If any man sin, we have an advocate, Jesus Christ the righteous, and he is the propitiation for our sins. In other words, God dies so we don't have to. That's the gospel right there.

That's good news. The point is God shows his love for people who are not worthy. When I say we need a reformation, we need to clearly communicate where people are and what is the gospel answer to that. So it's not so much what I'm doing for him, it's what he has done for me. And he's called me to be with him instead of focusing on performing for him in this performance treadmill. And it's been what the Catholic Church was doing with indulgences back then could be our modern version of performing these are ten steps to a better life, you gotta look for your breakthrough, you gotta look for something more. There's gotta be another thing, a deeper anointing, as opposed to going back to the good old news, the good news of what Jesus Christ has done and living in that, living in the reality of what he's done for us and finding our identity in him.

Like Paul says, being found in him, Philippians 3. Let's go back to sports. Two kinds of coaches. Two kinds of coaches. One that says, prove to me today in practice that you're worthy of being on this team. That anxiety, that pressure, fear, shame burns you out. But what about a coach who believes in you?

What do you do in practice? One athlete said, well if the coach believes in me, then I try harder to show him that his belief in me is justified. To say that grace and gratitude is where we start, it doesn't mean that sanctification isn't a healthy and wonderful part of the Christian life. But it follows from knowing God believes in us, not everyday fearing we gotta prove to God that we're worthy of his love.

Wow. So at the highest academic level, you're teaching this to the would-be future pastors, future scholars, future authors, which is going to change the whole culture. But then at the basic chaplaincy level, college athletes, Olympic athletes, you know, you do these Olympic retreats, you've been to the Olympic village, you've been in five Olympic villages, you're instructing high-level medalists on how to find their identity, not in their performance. The worst day in the life of someone who's a gold medalist, they've worked their whole life to achieve, achieve, achieve, they got the gold medal. What's the saddest day in their whole life, Dr. Noel?

The day after they win. Oh my. But they just won the gold! Yeah, and they found out that a gold medal on the outside, cold against the chest, it doesn't make you feel loved on the inside.

Wow. And so you communicate the identity found in the relationship with Christ, and this is in essence, when someone says, what is the Gospel, how do you answer that question as we wrap up the show today? We are not defined by our accomplishments, we are defined by our relationships. But it's our relationships that make our accomplishments possible. What the Gospel says is you are defined by what Christ did for you on the cross, and he was raised from the dead so that you know that he will restore what God's intention is for your humanity every day more in this life, perfectly in the life to come, and what was the cost that made that possible?

Jesus died so that you don't have to. Wow, that's beautiful. Dr. Ashton Noel, thanks for being on. We've got to have you back on again for an encore. Man, this is too good.

I know you're flying out here, but we'll have you on again soon. The website one more time is CaritasFoundation.org. C-A-R-I-T-A-S Foundation.org. Another program powered by the Truth Network.