Martin Luther and Our Lady of Guadalupe By Rick Salbato, Knight of Our Lady In the 1500’s Catholic kings fought each other all over Europe. Twenty-five million people lost their lives to the Black Plague, many being priests and nuns because they were the only ones who would care for the sick and bury the dead. So many priests and nuns lost their lives to the Black Plague that priests were quickly ordained with only one or two years of training, and many bad priests were the result. Two anti-popes fought for the Chair of Rome. The Moors occupied Spain and Portugal all across the Mediterranean Sea. This was the situation of the Kingdom of God on Earth at the turn of the 14th Century. When all seemed lost, God sent a woman, Isabella of Spain, to save the Kingdom. Isabella became Queen of Spain and, although constantly pregnant, she rode her horse all over Europe to defeat the Turks and the Tartars, pushing Mohammed out of Europe, stopping the King of France and saving the Holy Father. A pregnant woman on a horse saved the world from the first of the Antichrists of the world, Mohammed. She, and she alone, financed Christopher Columbus to discover the new world of the Americas. Because of Isabella of Spain and Columbus, eventually all the wealth of Spain and Portugal would migrate to the Americas and drain the power from Spain and Portugal. Before her death in 1504, a child was born in Germany of a poor peasant miner, named John Luder. This child would eventually change his name to Luther because the word "Luder" in German means "beast". The child was rebellious and full of pride, hateful of authority figures, and attitude which never changed despite training as a Augustinian. One day he was almost struck by lightning, and this so frightened him that he made a promise to God. If God would save his life from the storm, he would become a priest. And so, he did. He became an Augustinian priest. When he was still a priest, Luder wrote: "If Christ had not entrusted all power to one man, the Church would not have been perfect. There would have been disorder, and each person would have been his own master claiming to be led by the Holy Spirit. "The principle sin of heretics is their own pride. With pride they insist on their own opinions. Frequently they serve God with great devotion. They do not intend any evil, but they serve God according to their own will. "Even when refuted they refuse to change their words. They think they are guided by the Holy Spirit. The things that have been established for centuries and in which countless martyrs have lost their lives, they treat as doubtful questions. They interpret the Bible according to their own heads, and carry their own opinions in it." Luder did not understand "grace". He wanted to acquire sanctity by his own efforts, his own justice, his own works, and he did not like anyone helping him - not even God. He still hated authority, in whatever form it took, including God. But he did understand Church canon, the devastating role of pride, and the sin of heresy. Leo X issued a Bull on Indulgences, and the Dominican, Tetzel, traveled throughout Germany preaching indulgences and collecting money to rebuild Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Tetzel angered Luder because Tetzel said that man did not rely on himself, but needed the grace of God to do any good work. Tetzel taught that the grace stored up in the Church by all the saints, martyrs, monks, and cloistered nuns could be tapped.. By appealing to these graces stored up in the Body of Christ, the Church, we could gain power from God to do good and to gain the remission of sins. So angry was Luder that on Halloween Day in 1517 ( 500 years before Fatima) he nailed up on the Church doors 95 objections against indulgences. Luder wrote to the Holy Father, "Whatever your decision I will accept as Christ speaking through you." However, when his errors were pointed out to him, Luder rebelled with outrageous heretically preaching and writing. Finally, in 1520 he was excommunicated. Regarding his excommunication, Luder said, "I maintain that the author of this excommunication (the Pope) is the Antichrist." The Bible did not support his views. He needed a new bible. In the Sixteenth Century, it could be said that if anyone could not read Latin, he could not read at all. In spite of this there were 17 versions of the Bible in the German language alone before Luder came out with his own version from the Newenburg Version of 1483 in only 10 weeks and never stopped changing this version until his death. "These Popish asses are not able to appreciate my labors." And regarding the doctors of the Church - Augustine, Jerome, Basil, Aquinas, Luder wrote, "they are untrustworthy teachers. Bores, out of which Christians have been drinking. Naive blasphemers, infernal asses, knowing nothing of the gospel, deceived by the devil, and deserving of hell rather than heaven." Then he proceeded to take out whole sections of the Bible: Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiastics, Tobias, Machabees I and II, parts of Ester, parts of Daniel, the prayers of Menasseh. Regarding Revelation he said, "I feel an aversion to it, and this is sufficient reason for me to reject it." Now, armed with a Bible that supported his views, he placed copies of it into the hands of the peasants and the princes. To flatter them, he told the peasants that anyone’s interpretation of Scripture had equal value to anyone else. "Among Christians there should not be any authority," he said. The peasants led by a man named Mussner, they revolted against the kings, princes and the Church. They demanded the right to elect priests, the elimination of serfdom, the elimination of subjects, the elimination of princes, and the elimination of kings. They used the new Gospel of Luder to claim the right to kill all until authority was destroyed and the new Kingdom of God was established. To arouse the masses even further, Luder had cartoons pasted all over Germany showing the Pope and the Cardinals being born out of the devil’s behind. Monasteries, churches, and the palaces At first Luder wanted to use the peasants to destroy the Church in Germany before he realized that if the peasants gained control, he would lose control. So he wrote a declaration against the peasants, and the kings posted his declaration all over Germany. "Pure deviltry is the peasants. They rob and rage like mad dogs, therefore whoever is able to mow them down, slaughter them or stab them, openly or in secret, let them do so. Remember, nothing is more poisonous, noxious or devious than a rebel. You must kill them like you would a mad dog." In 1531 peasants were slaughtered like cattle. Luder wrote, "I, Luder, slew all the peasants because I said they should be slain. All their blood is upon my head, but I put it upon the Lord, God, by whose command I spoke." Luther celebrated by marrying a nun, and becoming the author of the "State Church" because he said, "He who owns the country owns the Church. He who makes the laws for you, has the right to make the religion for you. No finer government in the world is there than that of the Turks, who have neither a secular nor spiritual code of law, but only the Koran." So began all state-controlled religions. Eventually some governments would go so far as to outlaw all religions, as in the case of the "French Revolution" and "Communism". By 1984 Communism would outlaw religion in 74% of the entire world.
The main theological argument of Luder was that man has no free will to choose good or evil, and therefore cannot be blamed for any sin whatsoever. "If men believe in Christ and accept Him as their personal Savior, His justice will be imputed to them and they will go straight to Heaven. It does not matter what evil they have done during their lives. It does not matter whether they are, or not, repent of their sins. It does not matter at the moment of their death whether they have contrition or not, or if they are in the state of grace. If they have accepted Christ as their personal Savior they will be saved." "The Laws of God are only there so that man can see in them the impossibility of doing good. Man must persuade himself to have nothing to do with the law, and that no sin should deny him anything. Let him, so to say, boast of his sins. What should be the rule every time you read in the Scripture: God commanding good works, you should understand that to mean, that the Scripture forbids good works. Be on your guard against good works. Avoid them as one avoids a pest. I will drink all the more because you forbid it. I will drink goblets in the name and honor of the name of Jesus Christ. If you think about good works, prayers, the laws of Christ, I advise everyone to drive these satanic thoughts out of their minds by thinking about a pretty woman, or money or drink. It is impossible to do without a woman. Chastity is an abomination. --- Be a sinner and sin boldly but believe more boldly still. We must sin as long as we are what we are. Sin will not drive us away from God even if we commit fornication thousands of thousands of times a day. The gratification of sexual desire is God’s work, and it is as necessary as eating, drinking, sweating, or sleeping." Regarding a family, Luder wrote, "He who keeps a prostitute is closer to God --- than one who takes a wife." Regarding the Jews, he wrote, "Burn their Synagogues and schools. Put them on fire, their homes, their prayer books and their rabbis." Are you getting an idea where Hitler got his ideas, and why he found a following in Germany? GUADALUPE (1531) "How long O Lord, Holy and True, do you refrain from avenging and judging those who dwell on earth." (Revelation 6:10) .God answered these prayers in Guadalupe. On one side of the world in 1531 Luther brought two million out of the Church. On the same day, in the same year, on the other side of the world, atop a small hill in Guadalupe, Our Lady appeared to Juan Diego and, because of her, ten million people were converted to the Faith and brought into the Kingdom within a year, between 1531 and 1532. The story of Our Lady of Guadalupe begins when Cortez arrived in Mexico in 1519. What he saw was the great civilization of accomplished mathematicians, astronomers, physicians, architects, philosophers, craftsmen, and artists. They had a judicial system that resembled that of Europe. Reading and writing began at an early age, but their writing was in pictographs similar to that of the Egyptian Hieroglyphics. They offered human sacrifices to these gods. Aztecs regarded themselves "The People of the Sun", since the sun was their primary god. For fear that the sun might not rise again, they offered thousands of human sacrifices to the sun god. Victims of these sacrifices were often prisoners, slaves, children, or unwanted babies. While still alive, a black-robed, long-haired priest tore out their heart and held it in his hand offering it to his sun god as he watched the heartless victim die. In some rituals they mutilated and ate their victims alive. They would kill thousands of humans on any one of their feast days. On the inauguration day of their temple pyramid in 1487 they killed over 20,000 people on their altars in one day. The mightiest of their gods was the feathered or stoned serpent to whom many thousands were sacrificed every year. Another of their gods was the mother god, whose temple stood on a small hill that would later become Guadalupe. Her head was a combination of snakes heads and her clothes a mass of living serpents. Somehow God had gone before Cortez arrived because their mystics were predicting to Montezuma his own overthrow. His sister had dreamed of the ships with the black cross on their sails, and of the soldiers with the black crosses on their armor. A prophet from their past had predicted that a man with white skin and a white beard would bring them knowledge of the true God. The Spaniards did not even have 400 soldiers, and the Aztecs had thousands, but Montezuma was afraid because of what his prophets had told him and decided to negotiate with Cortez. On November 8, 1519, Cortez met Montezuma and marched right into the center of the city. While Cortez negotiated with Montezuma, his remaining soldiers, who were waiting at the ships, mutinied. Cortez had to leave the city to put down the rebels. While he was gone, Montezuma attacked the remaining soldiers in the city, and 300 of Cortez’s 400 men were killed. Some of the men were sacrificed alive to the snake god. In spite of his tiny contingent remaining Cortez attacked the city, killed the king and conquered the Aztecs. The rest of the population was enslaved and brutally treated. So on both sides of the world the populace was under brutal tyranny. The Holy Roman Emperor, Charles the Fifth Hapsburg, heard about the vicious enslavement in New Spain and wanted to correct this abuse, so he appointed a bishop to take charge of the new world. Bishop Zumeragua arrived in the New World in 1528 as the first bishop of the New World. He tried very hard to stop the abuses and overcome the hatred between the Aztecs and the Spaniards. He brought fruit trees, and agriculture experts, and printing presses with him. He built schools. He built the College of the Holy Cross, which would become the largest college in the world. The Bishop, however, had a lot of problems with the Spanish soldiers. In fact, they even attacked him and his monks. The hatred grew so bad between the Spaniards and the Aztec Indians that the Bishop felt there would be an uprising. He smuggled out a message in a hollowed out cross to King Charles. King Charles appointed another Bishop (Don Sebastian Rameres) to be the head of the government in America
Bishop Zumeragua began to pray to Our Lady. He asked Our Lady to send him some Castilian Roses, as a sign that his desperate prayers had been heard. In the Sixteenth Century there were no Castilian Roses in all the Americas. On a hill that was formerly the temple to the goddess of the snake, Our Lady appeared to an Indian, one of the few Christians who existed at the time, Juan Diego. "Juanito, my son, where are you going?" Juan Diego was shocked at her beauty and could only mumble, "I am on my way to church to hear Mass." Our Lady smiled, "Know for certain that I am the perfect and perpetual Virgin Mary, Mother of the True God through Whom everything lives - the Lord of all things, who is the master of heaven and earth. I ardently desire a temple to be built here to me, where I will show and offer my love and compassion, my help, my protection to the people. I am your merciful Mother, the Mother of all who live united in this land and of all mankind, of all those who love me, of all those who cry to me, of all those who have confidence in me. Here I will hear their weeping and their sorrows, and will remedy and elevate their sufferings and misfortunes. "Therefore, in order to realize my intentions, go to the house of the bishop of Mexico City, and tell him that I send you and that it is my desire to have a temple built here. Tell him all that you have seen and heard. Be assured that I will be very grateful and will reward you for doing diligently what I have asked of you. Now that you have heard my words, my son, go and do everything as best as you can." Juan bowed his head reverently, "My Lady, I will do everything that you asked." And he went down the mountain to see the Bishop. He returned to Our Lady the same day. The Bishop was kind but did not believe him. "I beg You, Noble Lady, entrust this matter to someone of importance, someone well known and respected, so that your wish will be accomplished, for I am only a lowly peasant, and You have sent me to a place where I have no standing. Forgive me if I have disappointed you, for having failed at my mission." The Virgin looked tenderly on him and said, "Listen to me, My son, and understand that I have many servants who I could charge with the delivery of My message, but it is altogether necessary that you should be the one to carry out this mission. It is through your mediation and assistance that My wish should be accomplished. "I wish you to go to the bishop again tomorrow. Tell him in My Name and make him fully understand my disposition, that he should undertake the erection of a Church for which I ask. And repeat to him that it is I, in person, the Ever Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, who sends you." Once again the bishop pushed him out the door saying, "If the Lady could give me a sign maybe then I could believe." "What kind of sign?" asked Juan. "I leave it up to Her," he said. "Come again tomorrow," Our Lady told Juan, when he had told Her what the bishop had said, "and I will give you a sign for the bishop." When Juan went home he found his uncle sick and dying. Instead of going back to see Our Lady, he tried to go around the mountain to get a priest for his dying uncle. She intercepted him on the path at the foot of the mountain. "Where are you going, my son?" Juan told Our Lady about his dying uncle and that he was going to get a priest to give him the Last Rites. He promised to come back the next day to do as Our Lady had requested. "Listen, and let it penetrate into your heart my dear little son. Do not be troubled or weighted down with grief. Do not fear any illness, or vexation, anxiety, or pain. Am I not here, who am your Mother? Are you not under my shadow and protection? Am I not your fountain of life? Are you not in the folds of My Mantle, in the crossings of My Arms? Is there anything else you need? "Do not let the illness of your uncle worry you, because he is not going to die of this sickness. At this very moment he is cured." Our lady told Juan to go up to the top of the mountain and pick the flowers that he would see there and to bring them down to Her. When he did, She placed them very carefully in the front part of his tilma which he held in his hands. He then ran to the bishop with the tilma folded over the flowers. With much difficulty he entered into the bishop’s chamber, and there he found himself in front of two bishops and a priest. The new bishop, who would be the head of all Mexico, had arrived. The priest was his interpreter. Juan told his story and threw down the tilma, and the Castilian Roses fell to the floor. The bishop was speechless. These were the Castilian Roses that the bishop had prayed to the Virgin for. After some time, he looked up at Juan, and at that instant an image of the Virgin Mary appeared on the front of the tilma, Juan’s robe. It was done in pictograph form as the Aztec Indians wrote in their language. The two bishops, the priest, and Juan stood in a daze for a long time. Finally the Bishop removed the Tilma reverently and hugged Juan, asking his forgiveness. News spread throughout Mexico all night of the miracle. The next day, Juan and the Bishops led a procession to the site of the future Church. The Indians were so excited that they jumped up and down and sang songs to Our Lady. "Our Lady is one of us" they shouted. They shot arrows into the air in celebration. One of these arrows came down and killed one of the Indians. The bishop knew that Our Lady would not allow this sadness on this day, so he placed the Tilma on the dead man, and he came back to life perfectly healed. The bishop ordered a chapel to be built immediately until a Cathedral could be built. After the celebrations, Juan finally returned to his dying uncle. It had been almost two days since he left him. Juan found his uncle perfectly cured as he knew he would be, but he did not expect the story his uncle told. The Virgin appeared to his uncle at exactly the same time She was appearing to Juan, cured him, told him the story, and told him Her name. The name She actually gave was an Aztec Indian word which means, "The Woman Who Crushes the Head of the Serpent". But the Spaniards misunderstood the name and took it for "Our Lady of Guadalupe" which is a famous shrine in Spain where there is a statue of Our Lady that was owned by Leo the Great in the Fifth Century. Indians from all over the Americas in the millions came to see the picture, and miracles occurred everyday. What did the Indians see? They saw an Indian Lady on that Tilma blocking out their sun god, standing on their moon and snake gods, and praying to a God more powerful than Her. For the first time, Indians and Spaniards hugged each other. Conversions to the faith happened so fast that some priests baptized more than 6000 people in a single day. At one convent alone, two priests baptized 14,200 Indians in five days. Indian women replaced their mini-skirts with clothes similar to Our Lady. Ten million Indians were baptized in one year. The bishop, who prayed for Our Lady’s help; Cortez, who stopped the slaughter of infant babies; and Juan Diego, who saw Our Lady; all died in the same year. In the same year that Martin Luther took two million people out of the Kingdom of God on Earth, Our Lady brought ten million in. In fact, the fifty-year span from 1531 to 1581 was the fastest growth of the Catholic Church in the entire 2000-year history of the Church. The Reformation resulted in more than 20,000 protestant variations in Christianity. To this day in Mexico Protestant faiths are negligible.
Me too! Thank you, this is such an incredibly miraculous and uplifting story. Now, if only we could bring back our Brothers and Sisters to the Truth. I really struggle with Protestantism. I know I must pray a great deal for those who are to be called home to receive this call with a fertile heart.
I think Rick Salbato's description of Luther is hardly going to stand up in any historical analysis. I would like to point that the late Mr Salbato viewed Medjugorje (and yes, Vassula also!) as Satanic. I thought I ought to provide a link to a more balanced source of information about Luther. The Catholic Culture is a conservative site that provides this article on him: https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=7260
Irrespective of his views on Medjugorje & Vassula -- Would you please list the historical errors in his analysis of Martin Luther in the article I posted?
Mr Salbarto's facts may well be accurate but it is all about which facts he chooses to use and which he ignores. It is all about the 'picture' that emerges from his writing. He uses the same technique to criticize Medjugorje which is why I mentioned his negative position. I suggest the article I posted will give anyone interested a better 'picture' of Luther and his times.
The central tenet of the article is valid --- that Luther through his errors of Sola Fide and Sola Scriptura led several million people astray from the true faith. And in the same historical time frame Our Lady of Tepyeac (Guadalupe) through her apparition to Juan Diego led tens of millions into the faith. Luther's excommunication as a heretic still stands.
