500 YEARS of FIGHTING IDOLATRY
Posted by: prophetic <prophetic@...>
-extracts by Tony Reinke
Five hundred years ago, God ignited a small flame in Wittenberg,
Germany, and it grew into the golden blaze of the Protestant
Reformation. What started in the hands of Martin Luther´s fabled
hammer swings, soon became a battering ram which rung across
the culture, smashing every false image of God in the cultural
worship of the day.
It got messy.
Yes, it smashed images and statues and shrines and icons and
relics. But these were simply outward manifestations of the
invisible idols rooted in sinful hearts - idols sometimes
perpetuated under the guise of "Christianity."
"The Protestant Reformation was a declaration of war on vain
thoughts about God."
The Reformers perceived the ancient expression of idol-making
as simply the expression of an inner idol, a falsely placed
confidence. The Protestant Reformation was a declaration of
war on vain thoughts about God. And when war is declared
against vain thoughts about God, war is declared on the culture´s idols.
Idol Factory
John Calvin fought in this battle, famously writing that "Man´s
nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols." But listen
to what Calvin says a few sentences later.
"Man´s mind, full as it is of pride and boldness, dares to imagine
a god according to its own capacity; as it sluggishly plods,
indeed is overwhelmed with the crassest ignorance, it conceives
an unreality and an empty appearance as God." (Institutes, 1:108)
Nothing is more dangerous than religious confidence in a fake
god of our own imagining.
~Source-
http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/the-nail-in-the-coffin-of-our-hearts