Luther neither removed the Apocrypha from the Bible nor discouraged its use. Rather, he received and preserved the ancient distinction inherited from the fathers: the Apocrypha is valuable, edifying, and worthy of reading, but it is not Holy Scripture and therefore cannot serve as the foundation of Christian doctrine.
The confessors at Augsburg remind us that every generation of Christians is called to bear witness to the gospel amid the challenges and pressures of its own age. As they confessed Christ before emperors and kingdoms, so the Church continues to confess Him before the world today.
When Jesus washes you with baptismal water, you can rest assured that the Lion of Judah is on the move.

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Luther neither removed the Apocrypha from the Bible nor discouraged its use. Rather, he received and preserved the ancient distinction inherited from the fathers: the Apocrypha is valuable, edifying, and worthy of reading, but it is not Holy Scripture and therefore cannot serve as the foundation of Christian doctrine.
Christianity does not ultimately rest on the assertion that God delivered a perfectly dictated text whose divine origin can be demonstrated by claims of flawless transmission.
From the very beginning, the community that God was forming was going to be much more inclusive than anyone could have imagined.
No one is harder to convert than a religious expert.
Even when the bitter places sink down deep into our bones, the Restorer never relinquishes his grip on you.
To not speak of hell is also to forget or ignore the great benefits of Christ and his saving work.
Christ’s saving work is finished, but his love is not locked away in the past.
What Israel’s story makes painfully obvious is that following the Lord is a lifelong lesson in “I believe, but help my unbelief” (Mark 9:24).
This is an excerpt from the first chapter of A Reasoned Defense of the Faith by Adam Francisco (1517 Publishing, 2026), pgs 1-3.
On Maundy Thursday, Christ explicitly gave his disciples the new command from which the day takes its name, for the Latin words novum mandatum are the Vulgate’s translation of “new command.”
God is not a tool in our hands. He does not exist to serve our goals, our metrics, or our platforms.
The reasoning was always the same. The gods were angry. The gods were hungry. The gods required payment.