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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But on the mountain in Galilee, where we encounter a very different side of God, doubts overtake us. Why?
Before you ever know what happened, Satan has taught us to doubt the promise of the crucified and risen Christ.
Imagine a church's mission statement is: "You Don't Have to Fake It Till You Make It." That is, you walk into church and an usher hands you a bulletin
That is the way of our Lord, the way of grace. He doesn’t abandon Thomas to drown in a sea of doubt.
God isn’t interested in your sins. He isn’t interested in keeping score, making sure that you keep at least one more good work than bad in your ledger.
God isn’t interested in your sins. He isn’t interested in keeping score, making sure that you keep at least one more good work than bad in your ledger.
The following conversation occurred between one of 1517's readers/listeners and Dr. Rosenbladt via email in February of 2016.
Our faith is not a mountain but a grain of sand, not pure gold but gilded plaster. And all it takes is a few nicks and scratches to reveal its shallowness.
Believe in God, belong to a church, and behave yourself isn’t the Gospel.
During my many journeys to Japan, I discovered that more than a quarter millennium after his death Bach is now playing a key role in evangelizing that country, one of the most secularized nations in the developed world.
The biblical witness is clear: all the so-called gods and lords and idols who are the object of people’s devotion, to whom they offer their sacrifices, to whom they pray, whom they call God and Lord, are sadly nothing but a front for the father of lies.
O bloody town of Bethlehem, How shrill we hear thee cry. Your mothers shriek while fathers weep The graveyard lullaby.