The Woman Who Knew Luther and Rejected the Message
Story★★★★I got cornered at a party once by another guest who wanted to tell me she had gone to a Bible college, and she was disappointed in the churches in our town because none of them preached the Bible. I invited her to the church where I was the pastor. She came. I phoned her the next week, and she said she appreciated that I had preached a message from the Bible.
However, she would not come back because of something in our worship service that came from Luther—and she didn’t agree with him. I asked her what it was. She said, ‘In your service you said, “He that believes and is baptized shall be saved.”
I know Luther said that, but I don’t believe it.’ She wouldn’t believe Jesus said it until I asked her to look up Mark 16:16. You guessed it. She didn’t come back to church. If the quote had been cited in our order of worship, I would not have had to embarrass the biblical scholar.
The point
A pastor invites a skeptical Bible-college graduate to church; her objection to a Luther-attributed phrase is answered when she discovers Jesus himself said it in Mark 16:16—a lesson in not dismissing truth based on source.