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Tom McDonald Closes the Sabbath with a Talk on the Reformers

 

To close the Sabbath hours during the 2018 Alumni Weekend, Tom McDonald (1983) had a program dealing with the Waldensians and later Reformers.

After a song service led by Carmela Burton and Melody Edwards, accompanied by Ruth Anderson, who is blind, on the piano. Todd Adams had prayer. All are members of the Class of 1983.

Then Tom McDonald talked about the Waldensians in the Italian Alps and later Reformers:

1. They lived in the mountain valleys of Italy in the beauties of nature.
2. Missionaries were sent out two by two with an older person and a younger person.
3. The Waldensians were going into enemy territory, ready to die.  They posed as merchants and experts in other trades.
4. They retreated to the mountains when the papal pressure became too great and copied God’s Word in the mountains.
5. Rome knew that these people posed a terrible threat to their power.
6. But the Waldensians planted the seeds that led to John Wycliffe and Martin Luther leading out in the Protestant Reformation.
7. These reformers stood against indulgences, which permit people to buy their way out of sin.
8. Luther stressed that the Bible is the only source of truth and that people could understand the Bible for themselves.
9. Habakkuk 2:4 “Behold, his soul [which] is lifted up is not upright in him: but the just shall live by his faith.”
10. Luther’s 95 Theses led to his excommunication from the Catholic Church.
11. At the age of 22, Luther encountered a thunderstorm so severe that he appealed to St. Anne and promised to become a priest.
12. As a result, he entered a monastery, enduring all sorts of penance to find peace.
13. So he read Romans 6:23 “For the wages of sin [is] death; but the gift of God [is] eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”   He prayed for the gift and dreamed that night of Satan unrolling a scroll of Luther’s sins.
14. But the devil was covering something on the scroll, and Luther demanded the devil’s hand be removed in the name of Jesus, which caused the devil to flee.
15. That section declared that Jesus had pardoned all his sins and brought him joy and peace and forgiveness.
16. Ephesians 2:8-9 “8 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: [it is] the gift of God: 9 Not of works, lest any man should boast.”
17. Jesus is all you need.