The Great Controversy The Great Controversy | Page 133

themselves against Christ and the truth by their opposition to the man
whom He had sent to enlighten them.
Luther trembled as he looked upon himself—one man opposed to the
mightiest powers of earth. He sometimes doubted whether he had indeed
been led of God to set himself against the authority of the church. “Who
was I,” he writes, “to oppose the majesty of the pope, before whom ...
the kings of the earth and the whole world trembled? ... No one can
know what my heart suffered during these first two years, and into what
despondency, I may say into what despair, I was sunk.”—Ibid., b. 3, ch.
6. But he was not left to become utterly disheartened. When human
support failed, he looked to God alone and learned that he could lean in
perfect safety upon that all-powerful arm.
To a friend of the Reformation Luther wrote: “We cannot attain to
the understanding of Scripture either by study or by the intellect. Your
first duty is to begin by prayer. Entreat the Lord to grant you, of His great
mercy, the true understanding of His word. There is no other interpreter
of the word of God than the Author of this word, as He Himself has
said, ‘They shall be all taught of God.’ Hope for nothing from your own
labors, from your own understanding: trust solely in God, and in the
influence of His Spirit. Believe this on the word of a man who has had
experience.”—Ibid., b. 3, ch. 7. Here is a lesson of vital importance to
those who feel that God has called them to present to others the solemn
truths for this time. These truths will stir the enmity of Satan and of men
who love the fables that he has devised. In the conflict with the powers
of evil there is need of something more than strength of intellect and
human wisdom.
When enemies appealed to custom and tradition, or to the assertions
and authority of the pope, Luther met them with the Bible and the Bible
only. Here were arguments which they could not answer; therefore the
slaves of formalism and superstition clamored for his blood, as the Jews
had clamored for the blood of Christ. “He is a heretic,“

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